Posted by : Diyon Prayudi Kamis, 09 Juni 2016


Comparing of James Fenton’s Poetry
And
Mathew Arnold’s Poetry
PAPER
Created by
Diyon Prayudi
NIM 1125030076
INTRODUCTION                                                                             
       James Martin Fenton (born 25 April 1949, Lincoln) is an English poet, journalist and literary critic. He is a former Oxford Professor of Poetry. Fenton grew up in Lincolnshire and Staffordshire, the son of Canon John Fenton, a noted biblical scholar. He was educated at the Durham Choristers School, Repton and Magdalen College, Oxford. He graduated with a B.A. in 1970.  
       Fenton’s journalism has been collected in such volumes as You Were Marvellous: Theatre Reviews from the Sunday Times (1983) and All the Wrong Places: Adrift in the Politics of the Pacific Rim (1993). He is also the author of Leonardo’s Nephew: Essays on Art and Artist (1998), a book on gardening, A Garden from a Hundred Packs of Seed (2002), and a history of the Royal Academy of Arts, School of Genius (2006). In 1994 he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, joining the company of Matthew Arnold, W.H. Auden and Robert Graves.
       Fenton acquired at school an enthusiasm for the work of W.H. Auden. At Oxford John Fuller, who happened to be writing A Reader's Guide to W.H. Auden at the time, further encouraged that enthusiasm. Auden became possibly the greatest single influence on Fenton's own work. 
       His first collection, Terminal Moraine (1972) won a Gregory Award. With the proceeds he traveled to East Asia, where he wrote of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and the end of the Lon Nol regime in Cambodia which presaged the rise of Pol Pot. The Memory of War (1982) ensured his reputation as one of the greatest war poets of his time. 
       Fenton returned to London in 1976. He was political correspondent of the New Statesman, where he worked alongside Christopher Hitchens, Julian Barnes and Martin Amis. He became the Assistant Literary Editor in 1971, and Editorial Assistant in 1972. Earlier in his journalistic career, like Hitchens, he had written for Socialist Worker, the weekly paper of the British trotskyist group then known as the International Socialists. In 1983 Fenton accompanied his friend Redmond O'Hanlon to Borneo. A description of the voyage can be found in the book Into the Heart of Borneo. 
       Fenton won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1984 for Children in Exile: Poems 1968-1984. He was appointed Oxford Professor of Poetry in 1994, a post he held till 1999. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2007. 
       He has said, "The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation." In response to criticisms of his comparatively slim 'Selected Poems' (2006), Fenton warned against the notion of poets churning out poetry in a regular, automated fashion. 
Fenton has been a frequent contributor to The Guardian, The Independent and The New York Review of Books. He also writes the head column in the editorials of each Friday's "Evening Standard." In 2007 he appeared in a list of the "100 most influential gay and lesbian people in Britain" published by The Independent on Sunday. His partner is Darryl Pinckney, the prize-winning novelist, playwright and essayist perhaps best known for the novel High Cotton (1992).
Poetry of James Fenton
In Paris with You


Don't talk to me of love. I've had an earful
And I get tearful when I've downed a drink or two.
I'm one of your talking wounded.
I'm a hostage. I'm maroonded.
But I'm in Paris with you.

Yes I'm angry at the way I've been bamboozled
And resentful at the mess I've been through.
I admit I'm on the rebound
And I don't care where are we bound.
I'm in Paris with you.

Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre
If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame,
If we skip the Champs Elysées
And remain here in this sleazy

Old hotel room
Doing this and that
To what and whom
Learning who you are,
Learning what I am.

Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris,
The little bit of Paris in our view.
There's that crack across the ceiling
And the hotel walls are peeling
And I'm in Paris with you.

Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris.
I'm in Paris with the slightest thing you do.
I'm in Paris with your eyes, your mouth,
I'm in Paris with... all points south.
Am I embarrassing you?
I'm in Paris with you.

Analysis of Poetry (In Paris with You)
1.      Title  (A couple went to paris on a vacation or trip and fall in love) and (I think it means that he will go anywhere with this other person because he loves them so much and he is just using paris to symbolize that- this statement according to Mike Dezervose).
2.      Paraphrase  (its about a man who at first seems to be forced to go to paris with someone else then starts to begin to enjoy it but reiterates that he doesnt want to talk about love).
3.      Figurative Devices (He uses the phrase "in paris with you" over and over. so it makes it seem like even though he would rather be somewhere else he is with his loved one).
4.      Attitude (He sounds  a little frustrated being in paris but at the same time very devoted to the person he loves).
5.      Shifts (At first he seems very angry at being in paris but towards the end he likes being there).
6.      Theme (I think he is saying that he loves this person very much and will follow them anywhere they want to go).
       According to AQA- Anthology zone 2012 in his poetry, Fenton often uses traditional forms (such as the sonnet or lyric) to explore contemporary events. He is interested in interrogating the relationships between different cultures, and in word play – often using unfamiliar words, or everyday words in unusual ways. As he once commented in an interview, he finds ‘in non-poetic language, what can be the poetic language of the future. His language can be comical and almost nonsensical at times, but it is also violent, piercing and nightmarish when he is writing about war, for example. Critics have noted the technical skill of Fenton’s poetry, and its musical, rhythmic and sometimes balladic qualities.
       His more personal poems of love and regret such as ‘In Paris with You’ hover between irony and romance. The usual clichés of love poetry are unsentimentally wiped away, as Fenton focuses on the particulars of a scruffy Parisian hotel room. By choosing to focus on simple and authentic details – the lover, the room, and his confused, emotional feelings, Fenton’s light-hearted yet sensual poem has a contemporary resonance.
       According to Dr Janet Lewison, May 2012, this is one of the most important questions you can ask of any text. When you read this poem, you notice an ‘I’ is speaking. They are a first person narrator telling their own ‘story.’ This does not necessarily mean that they are speaking the truth of course. Sometimes first person narrators are very UNRELIABLE and FALLIBLE.As we all are!
       First person narrators may also divulge enough information about themselves to make them appear loathsome or certainly unkind. (Think of Pip in Great Expectations for example) This may suggest that first person narration is actually like a form of self-persecution. A confession!-
       Here, in this poem,  the speaker seems cynical, possibly drunk and probably full of self pity. The internal rhyme of ‘earful’ with ‘tearful’ seems a bit colloquially crass and forced as if the speaker is drunk or feeling very sorry for themselves.( maudlin)
       The rhymes ‘wounded‘ and marroonded‘ heighten the sense of the speaker being full of self pity. They are hurt and even make up a word to emphasise their suffering, significantly ending in ‘ded‘. Has love killed them emotionally? Are they joking too or is there a self indulgent pleasure here in being miserable? Some people love recounting stories of their bad luck, unfortunate relationships and general misery. Is this narrator one of these types?
       But I am in Paris with you. The anticlimax is deliberately flat in tone. The romance of Paris and the intimacy of the second person pronoun ‘you’ is bathetic due to the qualification of the preposition ‘But’. This is a compromise and compromising relationship. There  is no romantic idealism or excitement here. If the speaker is in Paris then they have been before and this visit is full of revisions and reminders of the previous visit where a more romantic time was perhaps enjoyed.
       In other words, the speaker is comparing where he is now, with where he was before when he was full of trust and love! He no longer wishes to partake of Paris-or will he change his mind? And if he does change what will make him change? Is the speaker therefore  using ‘Paris’ as a metaphor for love or lost love too ? We have to wait and see how this voice untangles his tale..and of course there is no guarantee the speaker is male..we never know the identities or genders of either the I or the you. This makes the poem open to all sorts of possible sexual intimacies.
       The poem seems to explore a ‘now’ situation with a ‘before’ time when another relationship was central to the speaker’s existence. This conflict or tension between two experiences is ironically both humorous and sad; both polarities delivered in a perhaps pseudo-cynical, worldly tone. As as reader we alternate in our feeling towards the speaker and we feel sympathetic to the ‘you’ stuck in Paris with a lover very much hooked on looking backwards towards another love.
       However the casual, careless voice who dismisses all the sights of Paris and draws attention to their apparently ‘sleazy’ hotel room, gradually becomes physically involved with the mysterious ‘you’ and things become more interesting. it is almost as if the early ‘you’ is really not the ‘you’ in the room but the ‘you’ in his past, still very much present in his/her mind.The apparently tatty surrounds could be a sign of their economic spending or could be teh way he sees their room as ‘sleazy’ as they know they are not in love with this companion and feel it to be sleazy.
       The arbitrariness of ‘Doing this and that’ plays down the sexual contact. There is no expectation of sexual ecstasy or gymnastics here. Yet it is precisely this lack of expectation that ironically gives the promise of change. They may not talk of ‘love’ which is a painful reminder of what happened before, but now, they may refer to what they do as ‘Paris’ a euphemism if ever there was one!
       The poem’s last stanza shows a change of focus and tone. The world weary dismissal of ‘love’ and ‘Paris’ has become transformed into a celebration of sexual contact. The ‘you’ is now a source of excitement: I’m in Paris with the slightest thing you do the humour is apparent! This version of ‘Paris’ has liberated the speaker from hurt and recrimination.
       The ‘talk’ in bed has healed the cynicism, he/she is eager to make love and to enjoy ‘Paris’ with the partner’s ‘mouth’ and other parts no doubt! The euphemistic ‘south’ with suggestions of sexual arousal and different sexual positioning shows again the shift in the tone and meaning of ‘Paris’ by the end of the poem, so when we arrive at the last line, it really means that ‘I am in Paris with you’ instead of the earlier implication of either bitter regret or that he is mentally actually in Paris with the ‘you‘ he was previously involved with.
       According to my opinion, this poetry talks about love in Paris. Paris is love place for everyone. Paris is an icon for love. In this century, Paris is place famous. I think this is talk about broken of the writer because in the last of poetry James Fenton said, “Am I embarrassing you? I’m in Paris with you”.
Dead Soldiers


When His Excellency Prince Norodom Chantaraingsey
Invited me to lunch on the battlefield
I was glad of my white suit for the first time that day.
They lived will, the mad Norodoms, they had style.
The brandy and the soda arrived in crates.
Bricks of ice, tied around with raffia,
Dripped from the orderlies’ handlebars.
And I remember the dazzling tablecloth
As the APCs fanned out along the road,
The dishes piled high with frogs’ legs,
Pregnant turtles, their eggs boiled in the carapace,
Marsh irises in fish sauce
And inflorescence of a banana salad.
On every bottle, Napoleon Bonaparte
Pleaded for the authenticity of the spirit.
They called the empties Dead Soldiers
And rejoiced to see them pile up at our feet.
Each diner was attended by one of the other ranks
Whirling a table-napkin to keep off the flies.
It was like eating between rows of morris dancers –
Only they didn’t kick.
On my left sat the prince;
On my right, his drunken aide.
The frogs’ thighs leapt into the sad purple face
Like fish to the sound of a Chinese flute.
I wanted to talk to the prince. I wish now
I had collared his aide, who was Saloth Sar’s brother.
We treated him as the club bore. He was always
Boasting of his connections, boasting with a head-shake
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase.
And well might he boast. Saloth Sar, for instance,
Was Pol Pot’s real name. The APCs
Fired into the sugar palms but met no resistance.
In a diary, I refer to Pol Pot’s brother as the Jockey Cap.
A few weeks later, I find him “in good form
And very skeptical about Chantaraingsey.”
“But one eats well there,” I remark.
“So one should,” says the Jockey Cap;
“The tiger always eats well,
It eats the raw flesh of the deer,
And Chantaraingsey was born in the year of the tiger.
So, did they show you the things they do
With the young refugee girls?”
And he tells me how he will one day give me the gen.”
He will tell me how the prince financed the casino
And how the casino brought Lon Nol to power.
He will tell me this.
He will tell me all these things.
All I must do is drink and listen.
In those days, I thought that when the game was up
The prince would be far, far away –
In a limestone faubourg, on the promenade at Nice,
Reduced in circumstances but well enough provided for,
In Paris, he would hardly require his private army.
The Jockey Cap might suffice for café warfare,
And matchboxes for APCs.
But we were always wrong in these predictions.
It was a family war. Whatever happened,
The principals were obliged to attend its issue.
A few were cajoled into leaving, a few were expelled,
And there were villains enough, but none of them
Slipped away with the swag.
For the prince was fighting Sihanouk, his nephew,
And the Jockey Cap was ranged against his brother
Of whom I remember nothing more
Than an obscure reputation for virtue.
I have been told that the prince is still fighting
Somewhere in the Cardamoms or the Elephant Mountains.
But I doubt that the Jockey Cap would have survived his good
      connections.
I think the lunches would have done for him –
Either the lunches or the dead soldiers.


Analysis of Poetry (Died Soldiers)
       The poem Dead Soldiers by James Fenton is an example of journalistic poetry. This poetry comes in the form of reporting. Many ideas are implied through metaphors and symbols maintaining the clarity and trustworthiness of whatever are being reported. This poem renders one particular event; a party in Cambodian Civil War. The party is organized by Prince Norodom Chantaraingsey in the battlefield and the poet is invited to attend the party.
       The poem begins with a reference to the invitation that Norodom sent to the poet. In the description of the party and the kinds of recipe (dishes) that are being served, poet satirizes the war and demonstrates his critical position regarding the war. He is referring to the Norodom as mad. The organization of party in the battle field shows that the war managers are fighting not for the people. They are in the war to please themselves. The way war is romanticized from the view point of “His Excellency” and the mood of relaxation found in Norodom further reveals the futility of war. It is the war in which the common people victimized by brutality.
       “Frogs legs” “pregnant turtles” and “boiled eggs” are the dishes served in the party reveal the situation of common people. Frog legs can be related to the innocent people and the soldiers fighting for Norodom’s cruelty of war. The image of “pregnant turtles” becomes more vivid and evident to show the Norodom’s cruelty just for the pleasure. It refers to those refugee girls who are raped, made pregnant and mercilessly killed. Similarly boiled eggs refer to the desertification of the land (of the womb of mother) because of bombarding.
       The desire for luxury in the battle field that the poet finds in Narodom is suggested by “Napoleon Bonaparte” whisky. It has multiple connotations in the poem. This makes the war a kind of alcoholic madness in the Norodom. They are spirited with the spirit of war”. Here that poet shows devaluation and dehumanization of those soldiers who are dead in the war. Norodom and his party drink bottles after bottles, and throw the empty bottles which they call dead soldiers. It means that the soldiers are as valueless as the empty bottles after death. And moreover Norodom rejoices looking at the piling of empty bottles this suggests the piled dead soldiers become object of pleasure for him. The soldiers have become deer for Norodom who is born to be hunted by tiger like Norodom.
       In my opinion, this poetry talks about war. Cambodian Civil War is one of experience of James Fenton who becomes journalist in his career. Talks about soldiers when a war. I think this poetry is the real of imagination of the writer when his job as a journalist when Cambodian Civil War.
Wind


This is the wind, the wind in a field of corn.
Great crowds are fleeing from a major disaster
Down the green valleys, the long swaying wadis, 
Down through the beautiful catastrophe of wind.
Families, tribes, nations, and their livestock
Have heard something, seen something. An expectation
Or a gigantic misunderstanding has swept over the hilltop
Bending the ear of the hedgerow with stories of fire and sword.
I saw a thousand years pass in two seconds.
Land was lost, languages rose and divided.
This lord went east and found safety.
His brother sought Africa and a dish of aloes.
Centuries, minutes later, one might ask
How the hilt of a sword wandered so far from the smithy.
And somewhere they will sing: 'Like chaff we were borne
In the wind. ' This is the wind in a field of corn.

Analysis of Poetry (Wind)


1.      Title (I think it will be about how the wind is able to change things for good and bad – this statement’s Mike Deverseon) and (its talking about how the wind has changed things and mixed everything up.
2.      Paraphrase (its about a corn field where people are fleeing from some natural disaster and the mayhem that ensues).  
3.      Figurative Devices (Uses imagery, "Down the green valleys" to describe the rows of corn. Time is contradicted when he says " I saw a thousand years pass in two seconds" and "Centuries, minutes later one might ask".  Those quotes tell you that a long time has past in the wind).
4.      Attitude (there is no real tone, the speaker seems to be witnessing the events occuring and simply telling what they see).
5.      Shifts (at the beginning you are told of whats happening when the wind is blowing then in the end you kind of find out the results of it and how the wind has changed things like  "How the hilt of a sword wandered so far from the smithy"). 
6.      Theme (The message is that the wind has the power to change things and it is the reason that everything is the way it is).


       "Wind", the opening poem in James Fenton's Yellow Tulips: Poems 1968-2011, was written over 30 years ago, but could be about any natural disaster or environmental crisis, and most of today's wars, revolutions and conflicts. Fenton made his name writing poems about things so difficult that they ran the risk of seeming too easy. They ran that risk not because they wanted to show off, but because risk was part of the gain, part of what the poem had to acknowledge about itself and its place in relation to its subjects. Poems like "Wind" have a perpetual and tragic topicality to which Fenton's work has stayed true. Besides, if your subjects are Love and War, you're never going to run short of material. According to my opinion, this poetry talks about nature. In this poetry James Fenton try to explained which he see when his experience to be a simple words by this poem. In this poetry James Fenton talks about his family, ethnic, culture and country. I think that has relationship with his career. While he works as a journalist, he can see whatever happens.

 

To Marguerite: Continued .By Matthew Arnold

Yes! In the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone. The islands feel the unclasping flow, And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon their hollows lights, And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights, The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore, Across the sounds and channels pour—

Oh! Then a longing like despair Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain— Oh might our marges meet again!

Who order'd, that their longing's fire Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd?
Who renders vain their deep desire?— A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.

Analysis of To Marguerite: Continued
       A metaphor is set up in the first stanza comparing humans to islands surrounded by life and the world around them, the sea. In one of his most famous lines "we mortal millions live alone" (where alone was originally italicized by the author) he bluntly states perhaps his largest complaint about dealing with community in the modern Victorian world. He wishes for a realistic connection as he speaks to someone that background implies he feels romantically for, but the tone of the poem, as well as the dark descriptions of a life lacking control; give the unresolved sentiment that this may never be possible.
       The metaphor looks to science in referencing an imagined land mass that once comprised all of the earth on the planet. By including science, Arnold expertly leads into his bitter complaint that the God of his modern world does not provide the same kind of faith and hope that he once did when facts and teleological reasoning weren't so important. While he attempts to reconcile the gap between human desires for community and love with a world that has left the individual very much to his own devices, the poem finds no resolution, but instead, looks to capture the feeling of sadness, lack of control, and isolation that accompanies this lack of conclusion.

       Alternatively, it could be inferred that Arnold is explaining the one thing left to depend on when orphaned by death in response to John Donne's "no man is an island." When a person is orphaned completely by surrounding deaths, there is, bitter as it may be, a God involved in this orchestration. The conclusion to be drawn is left up to the reader. It is a metaphor filled with the philosophical Problem of Evil. If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, how could He? Nevertheless, Arnold concludes He is there.

CONCLUSION
       James Martin Fenton (born 25 April 1949, Lincoln) is an English poet, journalist and literary critic. He is a former Oxford Professor of Poetry. He was educated at the Durham Choristers School, Repton and Magdalen College, Oxford. He graduated with a B.A. in 1970.  In 1994 he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, joining the company of Matthew Arnold, W.H. Auden and Robert Graves.
       Matthew Arnold was born in Laleham, a village in the valley of the Thames. That his childhood was spent in the vicinity of a river seems appropriate, for clear-flowing streams were later to appear in his poems as symbol of serenity. Arnold's characteristic verse structures tend to depart from the traditional. Stanzas or verse paragraphs of varying length and of varying line length make him a forerunner of free verse practice
       James Fenton in his poetry always talk about his experience like on “In Paris with you” that talks about love and broken up, “Wind” that talks about disaster and change, “Died Soldier” that talks about Cambodian Civil War. James Fenton is a journalist and literary critic. However, I think not strange if he wrote, his poetry all about experience his life.
       Mathew Arnold in his poetry always talks about spiritual and intellectual. He is an education and near with church and his religion. According to the idealist hypothesis, compatible with religious belief, man can achieve self-transcendence and a return to the divine by virtue of the divine element in himself, but only if a "lonely pureness" enables him to remount "the coloured dream of life."
       Finally, both of them are the best writers of poetry that has relationship one and other. James Fenton was elected and joining with company of Mathew Arnold. Matthew Arnold's intellectual on his poetry and James Fenton following him on his poetry. Although, they are in the same characters, however both of them have the different one and other on their poetry.
BIBLIOGRAPHY



Leave a Reply

Subscribe to Posts | Subscribe to Comments

Popular Post

Blogger templates

Pages

Diberdayakan oleh Blogger.

- Copyright © Diyon Prayudi -Metrominimalist- Powered by Blogger - Designed by Johanes Djogan -