Themes discussed in the workshop include:
what's tragic | pronouns | pronouns
continued | the poet explains the poem and
the pronouns
(Further references to the discussion are in Duncan's
comments.)
Kim: I'm not really taken with your long-legged-ly–exhausted-ly form. [ALL LAUGH]
Elizabeth: What's the story, what's the story?
Hugh : I'm trying to think, is it A View form the Bridge, what's Rodolpho in?
Leona: It is a play? Isn't it A View from the Bridge ?
Elizabeth: Oooooh yes of course it's a play.
Cahal: 'Just a crazy man whose dare/ to break the law got grassed and anyhow/ his brother knifed the grasser.' Isn't there something going back before that: who is doing what, if someone is sitting there …
Hugh: No, no, no. The teacher's working on an essay with a student.
Cahal: 'my correcting pace'… Do you mean he's writing, and you are stopping him to tell him he's wrong, or spell the word?
Elizabeth: [TO CAHAL] Why is it a boy? I assumed it was a girl, I assumed that Tiffany was her friend.
Kim: I'm a little worried about the tone of voice of the narrator. It sounds as though the "I" whom I assume is the teacher is being superior to the student.
Elizabeth: Mmm, mmm
Cahal: But the pupil is delighted that things are going well, and that the teacher is able to spell properly.
Chris: Yes.
Elizabeth: So that he/she is going to get out quicker in return and play.
Cahal: Yeah 'in local pitch' which is a bit dodgy, I suppose. … 'when, home, she drops' exhaustingly, 'Oversea' is an interesting word isn't it, meaning 'overseas?'
Elizabeth: It is an interesting word that, fairly unprecedented, yeah.
Cahal: To 'oversee.'
Kim: Or perhaps English isn't the speaker's first language.
Leona: Surely no one in this coulntry would ever say 'oversea'?
Hugh: Ever, ever, ever!
Elizabeth: [LAUGHING] Lets work on through the story.
Chris: She is para-phrasing the text. So Rodolpho is the main character in the text.
Leona: If it is the Miller play, she's gotten the plot down pat anyway.
Chris: Yes.
Chris: The thing is we are aiming here for the correct English, she is …
Elizabeth: I think it's interesting, I don't know. There is also a question of whether the homework or which exercise is ever being done. Is the same thing as being watched and which one … is in.
Cahal: 'Forgetting these letters ... from oversea.'
Sudeep: Yes, quite interesting.
Cahal: Is it a text with letters in? Is it a 'Dracula' or is it a text based on a series of national words, it doesn't really matter very much.
Leona: I don't know about here, but where I come from the classic question that you always discuss in school about Miller's plays is 'are they tragedy?' Then you talk about the nature of tragedy, and the fact that there are Greek tragedies, but can there be modern tragedies?
Elizabeth: [TO HUGH] Is it part of the National Curriculum?
Hugh: I wouldn't know.
Cahal: My daughter, Ruth, did it a couple of years ago.
Hugh: A couple of years ago, it was studied as a GCSE set book.
Elizabeth: "It makes no difference." ....
Cahal: But "what's tragic is what you wear" is quite good in a way.
[GENERAL MURMURS OF AGREEMENT]
Elizabeth: Is Monroe in the film of it?
Kim: No.
Elizabeth: She is in the film of other Arthur Miller plays.
Cahal: No, but she had a relationship with Arthur Miller.
Hugh: They were married.
Leona: [LAUGHING] You could say that's a relationship.
Elizabeth: If there is this film being watched and Monroe is in it, in the poem then …
Cahal: No.
Elizabeth: Well what are you watching, if it's not a film?
Cahal: You watch whatever is on, watching is an activity that is the alternative to studying and reading and thinking about plays: watch East Enders or whatever it is, just that.
Elizabeth: OK.
Cahal: 'Watch' is passive
Hugh: The big swerve in the poem comes to tragedies, in the separate :..... 'makes no difference just who they are, these people of shiny paper.' meaning a published text, but 'your tragedy' ...
Leona: He's not talking about the student's tragedy. The student hasn't got a tragedy. The student doesn't conceive of a tragedy beyond not having the right clothes.
Hugh: The pupil sets one's tragedy in that context.
Leona: Exactly.
Cahal: The pupil says the teacher does not wear the right clothes, it's sad.
Hugh: '[MIMICKING CHILD'S TONE] You're sad, you're really sad.
Leona: OK, see, the student doesn't have a tragedy, her concept of tragedy is not having the right clothes.
Cahal: Yeah, sorry absolutely.
Leona: But the teacher has maybe some other ideas about tragedy: his own tragedy and Miller's tragedy and whether the real tragedy wasn't in the plays but in the life.
Cahal: So can we take that a bit at a time.'It makes no difference just who they are,' these fictional characters, 'You can meditate on Monroe' (as connected with Miller) 'as the real star' of a tragedy if you really want, 'truth never follows a plan.' 'Your tragedy is too separate, too far away for me to reach.' [[QUOTING ELTON JOHN'S SONG TO MARILYN MONROE] 'It seems to me that you have lived your life like a candle in the wind.'
Kim: [JOKING] Let me write that down! That's sheer poetry!
Cahal: The kids can think about Monroe, they can think about watching TV, they can think about what's trendy and clothes but 'your tragedy is too separate too far away for me to reach.' To be this man means searching though you 'find a gold bar,' and 'finding means leaving the door ajar.'
Elizabeth: Finding something obviously valuable or whatever is not the thing that you're looking for, you're looking for, beyond a gold bar or whatever.
Cahal: Is the gold bar Monroe or is the gold bar writing a good play?
Kim: It's knowledge. I think that the tragedy is the students' tragedy.
Leona: Yes. In the first stanza 'you' is the student....
Kim: And in the second stanza 'you' is the student and in the third stanza 'you' is the student.
Cahal: Well the 'you' in the second line of the third stanza could be 'us 'of course.
Hugh: In that sentence the 'you' is clearly not the kid .... In that sentence 'you can meditate on Monroe.' 'Meditate on Monroe' is nothing to do with the kid who's sitting there.
Cahal: [AGREEING] They don't even know who Monroe was connected with.
Hugh: No. If your tragedy is not the 'you' of the kid then it is problematic in terms of the construction of the poem, but I'd tend to go with Cahal. You see, because then we'll come to 'this man' which is a strange locution except it's a very Milleresque locution.
Cahal: This man? "This man", yeah.
Hugh: Yeah.
Cahal: I wonder if Rodolpho has found the gold bar.
Chris: I don't know the story.
Cahal: He's an immigrant isn't he, if he's the one I'm thinking of?
Leona: He is, yes, he's an illegal immigrant.
Hugh: So he's illegal.
Cahal: But would he be somebody that we see as searching? It's years since I've seen this so I don't have a strong image of anything other than problematic, slightly dangerous, rowdy, not rowdy but dangerous. Hidden in there isn't he? He's hiding in their house. He has a relationship with a daughter.
Hugh: [AGREEING] Beatrice.
Cahal: But to be this man means certainly you'd find the gold bar if finding means leaving the door ajar.
Leona: I'm not sure that the 'you' is properly controlled here. Because no matter how hard I look at it, I don't know who barely knows the text. I'm not sure that , in fact, it is the student. The student has a sufficient grasp on it for her purposes, at the level at which the teacher might want her to know the play.
Hugh: Certainly when I read it first time 'you barely know the text' is the teacher ... 'and wouldn't care / in any case if you were challenged now.' You know, it's not that important for the teacher who is just correcting the mechanics of the student's writing.
Cahal: Right ...
Chris: So the poet is addressing Miller?
Hugh: Yeah, at that point, that's the way it reads most naturally to me.
Cahal: But isn't there a problem ... in the answer to the challenge?
Leona: I just think the second 'you' is also the teacher.
Cahal: What's his relationhip to Tiffany?
Hugh: 'You're dreaming of the things that Tiffany/ will natter on about tonight' ...
Cahal: Not many teachers are married to women named Tiffany.
Leona: Or have a child called Tiffany? No, I suppose not, not in this country.
Elizabeth: He's run off with one of his sixth-formers!!!
Leona: [SHARING THE JOKE] I think we're finally on the right line here!!!
Cahal: But just taking the point about the middle section, 'you barely know the text' which could be the teacher addressing oneself. One barely knows the text and wouldn't care in any case if one was challenged now, but the answer that comes is the pupil. – "innit Sir."
Elizabeth: But no, no, that could be the challenge, "innit Sir." That could be a challenge ....
Cahal: ... OK, good, good.
Hugh: So it's not tragedy. It's fair.
Cahal: Yeah.
Hugh: It's not tragedy, 'tragic's what you wear.'
[GENERAL LAUGHTER]
Cahal: I think we're not too uncomfortable with the first two stanzas as setting the scene reasonably clearly (and exhaustibly even) and the question then is what do we do with it. This is a teacher dealing with a complex, contemporary text with a student. The teacher hardly knows the text, the student's got it sussed anyway and has a whole attitude, and the first two lines of the last section were 'It makes no difference just who they are, ' well that's a ... if ever I heard one, these people of shiny paper or on shiny paper ...
Elizabeth: Yes I think that's quite a bad line, 'It makes no difference just who they are' the 'just' has been put in just to stretch it out It slightly messes up the metre.
Hugh: It's a totally regular poem isn't it?
Kim: Yeah.
Cahal: From there on we've got the standing and then we've got the comment and the comment is addressed to a 'you'. You can meditate with Monroe ... That could be you lot, us here, ...
Elizabeth: And then we've got this other 'you' which presumably can't be the same.
Cahal: Unless the 'you' who can meditate with Monroe is all of us, then to be saying what our tragedy is ...
Leona: I thought the Workshop didn't allow the 'you' that means all of us. [LAUGHING] I thought that was another rule.
Cahal: We'll put that in as 58b, then.[GENERAL LAUGHTER] Well ... But if the 'you' is one, can meditate with Monroe as long as one wants as it were, and the "your tragedy's too separate" is ...
Kim: I still think the tragedy is the illiterate child not wanting to know anything more than that synopsis.
Cahal: Her tragedy's too separate and too far away for me to reach, that is Elton John, I mean why does everybody want to save Marilyn Monroe from her fate?
Leona: What's wrong with you that you don't?
[GENERAL LAUGHTER]
Cahal: Yeah, OK, that could be a problem too.
Elizabeth: No it can't be the student.
Kim: Isn't the tragedy that this student is so limited and can only see such short term goals. If you're going to be Rodolpho, if you're going to be whatever Rodolpho is, it means that you have to search. Even though you've got that gold bar already, you've got to go on searching and if you want to find anything else you have to leave yourself open to other experiences. That's what this student isn't doing.
Elizabeth: That's exactly right, that's exactly right. "Your tragedy" is the child, yeah.
Cahal: Just do it again slowly. 'Your tragedy's too separate, too far away from you to reach.' Now to be this man ...
Kim: Rodolpho.
Cahal: To be somebody like Rodolpho.
Elizabeth: Whose dare, I mean 'dare' is a plus word isn't it? 'Whose dare' is 'to break the law.'
Cahal: Yeah. It means searching, though you've found a gold bar, though you've got what you want,
Elizabeth: Well, you've got 'What other men desire', you know.
Leona: Well, we've solved that just in time. That's the end. Time's up.
Poet (Duncan): OK, a brief sort of a recap. First of all things were long-legged before Yeats' Long-legged Fly, and I stand by that.
Kim: They shouldn't have been though.
Poet (Duncan): They were.
Elizabeth: There's nothing wrong with 'long-legged.' It's a nice word.
Kim: Not 'Long-leggedly, ' though.
Poet (Duncan): The only thing that was not caught was Tiffany and I don't understand why that is. It's Tiffany from East Enders.
Elizabeth: Oh it is East Enders.
Leona: Ah.
Poet (Duncan): That's the 'local pitch' you see. The student's an East Ender. Anyway that's basically what the reference was.
Elizabeth: I wouldn't know, I've never seen East Enders.
Leona: I saw it three times. We had to watch three episodes of it for my BA course.
Poet (Duncan): I'm the person who barely knows the text in these situations.
Elizabeth: So we were right when we got ... well we, whoever it was, it wasn't me ... yes.
Poet (Duncan): They're saying: Look I'm sorry, so and so's got dyslexia, can you please help her with her course-work, and then she arrives in the room. It could be anything, any subject.
Elizabeth: Right, you can spell but you don't know the text, yes.
Poet (Duncan): You barely know the text and wouldn't care really if you were challenged because, you know, it's last minute stuff, right.
Kim: I want a different sort of stanza to signal the shift in the voice. There's another thng I find a little worrying. Are there any references in the poem that suggest that this child is dyslexic?
Leona: All the teachers among us got that!
Poet (Duncan): There is actually, yes, and that's the student being long legged. You know, 'long-leggedly' is quite deliberate in that respect. If kids are big then you'd expect that there's going to be some reason as to why in fact at that stage they still can't spell. I agree, there wouldn't be many clues, but there is a clue definitely.
Cahal: I really don't think it's a problem though.
Leona: No, I don't think it's a problem.
Poet (Duncan): The 'you' in the second stanza therefore is me, OK. The 'you' in the third stanza is Miller. I'd sooner it was Aristotle than Miller but it's Miller. The reason why Monroe is there is because obviously Miller at that time actually was going out with Monroe. And Cathlyn, one of the characters in this play I barely know, is modelled on her.
Elizabeth: Oh right.
Poet (Duncan): 'To be this man' refers to Rudolfo. In other words to unclue this man, to understand. That's perfectly straightforward, OK.
Elizabeth: Well 'to be' is not the same thing as to interpret or understand a clue actually.
Leona: To get yourself under the skin of the character.
Poet (Duncan): [AGREEING] ... to be this person
Leona: First it's the student and then it's the teacher and then it's Miller.
Cahal: I don't think there's meant to be a change ... I think there's just a problem.
Poet (Duncan): OK. Maybe it's too opaque, I don't know.
Kim: The first two lines in the last stanza invite the reader to continue to see the student as 'you.'
Leona: I think the 'yous' are a problem, I think there's still a problem.
Elizabeth: Not insuperable.
Leona: I don't know why you can't have an 'I' at the beginning of that line. Because that's all you need to solve the problem. When I talk about 'you' in the first stanza I'm talking about the student. Then it's 'I'.
Poet (Duncan): It's just interesting to use the same word in a different context, that's all.
Elizabeth: It's not interesting actually.
Chris: It just leads to confusion.
Cahal: If it doesn't resolve itself fairly quickly ... Just go back to the last stanza now, the 'You can meditate with Monroe as the real star if you want' -- who's 'you'?
Poet (Duncan): That's Miller.
Cahal: Right, so Miller can think about Monroe if he wants.
Poet (Duncan): Miller can have his reality.
Cahal: OK. Miller's tragedy is too far away for me to reach.
Poet (Duncan): This tragedy, meaning his book.
Cahal: Now to be Miller means searching, though you've found a gold bar.
Hugh: To be Rodolpho.
Poet (Duncan): To be Rudolfo. And above all to be Rudolfo means ...
Cahal: But who wants to be Rodolpho? Miller? ... ?
Poet (Duncan): Anybody tries to understand a character in a play, tries to identify with that person, 'to be this man.'
Cahal: It's just slightly hard to avoid the fact that you're apostrophising Miller here.
Elizabeth: Yes, about his own character.
Cahal: Do you think the Miller in your tragedy is 'too far for me to reach' and then you say 'to be this man,' – Arthur Miller – if you were really to be a Rodolpho you would have had to do X.
Poet (Duncan): No, but I'm not saying this man is Miller, to me this man is Rudolfo. To be your man, to be your character. It's all sort of opaque, isn't it?
Cahal: No, but you'd still decided that you're addressing Miller. Your tragedy is M and then you say to be this man means Y. It still sounds like you're lecturing Miller.
Chris: [CHECKING THE TIME] We must draw to a close.
Kim: Mmm. Interesting experiment. It didn't quite work.
Hugh: I like the second stanza.
Kim: I like the second and the third actually. I think that's a lovely definition of tragedy.
Hugh: [AGREEING WITH KIM] Yeah 'What's tragic's what you wear' is great!