VATE Literature Presentation

November 2002

Jennifer Strauss

Presented by Michael Box

mbox@vtown.com.au

What we already know about the text.There are some general comments that we can make about Strauss’s work, many of which she has made herself.

• Many of the poems are stimulated by personal experience. While they may move to wider or grander themes, they often begin with an observation or an experience. Many definitions of lyric poetry present the modern lyric poem as a short poem based on the observations of a single narrator (often not the poet.) This describes all of Strauss’s poems although often the experiences are connected with the poet’s life.

Strauss is very interested in words, language, communication, its delights, failures and gaps. You need to see the different ways that Strauss observes the use of language and then experiments with those uses:

The pun where one word can have two meanings, like Son and Moon.

The duality or paradox of language where one object can be described in two apparently opposite ways, like “the night, terrible and friendly”. This ambiguity is also thematic, that is she examines the ambiguity of relationships as well as in “Cold Anniversary”

The way that the language positions the subject in the mind of the reader which we will explore when we look at rewriting traditional stories to change the emphasis

Strauss is a strident defender of the disempowered. Her work has feminist, anti-colonial and socialist overtones (and she would not shy from any of these positions), but most importantly and helpfully for our understanding, her work speaks for the voiceless. This is done cleverly in “Snapshot Album of an Innocent Tourist” where the poem is structured around the absences that the abuse of power causes and how the poem tries to rectify, and laments that it cannot, those absences. A Just Cause is a defence of Jezebel, “Migrant Woman” offers compassion in the face of disinterest, “Son and Moon” explains the sense of loss that part of motherhood. Giving voice to the unspoken is a recurring motif in the poems.

Rewriting a myth to transform the meaning is a regular practice in the poems. Eurydice comes to rescue Orpheus in “After a Death”, Horatio’s credibility is restored and Jezebel is not the whorish devil in “A Just Cause” that she has been regarded as throughout history, since Kings11. In these examples Strauss is seeking to recover the truth, to demonstrate that it is often the teller of the story who is believed and who is able to sully the reputation of the subjects of those stories.

The other aspect of these poems is that often considerable background knowledge is required to get the jokes and references (or in the case of “Solstice” any of the narrative at all!) If you do not know about Pentecost and Bread and Stones and the demise of Ophelia, the poems can seem impenetrable. (And next week could be arduous)

While familiar with literary theory and able to play with the ideas Strauss refers constantly to the three grand narratives of Western culture, the Bible, Greek Mythology and Shakespeare. She sees this as the pillars of our literary understanding, part of the consciousness of the west, although Strauss has observed that she wonders just how embedded in the culture these texts are now.

The traditional use of imagery, rhythm and meter are evident in her work and there is considerable scope for us to comment on these in the exam.

Much of the work is personal; about big themes in the lives of ordinary people; birth, death, art, love, loss. The challenge for the poet and her readers is to find the universality in the work.

Stauss is very interested in the passage of time, the significance of cycles and the importance of place, (think about “After a Death” which is about all three of these things). Much of her work makes reference to our understanding of these, and she offers another interpretation:

Time, they say, heals-

some slippage too from memory

must be expected

as natural.

Time,

I say, steals and nature rots-“Cold Anniversary”

It is fair to say that Strauss takes conventional views and subverts them.

What we know about the examination.

You have one hour to present some ideas on selected poems.

The Chief examiner argues

The examination of theoretical perspectives and a variety of critical standpoints has a valid place in this course and students are to be encouraged to explore such views, but this must not take the place of first-hand exploration and thoughtful evaluation of the text/s. The criteria and the grade descriptors are quite explicit on this point. Criterion 2, for example, with its italicised section ‘but it is crucial that they (students) provide a close reading of at least one of the passages, rather than an attempt to present a prepared answer’ clearly instructs on what needs to be done.

There is not a wholesale endorsement of literary theory and there is an active

discouragement of prepared answers.The poetry, however allows for better preparation because of the limited

selection of passages available to the examiners

What we know about the examination.

You have one hour to present some ideas on selected poems.

The Chief examiner argues

The examination of theoretical perspectives and a variety of critical standpoints has a valid place in this course and students are to be encouraged to explore such views, but this must not take the place of first-hand exploration and thoughtful evaluation of the text/s. The criteria and the grade descriptors are quite explicit on this point. Criterion 2, for example, with its italicised section ‘but it is crucial that they (students) provide a close reading of at least one of the passages, rather than an attempt to present a prepared answer’ clearly instructs on what needs to be done.

To become skilled at this task necessitates the habituation of students, during the year, to working closely with texts, to reading and reflecting on the language and structures of particular passages and their links to the meaning and concerns of the whole work. The concomitant to this is the development of an apt and expressive language in response to the text/s, a development which will involve language learning, experimentation with, and exploration of, writing styles.

To become skilled at this task necessitates the habituation of students, during the year, to working closely with texts, to reading and reflecting on the language and structures of particular passages and their links to the meaning and concerns of the whole work. The concomitant to this is the development of an apt and expressive language in response to the text/s, a development which will involve language learning, experimentation with, and exploration of, writing styles.

The examiner is telling us what we suspected all along; we need to understand what the text says, how it is says it and what the effect of the combination of these are. We then must develop a way of talking about the text in detail, revealing our grasp of the complexity raised above.

The poems to be studied. Previous exam poems in red.

An End to Innocence

Songs our Mothers Teach Us

A Just Cause

Migrant Woman on a Melbourne Tram

Solstice

After a Death

The Snapshot Album of the Innocent Tourist

Wife to Horatio

 

Son and Moon: Scenes from Maternal Life

Cold Anniversary

The Red Divan

Tierra del Fuego

i. Burning Questions

ii. Dreaming of Hellfire and Damnation

iii. In the Line of Fire

iv. Estancia

v. Tierra del Fuego

What more we need to know about the text.

At this point it would be helpful to discuss one or two poems and gain a collective sense of how the poems work.

I have chosen two poems that have not appeared on the exam before

“Snapshot Album of an Innocent Tourist”

The Red Divan

As they allow us to see some of the crucial elements of the work of Jennifer Strauss.

The Red Divan (Francis Gruber 1912-1948)

How did the painter understand

so precisely

how a woman lies

collapsed between exhaustion and despair,

on the very edge of the bed?

One arm, one leg,

dangling without volition-

she waits for gravity

to take its toll

at the merest twitch of the hips

or stretch of fingers

to retrieve what might have been dropped

on the red carpet.

Cultural reference to a work of art painted by a minor mid 20th century artist, the poem questions the multiplicity of meaning that is available in the work.

Description of the work. Note the economy of language that is prevalent in Strauss’s work

The use of the question to convey meaning means that the device that Strauss uses to

narrate is the same as process the reader is using while reading

It is as if

all the blood of her body

has gone to nourish

the angry colour of dress, divan,

carpet, even the walls.

She's pallid

as if she's worked for hours non-stop

or heard her lover say it was over

or knows there is no food

in any cupboard anywhere in the city.

Did he remember

watching a woman like that,

or did he invent the pose

for some artist's model

cold and bored

and suffering from cramp

in the right calf?

Interpretation of the work, which moves from a localised personal view, a possible personal experience, to much broader themes including the work as a metaphor for Paris and even the author’s own death

Was it Paris he thought of,

down but not quite out

under the Occupation,

or had he heard

tubercular blood

clamour to burst his perished lungs

and paint the world red?

Feeling his treacherous body tilt

on the mortal verge,

did he place this woman

just so

on the edge of a red divan

from which she will never fall?

Another literary reference, to George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, a work in keeping with Strauss’s beliefs but in this case just a playful use of the reference

A reference to Gruber’s death from tuberculosis as a young man and raised by Strauss as a question about art and its ability to make the artist immortal

The immortality denied the artist is provided by this painting but interestingly Strauss has sees that model on the verge, about to fall but never will.

Finally, this poem is about the power of art.

What we can do to prepare for the examination?

Try to find ways to make the poetry come to life. I have animated two of the poems, “Snapshot” which we saw earlier and

Solstice

I think that this gives the reader a way to really understand the ambiguity at the heart of “Solstice”, how can a sun be black? The paradox of the tulip helps to provide the ominous atmosphere fro the rest of the poem.

With my colleague at Aquinas we have developed three questions that can help to provide insight into any text in preparation for the Literature examination.

What are the features of the passage or poem?

What is the effect of these features?

What specifically can you say about the impact of the features and the effect?

We believe this gives a helpful focus in trying to write about the passages, because, especially in the poetry, and particularly with Strauss whose poems are quite short, you can be armed with plenty to say before the examination without having a prepared response.

We developed a table for students to use. It looks simple, but here is an example of how a student of mine used it. I will send you the table with this powerpoint, but the student’s work is not mine to give.

A final point about the vexed question of the introduction. It is possible in the response to the passages on a novel or play for the student to launch straight into an analysis of the first passage. This is not as simple for the poetry. The 2001 Report to teachers contains a full essay on poetry, on the work of Seamus Heaney. The introduction is instructive

“There is a number of common concerns or preoccupations which unite Nobel prize winner Seamus Heaney’s work, in a career that spans more than three decades. For instance, Heaney’s interest in history, both personal and political and social, alienation, the present sectarian violence in Northern Ireland and a search for an answer to this violence, is reflected in the given poems.”

The introduction is brief, offers some background to the poet and articulates the thematic direction of the essay. You do not need to say much more, perhaps make some reference to the linguistic structures and features that you will examine, but otherwise get to the poems. You do not have long to render your complex reading of the text and to demonstrate your deep understanding of the poems.

It is much better to do this in reference to specific poems than to offer some general observations in introduction.