Poems Deconstructive Reading
This lab activity, titled 'Poststructuralism, Poems, and Generative AI: A Deconstructive Reading,' was assigned by Prof. Dilip Barad
Poem 1:Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
My understanding
According to my understanding, in this poem the poet writes about his beloved, whose gender remains unknown. He compares the beloved to a summer’s day.
Deconstruction:
At first, the poet focuses on the beloved and compares her/him to a summer’s day. In this opening line, the center of the poem is the beloved. As the poem progresses, the focus shifts toward poetry and writing. By the end of the poem, the center becomes the poet himself.
Initially, the poet describes the beloved as being as beautiful as nature. Then, he claims that this beauty can become eternal if he writes about her/him. This shift reveals a power struggle—who holds the greater power: the beloved, nature, or the poet? Ultimately, the poet suggests that only through his writing can the beloved’s beauty be preserved forever. In this way, he positions himself as superior, as the one who controls immortality through poetry.
Poem 2: On a Station inthe Metro’
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough
My understanding:
According to me, this poem is about the life of adults or elderly people, and it draws a comparison between them and petals (representing children). This is my personal interpretation of the poem.
Deconstruction:
From a deconstructive perspective, we can say that the word apparition holds multiple meanings—such as darkness, danger, or something ghostly or fleeting. The interpretation depends on the reader and the meaning they assign to the word. This reflects the poststructuralist idea that meaning is not fixed but constantly shifting.
The word petals can symbolize the limited time we have in life—fragile, short-lived, and beautiful. If we fail to act within this brief span, life may lead us into darkness. This idea suggests another possible meaning of the poem: the fleeting nature of youth and opportunity, and the consequences of inaction. Thus, the poem opens itself to multiple interpretations, revealing its instability of meaning.
Poem 3“The Red Wheelbarrow’
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
My understanding
According to me this poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" seems simple, but deconstruction shows its meaning is uncertain and depends on the reader. The phrase “so much depends” is never explained, and the images like the wheelbarrow and chickens have no fixed meaning. The poem highlights how language shapes meaning and how ordinary objects can seem important just through words. It shows that meaning is not stable and is created by interpretation.
Poem 4 'A refusal to mourn the death, by fire, of a child in London'
Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.
Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.
My understanding :
According to me poem resists a fixed meaning and challenges traditional ways of mourning. Using complex and symbolic language, it blends religious, natural, and mythical images to question whether grief can truly be expressed. The poet refuses to mourn the child’s death in a conventional way, suggesting that language and rituals may not capture the depth of loss. Deconstruction reveals that the poem's meaning constantly shifts, and its final line—“After the first death, there is no other”—remains open to multiple interpretations, showing the instability of meaning in language and emotion.
Reference:
Barad, Dilip. “Deconstructive Analysis of Ezra Pound's 'In a Station of the Metro' and William Carlos Williams's 'The Red Wheelbarrow.'” Research Gate, 03 July 2024, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381943844_Deconstructive_Analysis_of_Ezra_Pound's_'In_a_Station_of_the_Metro'_and_William_Carlos_Williams's_'The_Red_Wheelbarrow'. Accessed 03 July 2024.
Barad, D. (2023, July 23). How to Deconstruct a Text. Bhavngar, Gujarat, India: DoEMKBU YouTube Channel. Retrieved 7 3, 2024, from https://youtu.be/JDWDIEpgMGI?si=WnmtixfH9lFYj-bJ
Belsey, C. (2002). Poststructuralism (First Indian Edition 2006 ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Pound, E. (1913, April). In a Station of a Metro. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Retrieved 7 3, 2024, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12675/in-astation-of-the-metro
Williams, W. C. (1938). The Red Wheelbarrow. In C. MacGowan (Ed.), The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I, 1909-1939. New Directions Publishing Corporation. Retrieved 7 3, 2024, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45502/the-red-wheelbarrow
