Wikipedia Assignment: Draft 1

The Wikipedia page on Anti-Poetry is pretty bare. I’m going to be editing and expanding the page and provide a longer definition and examples so the researcher can understand the meaning a little better.

Anti-poetry is an art movement that attempts to break away from the normal conventions of poetry.

– (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-poetry)

Anti-Poetry is a way poet’s attempt to differentiate what is to be known as “normal” or “traditional” poetry. Often times poems are stereotyped to be simple, sweet, romantic, etc. Anti-poetry is used to change that. Some anti-poetry poems are the reality that surrounds us everyday. Poets use their words to make us open our eyes and realize everything we pretend not to see. “The poet who sees only those details that flatter our fondest hopes has one eye closed to reality. But no more so than the poet who sees only what is ugly or shocking.” (WW: pg 69) Reading poems can be misleading. Shakespeare is one of the many poets who used Anti-Poetry in his writings.

Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130” and “Winter” is a perfect example of anti-poetry. (Western Wind: An Introduction To Poetry Pg’s. 68 & 71)

Sonnet 130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Winter

When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp’d, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit! To-who!—a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doe blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit! To-who!—a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot

Sonnet 130 is your typical anti-poem. Instead of complementing his mistress like any other man would compliment a girl he loves, Shakespeare uses the “unattractive” features of his mistress. Letting her flaws be known in this sonnet but stating the love he has her. In the poem Winter, Shakespeare changes the sweet traditional winter “fairyland” everyone visions into a dark and creepy one. Winter would be compared to Christmas, decorations outside every house, etc. But this anti-poem describes the total opposite.

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2 Responses to Wikipedia Assignment: Draft 1

  1. erikasan1 says:

    I haven’t gotten any library resources yet.

  2. windyj says:

    DID YOU TAKE MY STUB CHOICE?

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