Teaching poetry by watching the tube

The icy wasteland in Coleridge’s

“Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

The old burial site in the film

version of King’s Pet Sematary

Introduction

• In my workshop we discussed ways in which students at high school or university can be introduced to the art of poetry by way of popular culture. I chose Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” as the test case poem because it is well-known and often enjoyed by students. The film Pet Sematary was the test-case product of popular culture.

• My basic thesis in the presentation was that all forms of culture, whether popular or elite (I personally refuse to make this distinction), share basic structural, stylistic and thematic principles that can be analysed using the same critical tools, so as to gain a greater understanding of the work as a whole.

• Because they are exposed daily to of film, TV and videogames, most teenagers and young adults are good readers of popular culture. They understand the basic narrative patterns, recognize the stylistic peculiarities, and shared themes of a Quentin Tarantino film, a Spielberg movie, or Hollywood Slasher flick. Without having ever been taught to do so, they can differentiate a comedy from a western, an art-house film from a Mel Brooks parody and talk endlessly and even critically about such forms of popular culture.

• I have found that the best way to introduce young adults to the art of poetry is by making them aware of the fact that a poem is just another cultural product that in principle is not any more difficult to understand than a modern horror film, if you make yourself familiar with the structural, stylistic and thematic conventions of poetry and the frames of reference used in creating the poem.

The poetry in popular culture – frames of reference

• What do I mean when I say “the poetry in popular culture”? Forms of pop-culture, from heavy-metal, through trash cinema, to the latest computer games contain as much figurative language, conscious manipulation of rhythm, and condensed imagery as any great poem.

• The fundamental difference between what is usually considered pop-culture

and what is usually called poetry, is that the frames of reference used by the poet, in constructing his figurative language and imagery is much more personal, culturally specific, and sometimes more obscure, than the frames of reference used by the makers of a TV show or videogame.

• Metaphors, symbols, and other figurative images in pop culture are constructed using frames of reference that the makers know will be shared by a wide range of people – or at least by their target audience who they believe are the right audience to whom they can sell their product.

One example of metaphors using “elite” and “popular” frames of reference

During the workshop we compared and discussed this so-called difficult poem by Ezra Pound, to a popular poetic scene in the Hollywood film American Beauty

Ezra Pound:

“In a Station of the Metro” (1911-12)

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Animal symbolism and religious frames of reference:

The albatros and/as the cross (bow) and “Church” the Cat

Horror imagery and moral themes:

human industry and the natural world

Symbolic landscapes and magic realms

the supernatural and the afterlife

Personification and de-humanisation

Death and Life-in-Death

Metre and rhythm in film and poetry

We discussed how an analysis of the cinematic techniques used to shoot the most famous scene of the film version of Pet Sematary (in which the small buy is run-over by a truck) can be a way into the analysis of poetic metre.

After having analysed how the camera shots, music, and timing create suspense, we looked at a passage from “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and saw how Coleridge manipulates the metre and rhythm of language to do the same in the passage where the phantom ship is approaching the sailors, who are unwittingly heading towards their doom.