andressa’s Blog

       To Counter Malthus

 

None us in this so

burdened earth has known

how to live, let alone

who is too many.

 

Presence, each day

afresh, you give a

purifying signal to

sting us alive.

 

Vast territories and seashores

still bear these thronging

strangers. May none die

without somebody caring.

 

To know even one other is

costly. And being known.

Alive, among so many

more now? a concern…

 

Hunger makes men desperate, threatens

to congeal the quandary. Yet

Presence abides untouched

in the churn of Quantity

 

 In this poem of Avison, she is straight foward in disagreeing with Malthus theory.

Malthus theory claims that the unprivilegd part of society should keep going the way it is because if it were to improve it would unbalance the rest of the planet.

The poet disagrees right on the first line with an argument:  that this planet is already difficult to bear for everyone. We are all human being trying to make a living and none of us is to decide who should get a less burdened life and who shouldn’t.

 

“Presence, each day

afresh, you give a

purifying signal to

sting us alive”

 

 

 

In the second stanza the poet starts talking about the Presence.

It’s important to understand the Presence in Avison’s work. For her it is understood as Dialogue with God, Wisdom, Revelation.

All of those elements are present in this second stanza and according to the poet that is what inflames us to live.

 

“Vast territories and seashores

still bear these thronging

strangers. May none die

without somebody caring”

Personally this is the most beautiful part of the poem. Academically speaking I believe an intertextuality is appropriate here:

The text chosen was written by John Donne

“No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee”

The concept is the same as we are all connected through a single truth: the truth that we are all part of the same planet, beings of the same race, living under the same sun and the same God.Therefore , if someone perishes I am affected, I am less because I too am part of a whole.

“

To know even one other is

costly. And being known.

Alive, among so many

more now? a concern…”

 

I wonder if the poet is using a sort of a sarcastic tone here.

In these days of lack of food, water , land, energy, it is dangerous to live among people because we might have to start to worry if there will be enough for both of us.

 

 

Hunger makes men desperate, threatens

to congeal the quandary. Yet

Presence abides untouched

in the churn of Quantity”

 

Finally, the poet concludes the poem saying that although hunger causes suffering it would congeal this impass. However, The Presence live and waits in the company of the Quantity.

 

The way I see it, these poem is very current. The matter of lack of food and natural resouces in general is something that affects the whole country. Authorities and intelectuals have to keep in mind that the world is for ALL without distinction of color, race or financial status.

The ideas of it can also be related to the matter of ecology. If we keep in mind that we are a part of everything, that our disregard for the planet and the excessive waste will affect people around me,maybe it would be easier to preserve nature.

 

I will finish this analysis with a picture that has always scared me.

 

 

The photographer who took that shot won the maximun award that a professional in his area could get.

He was objective, rational and did a brilliant job.

Later on he was asked what  he had done to help that child but  he couldn’t answer.

He took his life a few months after that.

 

The death of that child affected the man who photographed her, affects me every time I see it, affects you that is reading…

“ May none die

without somebody caring”

 

I say Amem to that.

 

 

 

A Thunderstorm

A moment the wild swallows like a flight Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high, Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky. The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight, The hurrying centres of the storm unite And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe, Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge, Tower darkening on. And now from heaven’s height, With the long roar of elm-trees swept and swayed, And pelted waters, on the vanished plain Plunges the blast. Behind the wild white flash That splits abroad the pealing thunder-crash, Over bleared fields and gardens disarrayed, Column on column comes the drenching rain.

he poems by Archibald are short but very dense. If we could paint, it would be possible to paint a very descriptive picture just by reading its words.

This poem in specific is describing a thunderstorm

ANALYSIS

 

A moment the wild swallows like a flight

 U /     U         / U  /  U        U        /

Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high

U  /      U      /        U        /        U /   U     /

The rhymes are: abba cddc  efggef

 A moment the wild swallows like a flight
Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,
Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.
The leaves hang still.

The poet describes this moment as if the nature is swallowing the leaves from the tree and the wind is causing them to fly.

The word GUST- indicates sudden and the word WITHERED implies surrender.

Also, the word swallow indicates a movement of being consumed,overcome by the force-in this case, the force is the wind.

So it means that the leaves were taken from the tree and are flying because of the force of the weather condition.

More than one sense can be recognize at this part:

The sight is one of them since the poet can see what the wind is doing to the leaves. The other is the rearing because the poet mentions MUTTERING sky. Muttering means  a low grumble. That implies the noises we hear from the sky when a storm is about to form

Above the weird twilight,
The hurrying centres of the storm unite
And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,
Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge,
Tower darkening on.

Twilight is defined by the soft, diffused light from the sky when the sun is below the horizon more commonly, from sunset to nightfall.

From that definition we can assume that this is happening in the end of the afternoon and the beginning of the night. Once again the sense is the sight in which he writes about the colors and the weirdness of the twilight.

At this moment the storm is getting stronger. The wind is getting thicker and the movement described here is spining/ rolling in the sky .

SO at this point the storm is uniting, reaching its peak and there is also a sense that it is spreading. It is ceasing to be centered and it is moving around.

 And now from heaven’s height,
With the long roar of elm-trees swept and swayed,
And pelted waters, on the vanished plain
Plunges the blast

At this point we are left with a sense of impotence beyond the storm.

“From heaven’s height” implies that the poet aware of the force of the storm

There is also a roar of trees that are moving back and forth because of the wind. The sense here is hearing.

For the first time in the poem, we see the word water. It implies that it is starting to rain .

The words used to describe the power of the water are: pelted-which means to beat or strike heavily and repeatedly and also the word plunge- which means to cast or thrust forcibly or suddenly into something.

Welsh History

We were a people taut for war; the hills                         
Were no harder, the thin grass
Clothed them more warmly than the coarse
Shirts our small bones.
We fought, and were always in retreat,
Like snow thawing upon the slopes
Of Mynydd Mawr; and yet the stranger
Never found our ultimate stand
In the thick woods, declaiming verse
To the sharp prompting of the harp.
Our kings died, or they were slain
By the old treachery at the ford.
Our bards perished, driven from the halls
Of nobles by the thorn and bramble.
We were a people bred on legends,
Warming our hands at the red past.
The great were ashamed of our loose rags
Clinging stubbornly to the proud tree
Of blood and birth, our lean bellies
And mud houses were a proof
Of our ineptitude for life.
We were a people wasting ourselves
In fruitless battles for our masters,
In lands to which we had no claim,
With men for whom we felt no hatred.
We were a people, and are so yet.
When we have finished quarrelling for crumbs
Under the table, or gnawing the bones
Of a dead culture, we will arise
And greet each other in a new dawn
Armed, but not in the old way.

 

R. S. Thomas (1913 – 2000)

View of the past, present, and future of the Welsh people 

The past was a period of fight, wars and challenges but it was also victorious, pride worthy…

 

The present, however is not seen with such eyes by the poet: for him the present is a place stuck in the past glories. All the heros, the kings, the barbans have already died and what’s left is only memories which people can’t let go.

 

 

The future is optimistic: the poet claims that when the Welsh people stop living from old glories’ crumbs, a new culture will arise

 

I see many similarities with the poem Welsh Testament

It seems that the past, although  full of glories, represents the reason why Wales can’t progress in the present.

The present is always the most hopeless time for the poetic voice.

In the future’s view there is a different element: hope.

The poet sees the possibility of change, of a continuance of the Welsh culture and language.

 

” Living is easy with eyes closed,

  Misunderstanding ALL you see”

                              The Beatles

This is my blog. My space for an attempt to “see” through the eyes of literature.

Enjoy!

Andressa