Yair Gritzman Week 6 - "Age Appropriate", by Philip Schultz
Yair Gritzman Week 6 - “Age Appropriate”, by Philip Schultz
In “Age Appropriate”, Philip Schultz discusses society’s change in what is deemed age appropriate. He begins by noting that his wife occasionally points out when their children do something that is inappropriate. Recalling these events gets him thinking about his own life decisions and whether or not his actions are appropriate. He wonders “why he still shout[s] at ballpark players and argue[s] with the dead,” meaning that he engages in inappropriate actions himself as a grown man. After that, he describes a situation where his son threw a wild pitch and “turn[ed his] left ankle into an eggplant,” causing him to become severely injured. He recalls that he did not curse at people who offered him poor advice or argue with the insurance companies. I think he mentions these events to show how he has become familiar with what is socially acceptable behavior and follows suit. Getting hit by a baseball seems to be the catalyst for his reflections on age appropriateness in modern society.
Schultz then discusses that what was socially acceptable in the past is different from what is acceptable today. He mentions that Blaise Monluc, a French lieutenant from the 1500s, murdered hundreds of people and was known for saying “‘when the scaffolds are full, use the trees’”, which emphasizes how many people Monluc killed. I think Schultz chose to use this quote to show how what was commonly done a few hundred years ago is now deemed to be completely unacceptable behavior. I am still confused about Schultz’s purpose for adding this tid-bit of history into his poem, but I am assuming it is to give the reader context about the drastic change in social norms over time.
Schultz closes the poem by mentioning that he occasionally avoids greeting his friends by running into lobbies. He then connects his actions with Monluc and the gallows, saying that sometimes he wants to walk into an area crowded with people on scaffolds (gallows). While I am still unsure of how avoiding people connects to age appropriateness, I think that he mentions this to show how far our society has come from its origins. It is now acceptable to avoid interacting with other people, something that may not have been so common in the past.
In conclusion, this poem was very difficult for me to understand. I am still unsure of how the title, “Age Appropriate”, connects to the rest of the content of the poem, especially the ending. The poem seems to be all over the place: Schultz gets hit by a baseball, reads ancient French philosophy, and then discusses why he avoids encountering his friends in the city. I have no idea how he was able to connect these three events together into one poem and idea. I wonder what was going through his mind while writing the poem.
Did you understand the poem? What do you think about the changes in cultural norms over time? Do you understand the connection between the various frames described by Schultz? If so, I could use some help.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56321/age-appropriate
Hi Yair. I agree this poem is hard to understand and decipher and is kind of all over the place. I think poems like this are important because everyone can interpret them differently and can mean different things to different people. I think everything in society changes over time. Cultural norms are only considered normal for a certain amount of time before changing to something else. This goes for something like beauty standards as well. What is considered "perfect" now would be completely different from what it would be 10 years ago. As for understanding the connection, no I do not. It seems Schultz is a bit out there with his poems.
ReplyDeleteHey Yair!
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree that the poem was very hard to understand. I thought you had a great interpretation of what the main message was about cultural norms. I think there are many cultural norms that have been altered over a great deal of time and also more recently. For example, on a border scale, society as a whole has become less barbaric than a few hundred years ago when imperialism and war were much more active. Additionally, in the short term, norms about gender roles and identity seem to change quite a bit on a constant basis. Finally, I also could not grasp the connection between the various frames described by Schultz.
Hi Yair. I think that it is interesting to look at the cultural changes over time because we could see that people from 100 years ago behaved very different than we do today, but even though that is true, there are still a lot of similarities.
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