William Shakspeare

ROMEO AND JULIET

Both versions of the final death scenes in Romeo and Juliet use the language in which it was written. They are both very dramatic and saddening to watch, my eyes watered with both clips. In the most recent version, it is made evident that Juliet is awakening from her sleep as Romeo puts his ring on her finger, before killing himself. In fact, Juliet wakes up before he dies and they have one final moment together.

The 1968 version is more dramatic, whereas the 1996 version adds a little bit of romance to the deaths by having her see him one last time. Also, her suicide in the older movie is done with a dagger and in the newer version, she shoots herself. I cannot say, however, which is more effective. They both are. In the older video they wanted to remain true to the story, and in the ’96 version they wanted to give it a modern twist.

HAMLET

A clear example of tragedy may be in Act I, Scene V. This is where Hamlet talks to his father’s ghost and learns that he was killed by his uncle Claudius, who has now been crowned King of Denmark and married Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude.

Greek tragedies were made up of incestuous relationships, treason, death, sorrow … This scene has a little bit of everything in it.

I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,

And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love--

…

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

I am your father’s spirit

Doomed for some time to come back during the nights

And during the day I starve in hell

Until the crimes committed in my reign

are forgiven. But I can’t

talk about hell,

I could tell you stories

that would surprise and amaze you,

make your eyes pop out of their sockets,

knock your socks off,

make all your hairs stand on end

like a porcupine;

But these awful stories

Cannot be told to those who are still alive. But listen,

if you ever loved your father,

…

Have his killer pay

IS MUSIC POETRY?

PART I

Poetry is a written form of expression; it is generally characterized by rhythmical writing, rhyme, similes, metaphors and symbolism.

For a piece if writing to be considered poetry the only requierement, I think, is for the writer to want it to be poetry.

PART II

A song that is definately not poetry would be "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails:

You let me violate you

You let me desecrate you

You let me penetrate you

You let me complicate you



Help me

I broke apart my insides

Help me

I've got no soul to sell

Help me

The only thing that works for me

Help me get away from myself



I want to fuck you like an animal

I want to feel you from the inside

I want to fuck you like an animal

My whole existence is flawed

You get me closer to god



You can have my isolation

You can have the hate that it brings

You can have my absence of faith

You can have my everything



Help me

Tear down my reason

Help me

It's your sex I can smell

Help me

You make me perfect

Help me become somebody else



I want to fuck you like an animal

I want to feel you from the inside

I want to fuck you like an animal

My whole existence is flawed

You get me closer to god



Through every forest

Above the trees

Within my stomach

Scraped off my knees

I drink the honey

Inside your hive

You are the reason

I stay alive

This song is not poetry because the writer is explicitly saying what he needs to say.  He does not want it to be nice and pretty and sound 'nice,' he just wants to send his message out.  The composer has no need to transmit a message other than what he's stating in the song and if no one else like it or doesn't understand it, too damn bad!

A song that I would consider poetry would be "Clark Gable" by The Postal Service:

I was waiting for a cross-town train in the London Underground when it struck me
That I'd been waiting since birth to find a love that would look and sound like a movie
So I changed my plans, I rented a camera and a van and then I called you
I need you to pretend that we are in love again and you agreed to

I want so badly to believe that there is truth and love is real
And I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd

I grease the lens and frame the shot using a friend as my stand-in
The script had called for rain, but it was clear that day so we faked it
The marker snapped and I yelled, "quiet on the set!" ad then called, "action!"
I kissed you in a style Clark Gable would have admired I thought it classic

I want so badly to believe that there is truth and love is real
and I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd
I know you're wise beyond your years but do you ever get the fear
That your perfect verse is just a lie that you tell yourself to help you get by

that you tell yourself to help you get by...
 
This song portrays life as a poem and is filled with messages of wishful thinking and hope.  The objective of the writer of this particular song may have been to leave the listener thinking-- it's the type of song that maybe someone would steal a line from and post it as their status on facebook.   The lyrics do tell a story, which would be considered prose, but in the way that the message goes out it would have to be poetic.
 
RAP and HIP-HOP
In regards to rap and hip-hop, as with any other type of music, it'd be a generalization to say that these songs are or are not poetry.  Sure, it's a cliche that these songs only make reference to sex and violence, but not all of them really do.  Every song has to be individually analyzed and detailed to interprent if indeed they are poems.
 
Songs in this genre have several literary characteristics.  The first one I'd think of is personification, especially in regards to genitalia.  
They also do have rhyme and rhythm, similes (not too many methaphors), consonance, denotation...  
 
I would certainly consider myself a context critic.  Not only for this particular musical style but for all of them, if the case be needed.  I don't like characterizations and I don't tend to be prejudiced either; every single individual piece must be selected and reviewed before a conclusion is reached.
 

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

A CLEAN, WELL-LIGHTED PLACE

1. This story takes place in Spain, I can tell because the currency used is pesetas. Because of the attitude towards men in the military I am guessing it was during the Spanish Civil War, during the 1930's. Any civil war is a dark moment; being from Colombia I know of many people who left Spain during that awful time and made Latin America their new home. I can only think that the idea of a well-lighted place was a symbol of hope for all those who were oppressed and demoralized in their homeland and needed some hope. Almost like a light ot the end of the tunnel.

2. The characters are nameless because there is no need for them to have names. They were random people; a patron and the servers in a cafe. The idea of not giving them names is to make them be as random as possible, just a few more citizens of the world. When it comes to a moment such as a civil war, it doesn't matter who the people are and what they do -- they are all people who are going through the same hardships as everyone else. By giving them names they would be given a certain status that Hemingway rendered pointless.

3. The casual occurrences at a cafe during none particular night.

4. Don't let appearances fool you.

HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS

1. The story takes place in what seems to be a lonely, run-down train station in a small Spanish town somewhere between the cities of Barcelona and Madrid. The only thing to do there is sit and wait for the train to come, the characters have no other choice. Just like the moment in the main characters' life. The couple is in between two great moments in their relationship. They used to be happy and will be happy again, but right now they have to do what is necessary; Jig must have the operation.

2. The story is written in third-person POV. I think the narrator's attitude is neutral. There is really no decription about their emotions nor the situation. The reader is getting the facts in a straightforward manner, no emotions are revealed, there is nothing that tells us anything about the physical aspects or what the operation is going to be. Sort of making those details unimportant.

3. The style it's written in is very mundane. Hemingway doesn't use a lot of adjectives, and the lack of pronouns in the dialogue make it hard to keep up. He writes about the simply moments during life that I guess a lot of other writers omit, giving his characters very humanly traits, to which his readers can easily identify with.

ERNEST MILLER HEMINGWAY

He was born in a suburb of Chicago in 1899, and left home as soon as he finished high school to be a reporter in Kansas. He went to Italy as in a volunteer ambulance unit during WWI, where he was wounded. He returned to the USA to recover but moved again to Europe, this time France, as soon as he could. He also travelled a lot to Spain, mostly as a correspondent during the civil war. He also travelled to London to cover WWII as a journalist. After the war was over, he travelled a lot to many different places, such as Cuba and Africa, where he was inspired to write. After Castro's revolution in Cuba, however, he decided to move back home and settled down in Idaho. He had become by now depressed and anxious. He committed suicided by shooting himself. He was married four times during his life and had three sons.

(source: www.biography.com)

1. He travelled a lot through Spain
2. He was always in love with a woman
3. He almost always seemed to incorporate war in his stories

James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”

HARLEM

Even without researching, I know what Harlem has been famous for. It has always been an ethnic spot; some streets are latin, others black, others Irish... And it's not the best of neighborhoods either. Right now it is, but it didn't use to be. Low income families would live there; it was crowded and frustrating. The Harlem Renaissance took place, looking for racial equality through intelectual work, such as poetry, art and music.

http://www.biography.com/blackhistory/harlem-renaissance.jsp#thr

Being a young boy in Harlem at that time, and getting involved with the music scene must have had a terrible influence on Sonny. He was orphaned, from a low income family, born into a family with parents who came from a rural background. He was easily caught up in the fascination and wrath and hate that emerged from all that and was easily influenced to parttake in activities such as doing heroin. However, his brother was absent during this period, being away in the army. ANd, had he not been absent, he was seven years older (and wiser) and would have probably taken a much more mature stand towards this. Sonny surrounded himself with the wrong people and had no one to guide him, which eventually led to his 'tragedy'.

AFRICAN AMERICAN MALES IN THE MILITARY PRE-CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

When Forrest Gump meets Jenny in Washington, DC and meets her friends from the Black Panthers, he is told of how it sickens them that black males are drafted and sent to the most violent zones to be killed, as if they didn't matter. In fact, until the 1940's, the armed forces were segregated! (http://www.army.mil/africanamericans/timeline.html)

Sonny wanting to enlist was ironic because he was coming from the HArlem Renaissance, where they were trying to be integrated, to joining the segregated army. He was trying to change from a non-violent, intellectual protest for equiality to an insitution where he was going to be treated accordingly to what was considered OK for black people to be treated. Not only that, but now he was wanting to belong to a violent, war-oriented organization instead on the intellectual and peaceful jazz movement of HArlem.

BILLIE HOLIDAY

Autumn in New York

It's time to end my holiday and bid the country a hasty farewell.

So on this gray and melancholy day, I'll move to a Manhattan hotel.

I'll dispose of my rose-colored chattels and

prepare for my share of adventures and battles,

Here on the twenty-seventh floor

looking down on the city I hate and adore!

Autumn in New York, why does it seem so inviting?

Autumn in New York, it spells the thrill of first-nighting.

Glittering crowds and shimmering clouds in canyons of steel;

they're making me feel I'm home.

It's autumn in New York that brings the promise of new love.

Autumn in New York is often mingled with pain.

Dreamers with empty hands may sigh for exotic lands;

it's autumn in New York;

it's good to live again.

(http://artists.letssingit.com/billie-holiday-lyrics-autumn-in-new-york-ch94h9d)

Sonny is back in New York now. It's Harlem and not Manhattan, but it's NYC nonetheless. He's back to where he started everything. He was born there, he experimented with drugs, lost his family, ran away from home, was incarcerated... This is his chance for rebirth, he has a second chance at life but is afraid of committing the same mistakes and blowing it again. He can't not suffer, as he told his brother. ANd his way of coping with suffering had always been drugs, but he doesn't want to do them anymore, and that is one of his biggest inner conflicts.

BEBOP

Bebop was an evolution of jazz that took place in the 1940's. It was a way to return jazz to blacks, since white people were beginning to enjoy it too. They 'africanized' it a and tried to make it their own again. Bebop artists wanted to make some uncommercial music, because jazz had been taken away from them and now they had nothing to call their own again. Louis Armstrong even stated that bebop artists were filled with malice and were ill-intentioned. Langston Hughes argued, "Everytime a cop hits a Negro with his Billy club, that old club says, ‘BOP! BOP!…BE-BOP!…MOP!…BOP!…That’s what Bop is. Them young colored kids who started it, they know what bop is."

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/songs/question3.html

http://books.google.com/books?id=2bw-drt5sigC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=bebop+political&source=bl&ots=iIFihASgKy&sig=5Eu7jhuTwNhGU_W_BgXfQYSys1g&hl=en&ei=J8KYTOe8JIG-sAPS_LTLDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&sqi=2&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=bebop%20political&f=false

Sonny feels what Hughes feels. It is a way to fight back against what he must have gone through in prison and being a victim of police abuse. He knows about the terrible racial differences there are out there and needs a way to let it out. His brother, on the other hand, agreed more with Armstrong. It was only a lot of noise that led to nothing. Until he witnesses Sonny playing and saw how he was letting go of everything and focusing on the piano. This was his outlet of emotions, and began to understand his need for music to express himself.