Reading Colorblind

One of the more traditional and most prominent themes present in poetry, plays and all other types of creative writing is the theme of colors. Though colors have been used often through the centuries of literature we have documented, colors still escape me when I read through poems and plays the first time through. I never really thought that seeing colors would change my perspective on reading poetry, until I read poems by Robert Frost and Charles Simic.

Robert Frost is known for carrying many different themes throughout his poetry, especially pessimism and nature, but Frost's attention to colors is very intriguing. One of the poems where color rang out the loudest was Frost's poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay". The poem reads:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early  leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

When first reading through this poem alongside Frost's other works, the major things I noticed were the style and the emphasis on nature, but upon reading the poem more closely, I realized the paradox present in the first two lines. When plants start to bloom in the season of Spring, everyone imagines green, but that's simply not true for every plant. Some plants bloom blue, red, orange, pink, etc., and some plants around where Frost probably lived when he was in England bloomed gold. It's easy to see this simple paradox, but thinking of what else the colors green and gold can stand for will bring even more depth to the poem. If nature stands for life, then gold may stand for money, which would bring a completely new meaning to the first two lines. In this context, instead of talking about flowers blooming in spring, Frost could be telling his readers that money is hardest to hold on to and only "lasts an hour".

A contemporary poet named Charles Simic also focuses on the theme of colors in his poetry, especially in the poem "The White Room". In this poem, Simic doesn't actually describe a white room, but a "woman who always wore white". This woman describes truth as "bald and cold" in the poem. The color black is also highlighted in this poem, as Simic ties the color to Gods who are "disguising themselves as black hairpins". The woman in white and the Gods disguised in black are designed to be opposites in this poem.

The styles of these poems may be slightly comparable, but the major connection between the two is the theme of colors. Both poets have a color headlining in their titles, and both use colors to go against the traditional view of what those colors may be associated with. Frost uses gold to signify both spring and money, instead of green, and Simic uses white to signify seclusion and black to signify gods.

To all readers and lovers of poems, the suggestion to pay particular attention to color may seem like common sense, but to all those who are just starting to read poetry (like me), I would definitely advise looking into the colors of the poems. There's much more to poetry that can be understood when noticing the theme of colors instead of reading poetry colorblind.


Suggested poetry blog of the week: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/

Immortal Depression

The idea of immortality is usually good...being able to live forever without ever worrying about death again....it's not the worst idea in the world, but it definitely depends on perspective. If you believe in an afterlife that gets considerably better than life here on earth, an immortal afterlife sounds like paradise. If you decide immortality is just an extension of the mortal life you have now, with the afterlife providing nothing new or better, then immortality sounds like eternal misery. Of course, there is always the third option of not believing in any type of afterlife or immortality, which may be the most pessimistic view of all, but that also depends on perspective.

Emily Dickenson writes a poem titled "Because I could not stop for Death", and inside these well-crafted lines lies a very interesting view of immortality and death. It's obvious that Dickenson believes in an immortal afterlife in her first stanza as she writes:

Because I could not stop for death
He kindly stopped for me
The Carriage held but just Ourselves
And Immortality.

As dark as it may seem, I love this stanza by Dickenson, as it's so expertly written. Death will always come along, and as sure as death is, it doesn't have to hurry to come meet us. We never have time for death. Heck, most people barely plan for it, even though everyone knows it's inevitable. An interesting note here is that Death stops by "kindly", showing a little bit of Dickenson's viewpoint on both life and death. Dickenson believes in an immortal afterlife, and upon further investigation, she doesn't believe in a very optimistic view of the afterlife. In fact, she appears to wish death were permanent instead of having an eternal state of existence.

The major reason I'm exploring Dickenson's view of immortality more than the poem itself is because a current poet, Craig Teicher, writes Dickenson into one of his poems that is titled "Immortality". Teicher also believes Dickenson is dark in her perspective on life, as shown when he writes:

If I could reach my hand out to you now, would you take it? How do you think it would feel? Warm and soft and certain? Or like Emily's: clammy and brittle as hardened paste? Is that not how you imagine her hands? Look again - they were like that, otherwise she could never, would never, have written those poems.

Teicher refers to Dickenson in his poem, but the major connection between these two is the theme of the poem. Both speak of immortality, though Dickenson speaks of immortality going along with death while Teicher simply refers to immortality in abstract terms. The major disconnect between the two is the style. Teicher writes in a more free-writing, paragraph blocked form, while Dickenson writes in a traditional, 4-line stanza form.

If you believe there is an afterlife, which type of afterlife is it? Is it an afterlife that gets better, or is it an afterlife that makes you wish death were permanent? To think that an afterlife could get no better than the life we currently live...to me, that's immortal depression.


Helpful poetry blog of the week: poetryfoundation.org