Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry” Part I
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art…” “Theory of Distraction”
Benjamin, “Paris — Capital of the Nineteenth Century”
Charles Baudelaire, “The Swan,” “To a Passerby,” “The Seven Old Men”
Virginia Woolf, “Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street”
Edgar Allan Poe. “Man of the Crowd”
Nikolai Gogol, “Nevsky Prospekt”
Edgar Allan Poe, “Tell-Tale Heart”
Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons, “Objects”
T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Andre Breton, “Manifesto of Surrealism”
The poem “itchy” by David Yezzi is a curious set of stanzas. The poem presents a cringing description of the distressed old man we all emulate in our distraught hours. The work shows what it’s like to be in the state of squirming disruption, leading to uneasy desperately desired satisfaction.
I found David’s last stanza to be the most curious. He goes on to present the analogy go the desperately thirsty man opening a seemingly full bottle of water, old to find sand. David accuses the undying thirst to lead the man to gulp it down anyways as we all would do. As I pondered over the obvious thought of “why would I ever desperately gulp sand to satisfy my thirst?”, I then delved deeper. This has to mean something more. Of course, the thirst can be described as a craving for any form of consumption. The humans craving to even partially satisfy the need for even just a taste on the tongue leads them to making off decisions, not lead to fully satisfy the particular craving. The concept of chugging sand is not only brutal in it’s tone but it is not nutritious. Neither is unnecessary consumer behaviors. The excess of materials, and indulgences we engage in as imperfect humans to condense an immediate craving, most definitely lead to dissatisfied souls. What a shame the poem describes about humanity. What a shame.