We've read some pretty brief poems ("Smalltown Lift"). I don't think any of them are more than a couple pages. So "Bicentennial" is a lot longer than the other poems we've read. Is that the only difference? Why does it need to be this long? What do the numbers do?
Do you know what a bicentennial is? Do you know when the US bicentennial took place? It's a marker for time and it seems that the poem is about time. If you agree, what ways is it about time? What does the bicentennial have to do with doing ecstasy or a princess or the young man who came home to die? What is the "blank / Where meaning would be..." (205)? The word "kindness" is mentioned multiple times in the poem. Why? Why does the narrator say "You are having your childhood now" (208) to his kids?
What questions do you have about this poem?
ReplyDeleteBicentennial means 200 years. According to research it took place around 1976. I do agree this poem is about time because the author, Dan Chiasson, mentions stuff happening in the past, present, and future. His life, his children's life, and the future life is mentioned. My partner and I worked on section 6 and mainly interpreted as marking history and the innocence of a child. how children think everything is going "great". The section ends with a celebration with the line, " I am at a party".
Christian and I had section 5, which was extremely confusing until we dug a little deeper. The poet mentions nuns and how they cared for him, but the first line paints a picture that this is not the nicest place to be, "From home to their small cell like rooms:..." and then section 7 the bottom of the page he says, "And there's my daddy, though he never knew me...", with this line and the mentioning of nuns, it makes me believe that the speaker was raised by nuns, possibly in an orphanage, which would help explain why childhood has such a great impact on him.
ReplyDeleteTori and I found the part 5 of poem a bit hard to understand. We manage to get some information out of it though. We found out that the boy was raise in an orphanage by nuns. He did not have the childhood that he had. that is why he spent his time talking to a young nun about stories. On the Bicentennial he would imagine going outside enjoying the Ferris wheels, the bright lights and other things children would do at time of year. He could not do that as if was kept in the orphanage which he described as cell-like rooms.
ReplyDeletebicentennial is not a term i was familiar with, when reading it the first time. After learning what the bicentennial was i was able to understand the text a little more.
ReplyDeleteWhen the author refers to ecstasy, the princess and the young man i think he was trying to show how all these things took place through our worlds "Childhood"
Me and my partner had section 6. we spoke about how the first stanza sounds like he is trying to connect being born and making history. he says " from the top they see the sliver of history"
In the second stanza hes talking to the children saying "You are having your childhood now". He is seeing that he had his childhood at one point and now its their turn and he knows that soon another generation will be having their childhood soon.
I felt as if every stanza was a new story but with the same beginning and ending.
It verified the feeling that there were people before and people after. moments before and moments after and although they may repeat, they are new moments.
2.
ReplyDeleteWhen people think of Paris is romance and love. Also the author was doing large amounts of Ecstasy at parties. This make me think that the author was doing large amounts of Ecstasy and that he hallucinated being in Paris and a party thanking strangers.
The second stanza gives the idea that the author is going to buy drugs from a dealer because he says "make a call","pool the money", "meet the guy". Also, he's going to a alley which is normally where that activity happens.
The numbers in "Bicentennial" represent different scenarios in the poem. Overall the poem flows in a orderly fashion but the numbers are there to break off certain parts of the poem. Yes, a Bicentennial is the celebration of a significant event every 200 years. The U.S bicentennial took place on July 4th 1976. The bicentennial is being related to doing ecstasy and princesses because it has something to do with time. The blank in page 205 has to do with the mixed feeling of emotions that cant be described as just one. I think that's why the author put blank at the end of those lines. The author uses "kindness" because kindness is what people introduced to him as a child. The narrator says " You are having your childhood now" because they are using their imaginations to do or be whatever they want.
ReplyDeleteIn the poem Bicentennial the differences between this, and other poems is not just that it is longer than other poems, but that it is also has a lot more stanzas being that it is so long. It needs to be long because he is almost in a way telling a story about what is happening in his life. The numbers separate different sections that have different scenes from his life. I agree that this poem is about time, because it is constantly shifting to different scenarios in his life, and events that are taking place.
ReplyDeleteI would totally agree with you that the poem was longer, its stanza was also long. I think the reasons for this is because the poems was based on the poet past and how he relates it to his family.Its is also shifting from one place to another because the poet is relating to his memory of his past experiences so as he remembers he writes.
ReplyDeleteI think Chiasson did ecstasy because he was sad and lonely. The drug ecstasy creates the feeling of happiness which Chiasson wanted. For example, in the first stanza, he says "Move with me now, for I need company".
ReplyDeleteI initially didn’t know what the word Bicentennial meant but I immediately looked for the definition because a title is very important to a poem having understood the word helped me understand what I was reading about in regards to the celebration taking place in his flashback moments . The US bicentennial took place in 1976 I wasn’t even in the picture of being born my parents were teenagers in that time they gave me a good inside of how fun it was for them. I felt this author was expressing his childhood and how he enjoyed it and as he hoped his children are as well. The word kindness was used as something he was shown since little and had an impact in his life as he would pass it on to his children. Also in my opinion He says that line to his children in regards to having them understand the point in time that their in and how you don’t go back to it.
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