Fishermen Varsity English (AP): Examples: Cover, Introduction, and Table of Contents

[Cover page]

“Stating the Case of the Underdog”:

Protest Songs, Laments, Documentary Poems, Blues, Cante Jondo, and so on

James Cook

Elizabeth Johnson Tsang

College Board AP Institute:

AP Literature and Composition

July 28, 2008

*******

[Introduction]

Introduction: Under and Below, Down and Out, Black and Blue

Strangely, it was while reading a Ford Maddox Ford quotation about Jean Rhys’s first novel that I came upon the theme of this poetry anthology. Francis Wyndham quotes Ford as writing that Rhys demonstrates “a terrifying instinct and a terrific—an almost lurid!—passion for stating the case of the underdog.” Wyndham goes on to write that without what Ford calls “a singular instinct for form” Rhys’s work might become bathetic: “sentimental or sensational.” Conversely, without the unflinching moral depiction of the downtrodden the formal acuity might seem superficial, no more than a shiny trinket. However, by championing the underdog—by revealing the underdog—with a fine (and innovative) sense of the novelist’s art (especially narration and characterization) Rhys produced “original art” that is both “exquisite and deeply disturbing.”

I hope these poems live up to Rhys’s fiction. All of the poems might be said to “state the case of the underdog.” The forms, however, are quite diverse.

Some poems are laments (“The Widow’s Lament in Springtime,” “I reason, Earth is short,” “Jim Dunn’s Eviction”). Some are blues (“Blues at Dawn” and “This Morning I Have Got to Keep Moving”). Some are deep songs, cantes jondos, possessed by duende. (Federico García Lorca wrote, “The duende…is a power, not a work. It is a struggle, not a thought. [I]t is not a question of ability, but of true, living style, of blood, of the most ancient culture, of spontaneous creation.”)

At least one poem is a wound (“Billie”). Another is an ache (“The ache of Marriage”). Yet another is a meditation on death (“The Fool on the Football Wars”).

There is a Whitmanic song of protest (“Cap’tain Zombi”). And there is an epistolary protest, a kind of prose poem (“Dear Mr. President…”). Some poems are analogous to activist documentary films (“Yiddish Speaking Socialists of the Lower East Side,” “Nicaraguan Canto,” “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” “Eugene Delacroix Says,” “Sept 17 / Aug 29, ’88”). Some poems are a combination of critique and witness (“London” and “After Lorca”).

In the anthology there is an ekphrastic poem—a poem responding to visual art (“Sugar Cane”). One piece is a poetic play (“Plumbing”). (Since there are prose poems can there not be play poems?) In another set of poems Vasko Popa employs a speaker who uses the language of children’s games; such games, of course, have losers: “There’s no place he doesn’t look/And looking he loses himself.”

The anthology contains three songs (“Song: Men of England,” “Straight to Hell,” “Fairytale of New York), a protest sonnet (“England in 1819”), and a Donne valediction, a poem of parting with ample characteristic conceits. (The later poem’s private defiance of the sorrowful moment seems analogous in some ways to the public defiance of injustice in the political protest poems within the anthology.)

Among the poems whose lines are liberated from the left margin, there are many variations of William Carlos Williams’ variable foot line and some Olsonian projective verse (“Song 3,” “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” “Nicaraguan Canto,” “Yiddish Speaking Socialists…”). There are poets playing with the net down (CAConrad), poets playing with the net up (Donne, Shelley, Blake), and poets playing with the net (Dickinson and Niedecker).

Poets are makers. (“Poein,” from which “poet” is derived, is classical Greek for “to make.”) And these poems are made of private sorrows and socio-political injustice, of resignation and resilience, of protest and witness, of song and declaration, of chant and moan, of empathy and defiance; all make “cases,” so to speak, for the wounded, the aching, the degraded, the alienated, the downtrodden. These are poems for and of the underdog.

*******
[Table of Contents]

“Stating the Case of the Underdog”:

Protest Songs, Laments, Documentary Poems, Blues, Cante Jondo, and so on

THE PERSONAL AND THE POLITICAL

“A Valediction: Of Weeping,” John Donne a 17^th century poem
“Song: Men of England,” Percy Bysshe Shelley a 19^th century poem
“The Widow’s Lament in Springtime,” William Carlos Williams a 20^th century poem
“England in 1819,” Percy Bysshe Shelley a sonnet
“Straight to Hell,” Joe Strummer (performed by The Clash) a song lyric
“Sugar Cane,” James William Cook a poem I have written
“Jim Dunn’s Eviction,” James William Cook a poem I have written
“The Fool on the Football Wars,” James William Cook a poem I have written

WITNESS AND PROTEST

“After Lorca,” Robert Creeley
“The Songs of Maximus, Song 3” Charles Olson
“Eugene Delacroix Says,” Ed Dorn
“London,” William Blake
“Gloucester Poem,” Amanda Porter
from “Nicaraguan Canto,” Ernesto Cardenal, translation Robert Pring-Mill
“Yiddish Speaking Socialists of The Lower East Side,” Ed Sanders
“Cap’tain Zombi,” René Depestre, translation Joan Dayan
from “Wichita Vortex Sutra” Allen Ginsberg
“Sept 17 / Aug 29, ’88,” Alice Notley
“Dear Mr. President There Was Egg Shell under Your Desk Last Night in My Dream!” CAConrad

BLUES & CANTE JONDO (DEEP SONG)

“Confusion,” Federico García Lorca, translation James William Cook
“Blues at Dawn” Langston Hughes
[301], Emily Dickinson
“This Morning I have Got to Keep Moving/Oral Histories and Family Sketches,” Sam Cornish
“Valentine’s Day,” CAConrad
“Fairytale of New York,” Shane MacGowan (performed by The Pogues)
“Plumbing,” Musa McKim
“The Ache of Marriage,” Denise Levertov
“Billie,” John Wieners
[“Who was Mary Shelley?”], Lorine Niedecker

DUENDE IN CHILD’S PLAY

from “Games,” Vasko Popa

Note: In case you noticed the directions for the assignment I did this summer were different than the directions I gave to you. So make sure you follow the directions instead of just following what I've done.