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The Many Portraits of Isabel Archer
The Ever-changing Portrait of Isabel Archer
Never a calm in the waters of her mind
Floating freely throughout time, without consideration
Inner beauty, outer tenacity
The future, an open adventure
No stings to break, no tethers wanted
Unadulterated freedom on the horizon
Straining to escape grounded boundaries
Society, station, expectations – not enough to bind her
Limitless dreams, flowing in the rivers of time
Floating on flowers
Viewing what she pleases
Gaps left where reality infringes
Happily left to childhood daydreams
Lost in the magic – down the rabbit hole
Descending down into the depths
No escort of life necessary
Stoically enticing
Intoxicatingly distant
Bound in her beauty enticing the devotee
Closer, closer – closed
Her cage is shut – keeping the world out
Content flitting about – no conductor needed
Exploring the unknown
On terms of her own
Deceptive blankness
Retreating behind
Hiding intentions
Nothing to untangle
Completely moldable – free to interpretation
Untouched, unformed
Everything to be taught
Free from influence – open to the task
Demure mask
No mind of her own
Devoted and willing
What lurks beneath the beauty so pure?
No independence of thought
Nor lack of duties call
Free for the taking
Make what you can
Perfect fit
The eyes so hidden
Changed for the man
Playing the part – becoming the part
Remodeled for the show
All done up – no pin misplaced
Ready to be caught
But what will you get?
The lady of perfection or deception
Captured and encaged
Fooled by the master
A pawn in the plan – a possession
Not as promised
Far from desires
Duped in to marriage
Caught in a deception
Still behind the veil – not all is clear
Believing in the fabrication
Hoping for the best
The blind eye – unseeing
Portraying the falsehood
Unable to define
The enigma untouched
Wondering for more
Unwilling to see the truth
Resentment and hatred
Pushed onto herself
Tiptoeing around – the water undisturbed
What is it she’s seeing?
Emergent from the safe recess
Of her mind – into the bright light
All has been revealed
Nothing can be changed.
Looking out seeing the sunrise
Seeing the blinding light – eyes wide open
To the scene in the foreground
No way to escape – the truth has been found
She was outwitted
Young and naïve
Saw what she desired – asked no questions
Trusted those not worthy
Looking back – unhindered for the first time
The closed doors of opportunities overlooked
She strays to long
Looking on what could be
Tempted by another
Looking for protection
Passed on from another
She hesitates
Duty calls
Not to be escaped
She must stand, alone
A woman for the first time
Unwilling to flee
Head on straight
Eyes frontward
Protective innocence lost forever
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Comments
Poetically speaking
kkazan--
your images are all here now, as comments on (or points of departure from?) your poetry. What's missing, though, is an explication, so I've got a ton of questions for you, all centered around the query of what has 'changed' in the portrait of Isabel Archer, rendered poetically:
What were you aiming for, in turning Henry James's novel into poetic form? What does the genre shift get you? (What were you trying for, and what actually happened?) Why this particular form of poetry (center-aligned, with no punctuation, except the ambiguous, Emily-Dickinsonian dash?) What were you signaling, about content, in choosing that form? Are you using James's own words, pulling out some sort of concentrated essence? Or using your own, to try to articulate, in different -- and radically shortened! -- form, what he said @ such length? I'd like to ask you, too, the same question I asked both Penguins and MissArcher2: do you think that your experiment has the intention -- and the effect -- of clarifying or complexifying the novel?
I don't know if you noticed, during the first round of projects for this course, that MissArcher2 also wrote a "crown of sonnets" for Alice James, trying (she said) "to get into Alice’s head — to understand the point she was making in her writing, and to then delve deeper into the words to get a sense of what she might have been feeling when she wrote them" -- while also seeking "to convey Alice’s feelings without necessarily saying exactly what she was thinking," "a sort of mirror of her hypocritical tendencies." You seemed to chose a very different point of view in your experiment, describing Isabel from a third person omniscient perspective. Why? How much does that p.o.v. allow or hinder you from trying to say for Isabel what she didn't say in James's words?
I'm curious...and look forward to hearing more....
My Own Feelings
Here are my answers to your questions. I am afraid I did not find a way to put them together is a coherent way other than simply answering and then elaborating.
When I chose to write these poems, I was aiming at finding a simple, somewhat straightforward way of expressing the often-introverted feelings of Isabel. I felt that poetry allowed me to talk only about feelings and inter workings rather than prose which needs context that tends to draw the focus away from what was really important to me: emotions. I think that my attempt, with poetry was successful, I am not sure about the portraits. For me, they showed different personalities in a woman that fit with the way Isabel was feeling during a specific segment in the novel. The image came first, followed up by the poetry as a way to explain what I saw in the image. Looking back on it, I realize that others view images in very different ways, and even if the image conveyed something strongly to me, it may have conveyed something completely different to another. I hope that the poetry cleared up what I saw in the image, but there was no way for me to address what the reader saw in the image if it was indeed different than what I saw. I focused on expressions, which are often read differently for different people.
When it came to form of the poetry, I must say I didn’t put much thought into, expect that I chose a form that I felt was loose enough to allow me to discuss what I wanted to. Looking back, the commas could correlate to the gaps in the novel; representing the pause it took me to understand Isabel’s feelings, as they were never directly handed to me from James. I chose to use my own words, with which I tried to express what James said in a much shorter, and hopefully clearer form. I had the intent of clarifying the novel, in specific Isabel’s feelings which I felt were so vague yet intensely important. I feel that I did what I set out to do.
I think that I chose to write the poems in the perspective I did because I was trying to mirror the way in which the novel was written. I wasn’t trying to clarify Isabel’s emotions through Isabel because I feel that most of the time Isabel had no awareness of what she was feeling until the very end of the novel.
images
I am not sure why my images have not come out. I will try to have them up by Monday. Sorry to be late on that.