Baby Villon Essay

Upon my initial reading of “Baby Villon” by Philip Levine the meaning of the poem was completely lost on me. However, after reading it over very carefully, it slowly started to unravel and make more sense to me. I believe that this poem is about a lightweight boxer who is having a conversation with his cousin whom he has only met for the first time. While this is definitely a bit of a reach in terms of interpretation, I believe that I can solidly defend that idea with evidence from the poem. Not only is he a lightweight boxer, but he apparently is also multiracial which is what I believe the first stanza is referencing.

The first stanza is initially what threw me off. He’s “robbed” in Bangkok “because he’s white,” in London “because he’s black,” and in Barcelona and Paris for being a “Jew” and an “Arab.” Initially I had no idea how to interpret this unless the character being described really is all of those things at once (stranger things have happened), and I was also confused as to why he would be in all of those places. The first two lines of the next stanza began to clear that up for me though and are what led me to assuming that the character being described might very well be a lightweight boxer. The lines are “he holds up seven thick little fingers to show me he’s rated seventh in the world.” Now I understand that that could literally be referring to anything, but I really just can’t help making the connection. There’s so much referencing to fighting throughout the poem, including at the end of the first stanza where it’s describing how “everywhere and at all times” he’s facing discrimination, yet always “he fights back.”

The next stanza, which is the stanza in which we find out that the character being described and the speaker of the poem are related (cousins), is where I made my connection to perhaps he really could be representative of all of those different groups that were being discriminated against in the first stanza. The reason I made this connection is because the speaker says the character, who I believe to be Baby Villon (more on that later), “talks of the war in North Africa,” and through my own personal knowledge I am aware many different groups of people are represented in that area of Africa (Arabs, white, black, Jews, even small groups of black Jews) so it could very well be possible that this character being described is some strange cocktail of all of the people that are represented in that part of the continent. I don’t know though, I really could just be pulling at nothing.

The fifth stanza is where I really began to solidify my idea that this was indeed a fighter of some sort. Baby Villon tells the speaker he “should never disparage the stiff bristles that guard the head of the fighter. Then, in the sixth stanza, when the fighter is being described he is described as “five feet two” and “116 pounds,” which is tiny. This is what made me assume that he was the character Baby Villon, because he is kind of a small man and it could be an endearing nickname.

Overall, the poem seems to have a rather melancholy vibe to it. I get the impression that perhaps Baby Villon is some sort of tragic figure whose life, destroyed by fighting and war, is defined by fighting in multiple aspects. It definitely seems as if the speaker pities him in a sense for all the pain that he’s gone through, whether emotional or physical. The tone of the poem definitely leads me to thinking it is pity that leads the speaker’s opinion of his cousin.

"The Red Wheelbarrow" William Carlos Williams

I chose to look at “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams this week. I really like this poem and was a bit apprehensive about writing on it since it’s so short, but I actually think the shortness works in the poem’s advantage in this case. I think the simplicity of the poem itself speaks bounds as to what the author may have been trying to state (if he was trying to say anything at all). The poem itself can be read as a simple sentence, “so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.” (Booth 554) I’m not entirely sure what drew me to this poem, perhaps it was the act that after reading it I couldn’t help reading it over and over and repeating it in my head. So, how much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside white chickens? To me, it seems like there is no real end to what you could do with a wheelbarrow on a farm. You could pick all of your crops and throw them in, or dig up some soil and take it to an area that you’re trying to grow things in just as a couple of examples. The reason I like the simplicity of this poem so much is it leaves a lot of room for the reader to interpret what exactly depends upon a red wheelbarrow, and, at least for me, reading the poem got me thinking about some really serene mental imagery having to do with a farm. I enjoyed that a lot.

Woodchucks

Something about reading the poem "Woodchucks" by Maxine Kumin really made me wonder if I've got it all together inside my head. For some reason, I couldn't help finding this poem strangely hilarious even though I'm pretty sure that was not the author's intent at all. I have a feeling that a lot of the humor I found in it spawns from my love for the movie Caddy Shack, and my inability to separate the idea of gassing woodchucks with Bill Murray's character and the gophers. I think I drew this comparison because of how serious the narrator/point of perspective is about taking out these Woodchucks.

"They brought down the marigolds as a matter of course and then took over the vegetable patch nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots. The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling to the feel of the .22, the bullets' neat noses." (10-14 Kumin)

Another aspect of the poem that made me make the comparison was the sheer enjoyment the narrator seems to be getting from killing off the family of woodchucks. The line "O one-two-three the murder inside me rose up hard" (22-23) seems to be a statement of enjoyment; I almost imagine the person singing it to themselves in a happy melody. Then the last line took away a bit of the humor for me, and made the poem seem a little more serious. “If only they’d all consented to die unseen gassed underground the quiet Nazi way.” (29-30) This last line of the poem struck a chord because it indicates that the woodchucks did NOT consent to being gassed, and gave them a bit more of a role as something to empathize with. Who wants to be gassed? Who wouldn’t fight for their right to live? It does not matter if you’re human or not, every living thing wants to continue living (most of the time). I really like this poem because of my own twisted humor, but also because of how the last line made me think.

"Sonny's Blues" response

There were a number of aspects of the story “Sonny’s Blues” that I definitely identified with, and I very much enjoyed the story and some of the realms of human experience that were touched. As a musician myself, I have always been amazed by other musicians of all kinds: jazz, blues, rock, classical, bluegrass, fusion, you name it! And I do find it interesting that it seems as if the subject of drug use in the realm of music is never that far off when venturing into conversation about it. It seems as if the justification for the use of drugs in music, by a lot of musicians anyway, is that it can help to get the mind off its normal pattern of behavior; its normal way of thinking. You can begin to approach the music in many ways you had never even thought of before, whether it’s just something a lot simpler than you normally play or something with way over the top energy.

Here's a video that briefly explores the influence of drugs on some of music's more popular figures:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI-9nubE6H0

 Unfortunately, so many musicians have died due to complications of drug use and it really does paint a picture of struggling artists coping with their own uncertainty by getting high and escaping from having to think about life and all of its troubles. As a person who has dealt with heroin addiction in my own family, I can say from seeing it first-hand that it is a nasty addiction that can tear at you for years and years even after “kicking it.” I have to say, reading this story was really pulling at a lot of emotions for me. I definitely identified with it, and I definitely identify with not having really a picture perfect life that has been mostly bright and shiny; there have been a lot of dark moments. Perhaps that is why I’m particularly fond of the blues (one of my favorite musicians, Jimi Hendrix, was a psychedelic pioneer of blues rock), and I can recognize the pain, suffering, and experience that it takes to really create something that can move people.  I feel like the story was almost implying that some suffering is necessary in order to make emotional music, and I came to that conclusion because of Sonny's statement "I won't die trying not to suffer. At least, not any faster than anybody else." (Booth 95) Sonny's brother wants more than anything to keep him from suffering, but it's almost as if Sonny recognizes that the suffering is what got him to where he was at in the first place. I would tend to agree that without some difficult life experiences it would be pretty difficult to truly play and feel blues songs. Here's a link to a blues song that I've always really enjoyed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1TxpIrwkSk

Works Cited

Booth, Alison, and Kelly Mays, ed. The Norton Introduction To Literature. 10th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. 75-101. Print.



Cathedral by Raymond Carver

I'm not really sure what is expected in terms of format so I'm just going to go for it and hope that that's acceptable. When initially beginning "Cathedral" I wasn't sure what to expect. Judging by the name I honestly thought it was going to be something completely different than what it was. My initial feeling towards the narrator wasn't really a positive one. He seemed to be generally disinterested and apathetic towards anything having to do with his wife (that didn't have to do with him, that is) and seemed to hold some pretty petty ideas about certain things. I thought that it was especially petty when he was discussing the prospect of a blind man marrying a woman and never being able to see her, as if looks and looks alone are what validate a loving relationship. It seemed like the idea of a genuine love with disregard to physicality was lost upon this guy. Also, the narrator had no real desire to care enough to even remember names. When discussing his wife's former childhood sweetheart he even blatantly asks "why should he have a name?" (Booth 33) implying how little he actually cares about that person's significance in his wife's life. Even after learning Robert's name he insisted on calling him "the blind man" as if he was some inhuman being that was so vastly different and needed constant labeling. But I did like that as the two were able to spend more alone time together they both ventured into each other's worlds in a way. Robert enjoyed smoking marijuana for the first time with the narrator, and was open minded and welcoming when asked about it. Then, the narrator began trying to describe a cathedral, and as they began to draw a cathedral together (in order to better explain what one looks like) the narrator finds himself outside of his general perspective of reality and in that of Robert's. His eyes are closed, he's "taking in" the cathedral that he just drew, and he's beginning to empathize with Robert just as the story ends. I did enjoy that, and it honestly reminded me of meditation and the peace that shutting out the external world and focusing inward can bring. To help give you an idea of what this feels like, here's a link to a guided meditation on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh-klfBJlHc

Works Cited

 

Booth, Alison, and Kelly Mays, ed. The Norton Introduction To Literature. 10th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. 32-44. Print.