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wind james fenton
| Critical Analysis #2 |
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wind james fenton |
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leee walker New Member
since 2007-09-18
Posts 2 |
How does James Fenton’s poem “Wind” respond to the problems of death, change and loss? What sort of attitude does the poem adopt towards human existence and achievement, and how does its language and poetic technique convey that attitude? |
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| © Copyright 2007 leee walker - All Rights Reserved | |||
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Brad Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705Jejudo, South Korea |
Are you kidding? |
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moonbeam
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356 |
How many other places on the net are you trying to get help with your schoolwork? |
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oceanvu2 Senior Member
since 2007-02-24
Posts 1066Santa Monica, California, USA |
Ah Moonbeam, I think you've hit upon a money maker. homework.com, where for a monthly fee of $29.95, someone does your homework for you. And maybe you offer a $3.95 "day pass" for someone who doesn't do that much homework anyway. Best, Jim  |
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Grinch Member Elite
since 2005-12-31
Posts 2929Whoville |
quote: Here’s a dilemma for you, based on the fact that I’m an idiot and a liar is this useful? Fenton sits besides a cornfield and watches the wind blowing the crop in swirls, in the distance he hears the sound of a machine, a combine harvester perhaps, and on the wind smells the smoke from the stubble burning. Fenton sees the insects, birds and animals take flight at the approaching doom and he likens it to mans struggles down the centuries and the ravages that assail him. He picks up on the yearly cycle of the cornfield and muses that a second could be a century and the scene wouldn’t change that much, the corn is sown, it grows and is blown by the wind and the inhabitants are forced to flee to better climes. Death, change and loss happen and have happened forever and will continue to do so, Fenton’s response in Wind is “Oh well, that’s just the way it is”. |
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Brad Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705Jejudo, South Korea |
You mean, this wasn't a post modern poem?  |
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Grinch Member Elite
since 2005-12-31
Posts 2929Whoville |
No it was a modern poem post. "There's a blaze of light in every word |
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Brad Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705Jejudo, South Korea |
Ah, now I get it. |
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beautyincalvary Member
since 2006-07-13
Posts 98 |
I'd say an honors or regular sophomore class... just maybe AP CA 3, but I doubt an AP student would search the internet. |
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Brad Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705Jejudo, South Korea |
I'm kind of curious. Does anybody even like that poem? I mean, it's okay, but Grinch's assessment strikes me as valid. It has the emotional impact of a bored sigh. |
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moonbeam
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356 |
No not really Brad. Though as an example of pretentious intellectualism it's not the worst I've seen by a long chalk. Apparently: "This early poem about the cultural collision between 19th century America and Japan contains in embryo many of the characteristics that define his later work; technical mastery, wide-ranging intellectual interests and a concern for foreign cultures and the problems of Western interaction with them." - The Poetry Archive Er, right! HTF we were meant to deduce that I have no idea. If "bending the ear of the hedgerow" is the best that Repton and Magdalen College can do, it's a pity. But then I suppose that if you can read the academic code then nothing else matters, perhaps this lord and his brother and the dysfunctional aloes are some kind of obscure clue. Whatever! M |
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Grinch Member Elite
since 2005-12-31
Posts 2929Whoville |
quote: Or maybe they just migrated as many feathered visitors do and aren’t obscure at all. I honestly don’t think Fenton wrote anything obscure into this, apart from the swipe at religion abandoning it’s roots, and even that may just be a figment of this atheists imagination. If there is something more to this it’s beyond my meagre brain, and in that respect, if obscurity was the intention, I think it fails, obscure shouldn’t be unfathomable it should be designed to be easily uncovered but only after careful reading. I still like it though but as a poem about Wind in a cornfield. |
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poemster New Member
since 2007-09-20
Posts 1 |
First, you might consider the wind references in the first and last lines--do they seem like part of the action the poem describes, of maybe some sort of symbolic comment on it? Maybe there's a comparison or a parallel between "The wind in a field of corn" and the events in the human world described in the body of the poem? So what sort of events are they? And in what way(s) might "The wind in a field of corn" be comparable.? i dunno what do u guys think death, change and loss? What sort of attitude does the poem adopt towards human existence and achievement, and how does its language and poetic technique convey that attitude? its a tuff question |
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Brad Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705Jejudo, South Korea |
quote: Are they nuts? I almost did my (doctoral) thesis on this period. I wrote and read God knows how much stuff. Does anyone else think Fenton is having fun with the idea that he can tell innocents what he's writing about? |
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leee walker New Member
since 2007-09-18
Posts 2 |
My take on this is that history is basically swept along by violence. In the first stanza, crowds are 'fleeing' the wind, but soon find themselves running in the midst of it. All through the piece, there is a sense of inevitability, and the compression of time, IMO, sort of lumps all the wars and skirmishes into one big, overarching conflagration, as if violence and upheaval are part of the natural state of mankind, thus making 'the wind' an apt metaphoric device. And 'the wind in a field of corn' adequately objectifies the whole mess, while at the same time lessening the significance of the whole thing, sort of like comparing the human condition to an anthill. |
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Grinch Member Elite
since 2005-12-31
Posts 2929Whoville |
Nah, just Fenton in a cornfield with wind, trust me I’m a docker. |
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moonbeam
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356 |
quote: “Valid”?! Of course it’s valid. What is non-valid? How can any reading not be valid. But you are right it’s “okay”. That’s what it is, just okay. The sort of competent poem you might see in any respectable internet workshop in fact. Regrettably I don’t buy your “innocents” proposition Brad. I wish I did, in that at least the guy could be forgiven for having a little fun at the expense of the gullible. I don’t think he’d have lasted as long as he has as an “established” poet if that was the reality though. The truth is sadder imo. There is a coterie of academically inclined people out there who regard themselves as the poetic elite and who invest poems such as this with a significance which has little to do with the quality of the written word or line and everything to do with obscure allusion. Poems without this quality are inferior. Poems written by the “right” poet which have it are elevated to a status far above that warranted by the “usual”, perhaps the “common”, measures of good writing. But that’s ok. Everyone to his own, I’m not going to say that this is a bad poem, simply because I can’t understand what some Oxford Don says I should understand. As Grinch says, it works as an ok poem about a cornfield and the associated metaphor. M |
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Brad Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705Jejudo, South Korea |
quote: When I take out my trusty stamp and mark it invalid. Nineteenth century Japanese/American relations is an invalid reading. Why? Because it doesn't talk about Japanese/American relations. Perry in Japan, the Japanese in Washington, John Mung, the first Japanese boy to live in the States (Rescued by a whaler)? Nope, I see cornfields. |
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Pedant New Member
since 2007-09-20
Posts 3 |
Hi Everyone Thanks for the helpful (but nicely limited) suggestions you've given my student on the Fenton poem. And thanks also to those who simply said, in one way or another, "do your own homework!" I'll let you know if any of your comments turn up "word for word" in any of the papers I receive. Ron |
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Brad Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705Jejudo, South Korea |
Pedant --nice touch that. |
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Pedant New Member
since 2007-09-20
Posts 3 |
p.s. just so everyone doesn't think Fenton is completely bonkers, the quotation from Poetry Archive about the collision between America and Japan refers to Fenton's sonnet 'Our Western Furniture,' the title poem of the book of the same title. Nothing to do with "Wind," except that it appears in the bio on the same page. Ron |
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Brad Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705Jejudo, South Korea |
So, are we going to get punished for not doing our homework, or at least not doing it very well? |
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moonbeam
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356 |
quote: Pedant Well thank God for that, and to you for pointing it out, I didn't get any sleep at all last night. Just as a matter of interest, do you as a teacher (presumably), approve of your students seeking assistance in forums like this without explicity stating that they are doing so? I'm not being provocative, it's just that this sort of thing happens quite frequently on message boards, and I often wonder whether teachers would approve. M |
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moonbeam
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356 |
quote: Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification Es ..., er, I mean Brad. M |
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Pedant New Member
since 2007-09-20
Posts 3 |
Moonbeam: It's a complicated issue. On the one hand, students have always asked friends, parents, older siblings, former teachers for help with their work. As long as the end product is substantially their own it's not really a problem. After all, how many of us could generate a truly "original" reading of _Hamlet_ or _Paradise Lost_? The problem with online resources of any kind is that they make it so easy for students to cut and paste bits and pieces of other people's writing into their own assignments. And as writers you all know what that's called! So I advise my students against this kind of trolling, but it's impossible to prohibit or prevent (though I consider it a small victory when they discover I'm lurking). I get a lot of emails from students who find my name and area of expertise on my University's web page and baldly ask me the questions their professors have asked them to answer. I usually tell them (sometimes politely but not always) to "get lost"! As a side note, one of the reasons teachers choose (more or less) contemporary poets like Fenton for these assignments is that the internet is overflowing with "canned" essays on Wordsworth and Yeats. I suspect the reason students find this poem difficult is that there are no Sparks Notes, so they have to fall back on their own skills as readers (or borrow yours!) A few years ago, this would have been considered a more or less "plagiarism-proof" assignment, but time marches on . . . sorry for the long post. Like I said, it's complicated. [This message has been edited by Pedant (09-21-2007 11:12 AM).] |
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moonbeam
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356 |
Yes, thanks for that. Much as I expected really I suppose. What slightly irks me, I must admit, is when students post questions, like your student did, without acknowledging that they are in fact looking for help with school or Uni work. It’s even more annoying when someone deliberately sets out to deceive by posting a poem “for discussion”. I think if a student openly asked for some help I for one would be more inclined to be sympathetic. Nothing wrong with teaching based on contemporary poetry. In fact if teachers when I was at school had done that I think I’d have been a whole lot more interested. And I should apologise to Fenton for the unedifying rant against his work, I’m on a general crusade against pseudo intellectualism at the moment - too much Prynne and Hill, ugh. Oops, I hope you aren’t either of them. M |
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