Constructing a Self & Bidart

Today, we concluded our discussion of Ammons' "Easter Morning" and then turned our attention to "Constructing a Self," as outlined in Vendler.  We specifically considered how the poet gets the reader to "turn into" the speaker.  Strategies included:

~ Construct temporal space

~ Relocate the speaker in space and time (Heaney's "Mid-term Break")

~ Add depth (round vs. flat)

~ Include details that make it seem as if the author has intimate knowledge of a given historical time and place (Whitman's "Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day")

~ Ensure the speaker's motivations, justifications, and conclusions are reasonable (Harper's "Nightmare Begins Responsibility").

In this context, we examined Bidart's "Ellen West,"  answering the following questions:

1. Does Bidart construct temporal space within the poem?  In other words, do you get the sense that life has been lived prior to this moment?  Explain.

2. Does the speaker move through time/space within the poem?  Explain.

3. Does the speaker seem round (multi-dimensional, have depth)?

4. Do the details make it seem as if the author has intimate knowledge, in this case of an eating disorder?

5. Do the speaker's motivations, emotions, etc. seem reasonable?  Why or why not?

Tonight's homework:  Write a sentence about Emily Dickinson's "I'm Nobody! Who are you?" and T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."