#listening to dust and ashes only heightened my ability to write this

[grandilcquently-a-blog]

❛❛ I just want to see you smile again. ❜❜ you KNOW this shits @ iveanis

ouch / soft caring sentences

         a dainty, cold hand, still shaking from tears snaked its way underneath vic’s; turning slowly to take a hold of one. it was grounding, to feel another, when there was nothing to be felt within oneself. iveanis’ chest was tight, yet hollow, as his brows furrowed to the sound of his lover’s words. there was a breath sucked between his teeth, sharp, that caught in his throat before it could form words to respond in kind.

                                                     smile? how could he?

        the voice of the high keeper boomed over the echo of vic; HARELLAN. harellan, fen'harel; the phantom pain of the anchor burned where it had been before &. he winced. there was a distinct instinct in the pit of his hollow chest that told him vic was wrong, that the last thing iveanis deserved was to SMILE. it was a simple gesture, &. one that came to him so often before. why couldn’t he? was it his own volition holding him back from a step toward happiness? or was it the sheer will of his own mistakes, keeping him from doing so?

        after a long moment, he finally speaks, the inflection pouring from his lips before he can think to structure them better. the walls built in the instant he had been turned away at the gates of revhenas cracked, &. only a trickle of what lied behind them came through.  “ i don’t know if i can. ”  iveanis murmurs, hand clutching onto vic’s tighter, eyes glued to the wood of his desk in SHAME.

        his burden was so great; how could he dare to share it with another? the hollowness became heavy, &. another bout of tears began to fall in rivulets down his cheeks.

[annabelaplit]

Poem Explication: To Inez Milholland

 So you casually mentioned in class that we could pick poems not in our AP Lit book for our explications. I may have mentioned this earlier but I really really really love Edna St. Vincent Millay and have a giant book of her poetry. So all of the poems that you ask me to explicate might end up being hers. So sorry, but also not sorry because Edna St. Vincent Millay is amazing. Anyway, since we are studying sonnets right now I figured today I would explicate my favorite sonnet by her “To Inez Milholland”. Seriously I almost ended up using the last two lines for my senior quote. 

To Inez Milholland (Edna St. Vincent Millay)

Upon this marble bust that is not I Lay the round, formal wreath that is not fame; But in the forum of my silenced cry Root ye the living tree whose sap is flame. I, that was proud and valiant, am no more; --- Save as a dream that wanders wide and late, Save as a wind that rattles the stout door, Troubling the ashes in the sheltered grate. The stone will perish; I shall be twice dust. Only my standard on a taken hill Can cheat the mildew and the red-brown rust And make immortal my adventurous will. Even now the silk is tugging at the staff: Take up the song; forget the epitaph.

Some historical  background; Inez Milholland was a major figure in the women’s suffrage movement and she died in 1916. Millay read this poem at an unveiling of statues for Susan B Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1923. She later ended marrying Milholland’s late husband, who she met a few months before writing the poem. It was originally titled “The Pioneer” and the title was changed “To Inez Milholland” in 1928. 

Anyway let’s start this poem explication by looking at its purpose and theme. This poem deals with the general topic of legacy and passion for a cause and the more specific topic of the women’s rights movement in the `920′s. What Millay saying here is the best way to honor the legacy of someone is to fight for what they believed in. More specifically she is saying that the best way to honor figures like Inez Milholland or Susan B. Anthony is to continue to advance the rights for which they fought for.

Up next let’s examine the structural components of the poem. This is a Shakespearean Sonnet written in iambic pentameter. The poem itself is 14 lines divided into three quatrains and an ending couplet. The rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg. The lines each have four feet, each of which consist of an unstressed and then a stressed syllable. Some exceptions to this are Lines 5, 12, and 14 which each have an extra unstressed syllable at the end. They are thus an example of hypermeter, a type of poetic license. 

Millay’s choice of sonnet is interesting in the context of her message. A sonnet is a very traditional type of poem and it makes sense that Millay would use it to honor the great suffrage and women’s leaders of the past. Sonnets are also often used to lay forth problems and questions and Millay uses this one to explore the questions of how to honor a legacy and how to move the women’s rights movement forward. Her poem also makes use of the traditional sonnet structure using the final couplet to express an answer about what women need to do. They need to stop memorializing the figures of the past and go fight for their causes. 

The next thing of note is the devices that Millay employs in the course of her poem. What stands out most is the comparisons that she uses. A metaphor is utilized in the line, “Root ye the living tree whose sap is flame” and there are two similes; the lines “Save as a dream that wanders wide and late” and “Save as a wind that rattles the stout door”. The metaphor compares the current women’s movement to a tree with flaming sap. This means that the women’s movement is active and has the power to affect great change. The similes compare the ghost of Milholland to a wandering dream and a rattling wind. This suggests that Milholland is still alive through her dream of women’s equality and power to affect this change in society. 

I would actually that the poem itself is a conceit, comparing a statue to the women right’s movement. Although this logic may be a bit tenuous because the statue is of figures in the women’s right movement and an essential point of the poem is that the statue is dead. That said, I think there is a convincing case for how the two objects are compared and their essential differences.

Repetition is something else of note. Millay repeats phrases such as “that is not” and “save as a” in subsequent lines. This heightens the effect and impact of what is being instead and fits it into a specific structure so readers can focus more on who is not what and what is being saved 

The imagery used in the poem is also striking and related to its theme. Statue imagery is very common in the sonnet, apparent in phrases such as, “Upon this marble bust”, “I shall be twice dust”, and “cheat the mildew and the red-brown rust”. The connections to the statue throughout the poem both ground the work to its outside context, a celebrating of a statue unveiling, and the protagonist used to tell the story, which is in fact a statue. Additionally the imagery is made vibrant through Millay's diction. Describing the exact color of the rust and the deep significance of the words “twice dust” make the images richer and absorbed more deeply by the audience 

The perspective from which the story is told is something else I would like to call attention to. Instead of being narrated by someone objective or even by Millay herself the poem seems to be told by the ghost (or living statue?) of Milholland or another women’s rights figure. Having the message come from someone so seemingly close to the cause makes the message more powerful. Having one of the great leaders exhort the youth is more inspiring than someone still alive and not quite as well-known doing the same.

I would also like talk about the tone of of the poem. I believe that it is one of inspiration and excited passion, which a bit of lecturing thrown in there as well. Millay is explaining to the next batch of women’s activists what they need to do. Telling them that they can’t just revere past figures but fight on in their image. To this end she reminds listeners that the statue is not the actual Milholland and that it is ephemeral. Her analogical talk about the ability to change is designed to inspire fervor and the final two lines are a command designed to create action. 

 A final note is the historical significance of this poem. In the early 1920′s women had just won the right to vote and were figuring out what do to next. Here Edna St. Vincent Millay was trying to make sure that they would not rest on their laurels and would continue to fight for an equal place in society. The focus on Inez Milholland could maybe be a way to honor the wife of the man she wanted to marry, and to show that she appreciated the woman’s great contributions to women’s rights. It is also possible she looked up to Milholland even absent of her connection to her husband. They both attended Vassar and were both huge advocates for women’s rights. 

So what do I think about this poem? As I mentioned before, I absolutely love it. This is one of my all time favorite poems my Millay and I think it remains inspiring and topical to this very day. The women’s rights movements continues to face challenges and obstacles and it is just as important to keep making forward progress as it is to pay reverence to the past. I think Millay is right in saying the best way to honor people like Milholland, Anthony, Mott, and Stanton is to “ Take up the song; forget the epitaph”. 

That’s all for today! I’ll be back on Tuesday with another explication. 

[fmdtaeyongarchive]

↬ let’s raise the temperature until it’s burning.

date: late 2018/early 2019.

location: n/a.

word count: 1321 words (excluding that one line of lyrics).

notes: creative claims verification. this sucks, don’t bother reading it.

sexy. that’s what they want from him. it isn’t that ash has a problem with making something sexy. there are plenty of files within his collection of work in progress songs that could be easily classified as that. it isn’t a theme he’s uncomfortable with touching on in the creation process. in fact, he’s positive there are plenty of never-to-be-finished pieces that bc would never approve for release in the first place because they aren’t coated with the necessary subtly dusted-over sensuality that came with being an idol. said dusted subtlety came even more as a necessity when his name would be credited on the lyrics in addition to the instrumental. after all, it can’t be too apparent that he’s writing from experience. the whole country seems to have been happy to assume he has experience at this point based on pictures that hadn’t even meant anything, but he still has to avoid too directly confirming the assumptions. it’d be throwing bloody meat out to the sharks, and ash is tired of watching his work being ripped apart for the sake of entertainment.

sexy isn’t the first word ash would use to describe himself, but it’s not the last either. he’s not idris elba or brad pitt (not that either man had ever been his type, but they were the pictures of sexiness in the western society in which he’d been raised, weren’t they?), but he’s an idol, and before that, he’s a dancer. he wouldn’t be where he was today if he didn’t know how to seduce, literally or metaphorically, with his body and his expressions and, by way of music, his voice.

the challenge comes more with the instructions accompanying the song assignment. that’s what leaves him in the studio staring at his composition program for far longer than ideal. the instrumental that he’s worked on constructing so far is fine, but it feels derivative after all of the times he’s listened to it back. they don’t want anything groundbreaking anyway, but it seems like too much of the same thing. it’s expected. low to mid-tempo throughout, layered instruments rolling throughout the track in waves (silently, he prays he won’t be told to do body rolls in the choreography if he ever performs the song live because if he is, he’s only brought it onto himself).

he wants it to be special, but it doesn’t come as naturally as most of the tracks off of his latest album had, regardless of how many times he switches up the rhythm or pitches the melodic line higher with some falsetto in mind.

days later, he realizes it’s because it’s directionless. he’d made the rookie mistake of trying to capture a mood in his music instead of a story, something he thought he’d moved past long ago in his composing and even earlier than that in his playing of music. if even the composition is depersonalized, he has no hope for the final lyrics (ones that will be more meaningful than the empty words layering the track now so he can focus on the compositional side of the song). the detachment is obvious now that he thinks about it, and, in a way, it makes all the sense in the world. it’s become second nature for him to reveal himself personally in his songs about insecurity or heartbreak, whether musically or lyrically, because they’re the image he’s chosen for himself instead of the one bc entertainment has chosen for him. it’s self-victimization he’s draped over himself like a protective blanket a voice in the back of his head tells him, and sexuality that’s already been thrust on him by the company and the public doesn’t fit that ideal so his mind has put a block on it.

he is hesitant, scared even, he realizes, to let himself dip into anything further than the sugar-sweet idea of intimacy he’d tackled with “touch my body”. that’d been comfortable, but even “daydream” had been glazed over with its dreamy instrumental and “dive” circumventing discomfort by pulling at tones of angst. they’d been solo pieces, safe in the box containing only him, but the knowledge bc wanted this to be a collaboration with some female artist they were still deciding on felt like taking it a step too far, his mind mentally blocking his ability to create for fear of the comments that would inevitably come if he leaned too far into sexy.

it hits him that, if he really thinks about it, most of the pieces he’s comfortably composed with more intimate themes were songs he had figured he’d keep filed away in hopes of giving to someone else some day. they weren’t for him because he didn’t want the sword of his own sexualization to fall from bc’s hand into his own.

weeks are spent trying to get over himself before the lyrics began to come together in a way he’s closer to happy with. every line ends up getting scrapped minutes or hours later at first because they either sounded too sleazy or too obvious in their metaphors.

it’s when he brings his latest round of unsatisfactory lyrics to one of bc’s lyricists he knows is down in the studios on the same night as him that he actually starts to make progress. he’d been too proud to ask for help before, always afraid that any shown need of assistance would be the last nail in the coffin of having his hands in his own music at all.

the other songwriter looks ash firmly in the eyes and asks him to explain the meaning behind his lyrics, behind the story, and ash has to think for too long before answering. he can tell by the look on the woman’s face that she’s already identified his problem, but he answers anyway.

“it’s about intimacy. they said they want sexy, but i want it to be more than that. the story, the feelings in the lyrics. that’s what i want to use to make it sexy. i don’t want it to be hedonism for the sake of hedonism. i want it to be,” ash hesitates, thinking as he tries to convey his intentions, “i want it to be sensual, not just sexy.” love. that’s what sexy is to ash, and if he has to do this, he wants it to match where his heart lays. perhaps his struggle had come from how often the sexiness in knight’s music comes alongside heartbreak and toxicity. he doesn’t want to continue down that path. if heated lyrics would stamp him with the seal of doubling down on everyone’s expectations of him, he’d rather they be words he can stand proudly with as his idea of sexy.

“focus on the verses then. we’ll worry about the chorus later. i’ll help you with that, but how are you going to tell a sensual story instead of one that’s just sexy?”

her words stick with him as he scraps all of the lyrics he’d previously written and starts on something new. everything changes but my heart that’s always pointed toward you will not change, is the first line that he finally feels is right, and as its rightness settles into his bones, ash breathes a sigh of relief. it all comes easier after that. lines are still crossed out and rewritten and altered with help, but in the end it’s a story of love. two sides of a couple that intertwine with tension and heat because of chemistry and desire instead of a forced conceptualization of what’s supposed to be enticing. a heightened reality springs from what was once destined to be a caricature.

it still isn’t what ash had planned for his next release, and giving in by presenting the final product to them still feels like losing, but it’s something he’s proud of. it’s a part of himself still, laid out on the silver platter that was music, and he’d rather reluctantly rip out his heart than have none of it in it at all.