"The Gift," "The Bridge," and "Woodwork"

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. The tooth pull and subsequent recovery knocked me out a bit more than I had anticipated, but I'm emerging from the warm cocoon of blankets and medication just in time to wish I was allowed to chew. Think of me when you are chewing turkey.

Jillian started us off pretty well with her interpretation of "The Bridge." One reason I chose this poem is because of the way it resonates with the other things we have been reading this semester. In one sense, this poem is about the experience of Arthur Peavahouse, but in another sense, it is about why we tell stories, and how we try to find truth in our own experiences even when we have to tell "the lie that stands for truth." First, you need to look up any words or references you don't know. If you don't know what "fulsome" means, or what "crappies" or "sloughs" or "roiling" denote, you might have some trouble. Once you have all of the words comfortably in hand, here are a few things we might talk about: What are the two words alluded to in the second line? Why does Jones wait until the end of the poem to let us know that there was a child that could not be saved? What clues does Jones give us throughout the poem that this story may not actually be "real"? What parts of the story seem to be based on real experience? And, perhaps even more significantly, how does real and imaginary experience blend together to stand for something meaningful? What is working metaphorocally in the poem? How do the line breaks work? How does sound contribute to the poem's meaning? Are there any symbols? Any of this is fair game for discussion. The poem takes some work, but it's quite a rewarding one, I think.

Poetry often begins in a single moment, or even a single image. I happen to know that in "Woodwork," the moment from which the poem emerged is described in the fourth stanza; it was a moment where the poet was working in the woodshed with his father. The sawdust covered them, turning them white, and as the poet saw his father turn ghostly, he glimpsed his father's mortality. My interpretation of Part I of the poem is that even after the speaker's father is gone, traces of him linger in ghost-like ways. You can decide for yourself why this might be, or what this means, but pay attention to the way the poet uses sound in the poem in ways that could be considered mimetic or even onomatopoeiac. here are some other things to think about: How does the second part of the poem differ from the first? Why are the two parts numbered? How does woodworking turn into a metaphor in the second park? Can any comparisons be made with "The Bridge" in terms of the way we shape experience in order to make it bearable, in order to live with it? (Okay, that was really awkward for me, so just talk about whatever you want!)

"The Gift" is, at least in part, about the way experience joins the past and present, how we pass on what we learn and who we are. It is also about the complexity of relationships. What do we learn about this father-son relationship from reading the poem, and how does the experience with the father inform the later experience with his wife? Is the splinter a symbol? What is going on with the "christening" in the last stanza? What does the title mean to you? What is "the gift" in the poem? During the procedure, the speaker's father tells him a story to distract him from the knife and the the pain. Is this important in the poem? Li writes in what could be called a deceptively simple style. The words are not difficult to understand, but htere are multiple layers of meaning, and the poem really begins to open up when read carefully and in light of all we have been learning about poetry.

Well, that is more than enough to think about. Have a happy Thanksgiving!