Week 1 - Dylan, Ginsberg, Komunyakaa

I am a huge Bob Dylan fan. Much of the time my love for him is connected to his delivery and the musical aspects of his songs, but certainly the lyrics are imperative to my appreciation of him. This particular song is an interesting one. I would like to focus on it as a performance piece and not simply words on a page, especially given that we're talking about a musician here. The tone in which he sings and the softness of the music adds a lot to this "poem" to me. It opens with images of a hanging coupled with images of a carnival, all while softly sung. This theme of contrasting images pervades the poem and the musical tone becomes more and more sad for me. There are instances of slightly more "punch", but in general it is pure melancholy. If you simply read the lyrics, I think it can come across as a tad more sardonic than sad.

I've studied Howl many times in many classes and although I generally enjoy the poem, I didn't quite get that much out of it until we discussed it in class. We sort of hurried through it and didn't go too in depth, which is why I'm shocked that something finally clicked. But I think the matter of fact way in which Professor Soldofsky accounted for each of the images as being directly pulled from his life was incredibly helpful. Rather than feeling boggled down with trying to find abstract meaning it was boiled down to fact. Much easier to handle and much more rewarding.

My favorite lines from Yusef Komunyakaa's "Togetherness" are "a lyre & Jew's harp / sighing a forbidden oath" (5-6). The fact that lyre is a homonym for liar and that Jew's harp is, yes, an instrument, but also associated with negative connotations is incredible interesting and stylistic for me. I just love using "lyre" in this context I can;t get enough of it!