Poststructuralism, Poems, and Gen AI: Deconstructive Reading

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Poststructuralism, Poems, and Gen AI: Deconstructive Reading


This blog is part of  Lab Activity: Poststructuralism, Poems, and Gen AI: Deconstructive Reading. Task


Poem - 1 : Sonnet 18 Shall I Compare Thee


Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.



In Sonnet 18, Shakespeare plays with the freeplay and undecidability of meanings, showing that interpretation is not fixed. The poem is built on a series of binary oppositions such as summer vs. the beloved, nature vs. art, and time vs. eternity. The speaker, traditionally read as a male lover, compares the beloved, possibly female, to a summer’s day. However, while summer is part of nature and fades with time, the beloved, being human, is idealized and preserved through art  in the “eternal lines” of the poem. This sets up a contrast where nature decays, but art and poetry endure.

The poem also reflects on poetic creation, with the act of writing becoming a form of power. Words like “I,” “poet,” and “love” show that the speaker is not just describing beauty, but also celebrating himself and his ability to make the beloved immortal. This introduces a subtle power struggle between time and poetry, between nature and human creativity, and even between the speaker and the beloved. Ultimately, the poem asserts the enduring power of poetry to preserve beauty and meaning beyond the limits of time.

Poem - 2 : Ezra Pound’s ‘On a Station in the Metro’



The apparition of these faces in the crowd:

Petals on a wet, black bough.




Ezra Pound’s poem compares faces in a metro crowd to petals on a dark, wet tree branch. These images are powerful because they are isolated and simplified, free from the noise and clutter of real life. The poem makes us focus on the beauty, fragility, and emotion of the moment not on actual crowds or trees.

The word “apparition” gives the faces a ghost-like, dreamlike feeling, and “petals” adds delicacy. These two images contrast each other in size, strength, and color like big crowds vs. tiny faces, or dark branches vs. light petals.

Also, the sound and rhythm of the poem add to its effect. The short lines, soft rhymes, and stress patterns make it feel musical and emotional, not just logical.

Julia Kristeva calls this type of meaning beyond words "the semiotic"  a kind of emotional sound that we feel even before we understand language. In poetry, this feeling comes through rhythm, tone, and sound, not just through clear meanings.


Poem - 3 : William Carlos's 'The Red Wheelbarrow'


so much depends                      
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens



At first, the poem seems to show real, solid things a red wheelbarrow, rainwater, white chickens as if it’s just describing everyday life on a farm. It feels like these objects truly matter in the real world, and the poem says “so much depends” on them.

But if we look again, the scene might not be so realistic. The colors are bright and clean almost too perfect. There’s no mud or mess like on a real farm. It could feel more like a toy scene or a children’s book simple, innocent, and pure.

The rhythm of the poem is also very simple and repeated, like a nursery rhyme. This suggests that maybe the wheelbarrow isn’t from the real world, but from language and imagination  a memory or a dream-like picture created by words.

Poem - 4 : Dylan Thomas's 'A refusal to mourn the death, by fire, of a child in London'


Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.


1. Verbal Stage – Focus on Words and Contradictions

This stage looks at confusing or contradictory phrases in the poem.

Example: The line “After the first death there is no other”


Saying “first” suggests more deaths, but the poet says there are no others this contradiction shows how language can be unclear or unstable.


Another Example: The use of “never until” mixing a negative word with a word that expects something to happen also creates tension in meaning.


These contradictions show that words don't always clearly express what we mean, and poetry often reveals deeper or hidden meanings.

2. Textual Stage Focus on Structure and Shifts

This stage looks at how the whole poem is structured and how the tone, time, or voice changes.

In the poem:

Stanza 1 & 2: Talk about vast time and cosmic events (creation and the end of the world).

Stanza 3: Suddenly shifts to the present and the child’s death.

Stanza 4: Shifts again to London’s history, shown through the River Thames.

These sudden changes in focus and time show that there’s no stable viewpoint in the poem this makes the meaning unclear or open-ended.

3. Linguistic Stage Focus on Language Itself

This stage looks at how language creates its own reality, rather than just describing the real world.

Example: The poem says darkness (not light) is what gives life:


"the mankind making / Bird beast and flower / Fathering and all humbling darkness"

Normally we think of light as life-giving, but here, darkness is celebrated  this flips usual meanings and shows that language invents its own world.

This stage shows how poetry doesn’t reflect reality directly, but creates a strange, symbolic world through words.


References:

  • Barry, Peter J. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester University Press, 2007.
  • Belsey, Catherine. Post-Structuralism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2006.

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