Strategy Response 1, Week 5

Strategy: Making the Sensational Mundane
Poem: Emily Dickinson's poem number 712

This week’s strategy involved “Making the sensational mundane.” This is a technique in poetry that involves the use of several other poetic tools: detachment, research, and semiotic analysis. When working to write a poem about something sensational in a mundane light, one my first detach themselves from the common, stereotypical of the topic (or everything that they “get with the topic for free”) One way to do this is to write down ideas associated with the topic, and then completely turn them over on their opposites sides. This way, the poet has a nice list with which to juxtapose the main idea. They can then find was to associate those sides with the commonality of everyday life by connecting them to things that normal people do all the time. Next, poets should conduct thorough research on the topic in order to broaden their material for their piece.

Research can involve looking for anything not normally thought of when the main idea comes to mind. Notions that are overlooked or how the topic is portrayed in other cultures are excellent areas in which to conduct one’s research. The researcher should look for a sense of commonality (or frequently occurring idea) in their data through which they could thread several signs about the topic. The book mentions how the poem, “Bigfoot stole my Wife,” presents a topic that can be looked at in ecological, religious, and multicultural scenarios: Big Foot (177-185). It then proceeds to give examples of semiotic analyses concerning Big Foot in these areas. The analyses are also complete with vividly rich language that could be recycled in poetry.

The poem that I analyzed in reference to using all of these tools to ‘make the sensational mundane’ was Emily Dickenson’s, poem number 712. In this poem, Dickinson paints death as a kind gentleman who is rather composed and takes her on a carriage ride throughout the city. Notably, the ideas of him using a scythe and appearing as a wispy dark shadow or a gravely horrendous skeleton are absent from the piece. Instead, Dickinson states, “Because I could not stop for Death - / He kindly stopped for me - / The Carriage held but just Ourselves - / And Immortality. / We slowly drove – He knew no haste / And I had put away / My labor and my leisure too, / For His Civility” (1-8). Words used to describe Death’s countenance here include: “kindly,” “he knew no haste,” and “civility.” Death is a rather composed and respectable gentleman who treats the speaker with kindness as they travel through the town. Still, Dickinson had to know what stereotyped aspects of Death she wished to avoid. In order to successfully portray Death in this light, she had to draw on her research and knowledge, and then detach herself from the common symbolism of Death so she could portray him as a polite and respectable caller in her work.

I believe this piece serves as an excellent example of a common and successful tool in poetry: flipping a topic around completely to explore its unusual side. To look at the sun in a dark light, or to look at the ocean through the perspective of the sky, or to even see a happy birthday as the time of one’s death, these are things that go unnoticed by the average person. Stereotypes in society set the boundaries that many people tend to work in, but to push outside of the box and turn the reality upside down, to tear apart foundation their vision: that is the dangerous beauty of poetry. Making the sensational mundane is a strategy that I love and one that I am trying to utilize frequently as I work to produce my poems for this semester. Dickinson’s work will serve as the lighthouse that will continue to guide me as I work more to successfully execute this strategy during the course of this class.