The poem, Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape, by John Ashbury, is about the cartoon Popeye. We’re never supposed to truly understand what is going on throughout it because it’s an “undecoded message”. In most of the original Popeye cartoons, Popeye tries to save Olive Oyl, his love, from different foes. When he was incapable of fighting enemies off, he would find himself a can of spinach that would give him amazing strength, and the power to save his lady.
One of the main underlying themes to the poem is the lack of communication between the poet and the reader. Because it was written to not understand, we have a hard time making sense of why the characters do what they do. An interesting perspective to this idea is that it is written about a cartoon, which cartoons normally don’t make sense. You don’t necessarily have to look deeper into cartoons because they’re usually just meant to be entertaining, It often seems like characters do what they please, without reason or explanation.
The Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape title is quite a peculiar one. The poem is set in a city, and the farm brings out the difference between a rural and country life. Even though there are no ‘rutabagas’ in the poem, there are other allusions to different vegetables and foods: Popeye with his spinach, and the names of Swee’Pea and Olive Oyl. Landscape, usually referring to a painting, is like looking at picture that’s worth a thousand words – you can come up with any perspective as to what’s going on in it (as long as it makes sense), which is just like the poem. You have to fill in the blanks by yourself.
The poem, written as a sestina, has six stanzas of six lines and a final triplet. The fact that the form is complicated makes the poem even more interestingly complex by it being almost incapable of validating what actually goes on it. Throughout the poem there are six words that are repeated: thunder, apartment, country, pleasant, scratched, spinach. These words are used to give the poem thickness, to try to give us an idea to what the poem may be getting at (like apartment/country = city/rural or thunder/pleasant = unhappy/content or spinach, the love Popeye has). There’s no really any specific rhythm scheme in it, but it does use enjambment, for instance between the last final two stanzas, “Bumpkin, always burping like that. Minute at first, the thunder - Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder,”. The enjambments used to simply allow the sentences to flow right over the line break.
“The first of the undecoded messages read: "Popeye sits
in thunder,
Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment,
From livid curtain's hue, a tangram emerges: a country."
The slightly indecipherable poem, first talks about Popeye sitting in thunder. Thunder in a literal sense could mean a weather or storm, but in the more broad sense could mean other things like a big bang sound, anger (probably with loud noises), or even superiority. Popeye seems to not even be acknowledged – or he’s ignored. There are ‘livid’ colored or furiously angry colored curtains in his very small, shoebox-like apartment. “A tangram emerges: a country.” A tangram, or an ancient puzzle, probably shaped like a landscape is symbolic to the poem as a whole. Like puzzle pieces you would try to fit together, you do the same with this poem – try to solve it.
Popeye was forced to leave the country because of his jealous father and wasn’t even living in his apartment in the poem. However, the Sea-Hag, one of his enemies was there ‘spending vacation on his green couch’. When Olive Oyl reaches the apartment with news of Popeye, she threatens to take Swee’pea out of the country because that’s where she believes he is. When they both leave the Sea-Hag in Popeye’s apartment by herself, the “Now the apartment - succumbed to a strange new hush - Actually it's quite pleasant - Here.". "If this is all we need fear from – spinach - Then I don't mind so much.” Sea-Hag enjoyed her peace. She realized that spinach she didn’t need to fear, even though she probably didn’t fear the spinach, but what the spinach did to Popeye.
“Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder,
The color of spinach. Popeye chuckled and scratched
His balls: it sure was pleasant to spend a day in the country.”
Domestic, or family, thunder filled the apartment. I find this funny because even though the Sea-Hag seemed to be in such solitude, the thought of Popeye seemed to disrupt that. The color of spinach, which is probably her saying that maybe she should fear it, and the possibility of Popeye returning home with Olive Oyl. The irony in this is that even though Popeye was technically exiled out of his own home, he’s still more relaxed and carefree than the Sea-Hag is.
One of the main underlying themes to the poem is the lack of communication between the poet and the reader. Because it was written to not understand, we have a hard time making sense of why the characters do what they do. An interesting perspective to this idea is that it is written about a cartoon, which cartoons normally don’t make sense. You don’t necessarily have to look deeper into cartoons because they’re usually just meant to be entertaining, It often seems like characters do what they please, without reason or explanation.
The Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape title is quite a peculiar one. The poem is set in a city, and the farm brings out the difference between a rural and country life. Even though there are no ‘rutabagas’ in the poem, there are other allusions to different vegetables and foods: Popeye with his spinach, and the names of Swee’Pea and Olive Oyl. Landscape, usually referring to a painting, is like looking at picture that’s worth a thousand words – you can come up with any perspective as to what’s going on in it (as long as it makes sense), which is just like the poem. You have to fill in the blanks by yourself.
The poem, written as a sestina, has six stanzas of six lines and a final triplet. The fact that the form is complicated makes the poem even more interestingly complex by it being almost incapable of validating what actually goes on it. Throughout the poem there are six words that are repeated: thunder, apartment, country, pleasant, scratched, spinach. These words are used to give the poem thickness, to try to give us an idea to what the poem may be getting at (like apartment/country = city/rural or thunder/pleasant = unhappy/content or spinach, the love Popeye has). There’s no really any specific rhythm scheme in it, but it does use enjambment, for instance between the last final two stanzas, “Bumpkin, always burping like that. Minute at first, the thunder - Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder,”. The enjambments used to simply allow the sentences to flow right over the line break.
“The first of the undecoded messages read: "Popeye sits
in thunder,
Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment,
From livid curtain's hue, a tangram emerges: a country."
The slightly indecipherable poem, first talks about Popeye sitting in thunder. Thunder in a literal sense could mean a weather or storm, but in the more broad sense could mean other things like a big bang sound, anger (probably with loud noises), or even superiority. Popeye seems to not even be acknowledged – or he’s ignored. There are ‘livid’ colored or furiously angry colored curtains in his very small, shoebox-like apartment. “A tangram emerges: a country.” A tangram, or an ancient puzzle, probably shaped like a landscape is symbolic to the poem as a whole. Like puzzle pieces you would try to fit together, you do the same with this poem – try to solve it.
Popeye was forced to leave the country because of his jealous father and wasn’t even living in his apartment in the poem. However, the Sea-Hag, one of his enemies was there ‘spending vacation on his green couch’. When Olive Oyl reaches the apartment with news of Popeye, she threatens to take Swee’pea out of the country because that’s where she believes he is. When they both leave the Sea-Hag in Popeye’s apartment by herself, the “Now the apartment - succumbed to a strange new hush - Actually it's quite pleasant - Here.". "If this is all we need fear from – spinach - Then I don't mind so much.” Sea-Hag enjoyed her peace. She realized that spinach she didn’t need to fear, even though she probably didn’t fear the spinach, but what the spinach did to Popeye.
“Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder,
The color of spinach. Popeye chuckled and scratched
His balls: it sure was pleasant to spend a day in the country.”
Domestic, or family, thunder filled the apartment. I find this funny because even though the Sea-Hag seemed to be in such solitude, the thought of Popeye seemed to disrupt that. The color of spinach, which is probably her saying that maybe she should fear it, and the possibility of Popeye returning home with Olive Oyl. The irony in this is that even though Popeye was technically exiled out of his own home, he’s still more relaxed and carefree than the Sea-Hag is.
Okay, so you have a lot of good things going on here: 1) You have a handle on the whole poem; 2) You look at the form; 3) You look at connotations and symbols. Now, think about going further with a few things. You need to further expand the importance of the end words with the idea of "communication", though you also seem to think that this poem is about "family" or "urban vs rural" (this by what you say within the essay). Remember FORM = IDEA. APARTMENT/COUNTRY, THUNDER/PLEASANT, SPINACH/SCRATCH. You need also to go further in explication of the last tercet. Remember, the TURN is here: Popeye appears. DOMESTIC is a very important word. Also, note there is more enjambment than you picked out (and your explanation of enjambment is very surface/slight).
ReplyDeleteFinally, good research on Popeye the cartoon (hopefully you watched some episodes or watched the Robin Williams movie...heheheh - just kidding, you don't have time). And yes, Ashberry likes to play with his readers. He is either very surreal or doesn't care if his poem is making sense as long as it sounds nice or is interesting. Of course, this just helps with READER RESPONSE THEORY - and makes him good to look at for explication.
This would have earned you a passing grade on the AP test (but we need to get you from a 6/7 to a 8).