I find James Clifford’s Year
of the Ram : Honolulu, February 2, 1991, slightly hard to unwrap, but
interesting none the less. One trope that I would like to examine throughout is
the desert. Some of the references are direct:
“In a desert the tank is hit and sends up a plume of black
smoke” or “In a desert,/ Where are we?” As professor Wilson discussed in class,
these lines correspond to a certain masculinity and military aspect of this
poem. However, I think this “desert” can also be understood to be present in
the lines about the Hawaiian man, “A Hawaiian man plays with three children on
the beach”. Although the term desert is not used – I think it is an important
connection between these images – that of sand. Although the image of the
Hawaiian man and his children represent a more feminine force or a “maternal
father” figure in this work – they both exist on the same substance or
foundation of sand. One way of reading this trope that I think would be
consistent with the message of this piece is the literal catastrophe that would
occur if sand is used as a foundation. This poem doesn’t leave the reader with
much hope, and I feel this trope furthers this idea of inevitable destruction
of the earth.
Sarah Eastland
Sarah -
ReplyDeleteThe big difference between the beach and the desert though is the ocean, and if we poetically extrapolate some associative connotations tied to the oceanic and the barren, we find the essential difference between the two to be life . . . the ocean brimming with it, both micro and macrobiotic, and desert barely capable of sustaining it . . . I am reminded of the differences of opinion concerning the ocean that native Hawaiians had compared to the initial European explorers and travel writers - that of nurturing nature, a source of relaxation and recreation for the natives while a source of dread and element of danger and foreboding for the Europeans. This is just a possible extension on your reading, I hope you are able to follow my line of thought/troping.
Interesting insights, this poem has attracted alot of attention from the class as a whole.
- Trey