WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.060 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.060 --> 00:00:01.560 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:00:01.560 --> 00:00:07.020 align:middle line:84% I wanted to talk a little bit about The Book of the Dead, 00:00:07.020 --> 00:00:18.480 align:middle line:84% which, shortly, very briefly, is a story about industrial abuse. 00:00:18.480 --> 00:00:21.870 align:middle line:84% I mentioned this to the class earlier today. 00:00:21.870 --> 00:00:27.550 align:middle line:84% Miners in West Virginia died of silica inhalation. 00:00:27.550 --> 00:00:32.990 align:middle line:84% The Union Carbide, may God never forgive them, 00:00:32.990 --> 00:00:37.860 align:middle line:84% just basically never compensated them, let them die. 00:00:37.860 --> 00:00:41.520 align:middle line:84% They knew this was going to happen in a sense. 00:00:41.520 --> 00:00:44.700 align:middle line:84% And because many of these miners were Black, essentially 00:00:44.700 --> 00:00:48.810 align:middle line:84% they figured they might as well just use them to death. 00:00:48.810 --> 00:00:49.920 align:middle line:90% This is the 1930s. 00:00:49.920 --> 00:00:52.560 align:middle line:84% And a young poet, Muriel Rukeyser, 00:00:52.560 --> 00:00:59.100 align:middle line:84% wrote this poem, which is made up of 20 pieces. 00:00:59.100 --> 00:01:01.840 align:middle line:90% And it is really-- 00:01:01.840 --> 00:01:04.260 align:middle line:90% in many ways it's a-- 00:01:04.260 --> 00:01:08.130 align:middle line:84% Eliot's "Waste Land" is an invocation of a spiritual 00:01:08.130 --> 00:01:15.010 align:middle line:84% crisis perhaps coupled with a sense of almost a, I can't say 00:01:15.010 --> 00:01:21.210 align:middle line:84% a sexual crisis, but the image is of fructify, 00:01:21.210 --> 00:01:25.530 align:middle line:84% of impregnation-- or actually the reverse of it, 00:01:25.530 --> 00:01:32.460 align:middle line:84% the images of impotence are really-- 00:01:32.460 --> 00:01:37.200 align:middle line:84% meaningless sex and impotence are very important moments 00:01:37.200 --> 00:01:37.740 align:middle line:90% in there. 00:01:37.740 --> 00:01:43.530 align:middle line:84% So in a sense, we've become a spiritually impotent society 00:01:43.530 --> 00:01:45.930 align:middle line:84% is sort of what "The Waste Land" says 00:01:45.930 --> 00:01:49.770 align:middle line:90% in a very dumbed-down version. 00:01:49.770 --> 00:01:52.570 align:middle line:90% And in some ways-- 00:01:52.570 --> 00:01:55.710 align:middle line:84% so this is where we need spirituality. 00:01:55.710 --> 00:01:57.810 align:middle line:84% To some degree, it's Christian spirituality. 00:01:57.810 --> 00:02:00.450 align:middle line:84% But also Eliot is open to-- he ends 00:02:00.450 --> 00:02:07.500 align:middle line:84% with a passage from the Hindu Upanishads, 00:02:07.500 --> 00:02:08.910 align:middle line:90% from the Sanskrit Upanishads. 00:02:08.910 --> 00:02:12.910 align:middle line:84% So it's not necessarily Christian spirituality, 00:02:12.910 --> 00:02:15.150 align:middle line:84% which what was his choice in the end, 00:02:15.150 --> 00:02:17.820 align:middle line:90% but spirituality in general. 00:02:17.820 --> 00:02:25.210 align:middle line:84% In many of these same techniques with greater documentation, 00:02:25.210 --> 00:02:28.540 align:middle line:84% with focus on there, if Eliot is working 00:02:28.540 --> 00:02:35.710 align:middle line:84% with the mythological stories and not so much the lived 00:02:35.710 --> 00:02:37.960 align:middle line:84% experiences, even though he has some document-- 00:02:37.960 --> 00:02:40.990 align:middle line:84% there there's a moment of a carbuncular guy, 00:02:40.990 --> 00:02:42.760 align:middle line:84% a guy with lots of pimples having 00:02:42.760 --> 00:02:50.350 align:middle line:84% a quickie with a young woman, and an Armenian raisin 00:02:50.350 --> 00:02:54.250 align:middle line:84% dealer who was trying to preposition a young man. 00:02:54.250 --> 00:02:56.440 align:middle line:84% So these are the things he steals 00:02:56.440 --> 00:02:58.570 align:middle line:90% from the contemporary London. 00:02:58.570 --> 00:03:01.630 align:middle line:90% But the rest is Cleopatra. 00:03:01.630 --> 00:03:04.510 align:middle line:90% There is Tiresias. 00:03:04.510 --> 00:03:07.030 align:middle line:90% Here we don't have much history. 00:03:07.030 --> 00:03:09.140 align:middle line:90% We have the lived experiences. 00:03:09.140 --> 00:03:12.430 align:middle line:84% So in essence, it's a democratization 00:03:12.430 --> 00:03:15.500 align:middle line:84% of who the heroes or victims are. 00:03:15.500 --> 00:03:19.870 align:middle line:84% But also, it is the emphasis on capitalist exploitation 00:03:19.870 --> 00:03:20.890 align:middle line:90% of people. 00:03:20.890 --> 00:03:24.820 align:middle line:84% And she brings many similar techniques 00:03:24.820 --> 00:03:29.770 align:middle line:84% but puts them in a very realistic-- 00:03:29.770 --> 00:03:32.620 align:middle line:84% well, I would say maybe Marxist-inspired poetics. 00:03:32.620 --> 00:03:36.502 align:middle line:90% And so it's a very-- 00:03:36.502 --> 00:03:39.460 align:middle line:84% it's highly experimental for its time, 00:03:39.460 --> 00:03:42.220 align:middle line:84% remains challenging, but also it does 00:03:42.220 --> 00:03:44.140 align:middle line:84% the work of telling us the tragedy that 00:03:44.140 --> 00:03:46.360 align:middle line:90% happened to these miners. 00:03:46.360 --> 00:03:49.750 align:middle line:84% And so you have a lot of sections are in tercets, 00:03:49.750 --> 00:03:54.400 align:middle line:84% and they look beautiful, just seamless tercets. 00:03:54.400 --> 00:03:57.010 align:middle line:84% Then you have a lot of uneven stanzas, 00:03:57.010 --> 00:03:59.380 align:middle line:90% a lot of capitalization. 00:03:59.380 --> 00:04:02.890 align:middle line:84% You have an interview format documentary. 00:04:02.890 --> 00:04:05.240 align:middle line:84% You have a lot of passages that are in-- 00:04:05.240 --> 00:04:07.870 align:middle line:84% she can write very dense, modernist poetry, 00:04:07.870 --> 00:04:11.560 align:middle line:84% but also there are passages in just people's normal speeches, 00:04:11.560 --> 00:04:14.320 align:middle line:90% a mix of quatrains and tercets. 00:04:14.320 --> 00:04:20.290 align:middle line:84% There's one passage-- because the silica is a source of glass 00:04:20.290 --> 00:04:24.400 align:middle line:84% or being used in glass but also alloy in the making of it, 00:04:24.400 --> 00:04:28.690 align:middle line:90% it was also used for X-rays. 00:04:28.690 --> 00:04:31.000 align:middle line:90% It was right around the time-- 00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:32.800 align:middle line:84% I mean, essentially the thing that 00:04:32.800 --> 00:04:37.120 align:middle line:84% killed these people was instrumental in actually 00:04:37.120 --> 00:04:39.400 align:middle line:84% pinning the case on Union Carbide 00:04:39.400 --> 00:04:42.280 align:middle line:84% because they needed X-rays of them. 00:04:42.280 --> 00:04:45.100 align:middle line:84% And Union Carbide didn't want to pay for the X-rays. 00:04:45.100 --> 00:04:48.010 align:middle line:84% They didn't want people to have X-rays to show that they 00:04:48.010 --> 00:04:49.180 align:middle line:90% actually-- 00:04:49.180 --> 00:04:51.820 align:middle line:84% it wasn't just pneumonia or because these Black guys 00:04:51.820 --> 00:04:54.790 align:middle line:84% hung out at night in the cold, it's 00:04:54.790 --> 00:04:56.260 align:middle line:84% because they had something in them. 00:04:56.260 --> 00:05:00.580 align:middle line:84% And so it is the use of this technology with some of that 00:05:00.580 --> 00:05:04.750 align:middle line:90% silica involved-- or glass is-- 00:05:04.750 --> 00:05:05.890 align:middle line:90% she notices that irony. 00:05:05.890 --> 00:05:07.720 align:middle line:84% She's also thinking about the camera, 00:05:07.720 --> 00:05:10.360 align:middle line:84% and what the camera sees, and what it does, 00:05:10.360 --> 00:05:13.960 align:middle line:84% and how it captures, and how it is benign and inclusive. 00:05:13.960 --> 00:05:19.270 align:middle line:84% So she had these what you call "meta-poetic--" I don't know, 00:05:19.270 --> 00:05:21.760 align:middle line:84% meta-visual, if you will, because she's thinking about 00:05:21.760 --> 00:05:23.300 align:middle line:90% the act of seeing. 00:05:23.300 --> 00:05:27.220 align:middle line:84% So not to overburden you with it, 00:05:27.220 --> 00:05:36.520 align:middle line:84% but it is a great example of what a modern long poem does 00:05:36.520 --> 00:05:41.290 align:middle line:84% in the variety of textual strategies it uses. 00:05:41.290 --> 00:05:44.360 align:middle line:84% She has a stock quote in the middle of that part. 00:05:44.360 --> 00:05:47.470 align:middle line:90% She has congressional hearings. 00:05:47.470 --> 00:05:49.000 align:middle line:90% The senators are talking. 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:53.170 align:middle line:84% She has a bill, a congressional bill that's quoted. 00:05:53.170 --> 00:05:55.660 align:middle line:84% Sometimes she has the prose language-- 00:05:55.660 --> 00:05:57.700 align:middle line:84% I mean, issue of speed is very important. 00:05:57.700 --> 00:05:59.710 align:middle line:84% Obviously she has the prose language in there. 00:05:59.710 --> 00:06:03.190 align:middle line:84% But then she feels like she has to speed it up, 00:06:03.190 --> 00:06:08.050 align:middle line:84% and so she interrupts that text and somehow reverses it 00:06:08.050 --> 00:06:13.180 align:middle line:84% for tonalities, for irony, for drama, et cetera. 00:06:13.180 --> 00:06:19.210 align:middle line:84% So it is a great example of also the range 00:06:19.210 --> 00:06:23.470 align:middle line:84% of things that can be done to poetry or to normal speech 00:06:23.470 --> 00:06:26.350 align:middle line:90% to speed it up into be poetry. 00:06:26.350 --> 00:06:30.010 align:middle line:90% 00:06:30.010 --> 00:06:32.410 align:middle line:84% So I highly recommend that you read it 00:06:32.410 --> 00:06:38.800 align:middle line:84% as an example of a model of a long poem that has been 00:06:38.800 --> 00:06:42.240 align:middle line:90% a point of reference for me.