Dissect a Poem | An Essay Concerning Light by John Burnside
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ต.ค. 2024
- Hello, I’m Jen - I’m the author of the Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops series, The Bookshop Book and The Hungry Ghost Festival. Click ‘Show More’ for more info on this video
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Read the poem here: www.scottishpoe...
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Poetry video on Book Break: • How to Get into Poetry...
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WHO I AM
Hello, my name's Jen. I'm an award-winning poet and short story writer. My debut short story collection 'The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night' is forthcoming from Two Roads, November 2017, and my first children's book, 'Franklin's Flying Bookshop,' will be published by Thames and Hudson, September 2017. I'm also the author of the Sunday Times bestselling 'Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops' series, 'The Bookshop Book' and 'The Hungry Ghost Festival.'
I run writing workshops, give talks at universities & book festivals on a variety of topics, judge literary prizes, and take on freelance writing and editing. If you would like to speak with me about the possibility of working together, please get in touch via email: jenvcampbell@gmail.com
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Please keep doing these as it expands my reading pleasure and improves critical thinking
Will do - thanks Paul! x
Hi Jen and Jean! What I got from this poem was that the light from the country is much more subtle than the light from a city which in comparison is blinding and excessive. The light in the country allows you to appreciate it more and enables you to see the light in all its little different forms, animals, TV etc. That's the imagery I got from the poem, but there was also this undertone of gloom as well which you talked about where the light might get swallowed by the darkness. Love these videos! As someone who is getting into poetry, they really help to understand poetry and appreciate it! Thankyou
To me the poem was about approximation of truth vs the essence behind the illusion. ..i liked how light wasnt necessarily about the illumination of truth, but more about externalized actions (like looking or glimpsing). Light wasnt clarifying reality as much as it was obscuring it. we're asked to looked at whats behind it. Thats a great way to tie into the beginning quote....The last line hints that maybe even the light of consciousness or thought is just an avatar of "pure reality"
I really liked this poem. I didn't find it dark rather pulling back the 'veil' of familiarity of everyday beauty to really see that beauty and truth in a fuller sense...
Please please do more of these Jen! I am doing a level english lit and our class discussions often feel too pressured, so I tend not to get as much out of poetry as I could do. However, this chat between two friends has reminded me of the reason why I love poetry (and your videos of the reason I love literature), illuminating the possibilities and exploration of life that poetry prompts! Thank you Jen and Jean
As I read the poem, I took it as Burnside sort of muddling the boundary between light and darkness. In the poem, both darkness and light can deceive the individual. The speaker speaks of "how the bloom on things / is always visible, a muddled patina / of age and colour, twinned with light or shade / and hiding the source itself..."
The repetition of the "muddled" image hearkens back to the cattle and dogs who seem to stand in, I agree, as a collective, possibly representing a collective of people as they, like us, look at the light and the light reflects off. (The animal image is also sort of body horror when you imagine this fleshy amalgamation of many different heads staring at the small lights of the countryside, almost Lovecraftian).
I find it interesting that he sets this poem during summer. Summer is often praised as the banishing of darkness, but the speaker himself (or the village) is anticipating the return of night. If anything, the phrase "All summer long..." means that this is a retrospective, meaning we're at the very end of summer and the beginning of autumn. Kind of adds a different idea on the surprisingly golden beech forests and the fusion of "age and colors" in the last lines.
All in all, I love this poem. Very layered, beautiful imagery, and the stanzas themselves are visually appeasing. Definitely worthy of Burnside.
This poem really struck a cord with me. Especially the second half. I feel like the poem is sliding from the outside of things to the inside. The layers of thought in peoples minds, the outer ones conscious and visible in the world, but a superficial representation, amendable to outside sources, the inner ones subconscious and hidden but true to the real unpolluted self.
I hope my grammar is ok. It was challenging to translate my feelings first into words and then into English. When I read poetry it often flows into my head as symbols and feelings. Thank you both for this! Really enjoyed it. :)
Your grammar is more than ok! Thank you for sharing. "When I read poetry it often flows into my head as symbols and feelings." Indeed! :D xx
loved the analysis. Its always good to hear more people talk about poetry and prose. love your work jen! hope you continue this series(dissecting a poem) :D
Thank you :) I certainly plan to x
Jen Campbell
I just read one of your old works, a short story about the cello tape marathon racer. Im currently participating in a short story writing competition and was looking for inspiration. after reading your story, it just hit me that your writing voice resonates with me so so well. I am truly thankful that people like you, John and Hank green and Ariel Bisette exist.
That's very kind of you, thank you :) and I'm very glad you liked the story; it's an old one but there will be more in the future x
Jen! This series is a god send. Your channel helped me be less intimidated, and enjoy poetry just as it is, its sounds and imagery, even if I don't understand it half of the time. Annotating a poem is so satisfying, thank you!
And could you please do one of Sylvia Plath's poems sometime? I honestly don't know why she gets such a bad rep. Also Sappho, YES PLEASE.
Noted! Thanks :) x
I was thinking about the light as some sort of self importance, the golden light being a more genuine feeling of love for yourself, for home and family while the blue television light is an artificial feeling you may get from consuming media. The animals have a muddled light as they don't strive for extremes of feeling and they just sorta burn along on a low heat? Idk, something like that :)
I enjoyed this poem! x
Yes, a play on light/enlightenment? :) x
Hi Jen, I know this is from ages ago and not sure you'll see this but had a thought I wanted to share about the poem! I thought the phrases 'mustered in a yard' and 'click into motion' had some military tones and maybe it is a comment on how the military takes away individuality and independent thought (therefore the light)? Love the video, off to watch some more!
That poem was great, and loved the analysis :)
I felt as though the 'essay' was in direct opposition to the epigraph, as the Tibetan Book of the Dead states reality and complete knowledge (enlightenment) is a pure light, which is some kind of ethereal almost transcendent concept reserved for the 'Nobly-born' - while throughout the poem Burnside references light in relation to humanity and even farmyard animals (not exactly the pinnacle of sentient beings.) - and I'd agree with your point on the animals being 'muddled light' because, well: they are animals haha and even Burnside's reappraisal still keeps them as not being as enlightened as us. It's the natural landscape that requires to be 'enlightened' by the kindling of the homesteads. Therefore conjuring up the image that humanity in of itself is reality, and is knowing, instead of the more pompous grandiose idea projected by the epigraph. However the television light isn't the light of humanity, instead trapping us in a moody cycle of constant reevaluation as we are ignoring the 'pure light' of Man and Animal: keeping ourselves 'from ourselves.'
Then, the poem almost restarts - which I found interesting as the title states this is an 'essay' but the conclusion seems mysteriously absent. Burnside considers that perhaps there isn't even a 'pure light,' that even complete knowledge and reality is a strange metaphysical idealism. As he states 'the bloom on things is always visible' (reassessing the prior message of the poem up to this point) and goes on to reassess light as being a composite creation, in the vein of Derrida and Postructuralism: he takes the dark into the light and blurs the borders between the simple Tibetan idea of either being wholly enlightened or being not enlightened at all. And the removal of this binary then allows for the assessment of the traits humans have which lack a real 'true' enlightenment: age and colour. With the essay ending on the culmination of his realisation, that the pure light of the enlightened is sometimes so overwhelmingly strong, and we are so focused on seeing the 'bloom' of things, that we are not actually able to realise ourselves the fruitless effort of striving for true all encompassing enlightenment. I feel as though this also works on a structural level as well, because this is an essay which begins to argue one thing, before discarding that argument and resigning to the limitations of human intellect.
So yah haha - can't wait for the next instalment so I can justify ranting on about poetry in a public forum again. Great vid! 😊
Hurrah! Thank you for sharing your thoughts. x
Aah, I love it when you two collaborate!
Me, too ^_^ x
Thank you for hosting these! I'm easing back into reading more adult/complex literature after having some verbal issues for a couple of years due to health problems, and your poetry vids are great to get back into the habit of reading critically and parsing meaning from texts. I would absloutely love to see some Sappho if you ever do one :)
I might be a bit late to the party, but I think it's interesting how he uses the word "muddled" twice, for the light of the cattle and then for our own perception.
Interesting responses! Everyone is unique. I simply thought of the Buddhist psychology of being in your present moment: it's life, that's bliss awareness. Seems as if the writer was realizing that. That's it.
Hi Jen! I would love for you to read The Fifty Year Sword by Mark Z. Danielewski. I haven't read it but I know it is a poetry book and would love to hear your thoughts. Btw, I love your channel. My favorite by far.
I don't think that's a poetry book :) x
OK may have look at Burnside more that was interesting also may have to reread book of the dead
Does my poem here appear to be more abstract or concrete? And can it pass for free verse?
Haunted
Lips red
Soft like rose petals
They speak words
Yet no sound is heard
A smile is given
Lustrous and inviting
Yet the curve of red is also a dangerous warning
Eyes lock, time stops
But the world continues as our lips connect
A beautiful assortment of colours
Like fireworks igniting up towards the surface of the dark sky
A moan from your mouth causes an explosion amongst my skin
It ripples like waves splashing into a calm lake
once a stone had been thrown into it
My body feels it as if that moan had physically reached into my soul
It ignites a feeling I’ve never felt before
Your hips meet mine
The moment soars until I’m begging for more.
A first kiss I’ll never forget.
And then I wake up.
Jen or anyone that can help. Can you tell me where I can find decent poetry slams in London? Venues? Thanks :0)
A bit like the Nuyorican poets in NY thanks x
Apples and Snakes, Bang Said the Gun etc etc. More details here: applesandsnakes.org/page/3632/Spoken+word+events+in+London
You guys are sooo flirty!