Medium Specificity - Poetry

A Rose by Any Other Name

It is a truth universally acknowledged

That all that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost,

That brevity is the soul of wit.

It was the best of times…

The boy who lived,

The odds ever in your favor.

What are men compared to

Rocks and mountains?

That is the question.

It was the worst of times.

I solemnly swear that I am

Up to no good,

To dwell on dreams and

Forget to live.

There is a monster at the

End of this book.

Real or not real?

We are all in the gutter,

Seen hell and it’s white,

It’s snow white.

But some of us are looking at

The stars.

To live will be an

Awfully big adventure.

I don’t play accurately—

Anyone can play accurately—

But I play with wonderful expression.

Oh, the cleverness of me!

Artist's Statement

Let me first explain my project—I’ve taken well-known lines from classic and popular literature and reworked them into a stand-alone poem. Every word is taken directly from another book, even the conjunctions and articles.  The medium I’m expressing is poetry with a focus on phrasing and words. I began by gathering some of my favorite lines from Shakespeare, Harry Potter, Peter Pan, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Hunger Games, Pride and Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities, North and South, Oscar Wilde, and one of my favorite children’s books, “The Monster at the End of this Book.” My aim was to keep the quotations as intact and recognizable as possible to emphasize that even though individual letter, words, and phrases can be common and unexceptional, profound and unique meaning can still be expressed by simply arranging them in a certain order.

Literature and the written word in general is extremely unique because there are only 26 letters available to artists. Every possible (correct) word in the English language has already been invented and has already written down, used, and understood. Even certain phrases, such as these famous quotes, have been rendered unusable due to their ubiquity. But my project highlights poetry’s power of creating new meaning and emotion through the juxtaposition of certain words and, in this case, certain phrases. Even though in their own context these quotes already have individual meaning assigned to them by author, reader, and popular culture, by placing them in a new order in a new context they are able to generate fresh meaning and insights.

The Scott McCloud reading had multiple similarities to what I was trying to achieve with my poem. McCloud states, “In time, most modern writing would come to represent sound only and lose any lingering resemblance to the visible world.” In many ways, this is how I felt about popular, border-line-cliché lines from famous literature, both old and new. Though these quotes and the contextual meaning they have in their own works and in popular culture are greatly admired, their ability to create new meaning has been limited—they are just sound with no new color. But through poetry and juxtaposition, these quotes are able to create new images, emotions, and meaning in addition to the history of meaning they bring with them.

The main outside inspiration for this poem was T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Though he does use some of his own wording, large portions of his poem are direct or corrupted quotations and allusions. He mainly draws upon the hallmarks of literature, but also includes children’s rhymes and other low-brow literature. Eliot’s aim was to trivialize their worth by irreverently juxtaposing respected works of literature with children’s songs. Though I in no way aim to trivialize the quotes I use, I did try and emulate Eliot’s ability to generate a new perspective in his readers through juxtaposition.