Author: Danielle Koppie

Mad Libs Engine

~ Danielle Koppie ~ Leave a comment

I enjoyed this activity as an entertaining, laid-back way to end the week. When we first read through some of the entries from the Twitter Bots, I was not really fazed. I saw a few somewhat humorous posts, but nothing that made me think differently about the poems; however, when we were able to generate our own bots, it changed my perception of the Mad Libs Engines. I was able to notice the specific words that were changed more clearly, and realize how important they actually were to the original poem. Two words that stood out to me in particular were “sweet” and “cold.” When I first read the poem, all I saw was an apology letter that was clearly not sincere. Once I generated a poem that replaced the words “sweet” and “cold” with other random adjectives, it seemed to jump out at me more. It is quite clear that Williams was trying to emphasize these adjectives and sort of tease the recipient of his letter. He feels no guilt, he really just wants to let the person know that the plums (or “marques,” “dens,” “kegs,” etc.) were extremely delicious (“pitiful” or “unreasoning”?).

I also decided to try this engine out with the lyrics to the first stanza of “Guns and Ships” from Hamilton. It was pretty entertaining, and I enjoyed that the word following “global” always ended up being something unfortunate such as “disparity” or “deportation.”

I feel like deformance can be useful for certain people, because it does make specific words stand out, and sometimes there are strange coincidences. Mostly, though, I just think it is entertaining and a fun tool to play around with and see how many words you can change in one poem.

“The Chimney Sweeper” (Songs of Experience)

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The Songs of Experience version of William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” more blatantly points out the horrors that came with being a chimney sweeper during the late 18th century. The profession was extremely dangerous, and almost always employed young boys because they would fit inside the chimneys. In this poem, the companion to the Songs of Innocence poem by the same title, Blake argues that parents and the church completely ignore the terrible conditions that these boys had to deal with, because they are devoting all of their attention to praising God.

First, the parents/church start the boy at work as a chimney sweeper because he is happy being outside in the snow. Then, once he starts the job, they believe that since the boy acts happy, he is completely fine, while he is actually singing the “notes of woe” (9).

The boy narrates this poem, and in the first line he refers to himself as “A little black thing among the snow.” This immediately depicts the boy’s view of himself: nameless, useless, hurt. Additionally, the “clothes of death” (8) that Blake refers to later in the poem are supposed to be the chimney sweeper uniform. The entire poem basically shows how the boys felt when they were forced into dangerous environments and entirely neglected by all of the adult figures in their life, because they were so concentrated on getting into Heaven. In the end of the poem, the boy says that these people ” praise God & his Priest & King / Who make up a heaven of our misery” (12-13). While the word “heaven” usually has a positive connotation, the boy is stating that since church is taking the focus off of the horrible conditions of the chimney sweeping profession, the adults’ “heaven” is actually the sweepers’ place of despair.

The engravings of this text significantly add to its emotional impact. In the images, the boy is walking in the snow to his job. Most of the engravings look messy and dirty, which immediately made me think of sadness and gloom (and of course chimney sweeping). I think Copy N and Copy T illustrate the poem best, because the boy almost blends into the background, and the pictures look like someone just threw soot all over them. The images definitely succeed in evoking feelings of grief and sympathy that add to the emotions from the text.

“Your City Cousins” by John Gambril Nicholson

~ Danielle Koppie ~ 2 Comments

In his poem, John Gambril Nicholson writes of the many boys he sees and admires as he stares out of his window, rides the train, or walks the streets of London. The obvious theme in this poem is simply being queer, but there is also a hint at a theme of unrequited love towards the end. Aside from the hinted theme, Nicholson is surprisingly blatant for the time period. The lines, “And gazing from my window high / I like to watch them passing by” (Nicholson), and the fact that he is referring solely to the “boys” in the street make it quite clear that he is interested in men, not women.

After the first stanza, which just introduces the topic of the poem, Nicholson lists the boys he watches. While he does interact with several of them, he never calls anyone by his real name. He refers to all of them by various characteristics such as “The boy that tidies up the bar” (7), and “The lad that’s lettered G.P.O.” (12). This could be a way to lead up to the last stanza, which suddenly shifts from a personal narrative with no target audience, to a sort of message to a specific person.

And though I never see you there

All boys your name and nature share,

And almost every day I make

Some new acquaintance for your sake.

Nicholson could be directing this stanza towards the object of his affection, whom he is unable to have a relationship with. There is not much information other than the fact that this nameless person is never where the narrator goes, yet the narrator always sees a reflection of the person in all of the other boys.

This poem surprises me because of its straightforwardness, but the themes do not surprise me at all. It seems like nearly every poem in the archive deals with unrequited love, and this is most likely due to the fact that queerness was obviously not acceptable during the Victorian era, so most people were forced to mask their feelings.

Weary Blues by Langston Hughes

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Hughes’ performance of “Weary Blues” emphasizes the emotions that he writes about in the poem. The poem is clearly supposed to be slow and sad (or blue, if you will). Hughes uses words like “droning” and “drowsy” in the first  line to make it clear that this is not an upbeat poem. When he reads it out loud, he actually performs those words by dragging them out and emphasizing them. The alliteration also adds to the lazy feel because repetition is often associated with boredom. He uses the same dragging voice during the repeated lines “He did a lazy sway” (4-5). We can also view this as another example of repetition being associated with boredom. Repetition comes up a few more times in the poem, with the words “Thump, thump, thump” (23) and the lines “I got the Weary Blues / And I can’t be satisfied” (25-26). He also moans the word “moan” (18), which is fitting.

There is a contrast in tone during the last few lines of the poem. From “And far into the night he crooned that tune” (31) to “While the Weary Blues echoed through his head” (34), he sounds a bit livelier, and then in the last line he becomes more solemn when he states that “He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead” (35). This could be to stress the sadness of the line. There are so many changes Hughes makes to his voice during the poem that make it come alive. While the performance does not necessarily change my interpretation of the poem, it definitely adds to the emotion and the idea that art can be a release from sadness, since the subject of the poem is playing piano to channel his anguish about feeling all alone in the world.

Be Calm by fun.

~ Danielle Koppie ~ Leave a comment

It might be obvious from the title, but “Be Calm” is a song about trying to calm down when times get difficult; however, it is impossible to feel the true meaning of the song by simply reading the lyrics. The song opens with harsh, alarming chords that contrast the soothing string tune. After a few seconds, these sounds get sucked up into what I can only describe as a tunnel or vacuum. Just from the introduction, it is clear that this is not going to be the relaxing ballad one may have expected from reading the title (or even the lyrics). The general idea of the song is that Nate Ruess is having a mental battle with himself. He is thinking about everything that has ever gone wrong or could ever go wrong in his life, and he tells himself to calm down. What can only be illustrated through the performance, however, is that he is not succeeding in calming himself down. In fact, as the song goes on he gets more and more riled up. While he sings the lines “The moment I was baptized or / when I found out one day I’m gonna die…” the music accelerates until the chorus, which is an explosion of excitement. He is telling himself to be calm, yet he is the complete opposite of calm. During the stanza about the panhandler, a poor musician on a street corner who tells Nate to relax (“be calm”), he screams the words, “And I can’t remember the man.” The screaming emphasizes his point that nothing matters besides the few words they exchanged with each other. Finally, the song concludes with what seems like a peaceful exit, until the music spirals out of control and doubles the discomfort felt from the intro. This descent suggests that it is not possible to truly “be calm” and just forget about your worries.

Here is the professional recording:

And here is a live recording. It has pretty awful sound quality and a loud audience, but I thought the emotion in his performance was worth it.