Helene,
Thank you. Feel free to use my comments. As for Paul's point about
the positive, almost joyful tone underlying the final comments, I think
the grammatical aspects may well play a part. All his statements are
active and, except for "hate," the verbs are quite positive and dynamic:
bucked, thought, started, gone and done. "I" is the subject of all the
clauses. None of the sentence subjects are outside forces that are to
blame for ruining his life; he seems to accept the responsibility for
the way the years have gone.
Brock
-----Original Message-----
From: Helene Krauthamer
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: 7/4/01 1:32 PM
Subject: Re: Grammar and Snyder's Hay for the Horses
Brock (or Nancy),
Thank you for such a beautiful illustration of how
grammatical knowledge helps us to read poetry.
The tutors in my lab have been building a website
(called the UDC Reading/Writing Connection) where we
have been looking for examples just like this one to
show the connections between reading, writing, and
grammar. May we use this sample, particularly your
wonderful interpretation, Brock? We will, of course,
be giving appropriate acknowledgements.
Helene
--- "Haussamen, Brock" <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Nancy's powerpoint included Gary Snyder's poem
> "Hay for the Horses" as
> an illustration of prepositional phrases and their
> descriptive power. The
> poem certainly is a stunning example of that. I
> also found myself thinking,
> though, about whether and how grammar (knowing the
> basic sentence
> constituents) could contribute to a classroom
> discussion of the poem. My
> American Lit. students in a web course read it and
> like it, but I haven't
> taught it in detail.
>
> He had driven half the night
> From far down San Joaquin
> Through Mariposa, up the
> Dangerous mountain roads,
> And pulled in at eight a.m.
> With his big truckload of hay behind the barn.
> With winch and ropes and hooks
> We stacked the bales up clean
> To splintery redwood rafters
> High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
> Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
> Itch of haydust in the sweaty shirt and shoes.
> At lunchtime under Black oak
> Out in the hot corral,
> --The old mare nosing lunchpails,
> Grasshopper crackling in the weeds--
> "I'm sixty-eight" he said,
> "I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
> I thought, that day I started,
> I sure would hate to do this all my life.
> And dammit, that's just what
> I've gone and done."
>
> Students often see the man's words at the end
> as quite bitter and
> regretful ones. I encourage them to imagine the
> tone and mood of those
> words as clearly as they can, considering the rest
> of the poem. What is the
> man's day like? What is the work like? What
> impressions do we get of the
> life?
> If I were conducting a leisurely class
> discussion, I might ask
> students to look at the sentences that make up the
> poem. Ideally, students
> might point out that the first two, long,
> descriptive ones are mostly
> prepositional phrases, and that the last ones stated
> by the man have no
> prepositional phrases but are full of clauses. I
> would hope a student would
> notice the pronouns starting the sentence groups:
> He, We, and I, and the
> subjects of two verbals, the old mare and
> grasshoppers. I might ask a
> question such as How do people (or living beings)
> fit into their environment
> and their work here? Are we mostly aware of the
> individual, or the setting
> of the individual? I would encourage them to
> notice that in the opening
> sentences the people (man and narrator), anonymous
> in the pronouns, are
> embedded in the environment and the working just
> goes by, in the locations
> of the prepositions, without comment or reflection.
> At the end, the man's
> consciousness becomes vocal; he remembers, reflects,
> reacts, without
> prepositions but with verbs.
> I think that maybe, after this kind of look,
> students might sense
> that althought the man may indeed have regrets, his
> words also express the
> awareness that (to put it colloquially) life
> happens, that it is what we do
> and it has a momentum of its own and that that's
> neither a good nor a bad
> thing.
> I don't want to overstate the role of basic
> grammar knowledge for
> getting into a poem such as this, but I think the
> ability to look at the
> sentences in a poem, name the basic kinds of parts,
> see patterns and the
> contrasts, and connect the structures with the moods
> in a general way, is
> helpful. It seems to me it doesn't take a
> specialized or detailed knowledge
> of grammar for this to happen, but it does take a
> confidence in and comfort
> level with the basics.
>
> Brock
>
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