Précis
Unlike the other projects in this portfolio, which resulted from more creative assignment descriptions, “The Many Faces of Evil” is the product of an academic essay assignment. The assignment requirements were to write a five-page research paper answering the question, “What is evil?” with a minimum of five sources. During that academic quarter, I planned a trip to Madrid, Spain, where I would visit the Prado Museum containing famous artwork depicting Biblical stories. As the essay was for a Douglas Honors College course titled “Satan and Society,” in which we read both religious and secular texts discussing good and evil, I was interested in incorporating aspects of the Prado artwork in my assignment. In addition, I thought poetry would be the ideal form. First, I would be attending a poetry festival while in Madrid, and I decided that an interdisciplinary assignment would work well in a creative form, allowing me concentrate on imagery. With the help of my mentor, both a professor and a poet, I asked the professor if I could write a series of poems instead of an essay, and I laid out a general plan. He approved the idea, and, while the poems could improve in terms of technique and craft, this became one of the most innovative, interdisciplinary, and challenging projects I completed during my undergraduate studies.
While my five poems are much shorter than five pages of essay writing, I still faced an academic challenge in that I needed to refer to sources in more implicit ways. Rather than frequently integrating direct quotes into the poems, as I likely would in an essay, I decided to incorporate course texts and outside texts through mainly through allusion. For example, I mention “the Forbidden Fruit” in the first poem, “I. Spectrum and Strings,” which refers to the multiple descriptions we read of Even in class, including Paradise Lost by John Milton. Many of the poems are also ekphrastic, including “III. Poem After Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights Triptych.” In this poem, I describe my perspective of the painting (see featured image above) which I viewed in the Prado. Therefore, I use ekphrastic responses to Prado paintings and allusions to Paradise Lost, The Bible, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Animal Farm, all of which I utilize to define evil. My response to and comparison of canonical texts demonstrate how evidence can be discussed in a poem, though the discussion may look visually different than in an essay.
While poems do not contain an explicit introduction, body, and conclusion like essays do, I still draw a conclusion, emphasized in the last poem which states that evil requires its antithesis—the concept of “good”—to exist. This demonstrates how poems can still contain an argument and a conclusion, though they may not be as clearly structured. Through literary analysis and imagery, the poems not only ask what evil means but also discuss difficult questions like human nature, who deserves forgiveness, and who determines what is considered evil. I do not necessarily determine a concrete answer in the poems, but, instead, I use my sources to suggest that every person has the potential of evil due to the nature of humanity; moreover, poems can still be analytical, argumentative, and research-based.
Poems from “The Many Faces of Evil”
I. Spectrums and Strings
How much does forgiveness cost?
My old pastor always said
grace is for everyone, but what about
thieves? Rapists? Murderers? He told me
all sin is equal. Some animals are more equal
than others. I like to think everyone
wants to be good before they learn
about thirst and hunger to become
something more than what they are,
and what are we
without environment? The hand
that steals once had something
stolen. Everything in this world
is a spectrum: truth, electromagnetism,
evil. Who decides where a person falls?
Some say God.
Some play God. Let any one of you
who is without sin be the first
to throw a stone.
The Forbidden Fruit was not always
an apple, reminding me how much is lost
in translation. Today, mouths move fast
as a flood. Humans want to be
puppet masters, to snatch up
the strings, but sin and salvation loom over
our wooden bodies. We all have strings.
II. Poem Where I’m the Mother in Sagunto
I have just killed my son.
The dagger pierced the skin
easier than cutting an apple
in half. He now lies
like a rag doll draped
over my body, while people stare
in horror. They want to stare,
and look away at the same time.
I don’t think they care
that the dagger now sinks
into my heart, the pain worse
than feeling my son clutch
my hair in his fist
as he took one last
breath. You have probably made
up your mind at this point.
You must think I’m the villain
in this image, but you don’t see
the Carthaginian soldiers stomping
towards us like the grim reaper
to take us away. You don’t see
how much I wanted to save
him, how I wanted to watch
as he aged and had sons
of his own, and how intensely I wept
for him, how my body wrenched
in agony. How am I
a villain for wanting
to save the love of my life?
III. Poem After Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights Triptych
On the green surface, a tangle of
limbs litter with their lust for colors
that burn. This is the center of all.
Adam and Eve have already fallen.
This is now, this blind
celebration before the flood
washes the world away
like a stain on a shirt. How many
floods does it take for God to cleanse
the Earth? Perhaps he watches and weeps
as a mother would, sitting helpless while
her children destroy themselves, their
brothers and sisters. Only animals
cluster around the Fountain of Life, and why
did God give us a choice
and not them? We were born
with sin. The hand
will reach for fruit, if ripe, because
that is nature, the crossroads
between spirit and head. Earth is a sick bridge.
We are already half-dead.
IV. Origins
The tale goes that Adam and Eve fell and lost
Paradise, but Eve still carries the sin of the world
in her womb, long after her time.
How much does sin weigh?
In a painting by Titian, Adam tries to stop
Eve from tasting the fruit but she may as well
be Satan himself, her eyes clutching
onto the promise
of clarity. How hard did Adam try?
Milton writes of Eve’s sexuality
and her weakness, the male gaze
creating a hazy image. People talk about
how history was written
by the victors, synonymous with men.
God is neither man or woman.
Evil is also neither.
Eve takes the fruit
from the child-serpent placing it
in her hand. The villain
is the person who knows the most,
but cares the least.
A fox watches in silence.
There’s always someone watching.
V. Pairs
In El Prado, people are drawn to the dark
paintings by Goya. I hear someone say
these give me the chills, and how
can someone paint such evil?
The He-Goat sits with a crowd
of animal-like humans. A dog
drowns. A man eats a woman’s limp body.
Ceci n’est pas une pipe.
Pictures cannot think
or move, but evil moves
and thinks, creeping through alleyways,
churches too. Like God, evil
is everywhere and nowhere.
You cannot hold evil
in your palm like an apple. Evil is a choice,
one we all have. Let us make mankind
in our image, in our likeness, so that they may
rule … over all the creatures.
God gifted us with choice.
Dr. Jekyll frowned at this dual nature
of man, wishing to split
the two like chopsticks, and as Hyde grew
stronger, Jekyll grew weaker
until he realized he was no match
for such indifference. Spoiler:
in the end, they both die.
Good and evil need each other
to survive.
Exploding Pedagogy 