My Ode to Pluto

Ode to Pluto

Wish I were more prepared for this time, the sacrifice of the great Being.
As the one who ruled the underworld, who guided the dead souls to their places,
Pluto, the Lord of the Underworld, placed his duties over his glories.
While Jupiter and Neptune showed off their power, dictating the sky and the sea,
He remained in Hades, beside the dead and the lost.

A brave Soul to risk his fame and honor to win his beloved one,
He abducted Proserpina, the daughter of Ceres, the Goddess of Harvest.
With Ceres in despair, human faced severe sufferings,
Under Ceres’ malediction, fruits and vegetables stopped growing.
Refusing to return to the Olympus, Ceres vainly walked along,
With every step she made, a plain changed to a desert.
Have eaten four pomegranates in Hades, Proserpina could not escape.
But with Pluto promising to Ceres, she could spend three fourths with her mother,
The remaining one fourth is what is now called winter.
And thus Pluto, the brave one, could marry whom he loved.

Over his long reign, he was regarded as generous,
But he also suffered from the Christians regarding him as the Satan.
He was later revered, even with a planet dedicated to him.
But again today, he lost his position and his honor all together.
With the advent of Eris, the Goddess of Conflict, he alone confronted her,
And to prevent her from raising her status, he sacrificed himself.
He dropped from the circle of planets.
He chose to be demoted to a dwarf planet, to shelter human from the conflicts,
In a world of despair, today I let him go.

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“Ode to Pluto” is the original draft that I prepared for the Drama Competition in February 2007.

With the discovery of Eris (2003 UB313 or the Goddess of Discord), Pluto’s status as a planet came into question. In order to call Pluto a planet, consistency would require that Eris be deemed a planet. In the definition announced by IAU on August 24, 2006, Pluto does not meet the third requirement as a planet, thus demoted to a dwarf planet.

To learn more about Pluto’s demotion, read this posting Pluto, Dwarf Planet.

I wrote “Ode to Pluto” in remembrance of Pluto, the planet or the Roman God.

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Photo Credits: (1) “Pluto, Roman God of the Underworld” by 1way2rock on Flickr

(2) “L’enlèvement de Proserpine par Pluton” by wallyg on Flickr

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A Leaf Falls in Loneliness

I read this poem by E. E. Cummings first time in May of 2007. However, still, I could not figure out the actual title of the poem, thus decided to call it “A Leaf Falls in Loneliness” for now, based on my interpretation of the poem.

(The poem can be found at the very bottom of this posting.)

When I first read this poem, without any knowledge of Cummings, I was really lost. It took me about 30 minutes (possibly more?) to reach the conclusion. Maybe you can also try to deduce the meaning of the poem. My logic went like the following.

“Hmm.. so the clues are ‘1,’ ‘a leaf,’ ‘oneliness.’ Maybe talking about being alone? Well, before that, is there such a word like ‘oneliness’?”

The first guess was too simple, thus a BEEP-!!

“Okay, so the poem talks about the leaf falling, but does not describe the surrounding at all. Thus, maybe, the isolation of the leaf?”

Well, a little bit closer to the meaning than the first guess, I presume.

“Alright. Basically, the poem describes the leaf, but not the surrounding. Would it be fair to presume the surrounding static? Then, the leaf may be the only thing that may grab the attention of the persona, and may be the object that unites the whole scene?”

This time, I was going too far into my own guesses and imagination. The person who showed me the poem smiled, and then asked me to look at the poem itself. How it looks like, aesthetically? She told me that it might be helpful to know that E. E. Cummings used poems as visual presentation of his thoughts. He was an artist and poet.

I played around with the poem a little bit more, elided the parentheses for a moment, and could see 1oneliness, i.e., loneliness. The embedded portion of the poem, of which I omitted for the moment, could possibly make sense. To describe the poem’s imagery, it is “a leaf falls (in, or inside) loneliness.” When I reached the end of my short journey, I felt the silent loneliness.

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- e. e. cummings

1(a

le

af

fa

ll

s)

one

l

iness

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Photo Credits: “Fall Leaves In the Spring” by Jigme Datse

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Everything Passes By

In his poem “Forgetfulness,” Billy Collins uses vivid imagery to remind us of the simple fact that everything passes by.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/wrEPJh14mcU" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

 

As the title indicates, “Forgetfulness” talks about inability to hold time and keep memories that are passing away. If something passes away, it is “followed obediently” by the next. The poem says that though we strive not to forget, even what we have considered the dearest at some point eventually disappears from our memory. The memories retire to a “little fishing village where there are no phones.”

Our memory works like a shelf. Think of when you buy a new book. Once the shelf is completely filled up, you have to pull one out from the shelf so as to put the new book on the shelf. The same applies to our mental shelf. In order to remember something new, we may have to give up something old unconsciously.

The idea this poem conveys is simply heart-breaking. It is really sad if I forget my fond memories however I try not to. I am a forward-looking person but I still want to remember every bit and piece that constitutes my world and my life.

 

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Forgetfulness -Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

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Fire and Ice versus Desire and Hatred

While simply asking the long-lasted question, whether the world will end in fire or in ice, the persona of Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” implies that the true scare lies in human himself.

Contrasting the two words, the immediate meaning of the poem seems to be obvious even to a little child. However, the poem goes beyond the discussion of how the world will end. The persona first sways toward the “fire” side of the argument, in that he knows the fervid humans’ “desire,” that has no limit. However, the persona is also persuaded into the “ice” side of the argument, considering the ice-like feature of “hate.” Eventually he couldn’t decide between the two and concludes that both fire and ice are destructive enough to end the world. The interesting point of the poem is that the persona does not talk about the physical meaning of fire and ice. Human’s desire and hatred take the place instead. Though the question remains unanswered, the persona seems to convey to us the important message that we humans should control our infinite desire and unending hatred that may lead to the end of the world rather than worry about which one of the two will end the world.

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Fire and Ice – Robert L. Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice,
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

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Photo Credits: “Dunnottar Castle Ruin” by spodzone of Flickr

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The Mocking Echo in His Mind

In his poem “The Most of It,” Robert Frost presents tension between one’s pursuit of “counter-love, original response” and the hard reality that everyone is in fact alone.

The poem begins with an indirect statement, “he thought he kept the universe alone,” recognizing that he is alone and lonely. Though he sometimes cries out for original response, what he can hear is the repetition of his own voice, “mocking echo.” Frost’s choice of words, “mocking echo,” is so exquisite that we immediately realize the intensity of the narrator’s solitude. Though he wants and needs “counter-love, original response,” only “copy speech” is returned in response to his cries. Despite his effort to gain a new, genuine reply by not using the same diction again, the nature does not respond other than giving back what he has given. The nature is in front of him, but the nature lacks human presence. In the middle of his loneliness, suddenly there appears some sort of reply to the narrator’s cry, “the embodiment.” That is, “a great buck” appears. How to interpret this is quite ambiguous. A great buck appears powerfully, but the narrator states at the end of the poem “and that was all,” which implies that he is not fully satisfied with the response from the nature. The narrator’s feeling is also revealed when he chooses the word “embodiment” to call the response, which itself is vague in its meaning. Though the buck constitutes a due response from the nature to his cry, he is not fully satisfied with the reply because the buck is also a part of the nature, short of “proving human.” Throughout the poem, Frost uses the third person “he,” without any explanation about who “he” might be. Hence, “he” is not a specific person but any human being.

Frost uses simile such as “pouring like a waterfall” and helps readers to visualize the scene. However, the dominant poetic element in this poem is imagery, both sound imagery and sight imagery. “The voice,” “the mocking echo,” the “cry,” and the way the buck “crashed” and “splashed” constitute sound imagery. The way the buck “crashed” and “splashed” emphasize the dynamic nature of the wild and the loneliness of the man. The “talus” and “the boulder-broken beach” of the “tree-hidden cliff across the lake” and the way “a great buck powerfully appeared” by “pushing the crumpled water up ahead” and by “stumbling through the rocks with horny tread” constitute sight imagery. The “talus” and “the boulder-broken beach” convey the scale of the “tree-hidden cliff.” Robert Frost does not use exaggerated words in the poem, but he generates the expected effects through careful choice of words.

Robert Frost is one of my favorite poets, not only because he produces a poem that is easy to understand, but also because he produces a poem that makes me think. “The Most of It” portrays man’s yearning for a genuine response to his voice, man’s solitude in the Nature, and somewhat ambiguous response from the Nature.

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The Most of It -Robert L. Frost

He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff’s talus on the other side,
And then in the far-distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush–and that was all.

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Photo Credits: “Cliffs of Moher” by Matt McGee on Flickr

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