“The Dacca Gauzes” by Agha Shahid Ali, is another more traditionally formatted piece (with easy to follow, short stanzas, that still pack a punch.) Ali’s piece is also personal, but at the same time takes on a view of society in that Ali writes of a community (that of the world outside of the United States and United Kingdom) that is not always heavily addressed in more contemporary English-language poetry. In the piece, readers are exposed to this via Ali’s grandmother, who comments to him on the lost art of weaving the particular cloth the piece is named for, as well as the changes to the world that her ancestors knew that affect her now (including her inability to obtain this cloth new.) The social commentary is not as heavy as that of some
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The piece gives us a full frontal view of the soldier’s tragic death, literally down to how his body was removed from the machinery he was working with. While the commentary isn’t quite as in one’s face, there is still a clear enough image presented that death in war may be honorable to many, but that doesn’t mean it is any less painful or messy. Randall Jarrell had his own unique perspective on this having been in both the Army Air Corps and the regular Army, the first of which he joined in 1942, the same year that he published his first book of poems (Academy of American Poets, 2016.) From his own experience, Jarrell was able to make his speaker take on his actual title, soldier, as a proper role, much like it would play out on a film screen: the young man, fighting for his country, and dying in the blood and mud, washed away by hose and into the battlefield, all honor and pain in one …show more content…
Truer words could not be spoken that these about poetry. Political upheaval will happen, social landscapes will evolve, sometimes even in a cyclical pattern, and the world will adapt to its new normal. What remains stagnant are the words of poetic greats such as Dylan Thomas, William Shakespeare, Agha Shahid Ali, and Randall Jarrell. What remains is the legacy these writers have left for us to study long after they’re gone—long after they get to tell us what their intent was. It’s an absolute privilege to analyze the words of a writer and to come to one’s own conclusions about the meaning and intent. This, the fluid nature of literature is one of the most profound draws to studying the subject. Whether a poem speaks of life and death, or of personal struggle, or culture, it’s evident that these themes are recurring, a side effect of human nature if you will, that has the power to outlive its creator and transform itself into something completely different given enough time and social change. Still, what remains is the history, giving literature the unique distinction of being both concrete and fluid in a way that no other art has the honor of
The piece gives us a full frontal view of the soldier’s tragic death, literally down to how his body was removed from the machinery he was working with. While the commentary isn’t quite as in one’s face, there is still a clear enough image presented that death in war may be honorable to many, but that doesn’t mean it is any less painful or messy. Randall Jarrell had his own unique perspective on this having been in both the Army Air Corps and the regular Army, the first of which he joined in 1942, the same year that he published his first book of poems (Academy of American Poets, 2016.) From his own experience, Jarrell was able to make his speaker take on his actual title, soldier, as a proper role, much like it would play out on a film screen: the young man, fighting for his country, and dying in the blood and mud, washed away by hose and into the battlefield, all honor and pain in one …show more content…
Truer words could not be spoken that these about poetry. Political upheaval will happen, social landscapes will evolve, sometimes even in a cyclical pattern, and the world will adapt to its new normal. What remains stagnant are the words of poetic greats such as Dylan Thomas, William Shakespeare, Agha Shahid Ali, and Randall Jarrell. What remains is the legacy these writers have left for us to study long after they’re gone—long after they get to tell us what their intent was. It’s an absolute privilege to analyze the words of a writer and to come to one’s own conclusions about the meaning and intent. This, the fluid nature of literature is one of the most profound draws to studying the subject. Whether a poem speaks of life and death, or of personal struggle, or culture, it’s evident that these themes are recurring, a side effect of human nature if you will, that has the power to outlive its creator and transform itself into something completely different given enough time and social change. Still, what remains is the history, giving literature the unique distinction of being both concrete and fluid in a way that no other art has the honor of