A Painting

When asked to paint a visual of the Book of Joel I had a hard time envisioning what picture to express. There is so much in Joel that could be brought out the various artistic forms. In truth, Joel itself is a descriptive and artful written word. The use of words describing the darkness that is coming followed by the hope of salvation in God is powerful and beautiful. So deciding what picture to pain was hard for me. I wanted to express all of these things, darknes, death, blood, light, dawn, joy, and life. So I decided to paint a picture that depicted these various points both in light of each other, opposing from opposite sides of the page.

I first drew a mountain, which Joel describes almost as a buffer. The light of dawn and the locusts come rising over the mountains to come down and swath the land in death. So above this I drew two emotional sides. On the left is a yellow to orange to red sunrise with white doves flying just above the peaks. This represents a coming light a joy killing the night. To the right, however, I painted a dark black and purple representing not only night, but the locusts as well. These dissipate as they approach the light as if the light is scattering the locusts and pushing them back.

Below the mountain base line I drew a river flowing down the middle. This river turns to blood as it gets closer to the viewer. To the left of this river, much like the sunrise, there is green. This is representing life in the lushness of growing things. To the right of the river is brown turning to dry tan. There are patches of green closer to the river but these soon disappear. This represents the death that the locusts have inflicted on the land, a scar that will take a long time to heal.

Joel

I found that reading this book is easily comparable to Whitman's poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d." What I found similar is the sense of sadness and despair followed by a hope for better. Just as Whitman laments of death and the darkness that comes with it, he keeps in mind the joy of life, of growing things and of birth.

For Whitman, his words emphasize a suffocating darkness or a sad pain. Joel, however, speaks of not only of darkness, but of fear and coming ruin. In chapter 2 of Joel says, "Let everyone tremble in fear because the day of the Lord is upon us. It is a day of darkness and gloom, a day of thick clouds and deep blackness." Joel uses descriptions of fire as coming war and destruction. Just as Whitman speaks of the Lilac growing with life, so does Joel describe a light in the darkness. "But everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved..."

What I found really fascinating when reading the book of Joel is the way it is written. Too often I have come to view the Bible as a set of rules or something more akin to a textbook on ancient traditions and life. However, the way that Joel writes, his imagery, his words, truly impact. It makes one realize that these authors were bright, intelligent people expressing a vision or a truth just as any other poet. In this way, I can see some poets being a little on the prophetic side.

Pass

This is my first pass.

Lilacs

This poem was refreshing to me. Compared to the other poems we read, this is less about the sadness and despair in hard times but of seeing a brightness during dark times. Each stanza seems to alternate a dark and light feel. When the lilacs are mentioned, Whitman paints the picture of spring and of growing things. In stanza 3, Whitman says, "In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash'd pailings, Stands the lilac-bush tall-grow with heart-shaped leaves of rich green."

We are all aware of the looming assurance of death. It is like the night full of stars. The darkness surrounds all of us and eventually we'll be swallowed up by it, our starlight will fade and dissipate until there is nothing left. Whitman is noting that as he walks through the night, "As you droop'd from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the other starts look'd on..."

Yet he continually comes back to the growing lilac in the dooryard, almost as if this is a cycle. The cycle of life. Spring comes and there is growth and then there is night and death. Even though there is death, there are lilacs growing with lush green leaves. Whitman has written a very moving poem depicting the sadness of death mixed with the joy and love of growth and new life. In this life, we should all remember to take the good things in life with the bad that happens. For there is always a spring after winter.

From "Howl" Reflections

On Thursday, September 10th, we, as a class, read five poems. The theme of these poems were represented as a sort of darkness, either through despair or night or death. Of these five poems, one stuck out particularly to me simply because I understood it more easily. Often times I find myself reading poems that have awkward wording when putting stanzas together. To me it seems like they use poem as a license to write irregularly and overuse metaphors. This is simply a subjective view towards poems. No doubt they could be considered works of art and literary prophesy. However, I see differently.

Yet, From "Howl", caught me by surprise. I, as many, have seen people who I knew, who were brilliant, be brought low by drugs. The first line of this poem is what grabbed me. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,... looking for an angry fix." So often this is true, not only years ago, but now and in the future to come. This poem did not use words such as Night City did. "Diaphanous lympth, bright turgid blood, spatter outward in clots of gold." Instead it used words I can more closely relate to, "who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high."

The portrayed darkness in words that I can grasp easily. Poverty, tatters, hallucinating, angry, and cowered. These are words that take one thing, drugs, and creates a definitely dark persona that is injected in every line of the poem. These people are killing themselves, their bodies and their minds, with a constant intake of "with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares." I believe this author grasped the disparity of drug abuse and articulated it with clarity and truth to the nature of such a dark addiction.

In Picture

When I was younger, I used to have these pictures that were a collection of small images. When I would focus my eyes differently, a Loony-Toon would suddenly pop up. I never really connected this with anything but enjoyment. I used to enjoy drawing. I was never very good at it and at first I would trace the outer lines of various cartoons and then color them in. Eventually I became better at it but I could only draw things that I could see. I could never create a drawing that was any good. I simply liked the act of taking something and putting it onto paper with my own pencil, adding shading and character from my own understanding, thus turning into my subjective view of the picture.

Literature is the same way. We are taking what we are reading and subjectively painting a picture of it. Just like that Loony-Toon pop out image, we see words but if we shift our focus we can see the picture. The previous in-class exercise required us to draw a picture reflecting on the reading of The Things that They Carried. I regretfully did not keep that picture to scan and put onto this post but I will explain it as well as I can.

The picture showed a man seated in an armchair in front of a fire. There is a broken heart over his head. It is day outside the window, sunny and bright. From him comes a picture of a dark night. The grass is tall and a man is seen hiding there. Another man is leaving a small building walking towards a flying bullet coming from the man in the grass. Behind the building stands another man with a whole heart over his head. The third seen is a grassy plain with a bright sun and a blue, cloudless sky.

My question was this, “Can any of these men ever gain relief from the guilt or horrors that followed them after a time as Vietnam?”

The Things They Carried

In The Things They Carried, each man in Alpha Company had particular objects that they brought with them. What is interesting is less what they carried with them during the war, but what they carried out of the war, those who survived, that is. Each person goes through times in their lives that leave lasting impressions. Marks or scars that they carry with them until the day they die, albeit physical or emotional. Vietnam is one of those occurrences that would leave lasting imprints on a person's mental and emotional state. Any thing so tragic such as war would do that.

This story really is a way for the writer, Tim O'Brien to give relief to those things that he carries with him. By reliving the experiences and telling them, it is his way of expelling some of those haunting memories. Some of the others don't do so well. Jimmy Cross continued to blame himself for the death of Ted Lavender while simultaneously carrying with him failing loving relationship with a girl named Martha. Norman Bowker remains guilty over the death of his friend Kiowa.

Terrible events such as these stay with men who are unlucky enough to have to endure them. My brother in law's father was a veteran of Vietnam. For the longest time he could not listen to fireworks without running to find cover. Even to this day he cringes when when blows off. This is something he will carry for the rest of his life, the memories that occur every time he hears that gunshot. In truth, we all carry such things around with us. Maybe not extreme circumstances such as war, but we still have our baggage and our guilt.