William Faulkner, "A Rose For Emily"

For no apparent reason except perhaps that I enjoy reading aloud, I read this story aloud. I rarely do this except when I have an audience to listen, as I listened so attentively to my father as a child when he read Briar Rabbit aloud and animatedly. My walls were attentive listeners. Hearing the words as well as reading them brought out more rhythm and imagery to this short story, I could see and hear the ladies gossiping about Miss Emily because as an animated reader I had to make a quick decision how those words ought to be said. I wouldn't say that the language is particularly difficult to read, although those words that attend the most to imagery may be cause for pause such as "coquettish" and jalousies (which I learned is a peculiar word for a blind or shutter with adjustable horizontal slats) or cabal (a small group of secret plotters; a clique). This last word, once its definition had been obtained, was cause for pause with me, because I hadn't exactly imagined the townspeople as aligned against Miss Emily during the story, but rather a group of various positions and knowledge of her. I supposed before that they would just as easily gossip about the pastor that they asked for help or the general store owner as her. Upon re-reading, I realize that it is narrated mainly from "we" and that supports the introduction of an image of mostly malicious individuals. However, what to do about the context within which the word is introduced: "By that time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily's allies to help circumvent the cousins" (127)? A cabal of people outside who have picked this time to be her ally for their benefit? We're not given any further information exactly about their intentions here. Or necessarily anywhere else, they are mostly speculative and voice a negative opinion only when it infringes upon their comforts - such as smells and bodies not put properly to rest. Can we conclude that Miss Emily was crazy as a consequence of her resting beside her love who we presume she poisoned with the arsenic? No, because we are given no indication that those things are the certain correlation of events due to the reader being aligned (against their will?) with the 'outsiders'.

William Carlos Williams

What a delight it was to be introduced to this poet! As a writer myself, I'm always a close reader of others poetry in terms of word use, spacing, analogy and metaphor. I suppose I could easily drive myself quite nuts suffering from low self-esteem in terms of my writing and always striving to be immediately as effective as some of the Greats. Needless to say, I have a fair amount to learn and reading selections of W.C Williams works was a wonderful contribution to that process.

The poem which struck me the most during my first read through was The Farmer but there were also paragraphs of pieces which came to my attention with another hour of attention. I suppose I really liked the image of a farmer being compared with an artist. Its first stanza evoked in my mind the rhythm of a piece written by Stan Rice, husband to Anne Rice, who was in his own rights a strong painter and gothic poet:

Duet on Iberville Street
The man in black leather
buying a rat to feed his python
does not dwell on particulars.
Any rat will do.
While walking back from the pet store
I see a man in a hotel garage
carving a swan in a black of ice
with a chain saw.

-January 30 1994

In contrast to that ironic depiction of urban livelihood, Williams presents us with a natural setting, and an exceptionally average man. One who must think ahead of nature in order for his and societies successes. His grasp of nature and his ability to use adjectives to describe not only the inanimate objects texture and temperature but its action is quite striking. I am thinking here of "the world rolls coldly away:/black orchards/darkened by the March clouds--leaving room fro though." and "bristling by/the rainsluiced wagonroad".

The other selections of his writing which caught my attention also had to do with his very exquisite, non-cliche, ability to describe nature. This is see in The Botticellian Trees: "principles of/straight branches/are being modified/by pinched-out/ifs of color, devout/conditions" and The Yachts: "the whole sea become an entanglement of watery bodies/lost to the world bearing what they cannot hold."

Also, from I (p.305) "Jostled as are the waters approaching/the brink,his thoughts/interlace, repel and cut under,/rise rock-thwarted and turn aside/but forever strain forward-or strike/an eddy and whirl,marked by a /leaf or curdy spume, seeming to forget ." The word use, and imagery and impenetrable spaces before the period left me quite impressed, to say the least.

Literary Time Twists

Recently we've read selections from The Souls Of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois and also started The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James. Both of these are books with seperate and special places in my life.

In regards to the first, I read "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" for my old Sociology teacher, Dia DaCosta (now Dia Mohan) who left HWS after Spring '07 for Queens University in Canada. She was an amazing teacher, very dear to all of her students hearts, for the way that she demanded the best from us, regardless of our previous experience with the subject at hand and left us striving for comprehension hours after class. I took Intro to Soc and Sociology of Art and Culture with her, two classes on opposite ends of the spectrum of academic rigorousness. I read Du Bois in Art and Culture and am incredibly pleased to be able to revisit his writings. I find them remarkable. He was so coherent in his conscious study of the present, the past and the future. He speaks in such a voice that it's hard not to at once feel transported. It's a History lesson that doesn't grow boring, because as tough as the material it wrestles with is, it is full of Truths: reflecting both humanities actions and mentality. In that manner it is a literary time portal that is, although in essence very defined, in a bizarre way timeless and unidentifiable. By speaking against exemption, it gloriously embraces.

The second text, which I had sent to me from home, has pages which hold a bright joyous yellow tint to their edges. This copy was printed in 1993. It's small and portable, complete and unabridged, with a cover which is printed with such an image as you can't help but want to know more. A young girl, with her hair standing on edge, and her mouth in a startled 'O' is dressed in a remarkable purple dress and fleeing from an apparition chasing after her up the stairs. The ghost's face has such intention to its brow, yet its hair also reflects hers. This work has sat on my shelves since my Dad deemed it a piece I was ready to consume, yet I have never managed to do its pages justice. I'm glad, at last, for the excuse. What has struck me already with this work, is its twisting narrative, not in terms of plot, but in terms of time. We have an undefined present the author speaks from, where another narrator speaks of a past, which is not his own past, but yet another's. And even when the narration of this third narrator begins, it is still in language of hindsight. Its a very remarkable journey to put a reader through within nine pages! And within such a short time, the audience has been promised a great mystery story. I do admit that by having the female narrator speaking from such a voice that we are always feeling as if we are expecting something is a wonderful style for a mystery story. A perfect example is, "But these fancies were not marked enough not to be thrown off, and it is only in the light, or the gloom, I should rather say, of other and subsequent matters that they now come back to me" (p.12)

Adieu.