Comparing and Contrasting: Collins and Neruda - Essay Example

Comparing and Contrasting: Collins and Neruda Your School Department, This paper is a partial fulfillment for the subject ________, under Professor ________. Abstract This paper compares and contrasts the differences and similarities of the styles of two poets, namely Billy Collins and Pablo Neruda. Both are modern poets tackling the same subject of creativity and the creation of the poem, but they have different styles. Along with several articles, this essay is expounds on the differences and similarities of their styles, particularly in the poems You, Reader and Poetry by Collins and Neruda, respectively. Comparing and Contrasting: Collins and Neruda Compared to other forms of literature, poetry is almost always considered as high art. Poetry is a fine art painting to short stories’ comic books. However, contemporary poets have struggled to shed the prejudice that comes with poetry. Some poets try to write in a narrative manner, like that of a novelist, but at the same time, maintaining the integrity of poetry by wiring in brief, suggestive and figurative lines. This is the style of Billy Collins, a contemporary American poet. He is dubbed as the most famous poet in America today by the New York Times. He is also one of the most appreciated because of his non-intimidating style in poetry. His poems are often humorous and quite “reachable” and not pretentious (NPR, 2011). To compare his poems to others, there is also Pablo Neruda. Pablo Neruda is also one of the more respected poets in the field of literature. His poems were romantic in nature and the themes often tackle the richness of the human existence, love, nature and at certain times, politics. His poems are often high-brow. The main difference between Neruda and Collins is perhaps the style in the way they express their poems. In these two poems, You, Reader (Collins) and Poetry (Neruda), the authors tackle the same theme: Creativity and the creative process. Specifically the theme tackles the creative process involved in making a poem. Reading the poems, one gets the idea that Neruda is a classical poet. His poems are formalistic and existential in style. Although both employ the free-verse technique in writing their poems, the major difference is in the way that they are using their words, the choices of words and at the same time the figurative use of words and sentences. This is because Collins puts an extra effort in making his poems “reachable” to audiences. In one interview for the NPR, he relates that many of the audiences of poetry are limited to just the poets themselves. He believes in democratizing poetry, by using easy to understand terms. His poems are witty, and quite serious too. On the other hand, Neruda’s poetry is more formal. Since most of his poetry that is being read in schools are translated, most people are more familiar with his poems’ free verse style. Neruda’s poems are quite romantic, peppered with suggestive images and metaphors. It is useful to note that most of his poems have the same meter throughout the poem, as having rhymes, but it is not shown in the poem, Poetry. His poems echo influences like the Romantic poets in England like William Blake, William Shakespeare and Federico Garcia Lorca. He was also influenced by Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel de Cervantes but credits Walt Whitman as his greatest inspiration, stating that he learned more from Whitman than Cervantes even if were Spanish. Both poems tackle the same subject and theme: the mysterious nature of creativity. Both poems also tackle the same subject: that of making a poem. However, both of these have different ways of achieving their goal of making a poem. In You, Reader, the persona speaks casually of sitting in his kitchen and writing down what he observes, the way a skilled poet usually does. In Poetry, the persona is somewhat baffled on how the inspiration/creativity came to him and help him make that said poem. Looking closely, the persona in You, Reader is quite the practical, no-fuss man while the persona in Poetry is a romantic, crediting nature and a mystery in lending him the power to be creative. Content wise, both poems as said before tackle the same subject. Their manner of approach is different. In Poetry, there is emphasis in mystery and nature. The poem’s message almost says that the persona is an unwilling character to write the poem because he doesn’t not know the reason on why he was “summoned”. He did not know what to say because his mouth had no way with words, and his eyes were blind. Nevertheless, something “stirred in his soul” and when he decided to write a “nonsensical first line”, the magical power of creation unfolded within his self. He was inspired, because by writing the first line, “he suddenly saw the heavens unfastened and opened, planets and palpitations, riddled with arrows, fire and flowers…, his heart breaking loose with the wind.” In contrast, Collins’ poem tackles the creative process in a practical, almost ordinary manner. The poem presents the persona as a man who woke up early to write a poem in the kitchen. Although the premise seems to be easy and comprehensible, the depth and significance of the poem sinks in as the reader reaches the end of the poem. In it, the author uses the metaphor in the form of the salt and pepper shakers, comparing it to the relationship that the poet and reader has formed in the process of making and reading a poem. Although the style of You, Reader is rather simple, the message is not. It is actually different from Poetry, although both tackle the wonders of the creative process. In You, Reader, the subject is all about the relationship of the author and reader. Sure, the author talked about the simplicity of sitting on a chair and observing the ivy wall paper and the goldfish circling on its bowl, but the significance of the “difficulty” of finding an inspiration like the one mentioned in Poetry (the heavens, flowers and fire) is dismissed by comparing poem-making as something of a game of speed (it was just a matter of time before one of us happened to notice the unlit candles and the clock humming on the wall), rather than a cosmic/divine process. This was achieved by comparing the reader and author to salt and pepper shakers (I wondered if they had become friends… of if they were strangers to one another… like you and I who manage to be known and unknown to one another). The significance of this reader-writer relationship is important, especially in Collins’ goal of promoting poetry to a larger audience. By using easy words and format, Collins can actually reach more audiences. But this is not the main point of this poem. The main point is that the reader-writer relationship is much more than using simple words and form. It is a relationship formed with the mind, much like telepathy. This was also the point that is iterated by Stephen King with his book, On Writing. In it, he says writing is “telepathy, of course”. True, a writer communicates from his private space and the reader understands the writer in his own private space. These private spaces of the respective characters can be thousands of miles apart but they can still understand each other perfectly through the use of words and creativity. This idea is echoed with the lines that say that he is on a table with “a bowl of pears” while the reader is “leaning on a doorway somewhere, near some blue hydrangeas, reading this”. The poem can mean that creativity can be the natural and useful tool for humanity to become one and united, even if they are literally miles apart. This is different in Neruda’s poem where the main subject is the creative process and how it affects the author. The poem tackles the relationship of nature and the author. This is also congruent to Neruda’s romantic style in writing. Since romanticism usually tackles nature and the power of human emotion and the subjectivity of everything. Since nothing can be right or wrong, it also follows that there is no correct way of making a poem. Hence, his way of being inspired by nature, like most romantic poets, is reasonable. Both of them appear humble, though, as both writers appear to be nonchalant about their inspirations. One appears to be extremely casual about poetry but his message is actually about being accepted by the masses. The other one was casual about not knowing what to write, and all, just being there while the mysterious power of nature continues to overcome the senses and moves him to write. The forms of both poems are similar. They are both prose poetry. This may seem contradictory but these poems are poems because they are concise, metaphorical and highly figurative. They do not necessarily follow a meter or rhyming. Both of them have highly visual images and these images are formed by highly suggestive words. These words are correctly used to paint a vivid scenario that helps the reader understand the words of the poet, even if it is in a difficult, figurative manner. These help the readers get the gist of the message successfully. The poems are rather short, however, even if it is free verse, Collins’ poem has a pattern. It is composed of ten stanzas with three lines each. This is unlike Neruda’s poem with three stanzas with thirteen, twenty four and nine stanzas respectively. However, in contrast to Collins’ poem, Neruda’s poem can be divided into parts. The first stanza being the introduction to the setting/problem, the second stanza presenting the conflict and the tension of the poem and the last stanza, the shortest of all, is the resolution. Unlike Collins’ poem, Neruda’s poem offers more dynamics. Collins’ poem, though, offers less drama but it encourages more introspection, especially on the part of the readers. This is not to say, though, that Collins’ poem does not have tension. All good poems require tension to be successful. The tension in the poem is presented near the end of the poem. Unlike Neruda’s poem which offers passionate words and images, the tension here is subtle and mild, although it is there. Both poems used metaphor as their choice in the use of figurative language. Metaphors are comparisons that do not use as or like. They are effective tools for poets, especially when conveying messages. In the poem Poetry, the persona compared himself into something hollow (someone who knows nothing) and blind. This is also similar to being compared into something that is waiting to be filled, like a bottle. Then, something indeed filled him when he saw the heavens. This is evident in the second stanza of the poem. In it, we can read that his senses are slowly getting stimulation from his surroundings. These factors inspired the persona to make poetry, when he felt he was one with the environment and nature. This event prompted him to create a poem and made him productive. The metaphor, being something hollow and barren that can be productive given the right setting and factors that can inspire a person. The factors can be anything from bad experiences, mundane events to larger than life objects. It does not matter as long as the person can elicit a passionate response that can produce a creative output. In this romantic poem, that factor is nature. This moved the persona so much that he resolved to write a poem, even if he was uninspired (as read in the first stanza). His conflict of being barren and uninspired was ultimately solved with him being one with nature, comparing himself with nature (as evidenced by “and I, infinitesimal being). For this poem, the creative process/creativity is fueled by man’s openness to his environment. His ability to be open and letting nature take its course in one’s experiences is the key to making a successful poem. In the poem, You, Reader, the metaphor is clearly defined. In the seventh stanza of the poem, the persona was wondering about the salt and pepper shakers that were standing in the kitchen. In the next stanza, he wondered if these “seatmates”/”neighbors” were still strangers to one another. In the next stanza, he compared the shakers to the author/persona and the reader, both known and unknown at the same time. This analogy is quite perfect. Salt and pepper is one of the most common complementary objects there is. It symbolizes the complementary relationship of author and reader. Like salt and pepper, they work together to make a successful literary object. Both are not necessarily together at the same time, nor recognizable (or combined) but they make things better when used together, or in the persons’ case, when they are communicating their ideas together. The comparison between shakers and persons is perfect, and even though it is a strange comparison, it works. This strange comparison of the relationship is the soul of the poem, and because of this soul, it brings forth the creation of a poem. For Collins, the creative process involves the reader, not just the author (and the environment). Successful poems are more than just a group of rhyming words and adjectives. It is more than meters, syllables and verses. It is an art form that emphasizes the use of words; this usage is meant to express the passionate feelings of a person through the use of imagery in its words. Apart from imagery, it can use other senses too, as long as there is emotion within the words of the poem. Poetry without emotion, a group of words, is just prose. It has its own life, it can live on its own, it knows when to swell, conflict and end. With these factors, it can be told that Poetry by Neruda and You, Reader by Collins are successful poems. What’s more, they are quite successful in chronicling the creative process by means of having poems. References: Baym, N. (n.d). Norton Anthology of American Literature. Available from: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/naal7/contents/E/authors/collins.asp Collins Values Approachable Poetry, Not Pretension. (2011). NPR Books. Retrieved from: http://www.npr.org/2011/04/06/135181560/collins-values-accessible-poetry-not-pretension Marsh, K. CITY PEOPLE: The Selling of Billy Collins. (2001). The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/18/nyregion/citypeople-the-selling-of-billy-collins.html Neruda, P. (2003). The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. Ilan Stavans (Ed.) Vancouver, Canada: Douglas and McIntyre. Shea, R. (2005). Sound and Silence: An Interview with Billy Collins. College Board Teaching Series: Special Focus on English Literature and Composition. Retrieved from http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/Eng_Lit_SF_Reading_Poetry07.pdf Weber, B. On Literary Bridge, Poets Hits a Roadblock. (1999). The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/19/us/on-literary-bridge-poet-hits-a-roadblock.html Read More