Term Paper on "Apollonian and Dionysian"

Quoted Instructions for "Apollonian and Dionysian" Assignment:

Analyze the poems "Big Black Car," by Lynn Emanuel, and "A Display of Mackerel" by Mark Doty for their apollonian and dionysian implications. Both poems may be talked about exclusively from either Apollonian or Dionysian perspective, or one may be discussed as apollonian and one as dionysian. Try to build a small cogent critical argument for your point of view and use extensive examples from the poems to illustrate or prove your contentions. Much of the paper should be actual analysis of the poem itself. The ultimate aim of the paper is to find an interesting way to talk about the poet's mythic vision of his/her subject matter. "mythology" by Edith Hamilton would be helpful. Examples of Apollonian elements would be: the sun, civilization, individuation, government, intellectuality, man-made things, reason, order, disclipline (the apollonian view seeks to control and describe nature) where as Dionysian elements include: inegration of self into the whole, the life and death cycle (myth of descent and ascent i.e. dionysian poetry is nurtured by the belief that man particiaptes in a drama of eternal repetition which is rooted in the cyclical view of nature) the natural world, and the Dionysian ecstasy i.e. chaotic, orgiastic, frenzied, uninhibited, reckless, and irrational. Analyze the poems for any of these elements, but make sure the argument is specific and focused. In my opinion, both of these poems by Frank O'Hara embody the idea of the Dionysian ecstasy, and celebration of life, but that is just a thought. Do not want the ***** nklenske

Below is a copy of both poems:

Big Black Car

By Lynn Emanuel, from THE DIG, 1995

*****¦anything with wheels

Is a hearse in the making.

Richard Miller

I thought, You*****ll never get me

Anywhere near that motor*****s flattened

Skull, the hoses***** damp guts, the oil

Pan with its tubes and fluids; I thought,

I*****ll never ride the black bargello

Of the treads or be locked up

Behind its locks and keys,

Or stare at the empty sockets

Of those those headlights, the chrome

Grill so glazed with light it blurs *****“

Oily, edible, about to melt.

You*****ll never get me into that back seat,

The ruptured upholstery hemorrhaging

Batting is not for me, nor the spooky

Odomoter, nor the gas-gauge letters

Spilled behind the cracked,

Milky glass. The horn, like Saturn,

Is suspended in its ring of steering wheel;

And below is the black tongue of the gas pedal,

The bulge of the brake, the stalk

Of the stick shift, and I thought, You*****ll never*****¦

But here I am and there in the window

The tight black street comes unzipped

And opens to the snowy underthings,

And little white stitches and thorns

Of a starry sky, and there, beyond

The world*****s open gate, eternity

Hits me like a heart attack.

A Display of Mackerel

By Mark Doty

(Mark Doty, an AIDS activist, writes poems that are first personal, then sometimes political.)

They lie in parallel rows,

On ice, head to tail,

Each a foot of luminosity

Barred with black bands

Which divide the scales*****

Radiant sections

Like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

Prismatics: think abalone,

The wildly rainbowed

Mirror of a soap bubble*****s sphere,

Think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

And not a one in any way

Distinguished from the other,

Nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

they*****re all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfillment

of heaven*****s template,

mackerel essence. As if

after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler*****s

made uncountable examples,

each as intricate

in its oily fabulation

as the one before.

Suppose we could iridesce,

Like these, and lose ourselves

Entirely in the universe

Of shimmer *****“ would you want

To be yourself only,

Unduplicatable, doomed

To be lost? They*****d prefer

Plainly, to be flashing participants,

Multitudinous. Even now

They seem to be bolting

Forwards, heedless of stasis.

They don*****t care they*****re dead

And nearly frozen,

Just as, presumably,

They didn*****t care that they were living

All, all for all,

The rainbowed school

And its acres of ***** classrooms,

In which no verb is singular,

Or every one is. How happy they seem

Even on ice, to be together, selfless,

Which is the price of gleaming.