Ink, by Melissa Cundieff-Pexa

Sometimes I feel a poem is so beautiful and moving that it is very difficult to analyze. This is how I feel about Ink, by Melissa Cundieff-Pexa. But this is a literature analysis blog, so I should make some sort of attempt...shouldn't I?

MELISSA CUNDIEFF-PEXA

Ink

The first time I ever watched something die, its eyes
opened at the last lived moment, death’s first. A razor

between the two. The fledgling hawk’s pupil turned so black
I felt as though I had been blindfolded and led high up

a cliff, then pushed. I didn’t know dead eyes darken
or that watching them darken meant for the rest of my life

knowledge would carry with it a bottle of ink. Recently, everything
has been stained: stuffed toy bears, my daughter’s fresh hair,

the dream in which I wear long white gloves I cannot remove,
and a dreamed, wild pig playing as a dog might with my children.

They are chasing each other, laughing. This pig
I’m about to skin grunts, the children grunt too. Strange voices

of the unconscious. But my gloves are too tight, and I wake
before killing. The lives and deaths of others are everywhere.

I once wrote a confession down but erased it. I once wore
a paper crown that caught fire, and when the burning

scent of hair filled the room, memory’s open fume
evacuated my head to hover between mind and automation.

Afterwards, hair shorter, my mother putting away leftover
birthday cake, I wrote down a first truth, I caught fire the day

I turned twelve. My mother’s arms and a blanket saved me.
Under them, blindness and weight. When ash hits water it floats

for a long time before becoming the whale’s passenger,
and the whale before she swallows the ash is different

after she does. I wrote this today, our baby would have been
born soon. His eyes would have been blue. To know this. It changes nothing.

P3: Auschwitz Death Camp Film

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P1: Auschwitz Death Camp Film

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More First Lines from Classic Novels

I really enjoyed analyzing those first lines last time, so I decided to do it again. Perhaps we will make it a regular thing. Maybe we will look at first lines from books that are terrible. Who knows.

Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe

"Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond."

This is not my favorite first line. It establishes the main character of Okonkwo and shows the reader how important he is, but that is pretty much it. It isn't flashy; it gets the job done. But that was how I felt about the whole of Things Fall Apart. It was simply okay, an average novel. There are some interesting things to discuss, but we aren't going to spend a lot of time looking at Achebe's writing. I wouldn't be able to find a good place in that novel to conduct a close reading exercise. Ultimately forgettable as a first line. 

Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Bronte

"There was not the possibility of taking a walk that day."

I love Jane Eyre and I love teaching Jane Eyre to my AP Lit student, but this first line isn't terribly interesting either. It is better than Things Fall Apart, but just a bit. The language is different here. The phrasing and the use of the word "possibility" show us that this writer is from a different time period, different country, and different caste than your normal joe writer these days. There is an elegance to the phrasing "There was not the possibility..." They could have easily have said that it was raining out, or the weather was bad. But Bronte doesn't do that.

The Road
by Cormac McCarthy

"When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him."

Ah, good old Cormac. Getting us back on track. Now, this is a first line. Lots of details in this sentence. "In the woods," "in the dark and the cold," "of the night." He could have added in those details later or in a different way, but McCarthy has that famous style. He likes to say a lot in one sentence. 

As I Lay Dying
by William Faulkner

"Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file."

No fair, you can't do another Faulkner novel! I certainly can! Whose blog is this anyway? And this is a good one. From this first line, we get our first taste of the dialect. Daryl is speaking and the reader can already tell the region of the country that we are dealing with; the type of people we are dealing with. The other thing that I think is really special in this line is the second half of it, "following the path in single file." That part is interesting because it is curious. The reader begins to wonder and then, you can see, Faulkner already has you hooked. People don't normally walk in single file unless you have been instructed to. The fact that they are walking this way actually becomes very important in the next sentence or two. This establishes Daryl and Jewel's relationship, which isn't the best. But Faulkner does that all without telling us. This is pure showing and it is marvelous.

First Impressions are so Important

in life as well as in literature. An author has only so much space to really grab a reader's attention and those first lines are prime real estate. In today's blog I wanted to spend some time discussing the first lines from notable classical novels. Many of these I teach in my AP Lit class and have taught for years--true classics.

The Sound and the Fury 
by William Faulkner

"Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting."

So, we'll start off with a novel that I don't actually teach, but this is what inspired me to do this particular blog post.  As far as first lines go this one is pretty good. Faulkner is a master with these sorts of things. We can see in this line one of his traits as an author, the lack of names. He starts us off with the pronoun "I" and then leaves us to figure out who that "I" is later on in the first chapter. In this case, it is answered pretty quickly, but sometimes author's can leave us hanging for quite a while. I'm looking at your Octavia Butler!

The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind every since."

I have to be honest with this one, I am not the biggest fan of the opening line of Gatsby. I think the first little bit of this book is pretty rough too. It isn't until we get to the part about Gatsby being alright in the end that I feel that this novel really starts to be interesting. The opening of this novel is all Nick's reflection and doesn't really make sense to the reader until after they have finished with the book. I doubt many readers go back and re-read that section when they finish The Great Gatsby either.

Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad

"The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was a rest."

My students complain about Heart of Darkness every single year and I can see where they are coming from. It is an extremely difficult text and Conrad's prose is dense. You really have to concentrate on what he is saying in those long, drawn out sentences. But if you look at Conrad from a structure point of view, his prose is near perfection. The dude knows his stuff. Even though this is not the longest first sentence we will be discussing, there is a lot going on. We have the appositive phrase, "a cruising yawl," helping the reader to understand what the Nellie is. The yawl then swings her anchor; the action of swinging is interesting because it isn't a human that is performing the action, it is as if the boat itself is doing it. And Conrad doesn't call the boat in it either, he uses the proper pronoun "her" to identify the ship. All boats are girls, don't you know. 

Abe Vigoda Dies At 94 (Not a Hoax) — Orlando Sentinel

I have been trying to limit how many poems from Linebreak I feature on the 'ol blog, but I just had to for this one.

Abe Vigoda Dies At 94 (Not a Hoax)--Orlando Sentinel

by Dorianne Laux

“Abe Vigoda is no longer not dead.” –Thomas Dean, Facebook

First he was, then he wasn’t, now he is. Always
and forever. None of this Get back up and dust
those wings off, not like in The Godfather
when he’s told, “Can’t do it, Sally,” only to
show up a year later in The Don is Dead
and The Devil’s Daughter. Isn’t this just the way?
Everyone thinks we died when we’ve only
been languishing in a string of forgettable movies.
Tessio’s death was memorable for happening
quietly, off-screen. The horror of it
was the inevitability of it: the pageantry
of the six men surrounding him, pallbearers
shouldering him away in their solemn brown suits.
And isn’t that just the way? The worst
is not what comes, but what we can see coming,
the unfolding of the moment, whole lives
unspooled and slopped in a celluloid pool at our feet.
What kills us is Sal’s stoic desperation, the naked
dignity of his calm plea. We forget
his lack of faith, his weakness and betrayal.
We gaze into his sad Italian eyes, upon his long
Modigliani face, and we pity him the way
we pity Judas, the way we pity our own small
selfish selves, dying a little with each violence
we’ve committed until someone more ruthless
brings our suffering to an end.

I have never seen The Godfather, I probably should one day. And I'm sure that and understanding of that movie would help in interpreting this poem. I like the subject of this poem and especially the poetic turn at the end: "and we pity him the way / we pity Judas, the way we pity out own small / selfish selves, dying a little with each violence / we've committed until someone more ruthless / brings our suffering to an end." The comparison to Judas is marvelous, and then brings the poem back around, helping the reader understand what they are to get out of it.

Description in Invisible Man

I have to admit that I am struggling with Invisible Man. I really enjoyed the beginning of this novel: the Battle Royal, the initial chapters where the main character is driving the white donor around, and the subsequent fallout of those events. But once the principle character leaves the college and moves to New York it loses me. I don't know what it is either. This novel has some sections that are nicely written. There isn't anything that truly blows me away, but Ellison has some good descriptive powers. Here is one example:

"It was a beautiful college. The buildings were old and covered with vines and the roads gracefully winding, lined with hedges and wild roses that dazzled the eyes in the summer sun. Honeysuckle and purple wisteria hung heavy from the trees and white magnolias mixed with their scents in the bee-humming air. I've recalled it often, here in my hole: How the grass turned green in the springtime and how the mocking birds fluttered their tails and sang, how the moon shone down on the buildings how the bell in the chapel tower rang out the precious short-lived hours; how the girls in bright summer dresses promenaded the grassy lawn. Many times, here at night, I've closed my eyes and walking along the forbidden road that winds past the girls' dormitories, past the hall with the clock in the tower, its windows warmly aglow, on down past the small white Home Economics practice cottage, whiter still in the moonlight, and on down the road with its sloping and turning, paralleling the black powerhouse with its engines droning earth-shaking rhythms in the dark, its windows red from the glow of the furnace, on to where the road became a bridge over a dry riverbed, tangled with brush and clinging vines: the bridge of rustic logs, made for trysting, but virginal and untested by lovers; on up the road, past the buildings with the southern verandas half-a-city block long, to the sudden forking, barren of buildings, birds, or grass, where the road turned off to the insane asylum."

This is, in essence, just a bunch of lists. The narrator takes us on a journey through the campus, walking us down roads and past buildings. It really works and I felt as if I were able to actually see what Ellison was describing. My absolutely favorite line is: "the bridge of rustic logs, made for trysting, but virginal and untested by lovers." That is an amazing image.

So, I have put Invisible Man aside for now. Maybe I will return to it one day, but I can't spend anymore time reading something that I am struggling with. Time is too short.