The Poetry of World War I
In examining World War I poetry, a poem that caught my eye was Guillaume Apollinaire's poem "The Little Car" because of the picture section in the middle. At first the picture was vague to me, but after a little research I learned that the technique is called a calligramme. This calligramme is in the shape of an automibile.
Furthermore, the poem interested me because the perspective of the speaker, a soldier and Apollinaire, is almost optimistic. In reading other World War I poetry, the grotesque images of battle, death, and starvation, overwhelm the reader with a distaste for war. "The Little Car" however describes a soldier being liberated or reborn from his involvement in such an important movement. Apollinaire was from Poland but actually moved to France to enlist. He died two days before the cease fire was recognized on November 11, 1918.
For such a short little entry this gives me a lot to think about. For one thing, I like that you go ahead and do research that you don't really have to do - looking up what a calligramme is. It's also a very interesting poem to choose to look at because of the way it stands out from the other WWI poems. This little analysis makes me want to find the poem again and reread it a few times.
ReplyDeleteI remember coming across this poem and stopping for awhile to appreciate the car calligramme! It's a really cool technique, and now that we've had some class discussions about the role of form and layout in modern poetry, I can't help but wonder what someone like Lyn Hejinian or G.C. Waldrep would say about it. For some strange reason, I have a feeling they wouldn't be too crazy about the idea of a poem physically resembling the object it's talking about...
ReplyDeleteApollinaire was writing in the 19-teens, when the automobile was in many places still fresh off the assembly line if it existed at all. What would our 2011 innovation calligramme be? the Internet? Cable TV?
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