Little Druid on the Prairie

Course Objectives:

The student is encouraged to examine examples of poetry and story critically by comparing works from within one culture from different historical eras and by comparing the works of writers of the same era in different cultures. The student will begin to write original poetry appropriate to a seasonal ritual.

The primary goal of this course is for students to examine historical examples and techniques implemented in the creation of poetry and stories to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to compose poetic invocations appropriate for implementation within public ritual.

Course Objectives

1. Students will increase their knowledge of techniques for composing poetry and stories employed within a single culture and the evolution of these techniques by comparing and contrasting examples from different historical eras; of the impact of hearth culture on poetry and story by examining the techniques utilized by writers within different cultures of the same era and demonstrating the similarities and differences of their works; and will utilize knowledge attained from research to develop the skills necessary to write original poetry appropriate for ADF seasonal ritual celebrations.

1.    Write two poems of at least 16 lines each appropriate for performance at a High Day ritual. One poem may be in free-verse form, but one must employ some form of meter and/or rhyme. Note in each case for which High Day the poem is intended.

A vilanelle, written in honor of Eostre, to be used at the Spring Equinox:

Bathed in Light

Tides of turning darkness, from the night
Our seasons neither here nor there entwined
With one who wakes the dawning, bathed in light

Snowy powers passing, winter’s might
With spring is balanced forward, time aligns
In ever-burning darkness, glowing night

Birds we see returning, robin’s flight
We drink in dew’s bright droplets, sweet like wine
She who comes with dawn, sings in the light

Still the warmth is small yet, icy bites
Run with our crystal breath, in chilly signs
But growth begins in darkness, from the night

In the turn of seasons, crocus writes
The newest verses, now in scattered lines
She flies on wings of morning, growing light

But now the goddess rises, milky white
Dancing in the sunlight, twisting vines
The world turns now from darkness, no more night
Eostre comes with dawning, bathed in light

A free-verse invitation to Thunor, to be used at Midsummer, when the sun is at its height:

Mighty Thunor, whose hammer protects all of the Middle World
Red-beard, chariot driver, you secure the storm and the skies
Your laughter heaves across the heavens
Your thunder causes the grain to grow
Father of Magni and Modhi
Husband of Sif of the Golden Hair
Giant’s bane, you keep us safe from dangerous foes.

Thunderer, look out for us over this summer season,
Bring your relaxing rains to ripen our crops
Keep the worst weather at bay.
Protect us from whipping winds and floods.
Let no hailstorms threaten our winter stores.
As clouds gather and thunder rolls,

May fields of gold sway with the gentle breezes
Ripening to the richness of the harvest.

May your blessing fall on our homes and all the crops we have sown
Until the time of harvest draws near.

2.    Compare and contrast examples from the work of three poets in one cultural tradition from at least two historical eras. (minimum 300 words of the student’s original essay material beyond the verses provided, at least one poem per poet)

The culture I have chosen for this set of poems is American, and the poets here represent both 19^th  century and contemporary poetry, and also each have a unique American-ness to them.

Emily Dickinson

“There is a solitude of space”

There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself—
Finite infinity.

(Dickinson)

Maya Angelou

“Still I Rise”

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

(Angelou)

Mary Oliver

“Wild Geese”

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

(Oliver)

Analysis

At first glance, these three poems do not have a lot in common. All written by American women, they focus on different goals, with different structures. Angelou’s poem is the only one that uses meter; both Angelou and Dickinson use rhyme. Oliver’s poem is entirely in free verse. Strikingly modern sounding for a poem from the 19^th century, Dickinson’s poem is about solitude – something with which she was intimately acquainted, spending most of her life alone, often secluded to a single room. Angelou’s is about power – female power, and the power of African-Americans that was so critical in the 1970’s when she was writing this poem.  She touches on freedom and wealth, but in the end it is perseverance and personal power that exudes from this poem. Oliver’s poem is grounded in the natural world, in acceptance of self and in the serenity of nature. Where Dickinson and Oliver speak quietly, Angelou speaks with emphasis and energy. All three poems flow easily when read, but it is Angelou’s poem that has the rhythmic meter that gives it such dramatic flair.

That said, all three of these poems are distinctly American – specifically in the streak of American individualism. Angelou does not say “We rise” but “I rise” – the poet rises above her circumstances, her heritage, her social standing. She is beaten down, but like dust or air, still she rises, an individual, uniquely herself. Oliver finds herself in the song of the wild geese, who announce over and over again “[her] place in the family of things.” And Dickinson finds the most profundity in the self given in solitude to the self – the individual sacrifice, the private one. Though separated by over a century, these three women each find within themselves, and thus express in their poetry, an attitude of individualism that is a common value held among Americans.

While this value would likely be seen as incredibly strange to our Indo-European forbears, for whom community was a measure of survival, this undercurrent ties these three women together in powerful expressions of individualism – individual solitude, individual power, and the individual in nature.

3.    Compare and contrast examples from the work of two poets of the same historical era from two different cultural traditions. (minimum 300 words of the student’s original essay material beyond the verses provided at least two poems per poet)

Izumi Shikibu (10-11^th Century (Heian) Japan)

“Although I Try”

Although I try
to hold the single thought
of Buddha’s teaching in my heart,
I cannot help but hear
the many crickets’ voices calling as well.

*****

“Watching the Moon”

Watching the moon
at dawn
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely,
no part left out.

(Shikibu)

Rabia Al Basri (8-9^th Century (Medieval) Persia)

“Reality”

In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.
Speech is born out of longing,
True description from the real taste.
The one who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.
How can you describe the true form of Something
In whose presence you are blotted out?
And in whose being you still exist?
And who lives as a sign for your journey?

*****

“My Beloved”

My peace, O my brothers and sisters, is my solitude,
And my Beloved is with me always,
For His love I can find no substitute,
And His love is the test for me among mortal beings,
Whenever His Beauty I may contemplate,
He is my “mihrab”, towards Him is my “qiblah”
If I die of love, before completing satisfaction,
Alas, for my anxiety in the world, alas for my distress,
O Healer (of souls) the heart feeds upon its desire,
The striving after union with Thee has healed my soul,
O my Joy and my Life abidingly,
You were the source of my life and from Thee also came my ecstasy.
I have separated myself from all created beings,
My hope is for union with Thee, for that is the goal of my desire

(Al Basri)

Analysis

I must note, as I begin my analysis of these poems, that both Al Basri and Shikibu wrote in their native languages, and thus have been translated. The collections that housed both of their poetry did not list their translators, which is a shame, but some of the poetic and rhetorical devices used are likely to be from the translation and not in the original.

These poets are both women, separated by the majority of the world, writing in completely different styles, yet somehow there is a common thread to their poetry. Rabia Al Basri, a Persian Muslim woman living in the area that is now modern-day Afghanistan, is lauded as the first contemporary female Persian poet. Her poems largely focus on either love or God, and it is not always entirely clear to which she is referring as she writes. Famous for having had a tumultuous love affair, but also for having a deep mysticism and faith, Al Basri’s poetry is florid and fluid, formal and with extensive use of metaphor and description. She uses extended metaphors, beautiful language, and grand sweeping statements of emotion and feeling.

Izumi Shikibu, writing from Heian era Japan, is highly regarded among poets (of both genders) for her exemplary use of what were then contemporary styles. Her given name is lost to the ages, but she speaks with a clear, relatable voice – if much more minimalistic in style than Al Bashri. Like Al Bashri, she was known in her day for having had a complicated love affair, and her extant poetry comes from her diary of that affair. The two poems quoted here, however, are less coy flirting and more expressions of her true self. I find a lot to be relatable in a woman who struggles with the chirping of crickets when in meditation. Her poetry is stark, in contrast to Al Bashri, and contains only enough words to accurately convey a single image at a time. Where Al Bashri moves from image to image, metaphor to metaphor as she pursues the target of her poetry, Shikibu picks a single subject and writes cleanly and clearly, with very few words, on that single target.

Both of these women were famous (or infamous) in their time for having had love affairs, but both wrote poetry that is deeply spiritual as well as deeply loving. Their styles are worlds apart, as one would expect for their geographical and cultural differences, but they share a common thread – one of spirituality, of knowledge of self, and of surrender of that self, though whether to love or to God is not always clear.

I did not expect to love both of these poets so thoroughly when I went in search of them. I am glad to have found both of them, and I love that through the medium of poetry, I can hear their voices across over a thousand years of time and space.

4.    Compare and contrast two mythological or folkloric tales from two Indo-European cultures. Include a discussion of the use of narrative point-of-view, the element of time, and any relevant issues of religious (or other) bias influencing the narrative. (minimum 600 words)

I went into this question knowing that I wanted to talk about Beowulf, as the primary Epic Tale of my Anglo-Saxon hearth culture. The challenge was to find a mirrored tale to talk about in contrast with it. I struck on the idea of talking about dragons – and fighting them – and decided to look to Vedic India as my counterpart. Often we see parallels between the Germanic tales and the Vedic ones, but in this case they play out very differently.

Beowulf is already a mighty hero by the time he approaches the Dragon which has destroyed much of his native Geatland. Having slain Grendel and Grendel’s mother, he returns home to find a greedy dragon having destroyed much of his country, and then holed up with its wealth. Ever the warrior, Beowulf sets out with twelve men to defeat the dragon, but ends up with only his trusty Wiglaf at his side. Though he vanquishes the dragon, his sword fails him, and Beowulf is killed in the battle. Wiglaf is named as his successor, and Beowulf is given a hero’s funeral, but the hoard of wealth is untouchable, only by God can it be given out.

This epic is told in Anglo-Saxon heroic verse, which relies heavily on alliteration and kennings, a type of metaphor where a word or word combination are used in replacement for a thing instead of naming it. These kennings are a bardic construct that help with the retelling of tales – especially important as Beowulf was originally in the oral history of the Anglo-Saxons, not being written down until later. The perspective is 3^rd person, and the story is told as though it happened in the not-so-distant past. These characters are heroes, but they are meant to inspire greatness in the listener, so they can’t seem too remote. The events of Beowulf likely happened sometime just after the Anglo-Saxon migration, but the story was not written down until the 10^th or 11^th century, which does introduce the possibility of religious bias, as generally speaking the only people in 11^th century England that were doing a lot of writing were Christian monks. While the story itself is largely sparse on religious topics, there is no way to know if the original Anglo-Saxon religious bits have been left out by our writer, or otherwise disguised.

Book 1, Hymn 32 of the Rg Veda tells the story of Indra, the Thunderer, in his defeat of the dragon Vrtra. Like Beowulf’s dragon, Vrtra is hoarding wealth – in this case, the waters of blessings – and Indra seeks him out to destroy him and disperse that wealth to the people. Indra takes a drink of the mighty Soma, an intoxicating magical beverage, and then strikes at the very mountain itself with his thunderbolt, slaying Vrtra and his kin. Though he tried to keep fighting, Vrtra was struck again and fully defeated, releasing the waters which poured fourth down to the sea.

Like Beowulf the Rg Veda is a collection of poetic works – hymns in this case, rather than one long epic tale. The literary devices are much harder to pick out, especially as they have been fully translated from their original, but in general the descriptive style sounds similar. While there is not the use of kennings, there is a lot of metaphor and exaggerated speech. Unlike Beowulf, this hymn  does not take place in narrative time; it is unclear how long ago Indra defeated Vrtra, or even whether he is still currently slaying Vrtra right now. This stems likely from the difference in function. Where Beowulf is designed to stand alone as a concrete story in the bardic tradition of Epic Heroes, the Rg Veda is a collection of hymns, so it’s much shorter and doesn’t have to have narrative continuity. Unlike Beowulf, which was not codified until quite some time after it was written, the Rg Veda was written down and codified long before external religious bias could have influenced the text.

 

Works Consulted

Al Basri, Rabia. “Poems.” PoemHunter.com. Web. 27 February 2018.
< https://www.poemhunter.com/rabia-al-basri/&gt;.

Angelou, Maya. “Still I Rise.” Still I Rise: A Book of Poems. 1978. Web. Poetry Foundation. 27 February 2018. < https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46446/still-i-rise&gt;.

Dickinson, Emily. “There is a solitude of space.” HelloPoetry.com. Web. 27 February 2018.
< https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3700/there-is-a-solitude-of-space/&gt;.

Griffith, Ralph T. H. “Rig Veda.” Internet Sacred Text Archive. 1896. Web. 28 February 2018. <http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda&gt;.

Hall, Lesslie. “Beowulf.” The Project Gutenberg EBook of Beowulf. The Project Gutenberg, 19 July 2005. Web. 28 February 2018. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16328/16328-h/16328-h.htm&gt;.

Oliver, Mary. “Wild Geese.” Dream Work. 1986. University of New Mexico. Web. 27 February 2018.
< http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_wildgeese.html&gt;.

Shikibu, Izumi. “Poems.” PoemHunter.com. Web. 27 February 2018.
< https://www.poemhunter.com/izumi-shikibu/&gt;.