MatthewBraun

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone" by W.H. Auden (1936)

Matthew Braun
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bow round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
 * 5** Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
 * 10** My working week and my Sunday rest,

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; For nothing now can ever come to any good.
 * 15** Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

Way 1: First Impressions
Here, my first impression of this poem is confused. This poem is the story of someone who has lost someone that is very close to them, either a family member or a spouse. To me, the first impression is a spouse with the metaphors that are made. In lines 9-12, it really states the love that this person had and how significant this person was to them. The speaker also to me is stating that it is a woman. I come to this from line 6 stating "He Is Dead" (Auden line 6), leaving me to believe that her husband has died. Also, in that quote, he, is, and dead is capitalized this is not like any other part of the poem. Also, in line 16, "for nothing now can ever come to any good" (Auden 16), states that right now, there is nothing good out of this and that he is going to a better place is not a reason to believe that this at all can be looked at as a good thing. This woman has lost her better half, and now will never be the same and is hurt a lot by this.

Way 2: Engaging with the Text
This poem is broken down into four stanzas. Also, the poem has a rhythm of AA, BB, CC, DD, and so on. This to me doesn't give me more insight to the poem itself right now, just the rhythm. This poem also paints a very vivid picture with how descriptive the words are. It is very easy to close your eyes and picture the entire poem happening right in front of you. Also, the poem almost doesn't reflect death, but almost the death of love. This woman doesn't see that her husband has died, but her love has died. Also, like I said in Way 1, in line 6, he, is, and dead is all capitalized, and nothing in the poem is like that. Here, it is making the significance that He, her husband, had died, and is the key quote here in the poem for me at this point.

Side note, poem was in the movie [|Four Weddings and a Funeral]

Way 3: A Point about Form and Its Relationship to Content
The poem is broken down into four stanzas in the AA, BB, CC, DD rhythm. The [|first stanza] tells the reader that someone has died, and that everyone has stopped what they are doing when they find this news. The [|second stanza] goes into the detail of the public being told that he has died and everyone has stopped to mourn the death. The [|third stanza] shows the importance of person who has died to the speaker. The words that are used in the text show the description and importance of this. The [|final stanza] show that nothing will ever come good of this death and that the woman, also the speaker, has lost the will to live. This way really tells a story of what is going on, and how the process happens when someone dies. It is a normal format of a story, beginning to end, but this way really shows that death is normal, and a part of life.

Way 3: Another Point about Form and Its Relationship to Content
This poem in the rhyme scheme AA, BB, CC, DD is a couplet. A couplet is in the form of two lines, a couple, that rhyme in the end. The way you can see this, and the significance I see this is a pair, or a couple. A woman here lost her loved one, the person that made them a pair. Writing in this format also shows the significance that the significant other was to the speaker. They were a pair, and without the other, they were not. Here, if the lines don't rhyme and follow the scheme, it isn't a couplet, they are not a pair. So, with this rhyme scheme, it shows how important the two people were to each other, just like how the lines follow each other in rhythm.

Way 4: Unpacking an Instance of Figurative Language
In this poem, the symbol that keeps coming to mind when breaking this down is darkness. It is evident that the writer has gone for a sad, gloomy feeling when reading this, and some of the words that are used make it stand out even more. In the first stanza, "[|bring out the coffin]" (Auden 4) brings a very sad thought to mind. Visualizing a coffin means death, a funeral, and burial. Something that is hard for anyone to go through. Going to the second stanza, "[|... black cotton gloves]" (Auden 8) has a different view. You always see cops and troopers have white cotton gloves, but here the black represents the darkness and representation of death. In the third stanza, "[|my midnight]" (Auden 11) represents the gloom and darkness of what has come over the person who has lost their loved one. Midnight brings to mind a pitch black darkness that has no light at all. Right after that, in the fourth stanza, "[|the stars are not wanted now]" (Auden13). Before, if there was midnight and night has fallen, stars will light up the sky and shed some light on the world. Here, stars are not wanted because she wants the gloom to represent how dark and ominous it has gotten now that her loved one has passed. Every stanza represents the darkness that has blinded the woman to anything going on, and the thought of it every getting bright out is hard to believe with such a painful loss.

Way 5: Analyzing the Setting
In this poem, there really is not a setting, but at the same time this makes the story that much more interesting. The setting is not a certain place or area, it is all around us. When someone dies, it hits everyone a different way, and here the whole world is shattered in this woman's world. The lady who has lost her love is right now in a dark and cold place. Her world has turned upside down, and has no meaning anymore. So, the setting you can look at is the world that the woman sees, the world that the woman lives in. It has turned into a life without darkness, no light is wanted in. Also, everything else around her has gone dim and dark, she sees the world in a different way now, and everything is affected by this death. Since there is no certain setting on the surface, the world that we don't see has not changed, but this woman's world and everything around her resembles death and darkness.

Way 6: Identifying and Analyzing Point of View
This poem is written in first person point of view. If you are not sure, you are sure about the point of view when you see line 12. "...I was wrong" (Auden 12). This is such a major point of the poem. With a first person point of view, we are seeing her view and her side of the story. We are not hearing someone else's view, just hers. This is so significant because that makes the story so heart felt and dramatic. We see that the lady is so hurt by the death of the man, and if given from a third person's view, we might not see how much the death of this man has impacted her so much. Because of the death, she has no meaning of life, no reason to see the good out of any of this; she is hurt so bad that she has lost a part of her. If anyone else tried to show her emotions by their views, they would fall short of what the true feelings she has. First person gives us that experience to see her view, a very sad view.

Way 7: Analyzing Complexity, Ambiguity, & Difficulty
When looking at this poem, you can see the ambiguity of death throughout. Death can have more than one meaning and way to look at it. With that, death can be the departure from life. We see that and can understand that this has happened with the woman's love. Also, death can be a time with when something ends. A couple things have happened here, the death of the man, and the death of an end of a love and life that the woman has had. I don't think this makes the poem difficult, but it opens up more so we can see this. It gets a little complex with thinking this, but makes the poem much more intriguing and rich in dialogue. Reading this with knowing that the man has died, and his life has ended, but even more with death, is that the woman's life and the love that she knows have come to an end. She no longer wants light, no longer has that meaning to go on, the life she has known so well has died.

__Horizontal Thinking: Connecting the Text to Wider Contexts__
==  Way 8: Considering Canonicity    == In this poem, I think it can be put into the category of canonicity. This poem is a very powerful and emotional poem. It is a hard stretch to put it into the category of canon, but I think it is possible with the relevance and meaning behind it. This poem shows how death of one person can change the life of someone else so much. Many young people that haven't fallen in love yet, or seen love, might not understand how much losing someone might be. This poem shows the hurt and pain that this lady is going through, and that the loss of her lover makes life not worth going on. Death is a part of all our lives, whether it is a parent, friend, family member, pet, and everything else. We will all have to deal with death at some point or another, and it might be a spouse, or someone that might be as close to them as this poem shows. This poem really shows a part of life that we all have to deal with, but doesn't show a specific time or era to represent that. This is why one may see it as a category of canon because death is always present no matter what era, but also one may disagree because it doesn't show a specific time.

Way 9: Biographical Context
W.H. Auden was known very much for his poetry in political and moral problems. Death is a moral problem that everyone faces, and he attacked it head on with this poem. The central themes for his poems as well are love, religion, and relationships between human beings. That summary of his past and the themes of his poems are present in this poem. Auden grew up and went to school in a parish church and learned about the importance of death. Also, Auden served as a choirboy for the church growing up (Notable Biographies). Right there, his past and being involved in the church, he saw that death was a part of live and a significant right of passage in the church. Seeing this, and being a choirboy, I am sure he saw his fair share of wives and family deal with losing a loved one, and how it affected their entire life at that moment.

Way 10: Historical and Cultural Contexts
When reading this poem, and having no idea the background of the poem, you just think about it on the surface. After doing some research, this poem has so much history behind it. "Stop all the clocks," exists in two very different versions: the original version in five stanzas and the version in four stanzas from 1938 that became famous when it was recited in the film __Four Weddings and a Funeral"__ (Wikipedia). I would have never known this if I didn't take the time to research this. The original poem was a five stanza written for the mourning of a political leader in the play. After that, Auden changed this poem to be sung by soprano singer Hedli Anderson. Also, the original title was "Funeral Blues". "Both the original and the version share the first and second stanzas, but the endings are entirely different" (Wikipedia). With knowing this, you see that the poem has evolved not for a love that Auden has maybe gone through, but for the purpose of a soprano singer to really bring out the emotions and strength into a play format. With knowing this, and finding out more information on the purpose and reason the play was written, you get a whole new way to look at it and understand the significance of it.

Way 11: Theoretical Application
The first way when reading this poem and looking for a theoretical criticism, the first thing that comes to mind is Reader-Response Criticism. This critical approach to this poem is that the reader’s response is sadness and heart broken for this woman who has lost their loved one. With exploring more about this poem and the history behind it, I can see that a reader can see that this might not be a woman who lost a loved one. "Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead" (Auden 6) brings up the question, who is He? Also, why is "He" (Auden 6) capitalized? A reader can see this and bring up a response to who He is, and what is their theory behind it. Is it Jesus, who has died for our sins? Is it a political icon like the original poem was written for? A response with in the first three stanzas can be open to many things, but one thing is for sure, a reader must see that someone has died that has a significant importance in ones life. "Reader-response criticism encompasses various approaches to literature that explore and seek to explain the diversity (and often divergence) of readers' responses to literary works" (Bedford St. Martin's). This first line on Bedford St. Martin's website definition of Reader-Response Criticism shows that every poem is going to have a different reader response based on their background, and how they might see it. This is no different. They initial way I read it; it was a woman's husband that has died. Maybe somebody else who has never experienced love or know it, might see it different, such as Jesus or a politician?

Way 12: Another Theoretical Application
Another way to see the literature is in a Deconstructionist Criticism. When reading this poem and seeing the AA, BB, CC, DD rhythm, you see a repetition that is military like. Very structured and disciplined, with sticking to the flow and rhyme scheme. When thinking of this, this does not relate to the poem's point at all. When someone has died or someone has passed away, this leaves a person that was very close with a loss of structure, especially in this situation. This person that is telling the poem has had their life crushed and now does not know where to go from here. This leaves me to believe that nothing seems right, nor nothing is going as planned. The structure of her life has changed dramatically. There is no plan, you cannot plan for death. The flow and structure doesn't match the situation going on at all. If to match it, I would see a jumble of rhyme scheme, something very abstract to show how this person's life has been thrown into the wind and tossed around with the pieces left to be found and picked up. "Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun" (Auden14) shows me that there is no time to rhyme or be correct with a scheme now, just throw it together and move on. "...deconstructionists believe that readings and interpretations of texts may be more interesting when they focus on meanings implicit in a text that were not necessarily intended by the author" (Brown and Yarbrough 224). Brown and Yarbrough show that it is great to see something in the text that the author probably didn’t intend for a reader to find and talk about, to me, this theory of looking at how the rhyme scheme doesn’t match up with the story is that. Maybe Auden did know this and take that into consideration, maybe he didn’t. The way I look at it, it is something that wasn’t something that shows or adds to the story, but takes away.

Way 13: Unifying Interpretation
After spending a lot of time and research in digging deeper into this poem, my overall view has not changed, but enhanced it. Looking back at my first reaction, it hasn’t changed at all. I still view this poem as a very heart breaking and emotional text that expresses how the loss of a loved one can completely change ones’ life. With completing this project, I now see the intentions of the poem, the history of it, and how significant it is.

The history of the poem showed me that this is not the original poem. The original poem was written for a play, and the last two stanzas were changed for the current poem to be sung. As well, W.H. Auden’s biography shows that he has experienced death in a religious sense of growing up in a church and being a choirboy. Knowing the history of him and the poem showed me where and why the poem was written.

When finishing up the poem and looking at it as a whole in a wider views, I see this poem written that affects everyone at some point in life. We are all going to lose a loved one someday, and this poem just shows us that we are not alone. As well, a loved one can be anything. As I saw it, we can interpret He in the poem to many different people. It could be Jesus, a wife/husband, a political figure, and so much more. With this project, I think Auden wrote this poem for everyone, and not just a particular crowd. He wrote this because everyone will go through this, and this shows the significance of that grieving process.

More importantly, doing all 13 steps has shown me all the different ways to explore a text to dig into that 7/8 of the text. We may be able to break a text down by just reading it the first time, but doing these steps and doing research has shown me that each characteristic of the text whether it would be a biography, setting, point of view, rhythm, or history is going to show us more about the poem and where its origins come from.