Machinima and "Suicide's Note" by Langston Hughes

“Suicide’s Note” by Langston Hughes, in itself is a very powerful poem. The three verses it is written it give the feeling of solitude and sadness. However, the Machinima does add to the poem for me. This is hard for me to admit, being that I detest video games and I love Langston Hughes. It is a very literal translation of the poem which still leaves the reader (or viewer) to make out their personal interpretation of the poem itself. The first time I watched the video, I did not pay any attention to the lyrics of the song. The music itself would have sufficed to give the video that miserable touch to the video. The lyrics did not add anything to the video for me. But the slight movements of the soldier are what gave the poem the most personality. You feel the aloneness of the soldier. I can feel his pain as he looks down to the river or up to the sky. Makes me want to go console this video game character.

Poetry is integrated into every aspect of pop culture: from movies, to commercials to music. For example, “Maud: A Monodrama” by Tennysons is quoted in the movie A Cinderella Story. Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” is presented in the television show The West Wing. The episode in which it is recited is called “The U.S. Poet Laureate”. The poet laureate holds the position as the consultant in the Library of Congress to help raise consciousness of poetry to America. I’ve never really paid attention to how much poetry is a part of the popular culture until this assignment. Between my own research and the research done by my fellow classmates, there are many great poems, that maybe are seen as a little antiquated, can be seen in a new light with the help of popular culture.

Assignment 1

Images
-the boy
-ship burning
-child yelling
-father laying dead
-flag on fire
-thunder sounds
-pieces of the boat floating in the sea

The poem, "Casabianca" by Felicia Dorothea Hemans speaks about a child boy that is on a burning ship, which he will not abandon because his father has not given him permission to leave. However, the father of the child is already dead and would not be giving the child any such orders. At the end of the poem, although not explicitly stated, the child dies on the ship.

Hemans uses very vivid imagery throughout the entire poem. The reader can immerse themselves completely into the poem and feel like they are there on the ship with the child. I find the theme of respect in many of the images in this poem. The fact that the child will not abandon the burning ship until his father has given him permission is the biggest image of all. It is one that is repeated a couple of times throughout the poem. For example, in the third stanza the poet says, “The flames rolled on—he would not go/ Without his father’s word”. Then we see this image of the child asking and waiting for permission from his father in stanzas four, five and seven. A child is very easily frightened and for this boy to stay on a ship that was burning shows how much respect he has for his father and for the word that he had given his father to remain on the ship. You also see the image of the flag burning, “They caught the flag on high (stanza 8, verse 2)”. When a flag is to be disposed of, the only respectable way of doing it is to burn it. This shows that the ship and its captain (the child’s father) went down respectfully. The poet could have given us the image of the flag floating in the water along with the other pieces of the ship but it does not. One assumes that the flag is burned completely before the final explosion of the ship.

Assignment 2

In the poem, "All Watched Over By Machines" by Richard Brautigan can be seen as anti-technology. He seems to be writing with a lot of sarcasm, especially in the verses that are in parenthesis. For example, the first stanza states "I like to think/ (right now, please!)”. This statement feels like a forced request. Not something that the poet would actually like to happen. The poem also produces pictures in the reader’s mind that seem to be impossible in existing. For example, in the second stanza, verses five and six, it says, “where deer stroll peacefully/ past computers”. This created more of an image of a devastation of civilization and technology. Sort of how it is pictured in the movie “I am Legend” where it is seen that antelope and deer roam around New York City. It is not something that you would expect.

At the same time, this poem can be seen as pro- technology. The poem can be seen to have a tranquil tone to it. The poet speaks, in the first stanza, of nature and technology living harmoniously together. The simile the Brautigan uses at the end of the stanza, “like pure water/ touching clear sky” gives the reader a greater sense of the calmness between the two worlds. Usually a reading will have at least clouds in the sky if there is an issue underlying but you do not see this in the poem at all.

I think that the poem, although on the surface very pro technology, is really anti-technology. I think Brautigan is predicting or foreshadowing what is going to happen with the technology in the future. The fact that technology will be filling land fills and that nature and animals will have to adapt to live around it harmoniously and that there is nothing that can be done by the animals. That is why he does not state that humans will have to live with it but the trees, the forests, and the animals, which have no say as to where these items go.