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Ariel sings of the eerie transformation of Ferdinand’s father’s corpse–the slow replacement of his eyes with pearls.
Compare the Duke of Clarence’s ominous nightmare in Shakespeare’s Richard III:
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scatter’d in the bottom of the sea:
Some lay in dead men’s skulls; and, in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As ‘twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems…
T. S. Eliot famously used this line in The Waste Land:
… Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor.
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
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The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
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What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
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In this early poem, Rich connects Aunt Jennifer’s creation and creativity to a certain freedom and immortality; her tigers are a made thing that required hours of work in a craft, needlepoint, normally associated with women. In contrast, Rich is working in poetry at a time (1951) when there were far fewer women than men in the field. Her creation, this poem, is a lot like needlepoint in that it took hours to create (it is in rhyming iambic pentameter, an elaborate pattern, or “weave”), expresses a kind of freedom, and gives her immortality too. (Rich passed away in 2012.)
Stephen answered:
—I do. James Joyce – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Chap. 1)
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The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
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What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
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What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
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Gary Jackson is the winner of the 2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize for his first book, Missing You, Metropolis. He was born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, and received his Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from the University of New Mexico in 2008. His poems have appeared in inscape, Literary Bohemian, Magma, and small chapbooks. He has been a fierce lover of comics for nearly twenty years.
(Bio via Graywolf Press.)
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
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