American Literature: Romanticism Sample Final Exam Essays 2015 final exam assignment #5. Romantic Poetry

Gregory Buchanan

14 May 2015

The Heroic Individual's Path from Isolation to Reconciliation in American Romantic Poetry

          Our course dealt well with American Romantic poetry. The system of presentations that we used was highly effective. I do not believe that we should change the discussion-style method that presenters are required to use when leading the class. It works well. Without discussing the details of the poems they were assigned, I can say that Heather Schutmaat's presentation of Sylvia Plath's "Blackberrying" and Nikki Bippen's presentation of Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish" were very successful. Heather concentrated on religious imagery and challenged easy identifications with interesting follow-up questions. Her rigorous engagement with classmates made the presentation fascinating, as I was challenged to recognize images I had previously overlooked. Changing the mechanics of our presentation system so that every presenter will experience similar success might mean allowing more time for questions and discussion. Presenters might also begin by reviewing material that is well known in popular culture or common knowledge about the material they are presenting, so as to stimulate the kind of inventive responses Heather's questions received. I know our course website contains some material on American Romanticism in popular culture; this could be reviewed at the beginning of presentations if relevant. Nikki's presentation devoted a lot of time to the details of "The Fish," but it also drew relationships to some of Bishop's other work, and attempted to integrate information about the poet's life. I especially enjoyed learning more about Bishop, and while I understand that biographical information should not influence criticism too much, I believe time devoted to authors would be helpful in future presentations. My presentation of Theodore Roethke's "I Knew a Woman" was moderately successful, but I felt it would have benefitted from more time on the poetics of Roethke, who shares beliefs in common with several other course poets. Maybe on a day or half-day assigned to a poet, information on his or her poetic principles could be shared by a class member? I tried to integrate poetics into my discussion of "I Knew a Woman," and I believe this made the scope of my presentation too broad. The course will benefit from separating discussion about poetics from treatment of specific poems. Presenters were very well-read and informative, but classmates not presenting also contributed surprisingly insightful observations during the discussion periods of presentations.

          Our class discussions often centered around the lyric as a favored genre of American Romantic poetry. The lyric's capacity for conveying emotion makes it appropriate for Romantics, who emphasize the personal, subjective aspects of their poetic subjects. Although less popular because of their formality, some forms of the lyric have traditionally discussed serious personal subjects, such as the ode. Less serious and more intimately personal subjects are usually expressed through confessional lyrics, which retain many of the conventions of Romanticism. American popular culture understands the lyric as a component of songs, but its scholarly applications are varied not only in form, but also in content. Lyricism in Romantic poetry often involves an individual who aspires to reality beyond the present moment, perhaps to reunite with a lover, become closer to nature, or overcome hardship.

          An important theme of American Romantic poetry is the relationship of individuals to nature, which Sylvia Plath's "Blackberrying," Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish," and Theodore Roethke's "I Knew a Woman" each address. The figure of the individual in nature is central to Romanticism, and Romantic texts offer various depictions of individuals pursuing unity with nature. Usually social forces obstruct the individual's progress, and he or she must separate from the crowd in order to search for meaning alone. However, in some cases, the individual finds himself or herself alienated from nature while alone. Nature and the individual work together to achieve unity, often with nature revealing the deceptions or hidden truths that prevented unity. Plath, Bishop, and Roethke trace the progress of individuals estranged from nature as they confront their perceived isolation, find comfort in natural objects, anticipate their reconciliations with nature, and finally arrive at realizations of their place in nature's order, demonstrating how the heroic individual may overcome self-imposed alienation to be reconciled with nature.

          Plath's, Bishop's, and Roethke's speakers offer descriptions of natural environments that concentrate on certain objects in isolation from other objects, suggesting that they themselves feel alienated from nature. In "Blackberrying," the speaker singles out blackberries: "Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries" (1). Both the speaker and the blackberries are alone. The speaker in "The Fish" is presumably alone in a boat when he or she catches a single fish: "I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat" (1-2). "I Knew a Woman" begins with the speaker describing a woman: "I knew a woman, lovely in her bones" (1). The speaker emphasizes the loveliness of the woman's bones, the material objects responsible for her form. Each speaker describes objects--blackberries, a fish, a woman--that they encounter while alone in nature. Knowing the conventions of Romanticism is helpful when reading these poems because one can easily recognize the figure of the individual in nature, a standard feature in Romantic texts. The objects are each set apart from their environments, which parallels the aloneness of the speaker. Singling out objects from among other objects suggests that each speaker feels alienated from nature, as if he or she were also singled out and unable to connect, relate, or belong.

          The speakers find comfort in attributes of the objects on which they focus, revealing that they desire reconciliation with nature, which possesses the same attributes on a larger scale. The speaker in "Blackberrying" claims that the blackberries love her because they "squander" (7) their juice on her fingers. Although their affection was unsolicited, she reciprocates it in "blood sisterhood" (8). Relying on imagery from Christianity, the speaker implies that the blackberries give their lives for her, so that her life may be improved, or, in this case, reconciled with nature. Personification of the blackberries continues when she depicts their willingness to be bottled: "They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides" (9). Although "Blackberries" contains many instances of Romantic convention, it cannot be read as a purely Romantic poem: the bottling of the blackberries is presented in specific detail, which readers should recognize as informed by Realist convention. In "The Fish," the speaker is impressed by the physical features of the fish: "I admired his sullen face, / the mechanism of his jaw (45-46). He or she is especially inspired by the fish's ability to escape previous attempted captures, as evidenced by the hooks and lines in its lip: "five old pieces of fish-line, / or four and a wire leader / with the swivel still attached, / with all their five big hooks / grown firmly in his mouth" (51-55). The lines and hooks are likened to war medals: "Like medals with their ribbons / frayed and wavering" (61-62). Observing the evidence of the fish's courageousness encourages the speaker to reconcile himself or herself with nature, regardless of risk or danger. "The Fish" includes very specific details in its Realist descriptions of the fish, which a solely Romantic reading would not be sufficient to appreciate. The woman described in "I Knew a Woman" consoles the speaker with her kindness and gentleness: "She stroked my chin" (8) She is cast as a caring, nurturing figure: "I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand" (11). Her tenderness wins the speaker's trust, which the woman will later draw on to teach him or her how to reconcile with nature. The speaker of each poem recognizes qualities in natural objects that lead him or her to desire reconciliation with nature itself: the selflessness of the berries, courage of the fish, and kindness of the woman inspire personal growth in their observers.

          In addition to finding encouragement in natural objects, the speakers also discover qualities that remind them of the ubiquity of nature, which suggests that their reconciliation is inevitable. The speaker of "Blackberrying" vaguely notes the presence of "a sea / Somewhere at the end of it, heaving" (3-4) at the end of the "blackberry alley" (3). The proximity of the blackberries to the sea suggests the unity of all natural objects, but the speaker only fully realizes this fact later, after "the berries and bushes end" (18). The sea symbolizes the amorphous, enveloping power of nature to incorporate things into itself, making it the appropriate agent for the speaker's return to nature: "The only thing to come now is the sea" (19). Similarly, in "The Fish," the speaker understands that the success of the fish in avoiding capture implies that he or she will return to nature by releasing it. The success of the fish is inevitable, regardless of the will of its captor: "I stared and stared / and victory filled up / the little rented boat" (65-67). But the victory is not only the fish's: by releasing it, the speaker approaches harmony with nature, so he or she becomes victorious, too. Since catching a fish is a visceral experience, relying too heavily on Romantic concepts when reading  "The Fish" may produce an account of the speaker's experience that is too cerebral. Readers must appreciate the difficulty of capturing such an elusive fish in order to understand the sacrifice involved in letting it go. Unlike the speakers in "Blackberrying" and "The Fish," the speaker in "I Knew a Woman" does not encounter the sea as a representative of nature's reconciling power; instead, he or she enjoys the casual, carefree dancing of the woman in order to find hidden pleasure in mundane labor: "Her full lips pursed, the errant notes to seize; / She played in quick, she played it light and loose;" (16-17). The enjoyment that the speaker experiences in the woman's movement anticipates the enjoyment that he will later find in all of experience when he is reconciled with nature. Each speaker perceives his or her eventual return to nature in experiences with natural objects. Proximity that signifies unity, victory that one experiences whether successful or not, and enjoyment in everyday labor all point to the larger values that the speakers will receive upon returning to nature.

          The speakers of the poems overcome their alienation from nature when each experiences a revelation of his or her inclusion in the order of nature, whether intimidating or encouraging. "Blackberrying" depicts the reconciliation of its speaker with nature upon her realizing that, isolated as she may be, her isolation is representative of all of nature. The selflessness demonstrated by the blackberries is an impersonal selflessness of non-identity, the surrender of individuality.  Looking out over a hill, the speaker finds the same impersonal selflessness magnified to include all of nature: "That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space" (25). The speaker's assumed isolation from the rest of nature was the effect of spatial delusion, as suggested in the first stanza of the poem, when she only vaguely perceives the sea beyond the blackberry hooks (1-4). She presumes that the immediate reality of the blackberries is the only reality, but her movement toward the sea ends her confusion. The poem allows the reader to perceive part of the spatial distortion that the speaker experiences, but in order to do so, the reader must approach the poem with a Modernist convention in mind: time and space are relative to the observer. The hooks of the blackberries end in two places, line 18 and line 23. The first ending is a temporal end--the rows of blackberries cease--but the second is a subjective end: the false reality of the blackberries gives way to the true reality of nature's order. In "The Fish," the speaker realizes the rainbow, a product of light reflecting off of water in the air, is as much a reality inside the boat as outside: "...oil had spread a rainbow / around the rusted engine" (69-70). Beyond the boat, "everything / was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!" (74-75). The speaker achieves unity upon recognizing the power of nature to project its rainbows within his or her sphere of influence, the boat, and without. The speaker in "I Knew a Woman" changes his or her understanding of time because of the influence of the woman, who "moved in circles, and those circles moved" (21). Her exposing the speaker to a new form of motion challenges the speaker's presumption of ordinary time. The speaker trusts the woman, as evidenced by his or her using "freedom" to know what he now considers reality, the woman's version (24). He or she no longer counts time in days, but instead "by how a body sways" (26, 28). This new standard is relative to the woman, but it is also sensuously enjoyable; it is one of the woman's "wanton ways" (27). Like the revelation in "Blackberrying," the revelation in "I Knew a Woman" must also be read with the Modernist convention of relative time in mind. At the conclusion of the poems, each speaker is reconciled with nature and overcomes the isolation that he or she initially felt. All of the reconciliations reveal the inclusion of the speaker in a larger, sometimes intimidating, natural order.

          The speaker of each poem moves from self-imposed isolation to finding comfort in natural objects, anticipating his or her return to nature, and finally realizing his or her inclusion in the natural order; these poems illustrate the restoration of the heroic individual to nature, a theme essential to American Romanticism. Nature cooperates in each poem by providing the speaker with objects, offering consolation, and even announcing the inevitability of his or her return. Although the individual sometimes struggles to overcome social barriers to unity with nature, personal delusions and overlooked truths can pose problems as well, as illustrated in Plath's "Blackberrying" and Roethke's "I Knew a Woman." Our course dealt with poetry extensively, and the figure of the heroic individual was often discussed. The system of presentations that we used allowed my classmates and me to point out the figure of the heroic individual whenever it occurred, and presenters often elaborated on it. I was impressed with the scope and extent of the material presented in poetry presentations over the course of the term. I hope to use a similar method of teaching poetry in my courses.