Lab Activity: Poststructuralism, Poems, and Gen AI: Deconstructive Reading
This blog is inspired by a thought-provoking critical activity assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad, whose guidance encouraged a deeper exploration of poetic language and deconstructive reading. Click Here
Poem: 1 Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 - “Shall I Compare Thee…”
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 starts with the famous line, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” It sounds like a simple love poem at first, where the speaker is saying that the person he loves is better than a summer day. But when we look closer, we see that the poem is more complicated. Shakespeare says that summer is not perfect, there are strong winds, the sun can be too hot, and summer doesn’t last long. So even though he praises the beloved, he also shows that both summer and people change and fade with time. Then, the poem shifts focus. The speaker says that the person will live forever in the poem itself through the “eternal lines” he has written. This means it’s not just the beloved’s beauty that will last, but the poem that keeps their memory alive.
This idea makes us think is that the beloved really immortal, or is it the poem that gives that feeling of immortality? The speaker seems to have the power not just to praise, but to give life through his words. The poem, then is not just about love or beauty but about the power of writing to fight against time. Nature changes, people grow old, but a poem can last. Shakespeare uses the image of summer and the changing seasons to show how life is temporary. But he also shows that art like this poem can make something last forever. So Sonnet 18 is not just a sweet love poem, it’s also a deep message about how poetry can hold on to the things we love even when time tries to take them away.
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
When I read Ezra Pound’s poem “In a Station of the Metro”, I might feel that the faces and petals he describes are more than just words they feel real to me, as if I can actually see them in my mind. And yes, in one sense that’s true. But the poem does something deeper. It takes these images faces in a crowd and petals on a branch and pulls them out of the noise and chaos of the real world. In reality, crowds and petals would be surrounded by many other sights and sounds. But in the poem, they are isolated and made clear. This lets me focus on their shared qualities, like how both are delicate, small, and fleeting. The poem makes me feel these emotions by setting up differences between large crowds and tiny faces, dark branches and soft, pale petals, strong and fragile things.
One powerful effect comes from the word “apparition”—it gives a ghost-like, haunting feeling to the image, making the faces seem not fully real, but like a vision or a memory. This ghostly feeling is enhanced by how the poem is laid out on the page, with only two short lines, and how the sounds of the words play off each other—like “crowd” and “bough,” or “petals” and “wet.” The rhythm of the poem also plays a role: the second line feels heavier and more serious than the first. Julia Kristeva, a literary thinker, says that poems often communicate meaning not just through words, but through sounds and patterns that come from deep emotions—like the sounds a baby makes before learning to speak. This kind of meaning, which she calls “the semiotic,” touches something emotional and instinctive in me, beyond logic or reason. In poetry, this rhythm and music can give me deep feelings even before we understand the words.
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
At first, The Red Wheelbarrow seems like a very simple and clear poem. It describes ordinary things “a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain, water and beside the white chickens” and it even starts by saying that “so much depends upon” them. That makes me feel like the poem is just asking me to notice the beauty of everyday objects. The colors are strong and clear red and white, shiny with rain and it feels like the poem is showing me something real, maybe something I’d see in a quiet farmyard. It sounds honest and grounded in real life.
But when I take a closer look, I start to see something else. The colors are so clean and perfect, and the poem doesn’t mention anything messy or muddy, which is what a real farm is usually like. There are no shadows, no noise just bright colors and simple shapes. That makes me think of a children’s picture book or a toy set, not an actual farm. Maybe this poem isn’t about real things at all. Maybe “so much depends” on my ability to imagine a peaceful, innocent world something pure and childlike that I’ve lost or forgotten. The rhythm of the poem is also very calm and regular, like a gentle song or something I’d hear in early childhood. So instead of describing something I can find outside in the world, the poem might be creating a feeling inside me.
When I read it this way, the wheelbarrow isn’t just a farm tool it becomes a symbol of memory, imagination, and emotion. It doesn’t come from the real world but from the way I respond to the language. It shows me how even the simplest words can open up deep thoughts and feelings. This small poem might be helping me connect with something I can’t quite name something quiet, gentle, and deeply human.
Poem:4 Dylan Thomas’s Poem ‘A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London’
In deconstructive reading, there are three main steps to digging deeper into a poem: the verbal stage, the textual stage, and the linguistic stage. The verbal stage is where I look very closely at the exact words in the poem to find contradictions or strange turns of meaning. For example, the last line of Thomas’s poem says, “After the first death, there is no other.” That sounds final, but if you think about it, calling something the “first” death suggests that there could be a second or third death. This kind of contradiction shows how language can be unclear or unreliable it seems to say one thing but suggests another. I also notice this when words like “never” and “until” are used together, which creates confusion: if something will “never” happen “until” something else, then when exactly does it happen? These contradictions are not mistakes they reveal how language doesn’t always work the way we expect. Deconstruction shows that meanings are often unstable, and even simple words can carry conflicting messages.
The textual stage looks at the poem as a whole, not just at single lines. Here, I pay attention to the way the poem shifts its tone, its perspective, or its focus. In Thomas’s poem, the first two stanzas feel like they’re describing huge, timeless things like the end of the world, the darkness that existed before life, and nature itself. But suddenly, in the third stanza, the poem zooms in on the death of one child in the present moment. Then the final stanza zooms out again, showing the River Thames flowing through London’s long history. These changes in time and focus show that the poem doesn’t follow one clear path. It moves around in confusing ways and doesn’t offer a solid context to help me clearly understand the child’s death. This lack of a clear, steady viewpoint makes it harder for me to pin down what the poem is really trying to say. And sometimes, it’s what the poem doesn’t say what it leaves out that matters too. For example, the speaker says he refuses to mourn the child’s death, but doesn’t really explain why or whether he actually follows through on that refusal.
Finally, the linguistic stage deals with how the poem talks about language itself. This is where I ask: is the poem aware that words can fail? And does it still rely on words anyway? In Thomas’s poem, this question is very important. Right at the start, the speaker says he refuses to mourn, but the entire poem ends up sounding like an act of mourning. In one part, he says he won’t “murder / the mankind of her going with a grave truth,” which means he refuses to describe the child’s death in typical or dramatic language. But after saying that, he still uses poetic and powerful images like calling the dead girl “London’s daughter” and saying she is “robed” with the dead of all the ages. These are the same kind of dramatic words he said he wanted to avoid. So even though the speaker is trying to escape the usual ways of speaking about death, he ends up using them anyway. It’s like he knows language can’t fully express this moment but he still tries, and falls into the same patterns he was trying to resist. This shows how language can trap even the poet who’s trying to break free from it.
References:
Barad, Dilip. “Deconstructive Analysis of Ezra Pound's 'In a Station of the Metro' and William Carlos Williams's 'The Red Wheelbarrow.'” Research Gate, 03 July 2024, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381943844_Deconstructive_Analysis_of_Ezra_Pound's_'In_a_Station_of_the_Metro'_and_William_Carlos_Williams's_'The_Red_Wheelbarrow'. Accessed 03 July 2024.
Barad, D. (2023, July 23). How to Deconstruct a Text. Bhavngar, Gujarat, India: DoEMKBU YouTube Channel. Retrieved 7 3, 2024, from https://youtu.be/JDWDIEpgMGI?si=WnmtixfH9lFYj-bJ
Belsey, C. (2002). Poststructuralism (First Indian Edition 2006 ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Pound, E. (1913, April). In a Station of a Metro. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Retrieved 7 3, 2024, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12675/in-astation-of-the-metro
Williams, W. C. (1938). The Red Wheelbarrow. In C. MacGowan (Ed.), The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I, 1909-1939. New Directions Publishing Corporation. Retrieved 7 3, 2024, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45502/the-red-wheelbarrow
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