<p>OK AP Litters, I'm pretty sure 90% of you (incl. myself) have said "the author couldn't possibly have intended THAT!!!!" and thought your teachers were crazy for thinking that Scout was a Christ figure in "To Kill a Mockingbird". Here's a little experiment I've devised in reponse. I've written this poem, and hidden puns and stuff in it that have actual meanings. If you want to whet your AP Lit minds, you can read it and try and dissect it.</p>
<p>CHANCE ENCOUNTER
You may know how
I so enjoy the poetry
Of William Carlos Williams
How it comes softly off
The pen with greatest tenderness
(I do indeed say this as a man. Oh how chivalric ideal of the poet-knight has sunk with that garden of which he spoke and which I shall get to eventually)
And thus caresses the soul
Fifty years later when
His words are no more
Well known than the works
Of Zeuxis or Apelles
"That strange, wonderful, gaudy
old work" applies not nonetheless
Like a cool summer rain
Pouring down like "Cast no Shadow"
On the asphodel below, which I was
Very glad to hear about too.
I went on to read another poem
About a garden, all but dead
But even the state of death,
Of that garden swallowed by
Moss and weeds, has life
Compared to the bleak and chill white
And brown outside (no I am not random. Faulkner reminds me of fate which brings me back to the topic at hand)
Suffice it to say
It filled me with warmth
As though Thomas Cole had
Painted the sun over my soul
As you wrote those words.
I have just read Il Decameron
I should have you know
And as you described the place,
in Upstate New York, that sweeping land,
I thought of Boccaccio's narrators
Dioneo was my favorite
Though I liked them all (but for Panfilo of course, which comes as no surprise to any Boccaccisto)
And as I read about the readings of
The Faerie Queen I was
Reminded that you
Even you, reject of pop writing
Who hid in Paterson
Delivering not just infants of life
But of life (poetry that is)
Had read the classics
More than I and indeed
Spoke several languages (I now regret not learning Latin now that I know of Erasmus' existence. Alas, the choices we make prematurely)
I continued to recall those Hundred
Even they were too brief.
I forgot that you translated Li Po
And if I had remembered
Still would not have seen
The fulfillment of my hopes
By God or fate or
Blessed fortune (not cruel)
as Boccaccio's garden
Was listed in the next stanza. </p>
<p>Here's some outside info:
Mapleleafs26 - common themes: fate, nature, culture
Influences: William Carlos Williams, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Giovanni Boccaccio
Era: Early 21st Century</p>
<p>I’m really bad at this, but I got one: “Cast no Shadow” - Oasis song from ‘(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?’</p>
<p>good call 10 char</p>
<p>There’s one that I’m incredibly proud of and will have to spill if no one has posted here in the next few days :)</p>
<p>(I do indeed say this as a man. Oh how chivalric ideal of the poet-knight has sunk with that garden of which he spoke and which I shall get to eventually)</p>
<p>“The Italian Garden”?</p>
<p>And hope of hopes to never see
The day of the death of chivalry
Though ridicule and slander fly
And the names of the great thrown to the sky
A poet born will always be,
No matter how little his talents see.</p>
<p>Sorry, I know nothing about actual poets. You just seemed so distraught about chivalry.</p>
<p>^^if that was from memory, I will be engaging in passionate love with you. If it was from googling, I give you hearty praise</p>
<p>^I’m reading Orlando Furioso right now and just finished The Decameron haha. That would probably explain it lol</p>
<p>[incomprehension]?lol[/incomprehension]</p>
<p>random color for ten seconds</p>
<p>^Mauve.</p>
<p>Lol, no, we never did poetry in Lit. Just a couple of Romantic poets, and I was correcting their rhythm, they messed up in a few places. But I’ve heard of the Decameron.</p>
<p>lol it’s a pretty good, fun read. </p>
<p>Romantic poetry is fun. That’s probably my favorite artistic genre if you include art as well (I just realized that no other artistic movements also had poetry movements, giving romanticism an unfair advantage…w/e). I’ll need to read Childe Harold’s Pilrimage to get my rebel/chivalry fix :)</p>
<p>Bocaccio, Li Po, Erasmus, Spenser, Cole, Faulkner WCW are fairly obvious. Asphodel - reference to Greek underworld. Zeuxis and Apelles - stereotypical distortions of Zeus and Apollo, or is there something else behind this?</p>
<p>Seems to describe an Arthurian waste land. Then again, every poem does. Especially The Waste Land.</p>
<p>I may post again after actually reading the poem.</p>
<p>
oh snap, this shouldn’t make me feel good, but I feel like an actual poet now.
[Zeuxis</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeuxis]Zeuxis”>Zeuxis - Wikipedia)
[Apelles</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apelles]Apelles”>Apelles - Wikipedia)
The name resemblance is interesting</p>
<p>Asphodel -> Asphodel, That Greeny Flower - my favorite WCW poem, which also references that more meaningful asphodel - “I was cheered when I came first to know that there were flowers also in hell.”</p>
<p>AOM lives on in you Maple. Good job with the thread imitation.</p>
<p>did he do a thread like this? I remember his “rate my nooby poem” thread</p>
<p>haha I am glad</p>
<p>“There’s one that I’m incredibly proud of and will have to spill if no one has posted here in the next few days”</p>
<p>Too early?</p>
<p>yeah I’ll tell</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So, when I said hundred, I meant not only the hundred stories of the Decameron, but also the fatalistic themes associated with Sutpen’s Hundred, keeping alive the Faulkner references throughout the poem. I think I need to work on better extending by metaphors.</p>
<p>Just a little note to do myself justice: this was originally written in Williams’ three line stanza, which was reformatted in my posting this.</p>