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| Mark Hama |
One of the main points that Hama attempts to make in this essay is that
Orrick Johns was a heavy influence on William Carlos Williams in his writing of
the “Red Wheel Barrow”. In doing this, he shows the walk of life that
originally influenced Orrick John’s work, referencing many, many poets in the
process. In the teacher activity system, this would be successful. As an
educator, teachers would be familiar with these poets-bringing more clarity.
However, this is not successful in the student activity system. Alfred
Kreymbourg, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Wallace
Stevens, Amy Lowell, Mina Loy, Alanson Hartpence, Man Ray, Malcolm Cowley, Walter
Arensberg, these are just a couple of poets named and referenced in the essay.
A different poet is referenced in almost every paragraph of the article. When a
student comes across these unfamiliar names, it only adds confusion and
frustration. We readers feel as though there is an obscene amount of excess
information-causing us to lose interest and feel lost. The point of the essay
to understand what modern poetry is. Mentioning every single artist who
influenced Johns who influenced Williams is pretty pointless. It is the
perfected modern poetry Williams created we are interested in.
Not
only does Hama include irrelevant history in showing the influence of Orrick on
Williams, but he also uses sixty-nine word sentences to convey this point:
“Based upon Williams’s enthusiastic description of his participation in the artistic ferment at the Grantwood art colony, one can readily conclude that Orrick Johns, Alfred Kreymbourg, and the other modernist pioneers with whom Williams associated during the formative years of his poetic career provided Williams with both the exemplary character of production and the apparatus necessary for the emergence of a new form of artistic expression, as Benjamin describes.”
This extremely long sentence implements the impersonal “one,” making
this passive and more abstract. This is blatant use of the official style. Using
“one” makes it seem as though the writer is not writing directly to the reader,
but rather some imaginary, impersonal being somewhere in the world. This makes
it harder for us to connect with what we are reading. It alienates us. It bores
us.
Instead of expressing ideas
in simple terms, he chooses to uses abstraction. He says “artistic ferment”
instead of simply sharing poetry or sharing ideas-bringing more complication to
understanding. He also says Williams was provided with, “the exemplary
character of production and the apparatus” necessary for producing poetry. What
does this even mean? Apparatus is a hard word to describe, but basically it can
be defined as the tools or the means necessary for a task. I had to look this
word up in the dictionary because I thought it meant something more along the
lines of social status-which was way off base.
Hama uses this abstraction of words throughout his piece. He adds unnecessary
confusion. When reading this I would often come across a word I was unfamiliar
with and make a guess at what I thought it meant-as I did with apparatus. This,
obviously, is not an effective way of understanding exactly what the author
meant. However, I am a college student, I am a very busy person. Like most
college students, I don’t have the time or motivation to look up every single
word I do not understand in a homework assignment. This was especially the case
Hama’s piece as I felt like every other sentence had a word I was not one
hundred percent familiar with. Take, for example, this passage:
“This cognitive process-from the printed page, to the imagination “at play,” to the re-cognition that such a play elucidates the writer’s contact with his locality-inverts the critical principals of the aestheticism. Rather than the ascent from the local to the transcendent category of the aesthetic, Williams stresses the descent from the realm of the aesthetic to the reformulation of the local conditions that give rise to such imaginative work.”
There are so many words in this passage that I do not fully understand-
“elucidates,” “locality,” “transcendent,” “aestheticism.” There is also the
difficulty of knowing the difference between ascent and descent. In the
professional world, all of this language would be understood and interpreted
correctly. However, as a student, I had to read this sentence about 7 times to
fully understand what it was saying. Many readers find themselves lost in the bureaucratic,
jargonistic language that Hama implements. He alienates many, many readers as
the reading level of America is around the 7th grade. He wrote this
passage at a 17.7 grade level and received a reading ease score of 24.6.
This
essay was originally published by West Chester University with an intention of
educating teachers how to convey modern poetry effectively to their students.
The intended audience was pure professionals. However, it was then published by
Project Muse-a database that can be accessed by anyone with a library card.
Also teachers began giving this article out as a homework assignment-expecting
students to grasp these ideas on their own. This piece is not successful in
these activity systems. It’s heavy use of the official style-long sentence
lengths and extreme abstraction of words-makes it difficult for most readers of
America to understand. The reader often finds himself re reading and working to
dissect long sentences into separate ideas. We find ourselves working so hard
to understand each sentence that we can’t even remember what the previous
sentence was saying. We feel completely lost in the language. The sad part of
it is, this essay defines modern poetry to a tee. Once the reader understands
its ideas, complete understanding of the art is achieved. It is a shame this
author wrote with such a heavy hand in the official style. It scares off common
readers and prevents them from understanding the difficult art of modern
poetry.
By: Erin O'Connor
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