Poetry Friday- Rhetorical Précis and Poetry
Assignment: It’s time to find a poem of your own again. Individually, use the resources available to you to search for a poem that you will respond to using the rhetorical précis format that we learned in class yesterday. Afterwards, create a visual response to the poem that focuses on the allegorical or symbolic and not the literal.
Example:
Cartoon Physics, part 1
Nick Flynn
Children under, say, ten, shouldn't know
that the universe is ever-expanding,
inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies
swallowed by galaxies, whole
solar systems collapsing, all of it
acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning
the rules of cartoon animation,
that if a man draws a door on a rock
only he can pass through it.
Anyone else who tries
will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds
should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,
ships going down -- earthbound, tangible
disasters, arenas
where they can be heroes. You can run
back into a burning house, sinking ships
have lifeboats, the trucks will come
with their ladders, if you jump
you will be saved. A child
places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,
& drives across a city of sand. She knows
the exact spot it will skid, at which point
the bridge will give, who will swim to safety
& who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn
that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff
he will not fall
until he notices his mistake.
Rhetorical Précis
(1) The American writer, playwright, and poet Nick Flynn, in his poem “Cartoon Physics, part I, suggests that the logic that is learned from cartoons as a child is less absurd than the realities of the world that we are faced with as adults. (2) Flynn establishes this idea by first explaining the nature of the real universe with “whole / solar systems collapsing, all of it / acted out in silence”, then comparing that conception with the rules of cartoon physics and the results of those principles, and finally describing the power of the child playing with a bus in a sandbox as if that child was Godlike in its power over the world they control. (3) The author hopes to illustrate how in the world of our senseless reality, whole solar systems are swallowed without thought or hesitation, a reality that is too dark for any cartoon to replicate or child to comprehend, in order to make the reader reconsider how we can accept the actions of our world as somehow more real than the fictitious worlds we create. (4) Flynn establishes a nostalgic tone for a slightly older audience that is educated by still connected to the culture and entertainment of their youth.
Response: Reaction to the poem
Claim: The poet is asserting that the logic that is learned from cartoons as a child is in many ways less absurd than the realities of the world that we are faced with as adults.
Evidence: Flynn describes the nature of the universe as, “whole / solar systems collapsing, all of it / acted out in silence” (4-6).
Explanation: By describing how the physics of the universe is absurd in its senseless and vast destruction, Flynn creates dark background upon which to paint his memories of childhood cartoons. The violence of the cartoon world, absurd in its own way in its lack of consequences and suspension of the laws of physics, seems more reasonable than the very laws that it defies. The penultimate image of the young girl pushing the bus through the sandbox captures the poet’s idea of God, deciding on the fate of the characters she controls. And yet the world that the girl controls maintains some idea of justice; the characters of her world that swim to safety are the just while the shark takes the wicked. In the world of our senseless reality, whole solar systems are swallowed without thought or hesitation and it is a reality that is too dark for any cartoon to replicate or child to comprehend.