Modern Urban Life in Bissett Eliot and Blake Essay

unconventional poetic form and breaking the laws of spelling and grammar, Bill Bissett's "Ode to Frank Silvera" presents a multilayered, multifaceted critique of modern poetry and modern life. Ironically, "Ode to Frank Silvera" does reveal a strong commitment to the traditional goals of poetry: including the use of verse to achieve intellectual and emotional reactions in the reader. The reader can recognize the elements of traditional poetic structure including the use of repetition and parallelism, and deliberate homage paid to ee Cummings in the use of all lowercase letters. Bissett also manages to achieve a sort of meta-analysis of the English language, distilling words to their essential phonemes and presenting them with blatant errors in spelling. Doing this, Bissett also draws attention to the words he misspells, such as the ubiquitous "yu," which is pivotal in "Ode to Frank Silvera." The content of "Ode to Frank Silvera" echoes that of T.S. Eliot in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," as well as William Blake in "London." All three of these poems depict modern urban life and the confusion, alienation, and ambivalence it brings out in people.

Writing in second person, Bissett directly engages the reader in conversation. Using vernacular speech and misspellings underscores the deliberate attempt to bring poetry to the level of the vernacular. Not too far from the lofty diction used by Eliot and Blake, Bissett creates an urban atmosphere that has blurred distinctions between social hierarchies. Using parallelisms to begin the first lines of each stanza: "yu might think," "yu might say," and "yu might hope" creates a sort of drum beat that anchors the reader to the content of the poem. There are deliberate discrepancies in the ways Bissett chooses to misspell his words, as the poet could have spelled "might" phonetically as well, "mite." Yet the poet chooses to render some words like "yu" and "th" differently and leave other words as they are, signaling the contradictions inherent in modern urban life. Eliot and Blake likewise rely on second person singular to connect with the reader, as they refer to the "anxieties" that accompany the speaker through his daily journey (Bissett).

Some of the imagery that Bissett uses hearkens to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." For example, Bissett refers to the "yellow colord air," and Eliot repeatedly mentions the color yellow in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," as with "the yellow fog," and "the yellow smoke." The color yellow is presented as a pollutant: a color that mars the otherwise clear light of day or crispness of evening air. Yellow is the color of halogen street lamps and noxious fumes, not of healthy living in the outdoors, the opposite of urban life. Blake takes the motif of pollution even further, as in the "blackening Church." Each of these three poems decries urban life for being dirty, filthy, detracting from human purity. This is why Bissett contrasts the imagery of the city…