Waldrop “Alarms and Excursions” - Betsy

Thesis #9:

"A poem is primarily an explosion of language. This view is shared by
linguistics like Roman Jakobson and Paul Valery."

To define a theme can be very challenging, especially in non-fiction work because it can be the writers own personal thoughts on life and who’s to tell them they can’t think in a certain way. One can argue and say that their “theme on life” is better but ultimately, one has to decide for them selves what they want to believe. But in the case of Waldrop in “Alarms and Excursions” Thesis 9, I agree with Waldrop’s theme and excursions. She states that “A poem is primarily and explosion of language” which, in definition, makes sense because if it wasn’t an “explosion” then it would just be classified as just an essay or novel not entirely poetry. The word “explosion” really catches my eye and makes me think. When I think of explosions, I think of big catastrophic events with objects flying everywhere and complete chaos. So when Waldrop refers to poetry as “an explosion of language” I immediately think of chaos on paper or just a jumble of words that somehow connects to the same point or topic. This is an aspect that I have liked in poetry before but not all the time. With poems that I really have to concentrate on to try and find out the meaning, I don’t enjoy because generally after reading it I still don’t know what the poem was suppose to be about. But if it has a predictable name, adjectives filling up the whole poem, and it seems like a jumble, I enjoy because I know what all the adjectives are suppose to relate to. Waldrop’s “explosion of language” also can be defined in “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott. The theme in that essay is that everybody, no matter who you are, you could be an author or a professional poet but everyone writes shitty first drafts. Lamott goes on to say that, “a first draft is a child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and let it romp all over the place”. This can be compared to an “explosion of language”, where it is just exploded or poured all over the paper and the writer formed verses and stanzas and called it a masterpiece. Waldrop goes on to say in her first excursion, “it also does not mean that there is no reference. It only means reference is secondary not foregrounded”. This is what I was referring to when I said that poems
without a sense of meaning or ones I cannot figure out the meaning to, I don’t enjoy. So what Waldrop is saying is that there is an explosion of language or words on the paper but they all connect to something. There isn’t just a random explosion of nonsense. If the writer is really passionate about he subject he/she is writing about, you should know the meaning of the poem. In conclusion, Waldrop’s “Alarms and
Excursions” Thesis 9 is defined as; poetry is chaos on paper that can all relate and connect to the same topic.