tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34097622755557816262024-03-13T10:16:55.842-07:00The Poetry Daily CritiqueA site for discussion about poetry, poetics, the aesthetic, and creative writing in general, using the poems<br>
from online poetry sites as subjects for critique, exploration, and discussion.A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.comBlogger178125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-36070669014010579472023-12-19T12:10:00.000-08:002023-12-19T12:10:24.633-08:00E.E. Cummings, "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls"<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47245/the-cambridge-ladies-who-live-in-furnished-souls">Poem found here.</a>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="noind">
First lines:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls<br />
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="noind">
<b>the proof is in the reading</b>
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="ind">
My intent here is simply to give a reading of a poem, and speak the poem's qualities through that reading. The poem in question is E.E. Cummings's well known "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls," from his first collection Tulips and Chimneys (1923). The choice is not unmotivated. An online friend of mine sent me a link to an established booktuber offering first an intentionally mangled oral reading of the poem followed by an intentionally close-minded ideational reading. I am not sure what choir he was preaching to but it made me half irritated and half embarrassed for the guy. So in the spirit of the defense of the realm, let's give a reading.
</p>
<p class="ind">
It is short, so read it a couple times to get the feel of it. Some quick notes toward that end:
</p>
<p class="ind">
First, what you would know from it published in his book (or in his collected), Cummings calls it a sonnet, and while it may not be consistently pentametric, I do read it as iambic, and it does have a rhyme scheme: abcddcbaefggfe. I consider rhyme scheme to be the the dominant element to legitimately calling something a sonnet. Fourteen lines of blank verse is rather easy, but I've seen it done to remark. And if not even that then why use the word? Who are you trying to con? Yourself? I have said it before I think Cummings is the U.S.'s supreme sonneteer. It would be an interesting book to publish just his sonnets to see their evolution. It would be an interesting book because he does them so well.
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<p class="ind">
Second, this poem is early on in Cummings's career, so the typographical play is not yet that severe. You should be able to read it without much difficulty. Let the line ends help; and, with all of Cummings verse, pay attention more to syntax and semantics than to punctuation. The one difficult spot may be the periods in line 11. I read that as a pause: for me, the sentence that begins with "While permanent faces" continues all the way through to the end of the poem, with a little pause at the string of periods. It can also be read that the periods end the sentence prematurely and starts a new thought. I tend to read it as one long thought, keeping with the sonnet idea that the second part of the verse holds a thought of its own. (To note, the Poetry Foundation site errs in its presentation of the periods. There should be spaces between them.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
Third, recognize that the point of the verse is to disparage the Cambridge ladies. Do not try to read it against the grain. The booktuber could not seem to handle that someone would speak ill of the fair citizens of Cambridge, as though all verse must be complimentary. But, then, he was dredging for ways to speak ill of the poem. (If he can't understand this only slightly difficult poem, he really should not be talking about verse at all.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
That said, give it a couple reads, and we will start.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The first two lines
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls<br />
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
set the scene. It speaks about the Cambridge ladies in broad terms, telling who they are with three well chosen phrases. They "live in furnished souls": souls that already come with furnishing, souls that they do not themselves decorate, souls that are nice but do not stand out one way or another, souls that are fitting to people who do not want to decorate, souls no one would object to. They are "unbeautiful": notice he does not say ugly, or plain, he says "unbeautiful." What they are he will not say, but no one would ever call them beautiful. And they "have comfortable minds": minds that never stir and are never stirred, minds that exist in perpetual ease. And there in three brush strokes we have the Cambridge ladies, unexceptional and unpossessing – if even that – in soul, body, and mind. What follows is commentary.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Lines 3 and 4 are presented as a parenthetical, but they are quite damning.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
(also, with the church's protestant blessings<br />
daughters,unscented shapeless spirited)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The Cambridge ladies have daughters, and have them with "the church's protestant blessings." Notice "protestant" modifies blessings, not church, so it is not merely a label of denomination. It tells what the blessings are like: protestant, as in lacking the finery and ritual and performance of the Catholic or Anglican church, as in being blessings that are themselves furnished, unbeautiful, and comfortable. And by those blessings they have daughters that are, appropriately, "unscented shapeless spirited." By "spirited" I believe you should read "of the nature of a spirit"; that is, lacking in corporeality, and, by implication of the line, sensuality. Why I call this damning is it is showing how the lack that defines the Cambridge ladies is passed on to their daughters. It is not merely a clique; it runs deeper, across generations. They condemn their offspring to likewise furnished souls. Indeed, they hardly can be said to have daughters.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Line 5 goes back to the Cambridge ladies.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead,
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Something of a joke, here. If you don't know, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was a very popular versifier in his time. Probably his most famous piece is "The Song of Hiawatha" which was published in 1855. But he was a populist versifier. He wrote for J. Q. Public and his skill did not exceed that. No one today speaks of him in terms of literary brilliance. So that Christ and Longfellow are tethered together in the line speaks also of how the Cambridge ladies think of Christ. Thus the joke. "Both dead" can be read twofold. First, within the context of the line – "They believe in . . . both dead" – it speaks that the scope of what the Cambridge ladies believe in lies within the dead in the sense of not being alive. They do not believe in anything current, anyone presently breathing. Second it speaks, more directly, that Longfellow and Christ are dead, which can be read as spiritually dead. There is the phrase "the living Christ," and we can speak of "living" literature. Neither of those apply to the Cambridge ladies.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Line 6 to the first word of line 9 is one thought.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
are invariably interested in so many things—<br />
at the present writing one still finds<br />
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?<br />
perhaps.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Line 6 sets up the thought. They are interested in "so many things" – in context this is easily read as lack rather than substance: they are a little bit interested in so many things, but not exceedingly interested in anything. They dance around their interests, flitting from one to the next. And it is "invariably" so, this state. "At the present" they are knitting things to be donated. But that question mark that closes line 8 fits in with what was already set up – as they flit about from interest to interest they are hardly interested enough to keep track. So "perhaps" whom they are presently knitting for are the Poles. It is not that they are not sure, it is that it never bothers them enough to really care. Which speaks about the nature of their charity work: it is just something they do in their comfortable minds. They are never deeply moved by the plight of the people for whom they are knitting; it is just this moment's charity – charity du jour, as it were.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The rest of line 9 to the end of the poem is, for me, one long thought (as discussed above).
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
While permanent faces coyly bandy<br />
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D<br />
. . . . the Cambridge ladies do not care, above<br />
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of<br />
sky lavender and cornerless, the<br />
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
"Permanent faces" should be by now expected, as the Cambridge ladies pass unmoved through life. And they talk of the scandal "coyly" – modestly, but also affectedly. They are not deeply moved by the scandal but among themselves put up a little show. Perhaps what they oppose most about it is that it disrupts their comfortable lives; perhaps they disapprove that it is itself something un-comfortable; something living. And then we have that little pause, something that gives a touch of emphasis to the gossiping, and then the thought (and sentence) picks back up and the poem rises to its climax. "Lavender and cornerless" is a wonderful description of the "box" of the sky, and of the kind of sky Cummings is hoping you to read – which is to say the kind of sky the Cambridge ladies are unmoved by. It is a metaphor – the box of the sky – that would not catch the fancy of the Cambridge ladies. Which is the point of those last four lines: they are unmoved by the sky, just as they are unmoved by the moon, an object that is tethered to myth, beauty, and mystery; the moon which sits in its box like a piece of candy, something delightful and poetically delectable; but, then, an object which does not sit but "rattles" in anger at the furnished souls of the Cambridge ladies, at their tittering about a romance that would be the very thing the moon would have a hand in, at their lack of concern for life, at their refusal to look up and see.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Thus the Cambridge ladies. But more importantly, thus the poem. Cummings did not merely put a description of the Cambridge ladies in rhymed verse, he made a poem of it. And it is not for naught that the poems ends with a complex and resonant metaphor for the moon in the sky. In fact, it could be argued that the moon is the most important element in the verse, that everything else works to set up that final image. When you go back now and read the complete verse again, give enough pause at the end of the lines that you hear the rhymes. Notice how thoughts flow across lines and yet the lines are absolutely constructed lines of verse. Notice the effectiveness of that parenthetical. See if you can read the "perhaps" to effect: in tandem with the question mark, it is a very clever little moment in the poem. Finally, glide through those final six lines as a whole, slowly coming to the crescendo of "angry candy." Do not merely think of the critique of the Cambridge ladies, see also that Cummings made something out of words, something subtle yet complex, something damning yet lyrical, something elegantly arranged, something that ends with an insistence that you recognize that you are reading poetry.
</p>A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-20694583631262923602023-10-11T11:56:00.002-07:002023-12-19T11:52:32.920-08:00Suzanne Batty, "Jesus on a Train from Mumbai"<p class="noind">
<b>unity and effect</b>
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="noind">
<a href="https://www.montrealpoetryprize.com/poems/jesus-on-a-train-from-mumbai?fbclid=IwAR2xV1PmXRhhmqqQBlJMCISP-4v0te1tV_Fh1rED2PjrVSp05y0xo_o4gEo">"Jesus on a Train from Mumbai" is found here.</a>
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="noind">
First lines:<br />
I was dragged from the train by English tourists as the tall man <br />
from Tamil Nadu called “coffee coffee” in his soft, sad voice.
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="ind">
Words coordinated in a poetic way create an effect when read. I am not talking about an emotional effect. Emotional effects are simple effects simply evoked by the narration itself. As the saying goes, a puppy can bite your ear and you will experience an emotion. We are talking about something a little more sophisticated than that. We are talking about an aesthetic effect. And not every combination of words creates an aesthetic effect. A brute narrative, a tale that offers merely what happened in the sequence that it happened, will offer no aesthetic value whatsoever. Thus: words coordinated in a poetic way. Which does not mean I am only talking about verse. And which also does not mean that all verse is poetic.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Take a look at these well-known lines by William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheel Barrow":
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
so much depends<br />
upon<br />
<br />
a red wheel<br />
barrow<br />
<br />
glazed with rain<br />
water<br />
<br />
beside the white<br />
chickens
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
We begin with its physical characteristics. Four stanzas, each with two line, the first, three words, the second, one. Each stanza is its own thought, though the four combine to a more complex thought. As well, it is worth noticing that the two lines of each stanza break in between two words that go together: depends/upon, wheel/barrow, rain/water, white/chickens. It creates an aural effect because the verse is asking you to stop where you would not normally want to. The verse fights against a reading that would string the words together into a single sentence, even though it is a sentence. It fights against the words being read like:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
So much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<a name='more'></a>
<p class="noind">
Every phrase is brought forward and made important, especially the first line of every stanza. (Can you hear how the second line reads almost like an unstressed syllable?) The verse is structurally organized in a way that creates an effect beyond what the words themselves, in their semantic relations, would create.
</p>
<p class="ind">
And then there is the meaning making. There is an opposition: the red wheelbarrow, the white chicken. That opposition gives strength to each side. The red is made the more red for it being compared to the white of the chickens. So also is the white made more white for being compared to the red of the wheel barrow. Yet it is carried even further by the structure of the poem. Each element has its own stanza, and in those two stanzas the most important words are red and white, given even more emphasis by how the lines are broken. For it all. the red is very red, and the white is very white.
</p>
<p class="ind">
It is the wheel barrow, though, that is our focus. For it is not merely so brilliantly red, it is also "glazed with rain / water." Glazed: for the water, the wheel barrow is made even more visually attractive. And it is rain water, which, being of nature, amplifies it that much more. The poem would not work so well if it was "glazed with hose / water."
</p>
<p class="ind">
And what are we doing with this visually pleasing wheel barrow? We are recognizing that "so much depends / upon" it. A physical effect is given philosophical resonance: so much depends upon that a thing can be beautiful. That a thing can be made beautiful by its situation and context. And if we dare to take it one more step out, with this a verse that very much makes you aware that you are reading verse: so much depends on that words, organized in the right way, can be beautiful.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The poem is a unified whole. Every part works with each other, every part works to the generating of the whole. Importantly, every part works to the creation of an effect that is generated by the whole and its coordinated parts. Something has been made that is outside its parts, and that is greater than the sum of those parts.
</p>
<p class="ind">
In opposition, let's look at this short verse – and I am intentionally choosing very short verses – by Richard Wilbur, called "The Shallot."
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The full cloves<br />
Of your buttocks, the convex<br />
Curve of your belly, the curved<br />
Cleft of your sex – <br />
<br />
Out of this corm<br />
That's planted in strong thighs<br />
The slender stem and radiant<br />
Flower rise.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Starting again with the physical elements, there are two stanzas divided in subject: the first stanza identifies the midsection of the woman, the second stanza identifies that which is above. That first stanza is a list of three elements broken across four lines. I question if the structure is in error, and whether the stanza would be better with a stronger parallelism, following that which was started by the first line and a half:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The full cloves<br />
Of your buttocks, the convex curve<br />
Of your belly, the curved cleft<br />
Of your sex –
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It is something of an issue of weight. It seems in the way Wilbur breaks the lines, too much strength is given to the adjectives, and the nouns and following prepositional phrases are left to trail behind as kind of necessary afterthoughts. The nouns, though, are doing as much work as the adjectives in the text, and I do not believe they should be separated. Just a gut reaction, though. In truth, I do not find the stanza strong enough for either way to greatly stand out.
</p>
<p class="ind">
As for the second stanza, there is not much to speak about it, except he again is breaking a two word phrase at the end. And part of the reason there is nothing exceptional about the structure is because there is, really, nothing exceptional about the meaning making. Except for the word cloves, the first stanza is straightforward identification: there is the buttocks, and the belly, and the sex. Nothing interesting is being done there except that that word cloves brings the idea of the botanical into that list. But that is the verse: it is a comparison of something botanical to something anatomical. And when you look at stanza two, the verse is simply continuing that movement. The midsection of the woman is identified with the corm of the shallot, and out of that corm rises but a "slender stem" and a "radiant flower."
</p>
<p class="ind">
The verse is absolutely mechanical. As a whole, it is nothing more than saying A is like B. It takes eight lines to describe how a woman's body is like a shallot, but does nothing with that perfunctory comparison. No greater idea rises therefrom. The coordination of the words is hardly more than a grammatical exercise, with a little line breaking thrown in.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Consider this opposition:
</p>
<p class="ind">
Williams is offering the reader an aesthetic experience. Wilbur is only offering information.
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="ind">
What we are describing is aesthetic unity. To go to Harmon and Holman's definition of unity in A Handbook to Literature (7th ed.),
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The concept that a work shall have in it some organizing peinciple to which all its parts are related so that the work is an organic whole. A work with unity is cohesive in its parts, complete, self-contained, and integrated. [. . .] A work may [. . .] be unified [. . .] by any means that can so integrate and organize its elements that they have a necessary relation to one another and an essential relation to the whole of which they are parts. (emphasis mine)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
I emphasize the word organic as it may be the most important word therein. Only an organic text can find unity. Only in the lyrical and mythic. Blunt narrative, documentary texts, and the like, generally do not have unity. Indeed, the closer a text moves to straight reportage – the farthest into the prosaic that can be had – the more there is the impossibility of unity. Not difficulty, but impossibility. Note here also, the prosaic need not be prose, and Wilbur's little verse is wholly prosaic.
</p>
<p class="ind">
While it is important to point out that unity and organicism walk hand in hand, I am not here going to dwell on the idea of the organic text. I just wanted to put the word in your head. My main point, here, is merely to get to the idea that unity resides in the poetic side of literature, not the prosaic. Indeed, to write a poetic text is by definition to write a unified text, to whatever degree of success.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Of course, it is easiest to create unity in a small verse. Though, perhaps something as miniature as "The Red Wheel Barrow" presents but a different set of difficulties than something slightly longer. I would say it is a little more difficult in a short story. After all, in most shorts you are creating out of a narrative framework, and the mechanical playing through of narrative works against poetic unity. Though that was Poe's aim and purpose: everything in the story worked to creating a singular, intense, impression. James sought organic unity in the novel. Though, at such a large size, the nature of that unity might be different than with "The Red Wheel Barrow." Poe argued unity could only be found in the length of a single sitting of reading, half an hour, I believe. And Eliot speaks how a very long poem must by needs be broken up by moments of mechanical action, to wit, getting everyone from the dining room to the parlor. But, that said, one can argue Beckett's The Unnameable is a unified work, without such breaks. And perhaps the same can be said for Burroughs's Naked Lunch, even for its episodic nature. You enter into an experience with that book that does not break between the episodes. One can call The Waste Land episodic, but it absolutely offers the reader a unified experience, if a complex one. And unity should not ever be conflated with simplicity.
</p>
<p class="ind">
We are here focused on verse, and with such, unity pretty much equates to the single impression, the single organic experience. Presenting two experiences – assuming they do not meld into a different single experience – would split a verse in two, reveal internal instability, an internal dichotomy, the verse at odds with itself.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Consider, then, Suzanne Batty's "Jesus on a Train from Mumbai." Does this verse present a unified experience, or is it at odds with itself? I am going to ignore the physical characteristics, because this verse pays no real attention thereto. There is not much crafting of verse form going on here, if any. We are offered but sentences arbitrarily cut into long lines and two-line stanzas. So let's just stick to ideation. Note right off that this verse is loosely structured by way of narrative. Do not, however, let that narrative pull you away from that which is being strung together therewith.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The first sentence (they are long lines, so I cannot keep them from wrapping):
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I was dragged from the train by English tourists as the tall man<br />
from Tamil Nadu called "coffee coffee" in his soft, sad voice.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The narrative is begun, the initial conditions are presented. I question whether "as the tall man" should be "while the tall man," but that is beside the point. Next sentence:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
They had been to too many temples, mistaken the pigeon-feeding ritual<br />
for a message from god.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
This is, actually, internally contradictory. The first half speaks of that temples were not important to them because they had been to too many. Yet the second half says that one of the temples absolutely was important, because they received a message from god, even if, from the narrator's viewpoint, that message was a mistaken interpretation. Why does this internal contradiction happen? The usual cause is that "for a message from god" was used because it sounds profound (even if, again, falsely profound), it sound poetic. Blatty went for a poetic "pow" but didn't pay attention and accidentally undercut herself. Notice, though, it sounds like poetry. But let's move on to sentence three, where we get into the meat of the matter.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
All they wanted was for me to sing songs<br />
<br />
altered by death but when I opened my mouth I vomited water hyacinth—<br />
they beat me with metal rods from London buses, whilst the school boy bird<br />
<br />
whistled outside.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The first phrase – "All they wanted was for me to sing songs" – starts off fine. It raises the question of why the English want the narrator to sing songs, but in the condensed forms of verse such a question can be answered by the question itself: they want the narrator to sing songs because the narrator is such a person that sings songs, otherwise they would not be asking. But they are to be songs "altered by death" – which, after sentence two, prompts the question: Is this phrase just another attempt at faux, poetic profundity? Then comes "but when I opened my mouth I vomited water hyacinth," which has nothing to do with nothing. Nor the following about beating with rods, nor that they would, somehow, come from London buses, nor the "school boy bird." We have four elements that – beyond that they connect together grammatically and narratively – have nothing to do with the initial set up, and nothing to do, really, with each other. Such a sentence very much sounds like something from contemporary verse; but, does it generate any form of unity?
</p>
<p class="ind">
And so it continues:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Women wrapped in blankets came to view me,<br />
carrying boulders on their heads to mend the roads.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
More discontinuity.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Verse like this is popular nowadays. (And perhaps we have John Ashbery to thank for that. But he will have to wait for a future post.) Such verse creates the illusion of being poetical, a false feeling that something special is happening. But it wholly lacks unity. It is a string of sentences, a string of phrases, and once a phrase is passed there is no need to keep it in mind. Again, there is the narrative line on which the phrases and sentences hang; but, as said, narrative does not in itself generate unity.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Now, you may say, what about The Waste Land or Naked Lunch and their being broken into episodes? Is this not the same thing, only the episodes are much smaller? Except that these episodes are so small they no longer participate in meaning making. Does the phrase "songs altered by death" have any real meaning? You can take the various episodes of The Waste Land and Naked Lunch and show how they are all pointing toward commonalities, how they build upon each other, how they all work to a generated shared effect. With such as Blatty's verse, however, it is just a string of thoughts that pass by – in the shallowest of manners – that but sound poetic. That is: It does not read poetic, it only sounds it. There is nothing being generated as you move from one phrase to the next. And that is all the reader is asked to do: move from one to the next.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td> When they judged me<br />
<br />
bloody enough, we went for chai at a shack by the roadside,<br />
a statue of St. George in a glass case spoke.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
A return to the idea of narrative, but the statue, again, has nothing to do with nothing. I have to ask a very simple question: Why is it in the verse? Is there an answer beyond "that's what came to mind next"?
</p>
<p class="ind">
There is no need in continuing through Batty's verse, as I have made my point. And if you read on you will see how phrases – that sound pretty and poetic – are trotted out one after another, without any effort made toward generating a whole, generating an effect – other than the same effect one gets looking out the window of moving vehicle, only without anything passed by having any great significance. There are no moments of "that's a beautiful scene"; there are only instances of "skinny dogs," "model trains," "dead kingfishers," moments so brief and insubstantial they exist only as shallow, meaningless, transience. Things on which nothing depends.
</p>
<p class="ind">
There is no unity, there is no single impression, there is, I would argue, no real impression at all. There is no generated effect, except for that it sounds poetic. Lots of "poetic" phrases that doesn't seem to add up to much. And that is the ultimate question here: What does it add up to?
</p>A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-35940965673565992722023-04-26T11:13:00.002-07:002023-04-26T11:13:41.195-07:00An Engagement with Strunk and White<p class="ind">
Something I forgot to mention —
</p>
<p class="ind">
<i>Strunk and White</i> came my way a couple of times and it prompted me to reread it and affirm my consideration of it. It has its merits, but it also has its faults. Particularly with the section "An Approach to Style," written by White. While some of the points he makes are simple and obvious, some of the larger points I do not at all agree with, and I gave affort to a full engagement. It ended up worth the reading so I threw it up on my website (and the Adversaria blog).
</p>
<p class="ind">
If you are interested, it is found <a href="http://hatterscabinet.com/pages/whitestyle.html">here [link]</a>. I point out the major moments, and you can jump to them on the website. But most important, if you read it to the Conclusion at the end, is to recognize that my opposition to White is not in the sense of grammar, where there is what is generally considered to be a correct answer to things. Rather, the questions raised here have a philosophical element to them: White is preaching a particular style and philosophy of writing, and I present an alternative. In terms of this website, White preaches a prosaic type of writing; while I speak an aesthetic.
</p>
<p class="ind">
White is speaking mostly of prose and so that slant cannot be avoided, but much of it applies to verse as well. Especially the major points. But check it out. Have a read. Have a think. It is meant to prompt thought, as everything here.
</p>A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-81682209710656179162023-01-27T12:56:00.002-08:002023-01-28T08:21:30.543-08:00Laurie Sheck, The Willow Grove<p class="noind">
<b>just because it looks like poetry, doesn't mean it's poetry</b>
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="ind">
I am pretty sure I have said before I do not often buy individual books of verse. Mostly I buy collecteds or selecteds, because they are people important enough I want to get a broad feel for them, or writers I have enjoyed that I want to collect them all, as it is said. (And, as has happened, you find a gem in the collected that you probably would have missed one book at a time.) Truth is I can look through shelves of individual books at the bookstore and not find anything I am at all interested in. For the most part sophistication just ain't there. But, occasionally, I do buy them, carefully and with thought beforehand. Laurie Sheck's <i>The Willow Grove</i> is such a book. It was recommended to me and I took a look online at what can be found of her verse and thought it interesting enough for eight bucks. Greatly, though, the fellow who recommended it previously recommended to me Freda Downie so I was willing to give the benefit. Maybe he was starting a streak.
</p>
<p class="ind">
And the first two verses in the book – "White Noise" (3) and "The Return" (4) – I rather enjoyed. Perhaps a little question on the lines feeling somewhat like broken prose but it was just the first two verses so I would overlook it. Though, in "The Return," there is this:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
pressed between the other, similar last names,<br />
laid down there in print deep black as the wires <br />
that carry one human voice to another.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That simile feels weak, more effort than the simile is worth. Printed text is normally pretty black, so is there a difference being made by comparing it to the wires? (And, actually, as I remember, as those wires aged, they grew more grey; they lightened.) Plus, is "that carry one human voice to another" something that needs to be said? Is it, really, adding anything to the verse?
</p>
<p class="ind">
Then came "The Storeroom" (5), and such as:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And what tense in which the musty dampness holds the ovens <br />
like moldy, unrocked cradles, eye-holes, graves,<br />
and street-cries skip and flare above our listening, but they are muffled <br />
from back here, as if they could not touch us, yet still here?
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There's lots of imagination there. Lots of words that look very poetical. But does it stand examination? First off, there is a problem in setting (not wholly evident in the given lines). The site of the verse is a storeroom in a store, a storeroom what shares a wall with what used to be a bakery, shares the wall that holds the ovens. So while the verse occurs in a storeroom, it is concerning itself with ovens in the next store over. That's a problem (or there's the problem that the verse is describing the geography so poorly I am misreading it). The natural question to ask is, how is the "musty dampness" of the ovens <i>in the abandoned bakery</i> being felt within the storeroom? And at a very basic level you have to ask, why <i>is</i> there all this concern, in a poem about two persons isolated in a storeroom, with something that is not even in the store? The verse is stretching way outside its setting to find ideas. Generally not good practice. Particularly when stretching out works exactly against the desired effect of closeted isolation.
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<p class="ind">
Second, there is an issue in meaning-making.
</p>
<table class="quote">
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<td width="35px"></td><td>
in which the musty dampness holds the ovens / like moldy, unrocked cradles, eye-holes, graves
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It offers a list of things to be equated to the ovens – more exactly, to be equated with how the dampness holds the ovens. Note that. For when you at all look hard, when you get to
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
the musty dampness holds the ovens . . . . like a moldy, unrocked cradle
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
you have to ask, how does musty dampness <i>hold</i> a cradle, exactly? What am I supposed to get out of this? How does musty dampness hold an eye-hole? It might be a un-commonplace phrase but I have no idea what I am supposed to get out of it. Most likely what Sheck intended was to create a list of nouns to be connected to "ovens," but she messed up the writing. Compare hers to this rewrite:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And what tense in which the musty dampness holds the ovens <br />
those moldy, unrocked cradles, those eye-holes, those graves
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It is much stronger in that the three nouns are now directly modifying "ovens" instead of being put to work to give body to "holds." The three trailing nouns as re-written not only modify "ovens," it escapes the question of how musky dampness holds an eye-hole. But, it does not escape the question of that the central thought is the musky dampness, so why all this effort on expanding the idea of oven. Which, perhaps, means you don't really escape the musky dampness of eye-holes after all. But, for sure, that "like" simply is a false step and should not be there.
</p>
<p class="ind">
And then there there are the next lines, about "street-cries" that "skip and flare above our listening," Except they are in a storeroom in a store. It is the same error. The point of the verse is the isolating of the main character, sitting on the floor in the corner of a storeroom in a store, and yet it moves to things going on outside the store? "Mufffled," is strained.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
and street-cries skip and flare above our listening, but they are muffled <br />
from back here, as if they could not touch us, yet still here?
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Indeed, both lines are wholly strained. The same question with the ovens is asked here: Why are the street-cries even being brought into the verse? Notice "as if they could not touch us": The initial and quite natural assumption of a reader would be that voices on the street could not touch a person hiding in the corner of a storeroom in the store. And yet, the reader is supposed to read that simile – notice, another simile – as though it is revealing a break from the expected. "Street cries, as if they could not touch us, because, contrary to what you think, they normally could." No, they normally could not. The whole clause is an assertion of something that does not hold, and, truth be told, for the distance does not really belong in the verse at all. Finally comes "yet still here?" To me those three words feel like something come out of the flow of a first draft that should have been lopped off in editing but never was. They simply do not belong. It's three words too many. (Which is actually a error to attend to in writing: pay attention to when you are going farther than you need to. Say what needs to be said, then stop.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
In total, the lines are weak. Very weak. And it is important to note the weakness is ideational, not grammatical. It is a poor control of meaning-making.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Which, reading the book, put the thought in my head of weakness, a thought that carried in my reading from page to page, to "Childhood" (29) and these lines (occurring in another store):
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
clocks on the walls whose cat-faces hum <br />
while their tails slice back and forth with a mad metronomic precision
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
"Mad" there is another word thrown carelessly in, as it clashes, ideationally, with "precision." But do you see the greater error of the lines? They are saying "the clocks' tails moved with the precision <i>of a clock</i>." When do clocks <i>not</i> have metronomic precision. They are the same mechanism. It is a sloppy, lazy phrase, a mistake that did not solely have the effect for me of marring the verse in which it is found, but of confirming what I had suspected throughout the reading thus far: that the verses were clumsily written, and filled with ideational weakness.
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="ind">
I prefer writing posts that teach something. Here, I want to teach about sloppy ideation and substituting pretty "poetic" phrasing for good ideation. Also, about reading: just because it looks like poetry doesn't mean, under closer examination, it really is poetry. And you should be reading everything "under closer examination." Not only so you are not fooled by sham poetry, but also because the really good stuff really pays off when you give it the attention it deserves. I'll continue, from the front, verse by verse. I have a number of examples here, and I am chosing not to explain everything at length by constantly offering and re-offering the lines in question as the argument progresses. It might make the reading easier if I were to write that way, but it would make it <i>much</i> longer. I am afraid I am going tend to the "to the point" in what I present and ask you to jump back and forth. Look at the lines, what I point out, back at the lines, back; hopefully you come to see what is there.
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="ind">
So, after "The Storeroom" comes "From The Book of Persephone (I)" (7), the sixth stanza:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I remember nothing, I remember the scattered pages,<br />
the mechanisms of sums, the cities accomplished <br />
and spoiled, crumbling an re-made.<br />
The candor of ruin and gates. In daylight the businesses <br />
go on, the bright calculations, the frantic advertisements <br />
that masquerade as calm. So little evidence is left <br />
of what has vanished. As if when the swan lifts off the liquid stare <br />
it is the wind of our words it leaves behind.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
For someone who remembers nothing, this person remembers a lot. Is there an implied "Oh, wait!" in the middle of that first line? It is, actually a refrain through the verse, the repeated "I remember nothing. I remember," but it never really works for me. How are we to take constant insistence of "I remember nothing" when the whole verse is what she remembers? It comes off for me like a gimmick whose value is just surface effect, which sometimes merits writing just to see what it's like but really should always be edited out, unless the effect rises beyond surface games, and this time it didn't. I'm not talking about repetition: that is an underused technique in both verse and prose. I am talking about repeating "I remember nothing" when it is obviously not true. It invites that insertion: "I remember nothing. Oh, wait! I remember . . . . ." That's not good.
</p>
<p class="ind">
And is it so surprising that "so little evidence is left" of that "what has vanished"? Isn't that the definition of <i>vanish</i>? there is nothing left behind? And I have no idea what to do with "liquid stare" or how that last sentence ties in at all with the rest of the stanza. "The candor of ruin and gates": it seems like a pretty line. But, unfortunately, that is all it seems like: a pretty line. Something thrown in loosely continuing the general theme but without much real attention to ideation. (Indeed, it seems telling that it is a sentence.) Indeed, the whole stanza is very wobbly, a badly performed and not precisely chosen nor carefully organized list of things about "cities . . . crumbling and remade." There is very little sense of control here. A run-on stanza, to wit.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Notice also how we have to accept as given that "frantic advertisements" "masquerade as calm," even though, if they appeared "frantic" then they would not be, <i>not in the least</i>, masquerading as calm. Kind of gotta be one or the other. Besides, in real life, do advertisements masquerade as calm? "Calm" is generally not what I read from most of what I see on TV. The phrase is an assertion that the reader is supposed to blindly accept at face value without question. This is important, as Sheck does this all the time: asserting something that we are to take as given without thinking.
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="noind">
"From The Book of Persephone (II)" (8), first stanza:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
What song do the hills sing as they whiten?<br />
And the goat that stumbles, falling from the jutting rock?<br />
And what of the river still pulsing its wishes through my skin?<br />
I remember the beveled hills where I once walked,<br />
rock the color of stars, yellow swathes of wild orchids <br />
by the roadside, but I don't know how to move toward them.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The problem with the first line is I can't get past the question of how hills whiten; I am not at all sure what that means. If she means snow she should have said snow and clarified the matter, though snow would clash with the orchids coming up four lines later. There is nothing present to separate the hills in the fourth line from the hills in the first, so they should be equated. So I am left in that first line to wonder about a song about something left rather ideationally adrift. And then I can tell you precisely what song the goat sings: it doesn't sing any song, because the goat that falls from the jutting rock is dead. (And very much the image she is intending is cliff faces, which clashes with "hills.") And then the river: it is "pulsing its wishes," as such, it is, in a way, singing a song. So why, then, the question of what song it's singing? Three lines that don't really have anything to do with each other, that sound like pretty, poetic lines, but really fall apart ideationally both alone and combined if you at all give them a moment.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Continuing: "Beveled hills." Not to point out the obvious, but all hills are slanted. That is rather their definition. If they just shot straight up ninety degrees they would not be hills, they would be mesas. And if they were flat, well . . . . . So what "beveled" brings into the description is what <i>beveled</i> means: that they were <i>cut</i>. But is that what she really intends? That the land used to be mesas or flat but someone "beveled" hills? I don't think so. It is a poor choice of words. Rock the color of stars? That doesn't work for me. Rock is a broad thing, stars are pinpoints. So what is she trying to add to the idea of rock by bringing in the idea of stars? And even the gist of the sentence: "hills I once walked . . . but I don't know how to move toward them." Perhaps you take the road that you talked about? "Road" should not be in there for that very reason, not that the idea works at all. She is trying, I think, to get to "move toward" the feeling the hills gave her, but the lines are really poorly executed. Try this instead:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I remember the hills where I once walked,<br />
the white rocks, the wild orchids,<br />
but I don't know how to reclaim that world.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Simpler, perhaps, but <i>much</i> more effective. The lines Sheck wrote are more of hyer throwing about "poetic" phrases one after the other, in a manner that doesn't pay that much attention to how the ideation melds or is developing, and hoping it adds up to a "poem." With "rocks the color of stars" she intends you to take "white" from stars and nothing else: which demands the question, why then use "stars"? There is nothing particularly special about the color of stars, when it comes to it. Notice she does not say "<i>rocks</i> the color of stars, which might imply rocks scattered about the hills like stars in the sky. But, then, it color would have not been to the point, and she would have said "Rocks scattered like stars." To note, though, it is a little false to say the writer hopes the phrases add up to a "poem"; writing like this <i>assumes</i> the "poetic" phrases are poetry, whether it develops ideationally or not.
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="noind">
"Living Color" (10):
</p>
<p class="ind">
The verse opens with a straightforward description of someone first adjusting the color on a tv and then turning up the sound. Then comes (I remove the seemingly arbitrary indenting of lines for convenience, here and continuing forward):
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
is this what fright is, these<br />
pale interchangeable faces<br />
is this the body of the world<br />
that can be seen but never touched,<br />
<br />
the faces floating there, the hands,<br />
and all the broken things?
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It is entirely assertion. "Fright" appears in the text like the word "suddenly" in a story, where the writer is cuing the reader what to think without the effort of creating the idea. There is nothing in the first lines that at all has to do with the idea of "fright," the action is quite quotidian; but, suddenly, we are to see fright in the images on the tv. (To note also, contructing it as a question generally is a weaker construction.) It is asserted that the faces are "pale" and "interchangeable" (are faces on the tv either?), and it is asserted that tv shows us "the broken things." The ideas are neither earned nor justified by the text, just as "the body of the world that can be seen but never touched" is wholly floating in space, without connection to anything offered. Indeed these ideas are all cast aside as the verse moves on. They are asserted, then they are dropped. Another example of thinking the mere presence of "poetic" phrasing, sense irrelevant, makes for a poem.
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="noind">
"Poppies" (12), first line:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Red poppies, you do not open onto treachery or possession.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Did anybody, before that assertion, think they did? That line is it, by the way. Idea completely dropped after the line is offered. The line might work and work really well if the idea generated were built upon and flushed out. But as a single-line-thought, it is but an empty assertion. (Yes, I realize how often I am saying the word <i>assertion</i>.)
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="noind">
"Evening walk" (13), third stanza, speaking of birds:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
What would the sky be like without them –<br />
without the wavy passage of the wrens <br />
or the redwinged blackbirds lifting from the field's long grass?<br />
I think I would fear its emptiness, its deep untamed forgetfulness,<br />
the faintest hush of a tamped candle.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Now, I don't like "I think" there because, generally, you avoid the iffy in writing: no "I thinks," no "it seems." It either is or it isn't. Pick one and go with it. In the verse "In the City of Gold Domes" there is "leaving only this soft confusion in which the city drifts and doesn't drift." It looks poetic but it's really bad writing. One or the other. Use both and it's just nickel FX. There is also an interesting question is whether "<i>the</i> field's</i>" is correct. The lines are speaking about "the sky": a generality, and that general thought is continued with the wavy passage of "wrens," but all of a sudden then, there is "<i>the</i>" specific field. It feels like an error because it is an error.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Back to the lines above, there is no first person in the verse until that "I think" and it feels like a break in the voice in the verse. (Again, "think" there is weak writing. Either yes or no. Pick.) Then, do the last two lines even work? "I would fear its emptiness." Most of the time when you look up into the sky it is a vast, empty field, so that does not really work, does it. And now that I think about it, how often, really, does the sky look "empty"? There tends to be clouds populating it more often than not. In the end, it is another assertion. Also, it seems Sheck is a little confusing the ideas of "sky" and "air." Air without birds can look empty. The sky, not so much. (Look up the definition of <i>sky</i>.) The idea of "emptiness" does not really work with sky. Now, I like the phrase "deep untamed forgetfulness," except does it at all apply to the sky? Notice, if the sky had forgetfulness, <i>as written in the verse</i>, that forgetfulness would be a constant presence, not dependent on the absence of birds. Besides, does it at all feel natural to call the sky forgetful? or is that yet another "poetic" assertion? What is the "deep untamed forgetfulness" of the sky? If it is so obvious it can be asserted like that I would think I would have noticed it by now.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Also, the last line is a construction issue. If you read "emptiness," "forgetfulness," and "hush" as a list, then
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I think I would fear . . . the faintest hush of a tamped candle.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
is problematic. But what if
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I think I would fear its emptiness, its forgetfulness, the faintest hush
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
as though "faintest hush" is to be coupled with emptiness and forgetfulness (as "eye-holes" was connected to "ovens"). A little better construction, but still a problem because there are two items being coupled to the hush. It might work if there were only one, equating, say, emptiness to the hush:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I think I would fear its emptiness,<br />
the faintest hush of a tamped candle.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Except it really doesn't escape how we are supposed to see emptiness in the hush. Notice, it's not what might be naturally seen as empty: a candle wick that once was lit but now is not could be seen as empty. That idea could work. But the lines as written are not about the candle, they are about the "hush," about the emptiness of the noise. Except a "hush" is a presence, a presence brought attention to with "faintest"; it's not an emptiness, is it.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Finally, just to note, you can try to connect "tamped candle" with something like birds suddenly vanishing, though that is not in the verse. And it does not cure the poor construction of the last two lines.
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="noind">
"From The Book of Persephone (III)" (14), second stanza:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I have heard my voice played back from the tape recorder<br />
scorched with distance, as if I did not own it,<br />
and the voices of others cut into segments,<br />
soundbits like paperclips holding the blown pages.<br />
I have known myself as the dizziness<br />
marring the still sky, causing it to tilt and quiver,<br />
dividing it into wide panels of gray light<br />
that fall and break apart.<br />
Blame is a secret terror.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
"I have heard my voice played back . . . as if I did not own it." To which I say, So what? What is the result of that? What is the effect of that? What am I as a reader supposed to do with that except to go, "oh, that's poetic sounding"? The verse doesn't do anything with it.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Next, "The voices of others cut into segments [] like paperclips holding the blown pages." (Sheck does a lot of similes. They quickly start to become, I would say <i>too</i> noticeable.) First, shouldn't it be the other way around: "like blown pages held by paperclips"? After all, how are <i>paperclips</i> to be equated with segments? It is much more natural to say the pages on a line, held by paperclips, are the segments. Also, by saying "like paperclips holding the blown pages" you are equating the segments not just to paperclips but paperclips "<i>holding</i>." This is a sloppily written line; a line in error created by sloppy writing.
</p>
<p class="ind">
"I have known myself as the dizziness / marring the still sky" – note that the semantics implies that we know what the dizziness that mars the still sky is. Never mind how a <i>still</i> sky is dizzy, when dizziness inherently implies motion either internal, external, or both. It sounds like a nice poetic phrase but try to come up with a reading for it. Indeed, try to make sense of the whole of the sentence: "dividing into wide panels of gray light / that fall and break apart" as if we know what that means, as if it actually means anything. And that last line is wholly from another piece of paper stapled on to the first at the butt. I have no idea how it connects to the stanza at all, how it at all relates to the verse.
</p>
<p class="ind">
I argue these lines are yet more of the same. "Poetic" phrasing that we are to accept as "poetry," even though it does not at all develop ideationally – or, even, make sense ideationally. Indeed, so often in the verses, the phrases clash ideationally, sometimes externally, sometimes internally. This seems to be a "poetry" you are not meant to think about; not closely, at least.
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="ind">
Let me add a word here: It is <i>unconvincing</i> poetry. I do not believe – or at least, the verses to not give me the confidence – that Sheck exercised much control over what she was writing, or did not bother with control, or was unable to exert control. This is what the verses tell me.
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="ind">
I think you've gotten the idea from me moving one to the next how every verse is plagued with ideational issues, so let's jump ahead to a humdinger as bad as the cat clocks. "From the Book of Persephone (VII)" (39):
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
and then the pages filled<br />
to the margins with print and illustrations
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Hopefully you see right off what the problem is: It is impossible for a page <i>not</i> to be "filled to the margins with print and illustrations," because it is the print and illustrations that define what the margins are. Have text that leaves but a quarter inch white space around the edge and the page and it is "filled to the margins"; have but a picture the size of a postage stamp and the page is still "filled to the margins." This is an incredibly lazy phrase that should have been caught immediately if ever happened at all, and is but another of the more glaring examples that make me question whether Sheck is in this book writing verses or just stringing together pretty phrases, loosely – and only loosely – guided by each verse's context. (It is made worse in the "Book of Persephone" verses, which are rather abstract, and thus should demand even tighter control, not looser.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
Something else also to the point. There's a lot of repetition of ideas between the verses. A lot of children. A lot of fists clenching air. An interesting one, perhaps exemplary, is that between "From The Book of Persephone (I)" (7):
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The water murmuring <i>was</i>, <i>was</i>, <i>was</i>.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
and "Voltage" (16):
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Planes pass and pass<br />
[. . .]<br />
<i>This is</i>, they seem to say, <i>this is</i>
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
She's repeting her rifs. And they are not used terribly cleverly, really. Just rifs in the verses. And while reading the book I was struck with the idea that it would be interesting to have, in a book, phrases that repeat here and there. But, for it to work to interesting ends – to poetic ends – they would have to be used differently every time, or used in ways that with every utterance that phrase became more and more vibrant. But here, Sheck's verse doesn't generate vibrancy even within the verse. Just sparkling lights. It's like bad jazz that is one riff after the other but only the vaguest sense of making a song. So the repetitions are nothing but that, repetitions.
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="noind">
"The Inn" (18), opening stanza:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The air darkens in gradations like a Xeroxed page<br />
the machine is making darker with each copy,<br />
slowly, slowly, until the inner workings grind<br />
finally to a halt, completely broken.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Perhaps an interesting start to a bit (though note no attention to the idea of a poetic line). Except I've never had that happen to me that I can remember, and I would not expect that printed pages would get darker and darker as the machine breaks, at least not breaks in a mechanical way as is implied. So it does not work for me on the experiential level; it is for me another assertion that I just have to accept.
</p>
<p class="ind">
But even more, the idea is totally dropped as soon as the stanza ends. Indeed, the last stanza of the verse – the end of the verse, and the first stanza is about an end – that last stanza begins
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The book drops from A.'s hand. She is dozing.<br />
Outside the window of the inn<br />
a field lies fallow for planting, and beyond that a hill<br />
where earlier some cows were grazing.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Perhaps an end in that A. falls asleep, but in no way any notion of something broken. The exact opposite, actually. Indeed, read the whole of the verse and it is obvious the first stanza ideationally has no place and should but cut. And yet, there it is. Is it there solely because it is "poetical" sounding?
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="noind">
"From The Book of Persephone (IV)" (20), opening stanza:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The river is quiet now, and dark, as if inside it<br />
another world were sleeping,<br />
a world a child might dream<br />
in which the stars are not constained within their farness<br />
but bend to touch the child's skin, its face<br />
moth-gray in the hours before morning.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Look at how far away the stanza is at its last words from the idea of <i>river</i> in its first words. Another run on stanza that flows nicely but what about ideation? Keep in mind, "in which the stars are not constrained within their farness" is supposed to be adding description to the river. And, it is adding it indirectly, as it is not the world within the river, but a world "a child might dream." Like I said, sounds nice, but wanders very far afield. Another example of a run-on stanza? (Might make for an interesting writing game: everyone starts with the same phrase, and you see just how far away you can drift without looping. I should write that down.)
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="noind">
"From The Book of Persephone (V)" (22); the stanza concerns a room full of clay statues, each one "a mother and her infant child"; the verse describes them:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Each woman's arms looked casual, relaxed,<br />
as she held the tiny child in her lap,<br />
and yet there seemed in the stiff fingers <br />
a hidden desperation.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
First, notice the sloppy clash: the arms "looked casual", and yet the fingers are stiff. It's already established what the fingers look like by implication of their inclusion in "arms," particularly in that "casual" modifies how the child is held, which implies also casual hands and fingers. Important here is to see that she does not say:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Each woman's arms looked casual <br />
and yet the fingers seemed stiff
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
she says
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
and yet there seemed in the stiff fingers
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
As written, it is an overt clash of thoughts. Sloppy writing probably created because Sheck wanted to say "in the stiff fingers a hidden desperation" and went for it even though the lines already establish the opposite. Plus, looking back at the sentence, is this an example of the error of telling rather than showing? Indeed, though I don't much care for that phrase, telling is asserting. Showing is developing. Those last two lines are asserted. Note that when you are establishing an idea the first instance of it is always asserted, but then you develop the idea, and you develop how the idea works with what is going on around it – you weave your tapestry. Sheck does not do that. She out of the blue says something that is unestablished, and then, pretty much, lets it fall. They never escape being blunt assertions.
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="ind">
Anyway. You get the idea. I can continue to go on from verse to verse. I have a note for every one up until I stopped taking notes. So I'll stop and declare enough said.
</p>
<p class="ind">
What to get from this.
</p>
<p class="ind">
(1) "Unconvincing" is a good word to contemplate with writing. Does the verse convince the reader of the text's integrity, strength, inner development. Does the verse convince you that the writer had a solid grasp on technique? on semantics? on meaning-making? Or does it start to feel that words are simply being cast on the page one after the other without idea of the final whole, only worried about each phrase? (Note that formality does not make a verse convincing.) When Sheck writes in "Headlights" (57)
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
and the flames from the refineries<br />
burning at all hours<br />
like the flame on the assassinated President's grave
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
are we really to search for how refineries are like an assassinated president's grave? or do we lose confidence that she was at all paying attention to the whole and just threw in a simile that looked "poetic"? "Unconvincing": It's a good idea to think about. Do I find the verse in <i>The Willow Grove</i> convincing? Not at all. Once you see the more glaring ideational issues, the whole of her verse starts to look like poorly assembled, pretty phrases. The whole of it does not create in me the confidence that Sheck can control an idea through the stanzas of the verse. Indeed, at times I question her ability to control syntax. At least so it was, apparently, during the writing of this book.
</p>
<p class="ind">
"Convincing" verse. Give that a thought, what "convincing" verse feels like and looks like.
</p>
<p class="ind">
(2) Ideation is important, if not essential. Coleridge points out that generally readers only read in small segments, they don't read across lines or across phrases. As I said in the last post, good readers reads across lines, through the whole of the sentence, the whole of the stanza, the whole of the verse. A good reader notices when stanza 6 contradicts stanza 2. A good reader notices when the verse has gotten to stanza 4 and it still doesn't seem to be out of first gear. Verses like the verse in <i>The Willow Grove</i> only work if you are reading in very short segments, where you see "yet there seemed in the stiff fingers a hidden desperation" and go "what a nice, poetic line" . . . . . and not see that it clashes ideationally with the first part of the sentence about the arms.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Control is everything. Grammar and syntax need not be precise, but they need to demonstrate control, that it works according to the abilities of the English language, and that what is on the page is what you intended to write. Semantics can be fluid and creative, but, still, it must demonstrate control to be convincing, to not fall apart, to not create clashes where it is supposed to be creating complex ideas, complexes of ideas. When it comes to it, controlled simplicity is better than out of control complexity. (And when it's out of control, it's not really complexity, is it.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
Control is everything because (again from the previous post) of that all important idea: <i>Composition Is Everything</i>. In writing verse you are making something out of words. You want to the reader to see – and experience – surety in your making, see your skill, see what you <i>made</i>. See <i>that</i> you made and made well. You want to get good enough at building birdhouses that the straight lines look like straight lines, that the right angles look like right angles, that all the pieces fit together as snugly as designed, that a bird would poke their head out the hole and say, "Damn straight I live here."
</p>A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-55039206884729017982023-01-18T12:23:00.007-08:002023-01-19T11:30:26.759-08:00Freda Downie, "Moon"<p class="noind">
<b>non-sequiturs and the composition</b>
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="ind">
So I have been reading the British writer Freda Downie's <i>Collected Poems</i>. She only had three verse books in her writing career, but they were (and are) highly regarded. And, I will add my voice to that in saying they are quite a pleasure to read. In the general, I would say the average British versifier seems better at the art than the average U.S. versifier; but then it very much seems they take the aural and verbal aspects of verse much more seriously over there than over here. Over here writers seem more concerned with their politics, or their diary.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Thus, in going through Downie, it is not unknown to come upon a stanza like this, the close of "The Lesson," about a boy not so good at his piano lessons, wishing he were elsewhere:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And when she turned away to mark his music,<br />
He sighed and looked to the window to see <br />
His bicycle gleaming in the early dusk <br />
Against the rain-wet trunk of the apple tree.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Just to point out, note she does not – here or elsewhere in the verse – say, overtly, he wishes he were elsewhere. She puts the idea in the image of the bicycle against the tree, of the boy's focus being on the bicycle, not upon his lessons. Good imagist practice; which is on that point to say good <i>poetic</i> practice. But also, the language, though formal, simply glides. The formality works toward the overall sound rather than putting strictures on it. It creates an aural effect out of the stanza, not just the sound of some short string of words (as with throwing in some consonance in a verse that otherwise ignores sound).
</p><a name='more'></a>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="ind">
But, what I really want to talk about is a question raised by one of her verses. And it is, I repeat at the beginning, a <i>question</i>, something you must debate for yourself. We can speak of the issues that the question raises, but I leave any particular answer up to you.
</p>
<p class="ind">
I am speaking of the verse "Moon." In toto:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Let alone the moon<br />
Preserving her pocked face.<br />
I have been over familiar<br />
With her pitiless stare and know<br />
She uses arsenic to whiten her hands.<br />
<br />
How she eats my flesh.<br />
How she disregards my bones<br />
While bleaching them.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The moment in question is the fifth line, which perhaps you guessed, as reading it that fifth line has something of a isolated feel to it within the verse. It is disconnected, to a great degree, from the other lines. If the idea presented were simply that she has white hands it would fit with "pocked face" in that the moon is cratered and the moon is (or appears) white. But the central thought of the line is not merely that: it is that she <i>intentionally whitens</i> her hands with arsenic. There is nothing in the verse elsewhere that connects with that idea of the intentional act; thus the line sticks out as something of a speed bump. If I may, something of a non-sequitur.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Which poses the question: Does it work in the verse, does it hold within the unity of the verse, or does it pop out of that unity? Does it stick out from the flow and create a bump in the road of the reading? In terms of ideation, are you reading idea A, then suddenly jumping into idea B, then jumping right back into idea A?
</p>
<p class="ind">
Or, the other side of the question, does the fifth line successfully expand the ideation of the verse without breaking out of it?
</p>
<p class="ind">
There are two, related thoughts to bring in here.
</p>
<p class="ind">
First: parataxis, the conjoining of language elements without using a conjunction or other such means of signaling the relationship between them. In poetry it is used a little more grandly, to designate abutting two passages together that do not on the surface seem related to each other. Of course, the most famous parataxic verse is <i>The Waste Land</i>, my favorite moment of it right at the front:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee<br />
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,<br />
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,<br />
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.<br />
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.<br />
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,<br />
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,<br />
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,<br />
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The poem is filled with parataxis, moving from one scene to the next. Though, I have always most enjoyed this one, moving from drinking coffee as an adult in the Hofgarten too, suddenly, a scene from youth of riding a sled. The paratactic aspect is magnified by the first part ending with a spoken statement that fits the context of a conversation but has nothing to do, on the surface, with "when we were children."
</p>
<p class="ind">
But, just because you can attach the label <i>parataxis</i> does not mean it works. As I was just saying elsewhere, Blondie's <i>The Best of Blondie</i> might be full of good songs, but combined they make for a not-so-good album. They don't, as is necessary in poetry, combine to make a whole greater than its parts.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Which leads to the second thought, an aesthetic principle, as it were; an extension of the fundamental understanding that <i>Composition Is Everything</i>:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Every element of a making must work toward and within that overall, uniting composition.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That is, even non-sequiturs must work </i>toward</i> the overall composition. You can paint in oil a lunar landscape and set within it the ruins of a castle. Even though logically there are no castles on the moon and so the castle is something of a non-sequitur. they are still united within the idea of landscape painting, and can combine to a whole greater than the parts. (Thus also one of the core and too little used elements of fantasy.) However, what you cannot do is have a kangaroo to one side colored in crayons – not unless you are going for humor. Because something that out of place can only end up in humor, intended or not. (And, in such an example, even if intended I would say it did not work, because the rest of the painting would not be participating in the joke. As it were, "it might be funny, but not for the reasons you intend.")
</p>
<p class="ind">
Now, one might think here of collage, if not, more specifically, surrealist collage, if not the greater part of the surrealist project, which is all but cornerstoned by the effect parataxis has on the unconscious mind. But, once again, just because you attach the word <i>collage</i> to the work does not mean the work succeeds; and, in the end, the success of a collage lies in whether, with all its strangeness, the whole unifies into something greater than its parts. Indeed, this is the lesson that the Surrealists had to learn: the strangeness of parataxis that activates the unconscious may be inherent to the idea of the aesthetic, but it is not art on its own. Consideration must still be made for the poem or painting as a whole. Composition is everything.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Which leads us back to "Moon," which I'll present again so you don't have to scroll.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Let alone the moon<br />
Preserving her pocked face.<br />
I have been over familiar<br />
With her pitiless stare and know<br />
She uses arsenic to whiten her hands.<br />
<br />
How she eats my flesh.<br />
How she disregards my bones<br />
While bleaching them.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
If you are a good reader you notice that that fifth line is a sudden shift in ideation. And if you are a good reader you are confronted with the question: Does the line nonetheless add to and work within the composition as a whole? or does it break from it and shatter it? A good reader, after all, does not merely read the moment, those words in the immediate focus of their eyes, they read across lines, across stanzas, they read wholes. So is "Moon" a unified whole? Or is it an otherwise interesting verse with one curious but ill-fitting line?
</p>
<p class="ind">
What is important, perhaps, is not where you come down on the question, but that you see that the question can – indeed, should – be asked; most essentially, that you can see that the question is there to be asked.
</p>A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-10656157761675160342022-11-09T13:26:00.001-08:002022-11-13T16:55:22.109-08:00Life in the Cereal Aisle<p class="noind">
<b>the poetic line</b>
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="ind">
I want to posit a question. Or posit an idea that in itself presents a question. Perhaps many questions. It depends on how seriously you take the idea of the poetic ear.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Take this phrase that I have been playing around with (unfortunately to little fruition):
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
time well spent in the cereal aisle
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Except, that's not the phrase I'm playing with. This is:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
time spent well in the cereal aisle
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There is a world of difference between those two phrases, entirely because of how they work on the ear. The latter has an aural resonance that is wholly lacking in the former. Why? What am I talking about? Break it down:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
time spent well in the cereal aisle<br />
spent well ------- cereal aisle<br />
speh / ell ---------- see / ayl<br />
seh / ell ----------- see / ayl
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
So that you can read it without going back up, and hear what is going on:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
time well spent in the cereal aisle
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
vs.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
time spent well in the cereal aisle
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Do you hear the aural construction that is created by reversing the order of "well spent"?<a name='more'></a> It is totally lacking in the more common way of saying it. And there is nothing grammatically or semantically incorrect with reversing the words. In fact, in normal construction, the adverb as often follows the verb as precedes it. For example:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
laughed heartily<br />
heartily laughed
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It just happens to be that we most normally fall upon "well spent." (I would be willing to argue it is because in English we tend to like our stops at the end of the phrase rather than having them in the middle of things.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
But what I am positing is not just the presence of the sound. Ultimately, decisively, what I am saying is that this:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
time spent well in the cereal aisle
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
is poetic, while this:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
time well spent in the cereal aisle
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
is merely prosaic. And that if you are writing verse, the momentum should be to the use of the former. That when writing verse, you should be seeking such sound constructions. That when writing verse, how the line sounds (or lines) is actually quite important to its poetic strength.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Now, some people would argue that you are supposed to use common speech nowadays in verse. I say that that is why so few so-called "poets" have any sense of a poetic ear, and why so very much verse you see about is aurally bland, boring, and often unmelodious if not clunky. (There is a lot of clunky verse out there, and you would think editors of magazines would know better. Would <i>hear</i> better.) Poetry is supposed to be making something out of language, something that does not normally exist but for the poet's careful creating. Something, dare we say, beautiful. And, very simply,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
time spent well in the cereal aisle
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
has beauty, and
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
time well spent in the cereal aisle
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
does not.
</p>
A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-11351799804205364402022-04-11T18:12:00.029-07:002022-11-09T13:35:01.430-08:00Amanda Gorman, "The Hill We Climb"<p class="noind">
<b>bad verse is bad verse</b>
</p>
<p class="noind">
</p>
<p class="ind">
<i>Addendum before the text:</i>
</p>
<p class="ind">
<i>So, Google must have been playing tricks on me because previously, no matter the search, all it would show me of Gorman was page after page about "The Hill We Climb." Except for the poets.org page. Now, of a sudden, it is offering me other fare, and I get a look at what Gorman is capable of besides "Hill." Which is nice to see, considering how bad "Hill" is. For example, there are the five poems from her then upcoming book posted on </i>The New Yorker<i> site [<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/13/from-call-us-what-we-carry-poetry-by-amanda-gorman">link</a>]. And, as said, I am pleased to see that she does write other things better than "Hill." Which is not to say I change my opinion on "The Hill We Climb." That mess is among the worst pieces of published verse I have ever seen. (Well, I include there things published in online mags.) There is a large difference between "Hill" and the bits on the </i>New Yorker<i> page. And that should be recognized.</i>
</p>
<p class="ind">
<i>Not that I see in those bits any sign of excellence. They are of the average fare for what is published today. Which is to say, rather mediocre. Unlike what the article writer says, they are neither "bold" nor "oracular." (But, then, forbid a poetry book reviewer to pass up the chance for grotesque hyperbole, their own "poetry.") They have their weaknesses, through and through. I would not have minded doing a post on them alone to show those weaknesses. In truth, were I to pick up this book blind in a store I would never buy it. Though, they are still head and shoulders better that "Hill," which is an absolute trainwreck, and makes me wonder if she wrote that calamity on a three day bender two days before it was due.</i>
</p>
<p class="ind">
<i>Do I now regret my post about "The Hill We Climb"? Absolutely not. It needs to be pointed out just how very bad that bit of verse is. The single greatest comeback to the people who defend "The Hill We Climb" is that it is so bad it is indefensible. Even if you want to say Gorman is a decent poet (and I would not say that from the </i>New Yorker<i> bits, I would say only she is an average versifier), even if you wanted to defend her, you have to start by accepting that "Hill" is miserably bad. It may be an outlier in her work, but it is, as I show below, a amateurish failure at verse.</i>
</p>
<p class="ind">
<i>To say, after a brief exchange I had with an FB friend, it is to be noted that I agree with such as Yeats and Auden: politics and poetry are oil and water. The more a writer wants to politics, the worse the poetry will be, the less it will be </i>poetry<i>. The best "political" verse may have a political subject, but they are not themselves political. The more political a verse is, the more it tends to, as I say below, "dead father" poetry. If I may risk aphorism, True poetry is about the human soul, and when you bring in politics, you no longer tread on those grounds.</i>
</p>
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<br />
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Recently an essay on the <i>Chained Muse</i> site <a href="https://www.thechainedmuse.com/post/why-amanda-gorman-is-not-a-poet?fbclid=IwAR0h6GsnSaRp8aZsHS1h5Q2hGaYDYBit_Tda6RuyXEJVu1bIFaf35cs2ScI">[link]</a> was brought to my attention, wherein its author, Adam Sedia, brought to task Amanda Gorman and her inauguration poem, "The Hill We Climb."
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Now, I watched the inauguration and, granted, inauguration poems have a tendency to be not very good. Such is the recent history of them. But even as she was reading it I was yet struck by just how really, <i>really</i> not very good Gorman's verse was. It was terrible. Remarkably so. Laugh out loud so. And I thought, in the days after, when transcripts became available online, to do a post here about just how not at all good "The Hill We Climb" is. But, to be honest, it seemed to me a little too easy a target. Fish in a barrel, and that. And when something is that bad, it is hard not to come off as vicious. It would not, after all, be merely pointing out a flaw here, a weakness there. To speak about "The Hill We Climb" would be to say, quite bluntly, "This is wholly awful stuff and the lot of it should be tossed in the bin," and without kindly amelioration (for such would be mostly impossible). So I let it pass.
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<p class="ind">
So why take it up now? Well, three reasons. First, there are some things in Sedia's post that I would like to give word to on their own, even if briefly. Second, perhaps he does not do so well a job at showing just how bad "The Hill We Climb" is, and for that it opens the door to many of the comments defending "Hill." So, third, perhaps it is worth, after all, giving a line-by-line demonstration of just how bad the verse is. Of course, one need only look at the inanity of those comments that follow Sedia's post to know however the proof, some people will still blindly defend the verse. Yet, by looking that those comments, you get a decent showing of just how ridiculous and grossly fallacious those defenses can be. But maybe a line-by-line would end most of those.
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And, if may add a fourth, perhaps a show of solidarity is merited.
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Now, Gorman's verse is readily available. I chose the <i>Town and Country</i> page <a href="https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/a35279603/amanda-gorman-inauguration-poem-the-hill-we-climb-transcript/">[link]</a> simply because the verse is quickly found on the page and easy to read. Note that line breaks change from site to site as they are transcripts of the reading. On Amazon, with the official print release of the verse, in the preview you can see a few pages of text, and see how Gorman divides the lines. So if you want, you can look there to get a flavor: they are mostly broken by the rhymes. At least, for a while they are. Then the rhymes – and the structure – goes away. But, since the location of line breaks is mostly irrelevant to my presentation, the <i>Town and Country</i> page will serve.
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Setting aside "Hill" for the moment, I want to begin with Sedia's post.
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First, right off the top, I disagree with the very nature of Sedia's titular idea: "Why Amanda Gorman Is Not a Poet." It is a poor statement. As should be obvious, you cannot demonstrate it from one bad bit of verse. Even a world-class golfer can find themselves staring down the barrel of a quintuple bogey. Who knows, maybe she has a moment of brilliance elsewhere. For how bad "The Hill We Climb" is, I doubt it. But, still, I give her the chance. Indeed, T.S. Eliot makes the observation that if a writer creates but one brilliant verse in their life, then it was worth all the effort. (I wish I could source that for you. A couple of years ago I read/re-read through most of Eliot's essays. Unfortunately, I did not in the trek write down where the bon mots were found. So, I suffer for it.)
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<p class="ind"> That said, as said, "The Hill We Climb" is really bad, so I would not expect to find much better by Gorman elsewhere. But, that is not to say I would not be pleased. I like good verse, whatever the source. (To say, there is one of her verses on the poets.org site; it is not as bad as "Hill," but it is not all that good either.)
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While Sedia's opening statement is falsely offered, there is yet the turnaround, the opposite question: Simply because Amanda Gorman wrote "The Hill We Climb," ostensibly a piece of verse, does that not make her a poet, even if it is really bad?
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Well, that depends on how much we want to water down the terms <i>poetry</i> and <i>poet</i>. This is a terminological issue that poets and critics sometimes confront (overtly or not) in their essays and books. How can you use the same term – an elevated term – to identify both <i>The Waste Land</i> and that endearing verse, "My Dog Bob Poops in my Shoes"? They sometimes solve the issue with the phrase <i>true poetry</i>, used to distinguish that which is truly poetry, those moments of transcendent brilliance, from the great mass of the poor and mediocre. (Indeed, the phrase is also used for art, by artists. And I have no problems calling Mozart's <i>Requiem</i> true poetry.) Myself, I have come to also use the terms "verse" and "versifier." That way we can still give categorical identity to those quatrains (to reuse an example of mine) that Aunt Edith writes in birthday cards. They rhyme, they have meter, there is no issue in calling them verse. But, we all know, if never say, Aunt Edith's quatrains are not very good. So let's not go and call them poetry. They are verse. Which is term enough. And most everybody who claims to write poetry really only writes verse. And I mean most everybody. Including almost all of the stuff you see published in poetry mags. (Which is mostly either bad or mediocre. And do not be surprised, a great portion of what gets published is bad verse, even in reputable mags. Indeed, bad verse wins awards.) So I try to distinguish poetry from verse. Though, to note, there is nothing wrong with writing verse. It is a worthwhile endeavor. Especially formal verse. (It takes neither brainpower nor creativity to spew out bad free verse.)
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To note, Eliot also uses the phrases <i>genuine poetry</i> and <i>sham poetry</i>. I do not remember him ever saying <i>genuine poet</i>, but then, the point of the endeavor is not the writer but the verse. As said, a writer could pump out a thousand bland verses and then strike gold with one moment of brilliancy: a thousand sham poems and then one piece of genuine poetry. That makes for a poet, one might guess. At least, for that one moment of composition. But, really, again, the point lies in the verse. So while you might want to call Gorman a poet, I would comfortably say that "The Hill We Climb" is sham poetry, not the genuine article.
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But what is the genuine article? What is <i>true poetry</i>? Well, that is something that takes more than a few sentences. And this blog, in no small way, is a constant engagement with that question. In brief, true poetry is something, in the material side, that demonstrates exceptional skill, care, and composition (composition is everything); and in its ideational side, that escapes the mundanity of the logical, the grammatical, and the literal, and rises to the mythical, the spiritual.
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See? You need more than a sentence. Read Eliot's essays. Pound's essays (those on literature). Read H.D.'s <i>Trilogy</i> (without falling into the pop criticism of a feminist reading, which only limits its brilliance; it is about art, and thought, and spirituality). Read the opening of Robert Duncan's book on H.D. Read Stevens's <i>The Necessary Angel</i>. Go crazy: read some of the essays here.
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Anyway. Continuing:
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Sedia spends a few paragraphs on the question What is a poet? He uses three excerpts, from Shelley and Poe and Frost, which are immediately fallacious in that they do not speak to What is a poet? but to What is poetry?, which is, really, as implied above, two very different questions. So let's just drop the What is a poet? line, and stick with What is poetry? Sedia offers this definition:
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First, it exists for the sheer aesthetic value of the words. But on another level, a poem expresses a thought, an analytical action of the human mind upon an object.
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And perhaps some people would accept that. I do not. After all, is it possible for a verse <i>not</i> to express a thought? I mean, perhaps this wording is guarding the gate against New York School-type abstractions (which, to be honest, maybe needs to be addressed). But, again, "My Dog Bob Poops in my Shoes" definitely expresses a thought. Indeed, so does "The Hill We Climb," so I am not sure how his definition would work in his argument. And does it have to be "analytical"? – I am <i>wholly</i> opposed to that word. In fact, I would say for verse to be true poetry it has to function outside the analytical, it has to put the analytic to use to serve a greater, non-analytical, endeavor. All in all, it is in the end a soft definition; but, then, he goes on to say:
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By any definition, Gorman's work fails even to qualify as poetry.
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By <i>any</i> definition? As said, read the comments to Sedia's post and you will find plenty of quote-unquote "definitions" under which "The Hill We Climb" is poetry. They are not terribly valid or useful definitions, but they are definitions. And, to be honest, Sedia's definition is not terribly useful either, nor, to me, terribly valid.
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That to say, though, really, his definition is greatly irrelevant even to his own dissection of "Hill." And he does then move on to some more specific and tangible ideas, which guide the rest of his presentation.
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"The Hill We Climb" [. . .] embodies all major defects of contemporary mainstream poetry, from complete absence of structural rigor, an abundance of truisms and cliches, numbingly unpoetic language to – most fundamentally – lack of poetic metaphor.
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And I agree in that those are major defects of contemporary mainstream verse – though it should be said there is no shortage of bad verse out there that has "structural rigor." Just because it is formal verse does not in anyway mean it is good verse. But to the point, I can think of other problems: a poor understanding of semantics or grammar, inattention to detail and logic and sense, the absence of evidence of a poetic ear, general lack of sophistication, and perhaps others if I really wanted to spend time on it. But his is a good list, four things worth talking about, and four criticisms that all apply to "Hill."
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To give a quick moment to the "structural rigor" and "The Hill We Climb," looking at the preview on Amazon, Gorman's verse (and there you can see it divided into stanzas of sort, though, that is probably to stretch it out to book length), begins in a kind of formality: rhymed lines that are mostly iambic. That is, until the last available page, beginning with "We, the successors of a country and a time," at which point all sense of structure disappears. And, looking at the <i>Town and Country</i> text, I cannot find but here and there after that where it might reclaim any sense of a natural, imposed structure (sometimes through repetitive phrasing, but that does not exactly take genius; sometimes through rhyme, though often if you did break it there they might make for bad lines). But, then, the text seems entirely prose, and I expect that in the book version, once you get past the opening lines, and but for rhymes and repetitions here and there, "Hill" is presented as little more than prose with line breaks. And composition is incredibly important to poetry. Without it, you have but a string of words. (Composition is everything!)
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As for cliches and unpoetic language, I will touch on that in my own analysis.
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But I want to give time to that fourth one: the "lack of poetic metaphor." (And here we see Sedia contradict himself a touch, as metaphor is not analytical, and yet, it is metaphor that is held up as "fundamental" to poetry.) This is actually quite important, because it goes to the ideational side of what is true poetry. Most contemporary verse lacks any real sense of metaphor within their lines: they tend to the realist and literal. And the first step to true poetry is to break away from realism and the demand for verisimilitude. Why? Because true poetry is not about facts. It presents thinking that transcends brute factuality, whether directly or indirectly. Indeed, much of the art of true poetry is how to escape the realm of fact.
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A good book to read on this point, as I have said many times, is Roland Barthes's <i>Criticism and Truth</i>, and while it is a short book, it is also, I will admit, a difficult book. But it speaks greatly to the opposition between true poetry (though I do not think he uses that phrase) and realist verisimilitude. Though, you can also, again, look to Eliot's writings, or Pound's, or H.D.'s <i>Trilogy</i>, or, if you are really brave, Coleridge's <i>Biographia Literaria</i>, which is also difficult, but absolutely worth it. (Locally, one might try my essay on an H.D. poem <a href="http://poetrydailycritique.blogspot.com/2016/09/patterns-by-amy-lowell-and-garden-by-hd.html">[link]</a> or, if you are into the harder stuff, my essay on a Cummings poem <a href="http://poetrydailycritique.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-mind-is-its-own-beautiful-prisoner.html">[link]</a>). It is a topic greater than I am willing to address here, but it is a very important point. And Sedia does give a quick but worthwhile argument of how "Hill" is devoid of metaphor.
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He is not entirely correct, though, as he says the text <i>wholly</i> lacks poetic metaphor: a "complete absense." It does not. Indeed, the second line, "where can we find light in this never-ending shade" is a go at metaphor, an attempt to signify "troubles, difficulties, dark times," even, as Sedia himself points out, the years of the Trump presidency. It is a metaphor. It is, for its delivery, a lame – as in both legs broken – and absolutely trite metaphor, yes, but it is a metaphor.
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But, still, Sedia has a point, and it is worth recognizing. And I agree: metaphor is inherent to true poetry; if not requisite. And, continuing:
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In the end, ["Hill"] is just prose, a series of declarative sentences stacked on top of each other – and not particularly brilliant or insightful prose, at that.
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Which is true. "The Hill We Climb" is pretty much prose, neither brilliant nor insightful.
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To another point: I do not entirely agree with Sedia's comments on poetic voice. He says,
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If the ideas a poem conveys are to have any meaning to a different mind reading it, the poem must engage the reader in the experience described. Decoupling the experience from the poet experiencing it achieves this universality.
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Which is true but also not true. The first part I agree with. I need only point to the many autobiographical "dead father" verses I have read that fall completely flat because they depend entirely on the reader believing the writer's emotions about their dead fathers (or mothers): they do not generate anything within themselves. They say "dead father" and expect the reader to react accordingly. And as is often said, should a puppy bite you on the ear you might experience something, but that does not make it poetry. But as for the second part, it is entirely legitimate for a poem to have a strong narrative voice, and a strongly identified narrator. So when he says
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By describing herself explicitly in raw demographic terms, Gorman destroys any chance the poem has of appealing to a universal audience
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one has to ask the question, is she describing herself, or is the text speaking out of a narrator? The problem is the poem is not very good, so the distinction blurs. And it is hard, even with a strictly autobiographical piece, to say that there is not yet a narrator that is separate from the author. Indeed, I would argue, the voice of a verse <i>should</i> be that of a narrator, whether one hard cut from clay, or one greatly abstract. Indeed, the best autobiography (verse or prose) speaks through a narrator, even when that narrator is to be identified with the author. The reason is, if a writer is writing too much out of their own voice, they will fall into the "dead father" poem trap: they will not be creating within the text, but will be expecting the reader to react to the subject simply because that is how you are supposed to react to that subject. "This terrible thing happened to me. Aren't you sad?" "Dead father" poems. (And, to say, when you are writing without a narrator, it tends to bad writing.)
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To be honest, I am a little bit arguing against Sedia's specific attack just so I can make the abstract point. In truth, "Hill" is mostly a "dead father" poem, mostly a poem that expects the reader to identify the words with the author. It does not generate ideas or emotions on its own. It says "We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside," and the "we" includes she, and she expects you to react accordingly. In truth, there is nothing generative about that phrase. It is absolutely banal, and trite, and dead prose. You are supposed to respond in a certain way because that is how you are supposed to respond when someone says that. Puppy bites. Political propoganda, if not political pornography.
<p class="ind">
That aside, I will say that Sedia's presentation has its value, if, in the very least, in making points about poetry and verse that are worth the making even if it does not strictly and precisely apply to "Hill." They are worth the making if just to get you thinking about those ideas as they relate to poetry. In general, though, he is spot on: in "Hill" there is precious little metaphoric language; there is mostly the trite and the banal, "truisms and cliches"; and the voice of the verse is problematic. As a whole, it has little poetic value when it is put to the scale.
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So while I do wish Sedia had been more careful with his arguments, I do not wish the arguments were never made.
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Now, I want to approach the verse a different way. I do not want to ask "Is this poetry?" I will set that aside and rather say, "Whatever this is, it is not very good." For me it is in no way poetry. It is verse. And it is really bad verse at that. So, in rhet/comp terms, I want to hit it with my red pen, and show how little white remains on the page when I am done.
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<p class="ind">
Now, before I start, it should be said that I recognize, and it should be recognized, that grammatical, syntactic, and, especially, semantic errors are not always easily seen. If you have taught a composition class you probably know the experience of pointing out an error in a sentence and having the audience stare at you with blank eyes. So you try one way to say it, you try another, and then suddenly the lights go on. (And if you have been in a composition class you might have had the experience of that light turning on.) If your abilities with the English language are not very sophisticated, it is not always easy to see the problems, even when they are being pointed out. Nonetheless, what I do point out below are absolutely problems, errors, that would be corrected by a good editor or comp teacher. They are things that should never exist in verse (or writing of any form), especially published verse, especially especially an inauguration "poem." So even if you do not see it at first, keep looking. It's there. And it is worth seeing. It's worth the learning. The posts on this blog are meant to be educational, not mere bloviations.
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<p class="ind">
(To note, there are a couple places where I say "she meant X," where I can also see a lesser probability she actually meant Y. If I am wrong it does not mean the error does not exist, it just means the fixing is different.)
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So, starting right at the top:
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When day comes we ask ourselves,<br />
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
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And stop right there. "Where can we find light"? But, was there not just . . . .
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When day comes
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Did not the verse just lead off with a quite blatant statement of coming out of the dark of night and into the light of day? And yet, "never-ending shade"? It took two lines and already the verse is sloppy enough to contradict itself. Of course, the reason it contradicts itself is most likely because the second line is a trite image. It is a line no self-respecting, college poetry teacher would ever let stand. And trite phrases tend to be things that are just flung about the page: they are not thought about, not seriously. Indeed, they are not meant to be thought about seriously. So it is not a surprise that the contradiction exists. Most likely, Gorman simply was not thinking that deeply about or paying that much attention to the text. She was within the trite, and she was happy there. And when you are within the trite, contradictions are not an issue.
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So, tallying: in the <i>first two lines</i> a major error (and a trite phrase) and she did not catch it. That does not bode well.
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Next:
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The loss we carry,<br />
a sea we must wade.
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More trite ideas. But notice that second line: "the <i>sea</i> we must <i>wade</i>." Do people normally <i>wade</i> across a sea? No. Of course not. In fact, "wade" is not that difficult a thing to do at all, though "sea" is obviously meant to imply difficulty. It is another contradiction in the text.
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So why "wade"? Because it rhymes with "shade." The word was chosen for the rhyme, not for its meaning. This is a problem often seen with beginner – and poor – writers: they force their phrasing to fit the rhyme or the meter and sacrifice the meaning for the match. Indeed, this is a perfect example of that issue, one to keep for when you teach this problem in your poetry class.
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Continuing:
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We've braved the belly of the beast,<br />
we've learned that quiet isn't always peace,<br />
and the norms and notions of what just is<br />
isn't always justice.
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<p class="noind">
I changed the lines from the <i>Town and Country</i> transcription so it keeps the intended rhymes. (This is how it is on the Amazon preview.) Now, "belly of the beast" is a little questionable. The truest meaning of belly of the beast refers to the hero's journey, wherein the hero must go through the trials of the "belly of the beast" in order to come out the other side the greater person. (Think Jonah in the whate: when he comes out, he is greater than he was going in.) But that last element is not present in Gorman's text. So "belly of the beast" is just another trite phrase. The line also suffers for the word "brave." Keeping to the possible theme, did we "brave" Trump's presidency? Even more broadly, did we "brave" our current social issues? Did we stand before and say "bring it on!"? No. It is a poorly chosen word. (I admit this might be a quibble, but I think there are better words, and "brave" was probably chosen for the consonance.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
And as for the next line, "We've learned that quiet isn't always peace," even if it is supposed to be taken topically, I have no idea what it might be referring to. She is making an affirmative statement as though we know what she means. Which is to say, like a "dead father" poem, like all platitudes, we are simply supposed to take the line at face value and respond as the writer means for us to respond. Indeed, "peace" – if not the line as a whole – probably only exists, again, because it slant rhymes with "beast."
</p>
<p class="ind">
It should also be pointed out that the semantic problems created by there not being a <i>that</i> before "the norms" almost demands that that <i>that</i> should be present. (Yes. three <i>that</i>s in a row.) Notice the difference.
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we've learned that quiet isn't always peace,<br />
and the norms and notions of what just is<br />
<br />
we've learned that quiet isn't always peace,<br />
and that the norms and notions of what just is
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<p class="noind">
Without the "that" the subject of the sentence changes from "we" to "norms and notions," which I do not think is what she intended. More sloppy writing.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Then comes the next two lines. To be blunt, the rhyme of "just is" with "justice" is so trite and ridiculously offered that it should have been outlawed from verse after the first time it appeared in a poetry slam. And even then it is so strained a rhyme, it should have been edited out before it was ever delivered. In fact, anybody who has an ear for verse, who studies it, will tell you this is a bad rhyme because of the accents:
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and the NORMS and NOtions of WHAT just IS<br />
ISn't ALways JUSTice.
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<p class="noind">
"Just is" and "justice" do not correctly rhyme because the accents are wrong. (Ask your poetry prof.) And, if you notice in the video, when Gorman reads the lines of text, she has to twist the emphasis to make it rhyme. Not to mention, this is astoundingly bad writing. No skilled poet with a developed ear would have ever permitted that rhyme to exist in their work, never mind because it does not rhyme. And, on top of it, the two lines are another empty platitude: there is no poetic creation going on here, just appeals to moral righteousness.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Let us quickly move on, because that not-rhyme causes me pain. (I cringed – and laughed – when she read it.) Rewriting again to put the rhymes at the end:
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And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.<br />
Somehow we do it.<br />
Somehow we've weathered and witnessed<br />
a nation that isn't broken, but simply unfinished.
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<p class="noind">
What does that mean, "the dawn is ours before we knew it"? First of all, you hopefully all see the grammatical error: "Before we knew it, the dawn <i>was</i> ours." (Or, "The dawn will be ours before we know it.") So there is that. (The tally on out and out errors in this verse it rising quickly.) But, still, what does it mean that "the dawn was ours before we knew it"? Does she mean that in the sense of the phrase "the day is ours," spoken when an army or such wins a battle and she got the word wrong? In context, that cannot be what it means, as there is not a closing victory, particularly not one "before we knew it." But beyond that, I have no strong idea.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Except what follows is "Somehow we <i>do it</i>." It could not possibly be that she wrote two more bad lines simply because she wanted the rhyme of "knew it" and "do it"? And "Somehow we do it" is an awful line. A howler. Not only for the question of "do what?", but also for that the rhyme of "knew it" and "do it" is a prime example of a rhyme that might match but should still be avoided and with prejudice, generally because the reader is going to laugh whether you want them to or not. Then, "We've weathered" a nation that "<i>isn't</i> broken"? Wouldn't normally "weathered" be used with a situation that was broken? We "weathered the storm," not "we weathered the calm." We weathered a broken nation, not one that was not broken. Dumb lines. Silly lines. Lines that pay more attention to the rhymes than to the meanings of the words. They are amateurish lines.
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<p class="ind">
Next:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
We the successors of a country and a time<br />
where a Black girl<br />
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother<br />
can dream of becoming president<br />
only to find herself reciting for one.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
These lines, this sentence, is a mess. It is very sloppy writing. Let's rewrite it as prose – and it is prose broken into lines, not strong verse – to get a better read. As you read it, try to attend to how the phrases work together. (They do not, not cleanly, but try.)
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
We the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There are two errors. "We the successors of a country ]. . .] where a black girl" – notice that the "where" phrase connects to "country," and "country" occurs <i>in the past</i>. It is not the country of now, it is the country of which we are the successors. So "we are successors of a country [. . .] where a black girl [. . .] can dream of becoming president" means that in the past a black girl could dream of becoming president. I think rather she would have it we are the successors of a country where a black girl could <i>not</i> dream of becoming president. It does not make sense the way she writes it, and I am sure the meaning she intends the reader to get is that of the version as I write it. That is error one. Error two is in the second half of the sentence: "can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting." That means that she dreams of one thing, but <i>instead</i> ends up with the lesser position of the second thing. She can "dream" of becoming president, but instead she is "only" reciting verse. She just put herself down.
</p>
<p class="ind">
What she meant to write was probably something like:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
We are the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother could never dream of becoming president, and yet today she finds herself reciting for one.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Even then the sentence still does not work, because it cannot avoid that it makes reciting for a president so much less than being one. But as Gorman wrote it it is a mess of a sentence. Both of the errors would get red marks in any college composition class. (And what school did she attend?) This is terrible writing. And worse verse. To note, there is no verb. (Hopefully you caught that.) Nor is there one in the Amazon preview. That might be part of the problem.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Beyond all the out-and-out errors, notice that we are this far in and Gorman has yet to offer a single original image or poetic phrase. And, you know, generally a reader of poetry wants the poetry to start at line 1. What we have had here are all bland, hackneyed prose sentences – even with the rhymes – and mostly empty platitudes. Bumper stickers on parade. There has been nothing new or of value, particularly not of poetic value. It is not even that she is offering poetic fare but rather bland poetic fare; this is empty nothings. A series of "dead father" phrases – rather quotidian ones at that – that you are supposed to respond to as she intends for you to respond them. (Generally, as said, through moral righteousness.) Again, nothing is being generated. And, a good reader who would not get suckered into the bells and whistles would be responding by saying "except for the humor of how bad the writing is, this is rather boring, no?"
</p>
<p class="ind">
More:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And yes we are far from polished.<br />
Far from pristine.<br />
But that doesn't mean we are <br />
striving to form a union that is perfect.<br />
We are striving to forge a union with purpose,<br />
to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors,<br />
characters and conditions of man.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
We are beyond Amazon's preview now, so the line breaks are how <i>Town and Country</i> put them. Though, as I said, they are guessing, following how she read it.
</p>
<p class="ind">
That said, what do we have with these lines? First, we have a mis-use of the word <i>pristine</i>. <i>Pristine</i> means uncorrupted, as in <i>yet to be removed</i> from the original, pure state. You cannot obtain the state of being pristine, as is meant in "far from pristine." Indeed, the phrases "far from polished" and "far from pristine," when taken on their own, mean two opposing things, one going toward the state of betterness, one going away. And gluing them together does not cure it, because <i>polished</i> and <i>pristine</i> are not remotely synonymous. Another contradiction. Or bad parallelism, as it is said. Either way, bad writing.
</p>
<p class="ind">
"But that doesn't mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect." Shouldn't she say "that doesn't mean we are <i>not</i> striving"? I mean, even if perfection is impossible, you still strive for it. More sloppy writing. And because of that error, "We are striving to forge a union with purpose," falls wrong. The text makes it as though "with purpose" is some lesser goal.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
But that doesn't mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Nah, that would be too hard! Let's go for something easier. Some less taxing, even if less valuable.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
See how the sentence structure is working? Not how she wants. "With purpose" is not held high here. It is undercut by the previous bad phrase. And as for the "c"s in "to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man," that's as poetic as this verse is ever going to get. Revel in it while you can. Though, note that "compose" is falsely used – you don't "compose" a country (unless you mean "calm it down") – and it is found in the line, probably, because it starts with "c", not because it is the best word for the phrase. Bad writing; amateurish writing.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Onward. Perhaps the next lines can be settled into rhymes, so I will rewrite. (I have no idea if this is how it is in the book, but I expect it to be so.)
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us,<br />
but what stands before us.<br />
We close the divide <br />
because we know, to put our future first,<br />
we must first put our differences aside.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Well, maybe that accentuates the rhymes, but they are pretty bad lines. "We lift our gazes?" Would we normally <i>lift</i> our gaze to the negative of "what stands between us"? Besides that error, "What stands between us"/"what stands before us" is high-school-class-president-speech quality stuff. An adult poet would never use this. Nor would they say something as trite as "to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside." Again, can you not see how these are crap platitudes? These are the emptiest, tritest lines, and "The Hill We Climb" is <i>one long string</i> of this stuff. By now you should be screaming, "By all that's holy! Say <i>something</i> that is not a bumper sticker, something that is <i>at all</i> interesting, at all creative!"
</p>
<p class="ind">
Even for all I have written, I am not sure if I am fully demonstrating how bad this stuff is, how unforgivably trite these lines are. Perhaps I need to say look in any collected works of an established versifier, even the mediocre ones like Billy Collins and Richard Wilbur, and you will not find <i>a one</i> of these phrases in the many, many lines. That is for a reason. They are inherently unpoetic, entirely uncreative, and wholly boring.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Now, I know I am setting myself up for failure, because what Gorman wrote here is not an isolated case. It is really, really bad, but you can find similar being published elsewhere in the U.S. Except, this is <i>really, really</i> bad. So maybe you would be hard pressed to find something <i>quite</i> like this beyond an high school lit mag. But in the general sense, it is out there. Nonetheless, no versifier of any caliber would ever write any of these lines.
</p>
<p class="ind">
And, they could catch the grammatical and semantic errors.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The flow of the above lines continues into the next few:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
We lay down our arms<br />
so we can reach out our arms<br />
to one another.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There's two things to see, to recognize. First, as with what preceded it, this is childish. No respecting versifier, etc. Second, though, is its rhetorical stance (and this issue is not isolated to these lines): it insists that this is actually happening. That "we <i>do</i> lay down our arms." But do we? I don't particularly see that happening in the U.S. right now. Who exactly is she talking about? Because rhetorically she is speaking for <i>everybody</i>, saying that <i>everybody</i> is laying down their arms. But they are not, are they. Even were we to limit it to the inauguration, even to the Democrats alone, can she legitimately affirm "We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another"? I do not think so. This is another variation on the theme of writing something that does not work because you sacrificed quality or coherence for the rhyme, or, here, for the cutesy phrase. This is one of the more subtle errors, but it is an important error nonetheless. (It is frequent through "Hill.")
</p>
<p class="ind">
And, have you noticed, as Sedia pointed out, since the so very trite "belly of the beast" there has not been a single metaphor?
</p>
<p class="ind">
Next comes another massive error:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That just makes me want to go out in the street and hug people, I tell you. (And shouldn't it be "harm to no one"?) But:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true,<br />
that even as we grieved, we grew,<br />
that even as we hurt, we hoped,<br />
that even as we tired, we tried,<br />
that we'll forever be tied together, victorious.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There is a little sloppiness in that "this" could refer to what follows or what precedes. It would have been cured with a little correct grammar, which would put a colon rather than a comma after "true." BUT, that could entirely be the error of <i>Town and Country</i>. Perhaps in the book it is a colon. (I would be surprised if it was.) Nonetheless, I wanted to point it out because the necessary use of the colon there is worth noting. But, really, mostly this is just continuing the bumper sticker silliness, here decorated with a little consonance.
</p>
<p class="ind">
There is, though, another, far more important error in the lines centered on "say." "Let the globe <i>say</i> this is true." But not only that, "Let the globe, <i>if nothing else, say</i> this is true." Which actually means, the globe (which is an awful choice of word, by the by, <i>world</i> would have worked just fine) may not actually <i>act</i>, many not actually <i>perform</i> what is listed below, but <i>at least</i>, "if nothing else," they will pretend and "say" it happened. "Let the globe, if nothing else, say [. . .] we'll forever be tied together, victorious." Because we obviously are not, but we'll smile to each other and <i>say</i> it. Wink wink, nudge nudge. Gorman has such little control over her language the text completely goes against her intent – again, probably because she is set on merely stringing together hackneyed, if not straight out inane, phrases, one after the other, in some lightly honeyed manner, and she is not at all paying attention to what it means. Either that, or she is so poor a writer she does not even see the problems in her text. I will give her the benefit of the doubt that that is not true. (Though, I have seen some really bad verse written by well educated and one would think intelligent people.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
I want to stop, because really, even only this far in I think I have proved my point that this is not only banal, trite, cutesy prose but flat bad writing. (Every sentence garnered a red mark.) The lines that follow the last few above fall into the same purview – the same rhetorical problem – as the above. So I'll skip those, because I do so want to get to:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
If we're to live up to our own time,<br />
then victory won't lie in the blade.<br />
But in all the bridges we've made,<br />
that is the promise to glade,<br />
the hill we climb.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Oooh, "victory won't lie in the blade." Now that's a daring statement. And it should be noticed that <i>Town and Country</i>'s punctuation does not work, but I am not at all sure how the grammar should go. (Probably because it is bad sentence construction.) But really, in the fourth line down.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
that is the promise to glade,
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
<i>Glade</i> means a clearing in a forest. And that's the only definition. It is not a verb. You can't even poetically twist it into being a verb. And yet, there it is. But <i>goddammitall, she got that rhyme!</i> (I listened to the video. That is what she says. If she spoke in error I can't think of what she meant. Perhaps in the book it is corrected.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
(Well, on deeper pondering, I guess you could metaphorize <i>glade</i> as a verb and say it means "to make a bald spot," as in: "Medieval monks used to glade their heads to show their religious devotion." But, I don't think that is what Gorman was shooting for, if she in fact was shooting for anything.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
</p>
<p class="ind">
Enough. Even though bad writing can be really funny – especially when the author thinks they are being profound – there is a point where one need go no further. And mostly all that follows is the ongoing string of bumper sticker phrases and bad prose written poorly.
</p>
<p class="ind">
So let's go back to Sedia's accusation:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
"The Hill We Climb" [. . .] embodies all major defects of contemporary mainstream poetry, from complete absence of structural rigor, an abundance of truisms and cliches, numbingly unpoetic language to – most fundamentally – lack of poetic metaphor.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Again, "absence of structural rigor" is problematic because there is a lot of bad formal verse out there (and that includes some of that by the well known versifiers who collect under the name of neo-formalists). And "The Hill We Climb" does in the Amazon preview show some structure in the sense of rhymes and rhythm, until it doesn't, and to note loose iambic rhythm is as easy as can be to have if you are not measuring meter. But those other accusations? "Abundance of truisms and cliches": pretty much the whole of it. "Numbingly unpoetic language": absolutely, except for that it is so bad it is funny. And "lack of poetic metaphor": undeniably. This is almost entirely straight forward, literal-as-you-can-get language. And when there is metaphor, it is cliche. There is nothing truly poetic to be found.
</p>
<p class="ind">
And then it is also replete with grammatical and semantic errors, poor construction, and bad word choices. And yet, it might be the greatest condemnation of "The Hill We Climb" to say, with great cause, that it is amateurish, and pins that label upon its author. If you write verse you should be looking at “Hill” not with admiration, but as something that can bettered. And believe me, such as “Hill” would not be well accepted in a collegiate poetry writing class.
</p>
<p class="ind">
In short, I would never call this poetry. And it may be verse, but it is really bad verse.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Really, <i>really</i> bad verse.
</p>A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-49272004411891444852019-04-27T09:47:00.000-07:002022-04-12T09:01:03.230-07:00C.K. Stead and "Eliot's 'Dark Embryo'" <p class=" ind">
<i>It’s been a while since a post. I’ve been working diligently (if not a touch obsessively) on another project, and have been unwilling to take breaks in it to work on posts for here, because these posts can occupy my mind for a week before appearing on the blog. But I’m a little stuck in the other project, so thinking something different for a moment is not such a bad thing.</i>
</p>
<p class=" ind">
<i>It is my thought to start permitting more posts, if not frequently. I’ve a small list of possible topics to work on; and I wouldn’t be surprised if the discussions that prompted this post don’t prompt more. We’ll see.</i>
</p>
<p class=" noind"> </p>
<hr />
<p class="noind"> </p><p class="ind">
<p class="noind">
<b>verse vs. poetry</b>
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
This is an essay I have been sitting on for quite a while – wholly unwritten except for the occasional expeditionary jot on a yellow pad (pages quickly abandoned), myself being unsure of where to go with it – since my re-reading a while ago of C.K. Stead's two books on Modernist poetry, <i>The New Poetic: Yeats to Eliot</i> (1964) and <i>Pound, Yeats, Eliot and the Modernist Movement</i> (1986). (Both of which I greatly recommend.) In the latter I came across again a moment in criticism that is a favorite of mine.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
There is in Western European civilization a large minority of sensitive, intelligent, and usually productive people whose lives are given shape, order, meaning, a sense of elevation and a certainty of purpose, by their pursuit of the best in music, painting, literature and film. These works of art, it is hardly too much to say, are their religious texts, their shrines and their chapels, their sources of enlightenment, order and hope; and for half a century, far more consistently than any one poem or group of poems by Yeats, <i>The Waste Land</i> has been one such text. It has been so because it is a superbly rich composition, rich in fine writing, varied in feeling, moving, not as the conventions of communication require, but <em>as the mind moves</em>, from image to idea, from perception to feeling, from revulsion to exultation, from love to disgust, at every point occupying that foreshore between subjective and objective which since the Romantic revolution has been the exclusive property of poetic discourse, but engaging the reader so that his too is the imagining mind, he too participates in the act of creation. Academics like to deal with Yeats because it is possible to tell students in abstract what he is saying, what he means. It is almost impossible to "teach" a Modernist poem because if it is not misrepresented (as for so long <i>The Waste Land</i> was) it is hardly possible to say more than "Here is the territory – plunge in, experience it, and report back." (165-66)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
As gestured toward in the quotation and in the full context of the book – of both books, and the later is in a sense a continuation of the earlier – the reason for the elevated stature of <i>The Waste Land</i> is not merely in that it is in some objective way "better" than other verse, but in that it is fundamentally <em>different</em> from most other verse. It acts differently on the receptive reader.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Within the context of this blog, that difference is obvious: <i>The Waste Land</i> is in the terms I use of the modality of the aesthetic; it lies on Barfield's spiritual spectrum to the side of the poetic (as opposed to the prosaic); in Eliot's own terms, it is what he calls <em>true poetry</em>.
</p>
<p class="ind">
What I want to do is to take a moment and look at Stead's examination of Eliot's view of what constitutes true poetry and – more importantly to the moment – of how it is made. To do that, I will move to Stead's earlier <i>The New Poetic</i>. I am working out of the chapter "Eliot's 'Dark Embryo,'" and in that I am mostly just relaying Stead's presentation, this is almost entirely Stead's argument and effort. I'm merely rearranging it to suit my own purposes. (Unless otherwise stated, all quotations are of Stead.)
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
"A close scrutiny of Eliot's criticism will show" – we will begin with what serves as a kind of thesis statement for Stead's chapter:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
the gradual realization of a poetic technique dependent largely upon moments of "Inspiration," and designed to bring into balance the two halves of the divided sensibility; a technique which weighs, on the one hand, that part of the poet's mind which rationalizes, constructs, and, in the rhetorician, illegitimately persuades and pleases at the expense of complex truth; and, on the other hand, that passive part of the mind which, independent of the will, negatively comprehends complexity, and provides images to embody it, but fails on its own to construct, assert, or even affirm. (126)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Two "sources," if you will, of thought; two types of creativity: the rational, categorical, organizational, and the unconscious, the passively engaged – as you cannot will a dream. Two parts – if sort of, then also sort of not – in opposition, nor, in the writing of true poetry, in equal measure. Rather, the conscious will takes more the role of "sub-editor," with the composition of poetry centered primarily in "spontaneous 'imagination' and 'inspiration'" (131).
</p>
<p class="ind">
Stead uses a triplet of essays ("Tradition and the Individual Talent," "<i>Hamlet</i>," and "Ben Jonson") to show the development of Eliot's thought, but perhaps the idea is most readily seen through his fourth major source, an essay on Kipling (first published in <i>A Choice of Kipling's Verse</i>, edited by Eliot, and which can be found in the Internet Archive). In that essay, Eliot makes the distinction between "'poetry' which is of the spontaneous imagination, and 'verse' which is of the world of will" (139). Says Stead,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
for Kipling poems are "instruments" to serve a deliberate purpose. His only concern is to find the form which will serve that purpose. The poet (Eliot), on the other hand, tries to find in each new poem "the right form for feelings over the development of which he has, as a poet, no control." (139; quoting Eliot 17)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
You get an idea there of the difference between verse and poetry: the former is a "deliberate" action, a premeditated conveying of information or persuading of the reader; the latter seems rather a self-emerging creature, that the poet as much as discovers through the act of writing. There is in poetry, then, no defining message, no purposing argument. In the words Stead uses to open his chapter, true poetry is "tested not by what it <em>says</em> but by what it <em>is</em>" (125).
</p>
<p class="ind">
Let's go directly to Eliot's words. And keep in mind, he is not here solely talking about verse or poetry as a finished product, but also about the <em>process</em> of their writing. Speaking of Kipling, he says:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I know of no writer of such great gifts for whom poetry seems to have been more purely an instrument. Most of us are interested in the form for its own sake – not apart from the content, but because we aim at making something which shall first of all <em>be</em>, something which in consequence will have the capability of exciting, within a limited range, a considerable variety of responses from different readers. For Kipling the poem is something which is intended to <em>act</em> – and for the most part his poems are intended to elicit the same response from all readers, and only the response which they can make in common. For other poets – at least for some other poets – the poem may begin to shape itself in fragments of musical rhythm, and its structure will first appear in terms of something analogous to musical form; and such poets find it expedient to occupy their conscious mind with the craftsman's problems, leaving the deeper meaning to emerge from a lower level. (140; Eliot 18)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Let us examine this passage in detail. Verse is constituted of words used as an instrument. Not necessarily divorced from emotion, but with the chosen aim of clarity. Thus why Kipling's verse is "intended to elicit <em>the same response</em> from <em>all readers</em>": he has something to say, and the creative process is for him the rational organization of thought and effect to delivering to the reader that which he wants to say. Kipling's verse <em>acts</em>: it has a purpose, and in being read executes that purpose.
</p>
<p class="ind">
In opposition, there is poetry. crafted with the "aim [of] making something which shall first of all <em>be</em>." The poem is not a vehicle for the transmission of meaning or argument, it is a thing to be experienced, and in that every person experiences objects in their own way, a poet is making a thing that "excit[es . . .] a considerable variety of responses." Though in "a limited range": they are, after all, crafting a singular thing, contained by the boundaries of the page, built upon the chosen subject matter. It would be a failure of design to craft a poem based on desire in the story of Pyramis and Thisbe and have someone read it as about the inhumanity of war.
</p>
<p class="ind">
How is a poem created, then, if the poetic element cannot be consciously crafted, if it is not constituted of something that is communicatively conveyed? Eliot gives two elements to the process. First (second, as I am taking them in reverse order), the writer of poetry will "occupy their conscious mind with the craftsman's problems, leaving the deeper meaning to emerge from a lower level." There is, after all, a rational element to poetry: else it fails as a work of language and degenerates into gibberish. The phrase "lower level" is not to be lightly regarded, though. Verse, Kipling's verse, is a poetry of the surface: in a sense, what you see is what there is. True poetry, to continue with the analogy, is more a three-dimensional object: the surface is informed by that which is beneath it, and the reader is intended to see not just the surface but the whole.[FN] That true poetry in its writing emerges from a "lower level" in the psyche describes also true poetry in its reading: the words work also at a lower level for the reader, who must look beneath the surface for the poetry to be found. That not in the sense of brute subtext, some second message carried by the surface material, but in the sense of experience: the reader must engage the text as unconsciously as it was written.
</p>
<table class="fn">
<tr>
<td width="35"></td><td>
<p class="noind">**********************</p>
<p class="noind">[FN] In truth, extending the idea like this makes only what is at best an imperfect analogy, as a three-dimensional object is in the end a solid, one that can be rationally understood: there is no "unconscious" on the inside. To cure the analogy one should imagine an object – say, a sphere – whose surface is fixed but whose body within is omni-dimensional, every point in touch with every point. Speaking in a mythic sense, it can perhaps be described as feminine chaos within a fixed, masculine surface: in its creation that masculine surface being formed in part by the feminine interior, the feminine interior shaped by the masculine, conscious, willed part of writing, the two working together toward a final, unified whole. In its reading the two still inform each other, though only the surface is invisible. Verse, rather, is very much a two-dimensional object. Whatever the process of creation: what exists in the end is only (primarily) rational surface.</p>
<p class="ind">Of course, we must keep in mind the reader's part in it: if the reader reads the text only with their rational self, they will only see before them a surface, a two-dimensional object, irrespective of what it actually is.</p>
<p class="noind">**********************</p>
</td></tr></table>
<p class="ind">
By focusing on the rational act of craft the writer pulls the mind away from focusing on fixed meaning and intended argument, obstacles that keep unconscious thought in the unconscious. Thus the second (i.e., first) element to the process of writing, a metaphorical description which Eliot believes gives word to what the creative process is like for "some" poets – no doubt what it was like for himself: that is, "the poem may begin to shape itself in fragments of musical rhythm." Now, I take that "for some poets" as important, as Eliot does not want to say "this is how it is for every true poet," because it may not be – after all, the individual psyche is involved. Some poets, perhaps, may find parallel rather in the process of painting, or in gardening. Indeed, I have often heard Pound's thought to "compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome" rejected by writers of verse/poetry as something that is if not meaningless then only causing confusion. To be honest, though, I believe I understand exactly what Pound was getting at, and it is an idea not distant from Eliot's point: "compose" poetry from the depth, in phrasing that reveals itself in the composition, rather than mechanically, say, starting from point A and moving to point Z, through surface technique like a "metronome." But, then, I am musically inclined, the metaphor speaks to me.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Eliot writes:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35"></td><td>
What fundamentally differentiates [Kipling's] "verse" from "poetry" is the subordination of musical interest. Many of [Kipling's] poems give, indeed, judged by the ear, an impression of the mood, some are distinctly onomatopoeic: but there is a harmonics of poetry which is not merely beyond their range – it would interfere with the intention. . . . from this point of view more "poetry" would interfere with his purpose. (141; Eliot 35)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There is no such music in Kipling's verse not simply because Kipling was unable to so write it (we might assume), but because such music would "interfere" with the intention and execution and, even, crafting of the verse. Kipling is not writing poetry, and as such "'Poetry' would interfere with his purpose." Stead says just earlier:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35"></td><td>
[. . .] Kipling is like Dryden; "for both, wisdom has the primacy over inspiration." Clearly Eliot implies that in his own case the proposition is in reverse; and that in all that is essentially poetic, "inspiration" has the primacy over "wisdom" (individual, conscious thought). (140; Eliot 26)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
I like that opposition of terms – "wisdom" versus "inspiration" – though Eliot may, a little bit, be using the word <em>wisdom</em> a touch idiosyncratically. But the point of opposition is important. "Individual, conscious thought" gets in the way of poetic inspiration, not only in terms of the text's music. As Eliot writes, still in the Kipling essay:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35"></td><td>
If a poem is neither didactic nor narrative, and not animated by any other social purpose, the poet may be concerned solely with expressing in verse – using all his resources of words, with their history, their connotations, their music – this obscure impulse. <em>He does not know what he has to say until he has said it</em>. (143; Eliot 17-18)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The emphasis on that last sentence is Stead's. And it is a curious thought, though one entirely in line with what has progressed thus far: if you are not consciously writing a poem, then you are not <em>consciously</em> writing, at least not wholly: what emerges – what emerges from the unconscious – emerges on its own, brought out through the process of poetic composition. In a review of Pound's poetry in <i>Athenaeum</i> (24 Oct. 1919), Eliot describes his response to two works that for him did not work as true poetry: "they make you conscious of having been written by somebody; they have not written themselves" (Stead 132). And we find ourselves back at Stead's most simple stating of the issue: "a poem is to be tested not by what it <em>says</em> but by what it <em>is</em>." A thing that simply is does not convey the voice of someone behind it; does not read as though passing on argument or information; it simply (or complexly) <em>is</em>, and, like (true) music, is experienced for what it is: as stated in the first quotation: "Here is the territory – plunge in, experience it, and report back." Stead goes into it more fully in a passage worth presenting:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35"></td><td>
A consequence of this view of poetry [. . .] is that the "meaning" of a poem is frequently of secondary importance. It may be there simply "to satisfy one habit of the reader, to keep his mind diverted and quiet, while the poem does its work upon him." Meaning is of the poet's conscious will, and it calls to the will of the reader. It is not desirable that the poet should be too precisely concerned with "meaning," for to prepare it in advance may be to prepare a vessel which will not contain the unknown "efflux" that arrives to fill it. The "meaning" of a poem of the kind which interests Eliot can never be predicted before it is written: the structure that awaits the efflux must be flexible. If "unconscious" is to "call to unconscious" (as it does not in the particularities of Jonson's [or Kipling's] verse) the poet is better preoccupied with technical matters than with an exact understanding of what he is about to say. These "technical exactions" are "enough to keep the poet's <em>conscious</em> mind fully occupied, as the painter's by the manipulation of his tools." (138; Eliot, <i>The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism</i> 151, 154)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The poetry is what lies within: the aim of the true poet is to bring it to the surface, not to consciously, rationally, create it.
</p>
<p class="ind">
What is it, then, that emerges? What is it that the poet brings to the surface? The answer: Eliot's "dark embryo." Quoting Eliot:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35"></td><td>
It is the poet's business to be original, in all that is comprehended by "technique," only so far as is absolutely necessary for saying what he has to say; only so far as is dictated, not by the idea – for there is no idea – but by the nature of that dark embryo within him which gradually takes on the form and speech of a poem. (135-6; from a "Critical Note" in <i>The Collected Poems of Harold Munro</i>)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There are two ideas there. I take them in reverse order. As Stead describes, the idea here is that poetry is like "a birth in which the role of the conscious mind is that of mid-wife" (136) – the mid-wife of the birth of the dark embryo. Stead continues:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35"></td><td>
All good poetry, we may conclude from [the Norton lectures that became <i>The Use of Poetry</i>], contains much that is strange even to its author. It's imagery draws on memories which "may have symbolic value, but of what we cannot tell, for they come to represent the depths of feeling into which we cannot peer." The poet himself is unsure of their sources and their meanings. (136; Eliot 148)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There is much in a true poem that cannot be predicted, crafted, or even explained by the writer. There is a difference, though, between poetic creation and such as automatic writing. The latter is a more immediate response. Says Eliot:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35"></td><td>
[poetry] gives the impression [. . .] of having undergone a long incubation, though we do not know until the shell breaks what kind of egg we have been sitting on. (137; <i>The Use of Poetry</i> 144)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Wherefrom comes this egg, this dark embryo? From the self – perhaps, after Jung, I should say from the Self –; from, in Stead's words, "what the poet has made of himself, and what his society has made of him" (137). And Eliot: "At the moment when one writes, one is what one is" (137; <i>After Strange Gods</i> 26). And again, Stead: "Hence the importance of Eliot's other concern: the saturation of the poet's sensibility in the vats of tradition and orthodoxy ensures a healthy 'embryo' and a healthy poem – something which no effort of the will can achieve" (138).
</p>
<p class="ind">
Now I think I will not here touch the idea of orthodoxy outside of making the connection between a loose idea of "orthodoxy" and that of a healthy mind, healthy embryo, and thus a "healthy" poem. But if we take it one step out and add to it tradition, we understand Eliot's thought: if making poetry is the act of mid-wifing births from out of the unconscious, then to make "healthy" poetry, vibrant poetry, poetry full of life, necessitates a mind that is itself vibrant and full of life; and, in that it is poetry, after all, a mind steeped in the traditions of poetry and literature and the arts. Which finally brings us to the first part of the quotation above:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35"></td><td>
It is the poet's business to be original, in all that is comprehended by "technique," only so far as is absolutely necessary for saying what he has to say [. . .].
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The tradition of true poetry is a tradition of successfully created true poetry: and in that poetry we can learn how true poetry is done – or, at least, we can fill our mind with it, give our unconscious something to work with, and then figure out, through technique (also found in the tradition) how to bring it about. And we need not venture into new technique except where the emerging poem demands it. We learn to write poetry through what poetry was written before. And we can develop our unconscious, the true source of poetry, through what poetry was written before.
</p>
<p class="ind">
In sum and in short, verse comes from the conscious mind; poetry from the deep unconscious of the poet. But lest we cast verse aside, Kipling is for Eliot not a <em>mere</em> writer of verse but a <em>great</em> writer of verse. And such skill has its role in the writing of true poetry, as he says in the Kipling essay:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35"></td><td>
the poet who could not write "verse" when verse was needed, would be without that sense of structure which is required to make a poem of any length readable. (141; Eliot 36)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
Now, taking a hard left (but never leaving the road) –
</p>
<p class="ind">
Recently, I have entered into discussions, via a couple of groups on Facebook, about mythology, the idea of personal mythology, how myth works in the psyche and such, and how mythology relates to poetry and the arts. It has gotten me back to reading Joseph Campbell, and Mircea Eliade, and Jung, and others, books and thought lines I was pretty heavily involved with back, for example, when I was writing the <i>Oracles</i>. Joseph Campbell considers poets the mythmakers of today, and for all I've read thus far his idea of a "poet" or of "poetry" is not that different from Eliot's.
</p>
<p class="ind">
(To note, Campbell's 1988 television series <i>The Power of Myth</i> is presently on Netflix, and is very worth the watching.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
It was these discussions that prompted me into finally working out the above essay, as the discussions – especially moments in discussing spirituality and myth, and spirituality and art – promptly reminded me of the quotation with which I started the above: the idea that for some people poetry and art <em>is</em> their religion, their engagement with the spiritual; and then the idea that, when thought of in the sense of <em>true</em> poetry – or <em>true</em> art or <em>true</em> music –, there is, in its modality, something genuinely of the spiritual to be found. Perhaps, because of its use of language, this most greatly in poetry.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Indeed, though I said in the close of the above, in relation to tradition,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35"></td><td>
We learn to write poetry through that what poetry was written before. And we develop our unconscious, the true source of poetry, through what poetry was written before.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
in somewhat broader context I might say the same thing with slightly different language, taking into account that things that are poetic need not be poetry per se (as with the plastic arts and music). They need to be, rather, of <em>the nature</em> of poetry, which is to say, in Barfield's terminology, <em>of the poetic</em>; in mine, <em>of the aesthetic mode</em>, in others', like Cassirer or Eliade, or like Campbell, <em>of the mythic</em>. I believe there is an intimate connection between the ideas of the mythic and the poetic. (In fact, I think it is obvious.) Perhaps, in the nature of the unconscious, they are speaking of the same thing but from different viewpoints.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Robert Duncan said, somewhere, I believe, it is years ago that I read it and I have not come across it again, that people who aspire to poetry should be well versed – well "saturated" – in mythologies from around the world. I agree with that. It is food for the dark embryos growing within us, whether we are capable of writing poetry or not.
</p>
A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-47755095326814227472018-10-04T15:22:00.001-07:002019-02-20T13:18:00.919-08:00The Knossian Oracles – Yours Truly<p class="ind">
If I may take a moment to talk about something I made.
</p>
<p class="noind">
<img src="http://hatterscabinet.com/graphics/oraclescover250w.jpg" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto" />
</p>
<p class="ind">
Let me introduce <i>The Knossian Oracles</i>. It is a verse book, one written over a number of years, that I have now brought out for the world to see. I tried for a couple of years to get it published the normal way, but to no luck. (Something not unexpected: for example, its size eliminates most presses right off the bat.) So I self-published through CreateSpace, and put the whole of it online for anyone to read. And that is the point, no? Readers?
<p class="ind">
What is <i>The Knossian Oracles</i>? Here is the description I am using on the Amazon page:
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
<i>The Knossian Oracles</i> is a journey in the traditions of myth and magic; in the erotic; in literary fantasy; and in poetic invention. Its themes rest heavily in the esoteric: from alchemy to mysticism, to traditions of witchcraft and the occult, and to myth, tapping many sources, but especially the tales of Daedalus and Pasiphäe, Theseus and Ariadne. However, while the book is woven from literary fantasy, the thread that unifies it is the characters of a contemporary man and woman. Through those characters and their many incarnations, <i>The Knossian Oracles</i> explores (what may be) its central theme: the <i>hieros gamos</i>, the union of the eternal masculine and eternal feminine. As an erotic work it takes up in words what is an important theme in the plastic arts: the female form. And it is not false to call <i>The Knossian Oracles</i> a meditation on beauty. Some may even say it is best described as a love poem in long form, though that may be putting to the fore what is an inevitable current within all the previous. Though, with <i>The Knossian Oracles</i>, how can you begin to distinguish what in the above is current and what is river?
</p>
<p class="ind">
While <i>The Knossian Oracles</i> is constituted of eighty-three “fragments” plus the seven part poem that brings the work to a close, it has development and progression, scenes and characters. It is not, however, a novel-in-verse: it does not have a plot as found in a novel, nor is it uniform in style. The fragments vary greatly, from the formal to the experimental, from the lyrical to the narrative, from the very brief to the somewhat long. Creating a unity of these stylistically disparate and thematically ranging parts is one of the endeavors of the work. This is not a collection of verse. It is a book. And a book like none other.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="noind">
It's a good description. I think it serves its purpose well. If you would like more information on the book, including something of an artist's statement, you can find it on the <a href-"http://hatterscabinet.com/knossianoracles/about.html">"About <i>The Knossian Oracles</i>" page [link]</a> on my website. If you would like to go directly to the text and see what it is for yourself, <a href="http://hatterscabinet.com/knossianoracles/titlepage-main.html">then here is the first page [link]</a>.
</p>
<p class="ind">
It's a large book, as I said. There's much to peruse and explore. Fragment 29 is a gathering of witches in a wood. Fragment 64 gives us Pasiphäe after her meeting with the bull. Fragment 79 is a creation story of one type; fragment 15 is one of another. Fragment 43 brings the Song of Inanna to a living room couch. Fragment 35 brings William S. Burroughs to the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Fragment 27 is a meeting with the Sphinx. Fragment 55 with a spirit cat. If you read anything of it, read the closing section, <i>And the Light Falls</i>, Remir. It is the climax and perhaps the high point of the book. Though, keep in the mind the <i>Oracles</i> is, as said in the description, a book and not a collection, so not every fragment works on its own; and the greatest value is found when it is read as a whole. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy it however you venture into it. Feel free to drop a line if you do.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="noind">
Those links again:<br />
<a href="http://hatterscabinet.com/knossianoracles/about.html">To: the "About" page</a><br />
<a href="http://hatterscabinet.com/knossianoracles/titlepage-main.html">To: the Title page</a>
</p>A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-25086737897808982172018-05-29T08:48:00.000-07:002018-06-18T09:20:29.665-07:00Update<p class="ind"><i>It's been five months about since my last post. I've been very preoccupied by a large project that not only takes up all my time but also keeps my attentions and thought elsewhere. In truth, I've hardly been reading outside the project so there hasn't been much prompting toward new posts. So, for the time being, we'll consider the blog here on hiatus. I'll post if I happen upon something interesting to post; but I won't be actively searching for subject matter.</i></p>A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-58906025313958493342018-01-23T15:56:00.001-08:002018-01-23T16:01:53.219-08:00"A Bushel and a Peck"<p class="noind">
Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<h4>two somethings worth two moments' thought</h4>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
Something short; well, two somethings short, that have caught my mind recently, both about the lyrics to "A Bushel and a Peck."
</p>
<p class="ind">
The song is originally from the Broadway show Guys and Dolls. It is also a single by Doris Day, which is the version you presently here on television in a State Farm commercial. (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw2phldcmCQ">Here's a Youtube of the song [link].</a>)
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
My first thing:
</p>
<p class="ind">
The song plays with repeating phrases, with the repeated phrases opening up a new line. The commercial uses the second verse so I will too.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I love you a bushel and a peck<br />
A bushel and a peck though you make my heart a wreck<br />
Make my heart a wreck and you make my life a mess<br />
Make my life a mess, yes a mess of happiness
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The question that always popped into my mind: what would happen, if anything, if I broke the lines up?
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I love you <br />
A bushel and a peck <br />
A bushel and a peck <br />
Though you make my heart a wreck <br />
Make my heart a wreck <br />
And you make my life a mess <br />
Make my life a mess, <br />
Yes a mess of happiness
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It might take some reading aloud to be able to read it without the music. For me there is a shift: the repeated lines now connect backwards instead of forwards. That is, where in the long lines the second "A bushel and a peck" is connected to "though you make my heart a wreck" (and it works whether its with the music or not), with the lines broken the second "A bushel and a peck" connects backwards, to the first use of the phrase. The second instance becomes an echo where before it was a leading in.
</p>
<p class="ind">
It's a little thing, but I find it interesting.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
Second thing:
</p>
<p class="ind">
A bushel is only eight dry gallons, and a peck but two. So the song is saying the speaker loves the target of the song only as much as ten dry gallons. (Wikipedia tells me that a dry measure is about sixteen percent larger than its wet equivalent.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
That's not all that large an amount, really. Not when one might say "I love you tons." Yet the song works. Why? (Or maybe it no longer works for you now that you know just how big the measure is?) I believe the song works because it is not dependent on just how much the actual measure of a bushel and a peck is. Rather, the phrase "a bushel and a peck" is used merely as a lead in to other, greater things, like a life being a mess. A bushel and a peck must be representative of a lot if it is measured against a wrecked heart and a messed up life.
</p>
<p class="ind">
I find that interesting. The verse did not need to commit to large amounts to speak large amounts. It could use something relatively small, but a something that connects – through the aural play – to larger things.
</p>
A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-30344014654850248752018-01-09T12:03:00.001-08:002021-02-09T09:51:31.806-08:00"Orgy" by Muriel Rukeyser<p class="noind">
From <i>The Speed of Darkness</i> (1968) as found in <i>Collected Poems</i> (2005)
</p>
<p class="noind">
<a href="https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/orgy-4/">"Orgy" is found on PoemHunter.com [link]</a>, but there is an error in the text there (see below)
<br />
</p>
<p class="noind">
First lines:<br />
<span style="font-family:Times; font-size:.9em">There were three of them that night.<br />
They wanted it to happen in the first woman's room.</span>
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<h4>a reading of poetic eroticism</h4>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
Taking a look this time at Muriel Rukeyser's "Orgy," presenting a reading of the verse.
</p>
<p class="ind">
But first a word first about Rukeyser's work in general. I purchased her <i>Collected Poems</i> two years ago, not because of any previous familiarity with Rukeyser but almost entirely on repeatedly coming across "you should know this person's work" mentions, and seeing a verse of hers (which I always enjoyed) here and there. Before purchasing the book I had read far more about her than by her. I'm not going to say I read through the whole of it one sitting. (It's a big book.) I still haven't read through it all, even after many sittings. But then it is normal for me with new collecteds to read at best half at first purchase (that half not necessarily being the first half) and saving the rest for future visits. I actually think it's a poor habit – at least for me – to read a large collected straight through. A collected is (usually) a gathering of multiple volumes, and when I read it through the latter parts of the book begin to loose the freshness of the first sections: that certain 'freshness' that can exist even at the tenth time of re-reading a book, if you but come to it clear of mind.
</p>
<p class="ind">
I am going to say, however, that you should know Rukeyser's work. It did not take much reading for me to be convinced of her talent, her skill, and her sophistication. After reading a decent chunk of the book – and I did a lot of hopping around, looking up texts I found mentioned online – I was ready to set Rukeyser on my very short list of major U.S., twentieth-century poets. Nothing I have read since has given me reason to bump her from that spot, and my confidence in keeping her there has only grown.
</p>
<p class="ind">
So I will pass it on to you: if you are serious about verse (about the best of U.S. poetry) you should know Muriel Rukeyser. Odds on, you will do far better spending money on her collected than you will on three or five or fifteen contemporary books.
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
Now to "Orgy." It's been put up on the Poem Hunter site but there the text is missing a line, so I am going give the full text of the verse here.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
There were three of them that night.<br />
They wanted it to happen in the first woman's room.<br />
The man called her; the phone rang high.<br />
Then she put fresh lipstick on.<br />
Pretty soon he rang the bell.<br />
She dreamed, she dreamed, she dreamed.<br />
She scarcely looked him in the face <br />
But gently took him to his place.<br />
And after that the bell, the bell.<br />
They looked each other in the eye,<br />
A hot July it was that night,<br />
And he then slow took off his tie,<br />
And she then slow took off her scarf, <br />
The second one took off her scarf,<br />
And he then slow his heavy shoe,<br />
And she then slow took off her shoe,<br />
The other one took off her shoe,<br />
He then took off his other shoe,<br />
The second one, her other shoe,<br />
A hot July it was that night.<br />
And he then slow took off his belt,<br />
And she then slow took off her belt,<br />
The second one took off her belt . . .
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
If you want to keep the Poem Hunter site open for reference, the missing line is "And then she slow took off her shoe" at the place where they take off their first shoe. (When it next comes to the second shoes the text does skip the first woman.) I don't know if "Orgy" is (or was) one of Rukeyser's more well known pieces. (Does a bit of verse end up on a site like Poem Hunter because of its history or simply because someone likes it?) I came upon it by randomly opening the book and was rather taken with it. (People who know me will laugh at that point.) I bring it here because there is much to talk about with it. And to be clear, I don't think there is merely something interesting about it: this is a very well-constructed poem.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Let's begin with general structure. The first line tells you what is going on.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
There were three of them that night.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Remember, you already know the title is "Orgy." The second line tells us where it is happening.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
They wanted it to happen in the first woman's room.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
From that point on the text is almost entirely action, though in two stages. First is the assembling together. The second, which begins at or around the line "A hot July it was that night," is the action of the orgy itself – and I argue the poem ends within the orgy, not still in prelude, even though at the end of the verse they have barely begun to undress.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The second part of the action is marked by being in strict (and somewhat lively) iambic quadrameter. That iambic rhythm is hinted at early on:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
THERE were THREE of THEM that NIGHT<br />
They wanted it to happen in the first woman's room.<br />
The MAN called HER; the PHONE rang HIGH.<br />
THEN she PUT fresh LIP-stick ON.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Though I would say that the degree you put stress on the "There" of the first line and the "Then" of the fourth depends on how much you pull the iambic rhythm of the later lines back into the beginning lines. For me, the first two lines read most naturally as free verse (which fits a structure that builds up to strict rhythms and repetitions). The next two lines begin to speak of the coming iambic, with line three, because of that semi-colon, nearly establishing it. Then comes the complete, rhythmic break of line 6,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
She dreamed, she dreamed, she dreamed
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
which breaks not only in being only three stresses but also in being a much slower line. After that there is the coupling via rhyme of lines 7 and 8, and we find ourselves fully captured by iambic quadrameter.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
She SCARCE-ly LOOKED him IN the FACE<br />
But GENT-ly TOOK him TO his PLACE.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
And if you still aren't sure how you should be reading it, the slightly plastic construction of line 9 should make it clear.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And AF-ter THAT the BELL, the BELL
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There is one reason to repeat "the bell" in what has been till now a rather casual text: to firmly establish the rhythm that governs every line from there on out. And once established, Rukeyser is willing to construct the lines so as to constantly reaffirm that strict rhythm. Notice how the "-ly" is missing from the adverb "slowly." Notice also how writing the line
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
A hot July it was that night
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
rather than as
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
It was a hot July that night
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
begins the line with an adjective and a noun, and an adjective ending in a hard consonant, rather than with three small words, the second of which ends in a sibilant. By this she begins the line in strength, and with that strength reinforces the meter.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Rhythm and repetition is partly why I say the orgy proper begins in the text of the poem, specifically at or after the line "A hot July it was that night." From there on out our three characters are in a dance, and the verse, in the strict meter, in the tripling of each step of the action, and in the repetition within each step of the action, pulls us, aurally, into that dance.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Without letting it fall into clunky repetitions. Once the primary action starts, the lines are written in repeating triplets of iambic quadrameter.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And he then slow took off his tie,<br />
And she then slow took off her scarf, <br />
The second one took off her scarf,<br />
<br />
And he then slow his heavy shoe,<br />
And she then slow took off her shoe,<br />
The other one took off her shoe,
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
And then comes a brilliant moment in aural control. The text does not simply drone on in continuing triplets. It successfully varies the material aspect of the text without varying the ideational aspect
</p><table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
He then took off his other shoe,<br />
The second one, her other shoe,
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
This does not mean the first woman was skipped. The continued tripling of the action is implied using only two lines. But for rhythm's sake the text still needs to sustain the tripling of the lines. So a line from earlier on is repeated:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
A hot July it was that night,
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
which does not add anything new to the now established dance but which, in its being a repeated line, re-emphasizes the atmosphere of it all. After which the tripling of lines is quickly re-established with one more trio. After which the text knows it has done enough, and there need only be a trailing of periods to imply the rest. I'll write it out so you can see the whole of it at once:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And he then slow took off his tie,<br />
And she then slow took off her scarf, <br />
The second one took off her scarf,<br />
<br />
And he then slow his heavy shoe,<br />
And she then slow took off her shoe,<br />
The other one took off her shoe,<br />
<br />
He then took off his other shoe,<br />
The second one, her other shoe,<br />
A hot July it was that night.<br />
<br />
And he then slow took off his belt,<br />
And she then slow took off her belt,<br />
The second one took off her belt . . .
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
I love it. Magnificent control of the text. I think it is quite important to the success of the structure that the text in that third triplet does not bring in a new line but repeats the line from the beginning moments of the dance. It does not introduce a new sound. You have heard this line before, just as with all the triplets you are hearing greatly the same line being repeated. But there is also the ideational aspect already mentioned: it reaffirms; it does not bring in something new, it does not upset the tripling by telling us something new about but one of the persons. And I like how, when varying from the strict tripling, the line chosen for repetition pulls all the way out to the farthest context (the time and weather), a neutral (as regarding the three persons) context. In sum, there is variation – that keeps the text from falling into monotonous repetition – but variation without disruption. The dance moves right through the variation without missing a step.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
Let's go back to the beginning and look at ideation. One of the interesting ideational moves the text makes is it gives the first woman primacy without letting the text become solely about her.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
There were three of them that night.<br />
They wanted it to happen in the first woman's room.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The verse opens with the three of them in equal standing. <em>They</em>, the "three of them," decided to have the event happen in the first woman's room. It was a group decision. Now it might be argued that the only reason primacy is given to the first woman is that it occurs in her room, so it is natural to have the action pivot, if only at first, and if only as concerns the material aspects of what is going, around her. But there does come that sixth line:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
She dreamed, she dreamed, she dreamed.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
We are fully in the mind of the first woman. Which, though, does not mean that it cannot also be said that the man or the second woman did not also dream and dream and dream.
</p>
<p class="ind">
But the first woman has primacy, not only in the telling but also in the action.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
But gently took him to his place.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
She's the one that's got everything organized; indeed, she's the one presently in control. And keep in mind, this is a verse about an orgy; it is erotic. When she dreams, she is dreaming about sex. And she doesn't just dream:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
She dreamed, she dreamed, she dreamed.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
a line, as already pointed out, that both stands apart because of the break from the building quadrameter and because it is a very slow line to read and to speak, very different from the running rhythms of the coming triplets. It is arguably the most important line in the text, and to be read correctly must be read within the erotic:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
She dreamed about sex, she dreamed about sex, she
dreamed about sex.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
But I don't believe that that goes quite far enough.
</p>
<p class="ind">
It is my reading that the man and the first woman are already a couple. That he calls her first, and that he is the first to arrive gives evidence to that there is already a relationship, a sexual relationship, of some degree between them. It is implied also in the first line. "There were three of them that night" – as opposed to when there was normally two.
</p>
<p class="ind">
But notice this:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Pretty soon he rang the bell.<br />
She dreamed, she dreamed, she dreamed.<br />
She scarcely looked him in the face <br />
But gently took him to his place.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The ringing of the doorbell is the beginning. Someone is here, it has begun. And because of it she dreams and dreams and dreams. But because of that dreaming, as I read it, she can "scarcely look[] him in the face." She shows a touch of embarrassment for her dreaming. Not because she is dreaming about sex with him (though maybe in part) but more so because she is dreaming about sex also with the second woman. Compare the above lines to what follows.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And after that the bell, the bell.<br />
They looked each other in the eye,<br />
A hot July it was that night,<br />
And he then slow took off his tie,
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There is an opposition. The second woman is here, and now they can look each other in the eye. But I think there is also an ambiguity present.
</p>
<table class="quote"><tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And after that the bell, the bell.<br />
They looked each other in the eye,
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Though the second line there ends in a comma, and is the beginning of a thought that will run right into the beginning of the dance, implying that all three are looking each other in the eye, the two sentences when read as a pair and when read in contrast to the previous ringing (and answering) of the bell imply that the first woman is <em>specifically</em> looking the second woman in the eye, and the second woman back at her. When the man comes to the door she cannot look him in the face. But when the second woman comes to the door she can look her right in the eye. For that I think that to read
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
She dreamed, she dreamed, she dreamed
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
correctly, you must read it with a primacy – a primacy equal to how the first woman has primacy but not dominance in the narrative – given to sex between the women. For the first woman, this is not simply a experimental three-way, nor is this acting out a male fantasy: this is opportunity for desired sex with another, presumably desired woman, who, presumably, desires her back. To read line 6 correctly, then, it should be read with the idea
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
She dreamed of sex, she dreamed of sex with the man, she dreamed of sex with the second woman.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Which gives some more rational to why she could not look the man, ostensibly a man she's already in a relationship with, in the face. She is dreaming about sex, yes, but greatly dreaming about sex with the second woman. And for it there is a touch of – perhaps <em>embarrassment</em> is not quite the correct word. It may merely be that she is having thoughts that does not necessarily in that moment include him.
</p>
<p class="ind">
But again, this is only a <em>primacy</em> given to the first woman. As said, there's no reason to believe the man and the second woman are not also dreaming. But having the first woman dreaming about the second woman gives a balance to the trio. So when the erotic dance begins, when the orgy begins,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And he then slow took off his tie,<br />
And she then slow took off her scarf, <br />
The second one took off her scarf,
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There is an equality between the three sides of the triangle. There is desire along every line. Which increases the eroticism of that dance, even though that dance, in the text, never goes beyond, except in its pointing forward,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The second one took off her belt . . .
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The three are not taking off their clothes step by step because of bashfulness or an unsurety of what to do. They are acting the way they are acting because of mutually shared desire. The dance – a dance that exists also in the material rhythms of the text – is an erotic dance. Thus why I say the orgy begins in the poem, not after it.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
Final thought. But not the least thought. With this we get to why this verse is so good. Though, I will only state it here and leave it to you, in rereading, to explore. Greatly the art of "Orgy" lies in how the text develops its eroticism. It generates quite a bit as I read it. But most importantly, it does so without ever stating anything <em>explicitly</em> in regards to what people are thinking or feeling. Except, perhaps, for that one, wonderfully performative line.
</p>A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-32025289343092326682017-11-12T12:06:00.001-08:002021-02-09T09:52:31.828-08:00"Narrow Flame" by Linda Gregerson<p class="noind">
<a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/narrow-flame-0">"Narrow Flame" is found on poets.org [link]</a>
<br />
</p>
<p class="noind">
First lines:<br />
<span style="font-family:Times; font-size:.9em">Sun at the zenith. Greening<br />
earth.</span>
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
</p>
<h4>shape: what works and what doesn't</h4>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
Keeping in line with the last post I went looking online for something else to talk about and found Linda Gregerson's "Narrow Flame" on the poets.org site. I found it interesting verse both in what works with it and what doesn't.
</p>
<p class="ind">
I want to pick up on three points. The first concerns ideation, the third the material aspects of the verse, and the second sits somewhere in between.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="noind">
(1)
</p>
<p class="ind">
There's a interesting event in stanza 6, but I want to work my way there. Beginning at the beginning:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Sun at the zenith. Greening<br />
earth.
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Introductory statements setting the scene. Not a lot of energy put into it, but not a lot of energy needs to be put into it. Indeed, I would argue no energy should be put into it: this verse works through directness and sparsity.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The action begins with the next line, with the horse.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Slight buckling of the left<br />
<br />
hind leg.
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There is opposition between the two opening statements of a bright green day and the first moment of action, the first noticeable evidence of the coming death of the horse. But the opposition is momentary, and it works not so much to create a contrast – the opening statements are too brief for them to push forward – but to give a sense of quotidianness to the action. Even continuing, with the introduction of the girl and her speaking to the horse
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And all this while<br />
the girl<br />
at his ear <i>good boy</i> and now<br />
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
the reader has not been given any strong emotional cues. We do not know what the girl is feeling. Is this a difficult moment for her, or is it too something quotidian? That she is saying "good boy" to the horse, as opposed to, say, apologizing for what is happening to it, implies that she is quite in control of the moment.
</p>
<p class="ind">
In the next stanzas we begin to get some description beyond basic statement of the event.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
the hip giving way and mildly as<br />
was ever<br />
his wont the lovely<br />
<br />
heft of him lists toward the field<br />
that minutes <br />
ago was still so sweet for<br />
<br />
grazing and <i>good boy</i> and on the<br />
ground
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
But notice the modifiers – and there are very few of them in this verse – all apply to the horse. Even at the second "good boy" we are still given nothing as concerns the girl. Which is actually the something we are given about the girl: she is not remarkable in any way except for that she is unremarkable.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Now we come to the sixth stanza, where the sense of quotidianness breaks.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
now where the frightening<br />
<br />
last shudder of lungs that we've been <br />
warned about<br />
does thank you darling does <br />
<br />
not come
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There's a major shift: the narrative 'I' has entered the verse. Up to this point the subject of the verse was the girl and the horse – and the verse wants the girl to be the subject, thus the repetition of the phrase "and all this while the girl" at the end of the verse. But now the action of the girl and the horse is put into a frame, that of the observing speaker. And that frame has the only direct presentation of emotion: the speaker – it's "we" so it's the speaker and at least one other person – has been warned about the moment of death, that it can be "frightening." The lines thus present a combination of fear of what might happen and relief – "thank you darling" – that it does not.
</p>
<p class="ind">
For the observers this is not quotidian. They have never seen this before, and it is for them a charged event. But in opposition to that there is the girl, who, thanks to the absence of emotional cues, is cast, as said, as being quite in control of the moment. This is the central opposition to the verse, the ideational dynamo of the verse. It is safe to assume from the proffered "good boy"s and the last lines
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
<i>good boy</i> unbuckling the<br />
<br />
halter lifting the beautiful head <br />
to her <br />
lap and all this while the girl
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
that there is a connection between the girl and the horse. But there is no reason to impute the emotions being felt by the speaker to the girl. The contrast between the speaker and the girl is what energizes the phrase "and all this while the girl": the speaker is in a state of heightened emotion, and yet in front of them is this girl who handles the event not dispassionately but as calmly as if the event were as unexceptional as the setting of a high sun over a greening earth. It matters not if you read the fear of the speaker as being extended toward the girl: that is, that this is as new an event to the girl as it is to the speaker, and the speaker fears for how the girl will respond to the death shudder as much as they fear the event themselves. The verse, even in its light economy of words, plainly sets the behavior of the girl and the emotions of the speaker in opposition to each other.
</p>
<p class="ind">
After stanza six the verse goes back into its sparsely presented description of the event. Which is something worth noticing in that it fully establishes that it is the emotions of the speaker that is the exceptional part of the event. And, those emotions are given their due by being an irruption in the event, not by dominating the narration. What is said of the emotions is all that needs to be said, and the verse can move on to complete the action in the same manner as it began the action.
</p>
<p class="ind">
It's an elegantly structured verse, ideationally and semantically. And its worth giving attention to how it is pulled off: with very few adjectives, with very brief and direct statements of action, with a running style of delivery (once the horse starts to die the verse runs through continuously to the end), and with the ideational dynamo of the verse being a sudden and momentary irruption of emotion in the middle of that narration, set in a frame that distinguishes it from that narration..
</p>
<p class="ind">
I have one gripe, though. I think the word "darling" is a mistake. Compare the way it is written to a variation:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
last shudder of lungs that we've been <br />
warned about <br />
does thank you darling does <br />
<br />
not come <br />
<br />
last shudder of lungs that we've been <br />
warned about <br />
does oh but thank you does <br />
<br />
not come
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The darling presents the necessary other person in the "we" of the speaker. It is unstated whether the girl is to be included in that "we" and as such I myself do not include her. It makes no sense to say the girl is "darling" – why would the speaker be thanking the girl for what does not happen with the horse?
</p>
<p class="ind">
But that is the mistake: why would the speaker be thanking anybody – and with "darling" that anybody is a specific somebody – for what does not happen with the horse? It makes more sense that the "thank you" be presented as a non-directed, generalized "thank you." Though the "darling" does serve to give body to the "we," it does not serve well as an object for that "thank you."
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="noind">
(2)
</p>
<p class="ind">
It is worth talking a bit about syntax. (I'm mostly exploring writing here, rather than critiquing.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
The verse begins with three sentences ended with a period. From then on out it is a single, unpunctuated run. But not without coordinating syntax. The conjunction "and" is used four times to move the reader to the next thought. What is more interesting though is how the spoken phrase "good boy" is also used as a conjunction.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
its toxic everlastingness has done<br />
its job <br />
<i>good boy</i> unbuckling the<br />
<br />
halter lifting the beautiful head
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It works very well both as a means to close and open up a thought, as a means to not let the run of words end nor to let statements blur one into each other. It works so well it leads me to question whether the two previous appearances of "good boy," which are used with "and"s, are weaker constructions. Would the earlier constructions be better without the "and"s? For example, instead of
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
that minutes <br />
ago was still so sweet for <br />
<br />
grazing and <i>good boy</i> and on the <br />
ground <br />
now
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
what if it were written without the "and"s?
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
that minutes <br />
ago was still so sweet for <br />
<br />
grazing <i>good boy</i> on the <br />
ground <br />
now
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Does that weaken the use of "good boy"? It's worth the time to explore with variations.
</p>
<p class="ind">
I am by the syntax of the long run also brought to question the use of periods in the beginning. The verse is shifting gears through those first lines, trying to get up to speed. The question to be asked, the point to explore, is: is the use of periods a cheap means to get the reader into the verse? Could the text have been written entirely as a running string or does writing it as a single string reveal that the periods actually do work well, in a way like the pause in sound during the change of gears in a car?
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Sun at the zenith<br />
greening earth<br />
and a slight buckling of the left<br />
<br />
hind leg and all this while<br />
the girl
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
But I am there using line breaks as a means toward syntax. Which is something Gregerson completely eschews. Which leads me to my third issue.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="noind">
(3)
</p>
<p class="ind">
Click on the audio button above the verse on the page and listen to Gregerson read her work.
</p>
<p class="ind">
It is brutally apparent, right from the start, that how she reads the verse (except for but a couple of places) has nothing to do with how the verse is written out. There is zero evidence in the verse as written that the lines were written to be heard, and as such overwhelming evidence that there was not much attention paid to the lines outside of that they come out to be about the same size from stanza to stanza.
</p>
<p class="ind">
By happenstance – and looking at the verse as a whole it can only be attributed to happenstance – there is a passage where the lines do work in an interesting way as written.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And all this while<br />
the girl<br />
at his ear <i>good boy</i> and now<br />
the hip giving way and mildly as<br />
was ever<br />
his wont the lovely<br />
heft of him lists toward the field
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There is something interesting at play there. That play does not hold up with the rest of the verse, but it does show that an aural structure might be able to be made out of shorter, more abrupt lines.
</p>
<p class="ind">
But that's beside the point. Gregerson does not read the verse that way. And since it is her verse, I believe it is fair to assume that we as readers are not meant to read the verse that way either. (A very fair assumption when, as I said, such reading is only sustainable in the short term.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
The question to be asked, then, is why not write the verse as it sounds in Gregerson's own ear. If that is the way the verse sounds best to Gregerson, why not write the verse in a way that guides the reader to that reading? After all, writing verse <em>is an aural art</em>. (Or, at least, is in part an aural art.) And if it sounds a certain way in the writer's ear, it should be safe to a assume that for the writer that way is the best way for it to sound. So why not write the lines that way?
</p>
<p class="ind">
What if we restructure the verse according to how Gregerson reads it? There only needs be added a few line breaks where the lines as spoken run long. (Which, actually, do not <em>need</em> to be broken but for the sake of typesetting I will – plus I think the results are interesting.) I keep the periods in the opening because I think they do their job well, though I add a period at the end to balance things out: the action of the verse has ended, so let the verse end too. I'll even throw in keeping the three-line-stanza structure. Following that, this is what we get:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
<br />
Sun at the zenith.<br />
Greening earth.<br />
Slight buckling of the left hind leg.<br />
<br />
And all this while the girl at his ear <br />
<i>good boy</i> <br />
and now the hip <br />
<br />
giving way <br />
and mildly as was ever his wont <br />
the lovely heft of him lists toward the field <br />
<br />
that minutes ago was still so sweet for grazing <br />
and <i>good boy</i> <br />
and on the ground now <br />
<br />
where the frightening last shudder of lungs <br />
that we've been warned about <br />
does thank you darling does not come <br />
<br />
and feeling for a pulse <br />
no pulse <br />
and warning us <br />
<br />
touching the liquid eye which does not close <br />
which means the slender needle <br />
with its toxic everlastingness has done its job <br />
<br />
<i>good boy</i> <br />
unbuckling the halter <br />
lifting the beautiful head to her lap <br />
<br />
and all this while the girl.<br />
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
I'm not completely happy with the "does thank you darling does not come" line (maybe dashes marking off "thank you darling"?), but other than that I really like how it turns out. (I'm not 100% on whether I prefer stanzas to a single stanza.) The lines have identity, strength, and even play up and play upon the aural structure of the verse. The line breaks also reveal the general ideational structure of the verse. I might also argue that the thoughts in each line are brought into greater play with each other by their being isolated into visual and – just as Gregerson does in her reading – aural units.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Push come to shove, I think it's a superior verse when written the way the Gregerson reads it.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Which, again, prompts the question: why write it otherwise? Especially, why write it in a way that works counter to how it is read? to how the author herself reads it? What reason is there . . . . except perhaps that that is the convention. That is how "verse is written" nowadays.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Only, convention is the last and weakest reason to do something, in verse or elsewhere. And anything done in verse simply because of convention should be struck as poor writing. Which it is.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="noind">
(4)
</p>
<p class="ind">
Bonus comment: I've no idea on the title. But that's cool.
</p>
A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-57130761539763291442017-10-19T08:33:00.000-07:002017-11-15T08:27:52.373-08:00"Black Locusts" by Cameron Barnett<p class="noind">
from <i>The Drowning Boy's Guide to Water</i>(Autumn House Press)<br />
<a href="http://www.versedaily.org/2017/blacklocusts.shtml">"Black Locusts" is found on Verse Daily [link]</a>
<br />
</p>
<p class="noind">
First lines:<br />
<span style="font-family:Times; font-size:.9em">There are no gardens in my neighborhood,<br />
just three black locust trees</span>
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
</p>
<h4>after closer reading . . . .</h4>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="noind"><i>— a little text added at the end, Nov. 2, 2017</i></p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
I do occasionally go back to the daily sites to see if there is something interesting to talk about, especially if I have nothing else on the burner (or nothing that I can get finished) as is the case now. This time I found on Verse Daily "Black Locusts" by Cameron Barnett, posted a couple of days ago.
</p>
<p class="ind">
It's an average bit of verse over all. There's nothing spectacular about the versification, but at least he's writing in lines, which is something. I like the general idea being played out, how the verse works two conceits simultaneously: the idea of the three trees as children, and the condensation of a lifetime into the seasons of a single year. But there are problems with the verse. Interesting problems, though, which may be worth pointing out. I'll go through some, one at a time.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
(1) Begin with the simile that starts on line 4.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
All spring, cream-white petals<br />
blooming like baby teeth,
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
(I'll quickly say that I like the verbless construction of that sentence.) The phrase "blooming like baby teeth" works very well, giving the idea both of the whiteness of the flowers and of their size. But what about the next line?
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
nectar drooling from the center.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The movement from baby's teeth to drooling works in the immediate. Reading the lines for the first time I got a touch of the thought of "a clever little jump, there." Unfortunately, the extension falls apart on the other side of the simile. Would anybody ever use baby drool as a simile for nectar? Considering that the idea of nectar is greatly grounded in taste and eating (even in its botanical/entomological usage), it's actually a pretty gross simile. For that, the simile falls apart. The line "nectar drooling from the center" sort of works on its own. But throw in a source of that drool – a baby – and not so much. And you can't separate the one from the other, not as presented in the text.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
(2) Jump now to near the end of the verse.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Later, when winter comes,<br />
I watch kudzu creep up their trunks,<br />
wrapping itself over every inch,<br />
stealing away the last bits of sun.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Kudzu can grow pretty quickly. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu_in_the_United_States">Wikipedia tells me[link]</a> that once established it can grow as much as a foot a day, sixty feet in a season. But that's once established. The kudzu around the trees in the woods behind me has never been able to make such gains. (It seems to die as quickly as it arrives.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
But notice what I said: kudzu can grow sixty feet <em>in a season</em>. In the text, the growth of the kudzu occurs in winter, and kudzu's season of growth, one would assume, is going to be spring/summer, not winter. That's a problem in the text as written.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The winter part of the idea also doesn't work in that kudzu kills the tree by blocking out all the light. But in the fall the tree will have lost all its leaves, so it wouldn't really care that much if it didn't get any light in winter. Plus, on top of that, the losing of the leaves is already a metaphoric death, and the idea of kudzu doesn't expand on that idea. Rather, the idea of kudzu comes off as somewhat redundant, and, even, in the way.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Now, in that kudzu kills a tree by "stealing the last bits of sun," the idea can operate as a metaphor for disease, a 'natural' death as it were. So there does seem to be something that can be played with here in treating the trees as children. But it simply doesn't work when you say it occurs in winter. The verse as written comes off as though Barrett was forcing the two ideas – kudzu and winter – together. And they don't go together at all. He needed to pick one or the other.
</p>
<p class="ind">
There's actually another, more subtle, problem with the idea of kudzu. Look back at the first lines.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
There are no gardens in my neighborhood,<br />
just three black locust trees<br />
in my backyard.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The trees are in the backyard, and are presented as being an ersatz garden. Which prompts the question: Why does the person have kudzu in their backyard (in their 'garden')? One does not normally see kudzu sprout at the base of trees in a yard. So it is not quite as natural a thing as first thought.
</p>
<p class="ind">
In sum: the kudzu idea is an interesting idea, but it does not jive with the rest of the text.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
(3) Let's go now to the middle of the verse, and one line that should have felt a little like it didn't belong when you read the verse.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
They are the children I pray every night to have.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It's an absolutely unnecessary line that should have been cut from the text.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Why? Because it's directly giving the reader the idea that underlies the whole of the verse: that the trees are being linked to the idea of children. If the verse needs a line to explain the primary conceit, then the verse does not work very well. If the verse does work well, then it should not need or have a line explaining the conceit: let the verse do it's work on its own. As I've said before, and it's a good rule of thumb for life in general: never explain your jokes. If you have to explain your joke, the odds are either the listener was never going to get it, or you didn't tell the joke well. And in the case of writing verse, if you can't tell the joke well, you shouldn't be telling the joke. (It could also perhaps work as a rule for writing: distrust all overt statements.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
I will add also I don't like the line on another level: the phrase "I pray every night to have" brings a sense desperation that I don't like at all, nor does it fit the verse. Nowhere else is there the idea that the trees are substitutes for children the speaker wants but doesn't have. If that idea is meant to be important to the text, then it should be part of the text, demonstrated through the relationship between the speaker and the trees. Simply stating it overtly is clumsy, lazy, and un-creative.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
(4) To note, there's a second place where Barnett is "explaining his joke." Line 9:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
In the summer they stand<br />
as if for a portrait,<br />
lined up like siblings<br />
in the corner of my window.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
"Lined up like siblings" is unnecessary and should be cut. Again, the reader should be able to get the idea of trees as children – as thus as siblings – from the text without the verse having to stop what it is doing to explain everything overtly.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
(5) Last lines.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Before the first snowfall I'll sharpen a hatchet,<br />
read up on girdling, stand at the window,<br />
and wonder which sort of death they deserve.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That is rather an odd ending in a verse that is equating the trees to children: the speaker is contemplating whether and how to kill his own children? I did myself "read up" on girdling, something that was new to me. And I can come up with no positive way to connect girdling to children, no way for girdling to be metaphoric for how one treats one's children.
</p>
<p class="ind">
If you connect the sentence with the previous, about the kudzu, the last line does garner some sense in that there have now been presented two forms of death: denial of sunlight by the kudzo or girdling by the speaker ("which sort of death [do] they deserve"?). But are we talking euthanasia here? And with girdling it can take years for the tree to die. That doesn't exactly seem like a positive option to being starved to death by the kudzu. In fact, with girdling, as I found out, the tree dies because the roots of the tree are being starved to death. So is it even a true option?
</p>
<p class="ind">
I'm not sure if the reader was meant to connect the kudzu line with the last line. And the odd, murderous tone of the last line is unavoidable. I have a feeling Barnett wasn't really thinking out how the line reads, he just saw it as a way to bring the 'life story' of the trees to a point of death, using something you don't see every day, girdling. The lines read like he had a clever idea and forced it into the verse without paying attention to how the verse reads as a whole. (The lines about the kudzu read the same way.) Because of the idea of girdling, the seasons-as-a-life metaphor falls apart in that last sentence. And, in truth, so does the idea of the tree as children. It ends up a confused, strange ending to a text that doesn't live up to its possibilities:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
By autumn they droop<br />
and withdraw like moody teens,<br />
leaving all their trash behind them.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That's interesting, there. Note the guiding rhymes working across the lines: autumn/withdraw/all; and droop/moody. There might also be something to be said for the lines increasing in stresses, 2/3/4. (Although, the third line can be read as three stresses, if you read "leaving all" to echo "and withdraw.") The idea of leaves equated with trash has a humor to it. Although, the lines also show the strain between the two conceits: teen years but it's already fall? Perhaps the two ideas don't work well together after all.
</p>A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-44536150379628195942017-09-21T13:36:00.002-07:002017-09-26T10:30:37.225-07:00"On Poetry" by Ai Weiwei<p class="noind">
<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/70234/on-poetry">AI Weiwei's "On Poetry" can be found here [link]</a>
<br />
</p>
<h4>on the transportive quality of poetry</h4>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's short statement on poetry found in an issue of <i>Poetry Magazine</i> from a couple of years back was recently brought to my attention. As statements on poetry go I don't think much of it: it's disjointed and a bit pell-mell, and mostly empty rhetoric. But at a couple of places, if we take Ai's words at face value, accept them as they are written, there may be something interesting to be found.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Beginning with the statement in the second paragraph.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Reading Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda, Federico García Lorca, and Vladimir Mayakovsky at a young age, I discovered that all poetry has the same quality. It transports us to another place, away from the moment, away from our circumstances.
</td><td width="35px"></td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That is a very often seen claim for poetry, that it "transports us to another place." Unfortunately, it's also a very common claim for prose fiction, which right off the top should make the claim suspect as to its value as regards poetry.
</p>
<p class="ind">
And then we also can consider this:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
One gloomy January day in 1863, Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, the world's wealthiest and most celebrated painter, dressed himself in the costume of Napoleon Bonaparte and, despite the snowrall, climbed onto the rooftop balcony of his mansion in Poissy.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That's the opening sentence to Ross King's <i>The Judgment of Paris</i>, a book about the rise of Impressionism in painting. It is presenting historical, verifiable fact. And yet, it also can be said to "transport us to another place," making the claim not only trivial about poetry, but one that can't even be limited to literature.
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<p class="ind">
And if you think that, in being a history, <i>The Judgment of Paris</i> holds a kind of kinship to literature, I give you this.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
A point is that which has no parts, or which has no magnitude.<br />
A line is length without width. <br />
The extremities of a line are points.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That's the opening to Euclid's <i>Elements</i> (trans. I. Todhunter). It's not even a narrative and yet I would argue that for anyone who can engage the text it too "transports" the reader "away from the moment, away from our circumstances."
</p>
<p class="ind">
My point: <em>any text</em> that engages the reader "transports" the reader. As such, being transportive cannot be considered a defining quality of poetry. Indeed, I argue that Ai's statement is an absolutely trivial claim, something that says, when given any thought, nothing about poetry <i>qua</i> poetry.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Indeed, when push comes to shove, I'm not sure I can even accept it as true. Look at this moment by one of the writers Ai lists as being transportive, Walt Whitman.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,<br />
The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp,<br />
The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner,<br />
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,<br />
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready,<br />
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,<br />
The deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the altar,<br />
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel, <br />
The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and looks at the oats and rye, (<i>Song of Myself</i>, the opening to §15)<br />
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
I would argue the intent of Whitman here is not to transport the reader but to ground the reader in quotidian existence. The sound of the carpenter's foreplane "whistl[ing] its wild ascending lisp" is not mean to reveal something new but is meant to be immediately recognizable.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Now, it might be argued that since the section from Whitman does not "transport" the reader it is not truly poetry, which is an argument I would be willing to entertain. (Though, in context, I believe Whitman is attempting to ground the reader in every day reality so that he may then make a statement about every day reality, a statement that might be considered poetic.) As such, it is possible to argue that while saying that poetry transports the reader tells us nothing, saying that if a text doesn't transport the reader it is not poetry (at least to that reader) could have some merit.
</p>
<p class="ind">
But by recognizing that the idea of "transporting the reader" is not in any way a quality specific to poetry, we come to a conclusion that might be of no small value to the pop discourse on poetry: namely, if you are trying to describe or define <em>poetry</em>, the idea of <em>transport</em> should be left out.
</p>
<p class="ind">
But that is prompts no small question: how does one define poetry if the idea of "transport[ing] us to another place, away from the moment, away from our circumstances" is not to be part of that definition?
</p>
<p class="ind">
Ai makes two statements in what follows that might be used as efforts toward an answer to that question. The first is in the fourth paragraph.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr><td width="35px"></td><td>
In engaging social media and the forms of communication it makes possible, again and again we find ourselves deeply moved with emotion. By anger, joy, even feelings that are new and indescribable. This is poetic.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Taking the language on its face the poetic is nigh defined as that which moves us with deep emotion – it need not even be made of words. Now, hopefully, most of you will in your thinking about poetry have already rejected this idea. To give you the classic refutation, I can bite your ear and move you to "deep emotions" and there will be nothing "poetic" to be found. This is what gets us to the idea of dead puppy poetry: just because the idea of dead puppies is (generally) emotional, does not mean your writing about dead puppies is in any way poetry. It may be that all true poetry generates in the reader an emotional response of some sort or the other, but in no way need that experience be "deep," and in no way is that experience a defining characteristic of poetry.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The second statement – the final paragraph – is more interesting, though we have to clean it up a bit.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
To experience poetry is to see over and above reality. It is to discover that which is beyond the physical, to experience another life and another level of feeling. It is to wonder about the world, to understand the nature of people and, most importantly, to be shared with another, old or young, known or unknown.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Most of that – specifically from "to experience" on – can be discarded through the same arguments as used above. The interesting statements are in the first part.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
To experience poetry is to see over and above reality. It is to discover that which is beyond the physical,
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Now, it is quite possible, and I totally permit this to be true, that by "over and above reality" Ai means something in the nature of looking at the world from above, from a third person perspective, a perspective that pulls us outside of ourselves, a perspective that permits engagement with what is happening below, but nonetheless a perspective that falls in line with what Ai has presented thus far: poetry as (thusly) transporting and emotional. (It might be argued that this reading is affirmed by the phrase in what follows, that poetry is "to understand the nature of people.")
</p>
<p class="ind">
However, it is possible to read the opening of the paragraph a different way: taking "over and above reality" as meaning pulling the reader <em>outside of the known</em>, outside of our rational, categorical experience of reality, into a different kind of thinking, a different kind of engagement with the world (as generated through the poetic text). What does that mean? One way to explore the idea is to ask yourself: What is poetry if it cannot be defined either through the idea of "transport" nor of "emotion"?
</p>
<p class="ind">
Now, one answer to that question is to ignore the ideational entirely and define poetry as a language object that is written with verseform (and some will say – and do say – that poetry is defined even more strictly as a language object written in a formal structure). That answer rests the definition of poetry entirely within the material. But should we – or, even, can we – remove the ideational so cleanly? It seems to me the very history of poetry speaks the opposite: that the meat and measure of poetry lies not in the material but in the ideational. Though not exclusively: the material is still a factor. The two spectra of language – the material aspect (moving from prose to verse) and the ideational aspect (moving from the prosaic to the poetic) – must both be taken into account. For while all true poetry is poetic, not all things poetic need be true poetry. There is such a things as poetic prose (examples are <i>Nightwood</i>, <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i>, <i>Funeral Games</i>). Thus, if we are to find a definition for true poetry it should include the material: true poetry has verseform. However, in the same manner while all true poetry is verse, not all verse is true poetry. There is such a thing as prosaic verse. Indeed, the vast majority of the verse published today is prosaic verse, not what I would call true poetry at all.
</p>
<p class="ind">
True poetry is poetic verse. But, pulling us back to Ai's statement, what is "poetic"? What is the quality of the poetic that distinguishes it from the prosaic? What distinguishes true poetry from non-poetry? Not, as we have seen, the transportive. The prosaic – indeed the scientific – can be transportive. Nor, as we have seen, the emotional, as the prosaic and a great many things besides can be emotional.
</p>
<p class="ind">
What then is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the prosaic – the rational, the categorical, the theoretic? The answer is <em>the symbolic</em> – the irrational, the experiential, the mythical.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Though, it is my suspicion that that is not what Ai had in mind. Someone should ask him.
</p>
A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-81272502047103827862017-09-08T08:40:00.000-07:002017-09-26T10:29:59.926-07:00"The Circus Animals' Desertion" by W.B. Yeats<p class="noind">
<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43299/the-circus-animals-desertion">W.B. Yeats’s “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” can be found here [link]</a>
<br />
</p>
<h4>the contextual nature of meter in English</h4>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
<i>Trigger warning: this post is about scansion and meter. Results may vary.</i>
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
I want to take a look at one line of verse – at one syllable within the context of one line of verse. It offers what is to me a curious moment within meter in English. The conclusion I will draw from this little excursion is so fundamental it is barely worth being a conclusion. Still, it is a conclusion important enough that it merits being made every now and then. And I do come upon arguments about meter or prosody that fails to hold to this rather fundamental idea. Besides: in the least, everyone needs to see it a first time.
</p>
<p class="ind">
That line of verse is found in the opening stanza of Yeats's "The Circus Animals' Desertion."
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,<br />
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.<br />
Maybe at last being but a broken man <br />
I must be satisfied with my heart, although <br />
Winter and summer till old age began <br />
My circus animals were all on show,
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Iambic pentameter, the rhyme irrelevant to the discussion. So that we are all on the same page with the scansion, which is not irregular by any means, let me set it out.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
i SOUGHT / a THEME / and SOUGHT / for IT / in VAIN,<br />
i SOUGHT / it DAI / ly FOR / six WEEKS / or SO.<br />
may BE / at LAST / being BUT / a BROK /en MAN <br />
i MUST / be SAT / isfied WITH / my HEART, / al THOUGH <br />
WIN ter /and SUM /mer TILL /old AGE / be GAN <br />
my CIR / cus AN / i MALS / were ALL / on SHOW,
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
I believe all would agree to this reading. The only real variables are the "maybe" of line 3 (which can be: MAY be / at LAST) and perhaps the "satisfied with" on line 4 (reading it: be SAT / is FIED / with my HEART), though I tend to consider the latter a less satisfactory reading. Both speak in their own way to where I want to go, but I want to focus on another word.
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<p class="ind">
That is, the word "animals" in the final line. In natural speech (as you find it in a dictionary) its stress lies on the first syllable, with stress decreasing toward the third, the vowel of which, in pronunciation, is voiced as a schwa. Say it to yourself and it is probable (or at least possible) that you will say it with the word descending in stress with each syllable (as opposed to one stressed syllable followed by two equally "unstressed" syllables). And yet, within the verse, that third, least stressed syllable is used in a position of stress within the metrics of the line.
</p>
<p class="ind">
You can, in reading the line out loud, give the syllable stress. Though, it seems to me, the more stress given to that third syllable, the more affected the pronunciation seems to be, and the more that pronunciation gets pulled away from the vowel being sounded as a schwa, a sound that all but requires an unaccented syllable. But, there is an alternative reading. When I read the line, it is my natural reading to speak the third syllable not as stressed but with a slightly lower stress than the preceding and following unstressed syllables – and yet the line remains in my ear iambic.
</p>
<p class="ind">
To be clear, I am not arguing here that stressing the third syllable is an incorrect reading. I am only arguing that it is possible to read the line with the last syllable as lower in stress than those around it without damaging the metrics of the line. As I speak the line, I still hear the syllable as functioning as a "stressed" syllable, even though the syllable as I annunciate it has the lowest stress in the line. Rather than being marked through being stressed, the syllable is marked simply as being "different in stress than the surrounding level of unstress."
</p>
<p class="ind">
This is not a rare event. Let me give you a couple more that I found while reading Wordsworth's <i>Prelude</i> (the 1850 version). There are many examples to be found there; I'll offer but two. First, the word "family" in the fourth line, here.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
How Wallace fought for Scotland; left the name<br />
Of Wallace to be found, like a wild flower,<br />
All over his dear Country; left the deeds<br />
Of Wallace, like a family of Ghosts,<br />
To people the steep rocks and river banks (I.214-18)
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Second, the word "inn-keeper" in the fourth line here.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
How sometimes, in the length of those half-years,<br />
We from our funds drew largely; – proud to curb,<br />
And eager to spur on, the galloping steed;<br />
And with the cautious inn-keeper, whose stud<br />
Supplied our want, we haply might employ (II.95-99)
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Indeed, it is difficult to put any false emphasis on the "-er" of "inn-keeper" without sounding affected or artificial.
</p>
<p class="ind">
All three cases are the same basic situation. There is a three syllable word whose stress lies upon the first syllable, with the subsequent syllables descending in stress within natural speech. Because that word is followed by another unstressed syllable, a syllable that marks the beginning of a new iamb (and it is important to recognize that the expectation of iambs has to have been established before the line in question), the third syllable in the word is pressured into performing as a stressed syllable. Were the line to be written without "were," as quadrameter
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
My circus animals all on show
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
the natural stress of "all" would force the "-mals" syllable into a state (in terms of meter) of unstress.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
my CIR / cus AN / imals ALL / on SHOW
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
In the line as written, however, the syllable following the "-mals" syllable is unstressed and holds the unstressed slot in the expected iambic rhythm. The reader is thus invited by the greater context to read, and more importantly to <em>hear</em> the "-mals" syllable as an "stressed" syllable. Yet, I say, it is not necessary to the reading to actually stress the syllable. You can read it as a lower stress without disrupting the meter. All that is necessary is that the syllable sounds different in terms of stress from the syllables that surround it (two unstressed syllables, each of which establishes the beginning of a new iamb). That and that the iambic tempo is maintained, not letting that last syllable get slurred.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Again, I am not arguing that the line <em>must</em> be read that way, only that it <em>can be so read</em>, without disrupting the metric rhythm.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Now, it is tempting – and I was so tempted – to posit the idea that the unstressed syllables in a line of verse create a kind of base line which the other syllables need only vary from to accept the quality of being "stressed." However, that is a false idea, and the same line offers demonstration as to why. That is with the word "on" in the final foot. When I pronounce the phrase "on show" naturally, both words are stressed, with the greater stress put on the first syllable.[FN] As such, the final three syllables in the line are three stressed syllables.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
My CIRcus ANimals were ALL ON SHOW
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Yet, you can read the line, especially if reading it expressively, with the stress on "on" being higher than the stresses spoken with "all" and "show," and when doing so the iambic rhythm is not broken for the same reasons it is not broken with "animals": the stress put on "on" is different than the stress put on "all" and "show," thus permitting the central syllable to distinguish itself as being different in terms of stress than the syllables to either side of it. Where with "-mals" the syllables to either side were establishing themselves as the unstressed syllables in their iambs, here the surrounding syllables establish themselves as the stressed syllables, thus asking the central syllable to mark itself as "different than stressed," a difference that can be annunciated either through decreasing or increasing the level of stress.
</p>
<p class="ind">
There is a degree that a baseline is being established; but, it is not established such that all the unstressed syllables in the line form the baseline, or even that all the stressed syllables form the baseline. The baseline exists only in the moment, created by the two syllables to either side of the variant syllable. In the case of "-mals," the two surrounding syllables, as read within the expectation of iambic meter, create a momentary unstressed baseline, from which the "-mals" syllable need only vary to successfully mark itself as other than unstressed. Likewise, the "on" is surrounded by two stressed syllables situated in to stressed slots in the meter, and the "on" need only vary, in either direction, to be different than the surrounding "stressed" syllables, thus maintaining the iambic rhythm.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Admittedly, more than with the other examples, the reading of "on show" may be more dependent upon individual or local speech habits as to whether or not the "on" gains natural stress, making "on show" two stressed syllables. But, again, the question is not whether either reading is correct or incorrect; it is only whether the reading is possible, whether it can be had without disrupting the rhythm. I argue it can.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
The conclusion to be drawn from this little demonstration is not hard to find in books on meter: that is, <em>meter in English is not based on quantitative values inherent to the syllables; rather, meter is a relative event, established through context</em>.
</p>
<p class="ind">
This is where English meter and classical Greek meter are fundamentally different. In classical Greek the vowels in words are measured by their length: a long vowel is annunciated twice as long as a short vowel. Changing vowel length in a word meant you were saying a different word. Classical Greek meter is based upon the length of vowels. An iambic foot in classical Greek meter is a foot created out of a syllable with the short vowel followed by a syllable with a long vowel. Since vowel length is fixed in the words, the words could only fit into a metered line where the long and short syllables of the word matched up with the long and short syllables of the meter.
</p>
<p class="ind">
English meter is based (primarily) on stress, and stress varies; as such there is no necessary one-to-one coordination of syllables between how the word is pronounced and how the meter runs. If English were based on fixed quantities, the word "animal" could only fit in a / ´ - -/ slot. It could not have been used as Yeats used it.
</p>
<p class="ind">
For the simplest example, consider one syllable words. Is the word <i>it</i> stressed or unstressed? In classical Greek, the answer would be provided by the word itself, through whether the one syllable word contains a long or short vowel. In English the answer depends on its context. In the first line of "The Circus Animals's Desertion" the "it" is stressed.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I SOUGHT a THEME and SOUGHT for IT in VAIN
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
If there was no "for" in the line, the "it" would be unstressed.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I SOUGHT a THEME and SOUGHT it in VAIN
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The status of stress is not created by the word itself, but by the context within which the word sits.
</p>
<p class="ind">
It might be asked, is not the first syllable of the word <i>animals</i> a fixed quantity? The answer, actually, is no. It is still fixed by context, but that context is carried by the word itself: there is a relationship between the first two syllables of stressed-unstressed. The stress is not inherent to the syllable "an-," as is demonstrated by the word <i>antique</i>.
</p>
<p class="ind">
If English meter is constituted by relative quantities and not fixed quantities, then meter cannot be found within the words themselves. Rather, as demonstrated with the word <i>it</i>, meter is established not in the immediate event but across context. As seen in the discussion above, that context can be created across words in a line. It can also be established across lines. There is an example of such to be found in the second Wordsworth excerpt above if we but take out the comma:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And eager to spur on the galloping steed;
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
What is the meter of that line? It obviously fits the iambic reading established in the <i>Prelude</i>.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
and EA / ger TO / spur ON / the GAL / loping STEED
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
But it also fits a dactylic reading.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
and / EA ger to /SPUR on the / GAL op ing / STEED
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It is false to say that a line on its own has meter. Such language is the language of fixed values. Rather, it might be better said the line <em>implies</em> a meter – in this case, two meters. The actual meter by which to read the line is established only in context. You read a line of verse
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
and it implies a meter of iambic pentameter. But that reading – the reading that the <em>verse</em> is iambic pentameter – can only be affirmed by continuing reading.
</p>
<table class="quote"><tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
A second line that fits the predicted form. Remember also, any line of formal verse could also be a line of free verse, sculpted by context into a less formal prosody. Meter is not inherent, it is established and maintained.
</p>
<p class="ind">
As more examples, take a look back at our stanza from Yeats. Four of the lines could be used in a four stress, accentual meter.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
i SOUGHT it DAIly || for six WEEKS or SO.<br />
i MUST be SAtisfied || with my HEART, alTHOUGH <br />
WINter and SUMmer || till old AGE beGAN <br />
my CIRcus ANimals || were ALL on SHOW,<br />
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Of course, such a rhythm must be established in the reader's ear for the reader to hear the rhythm.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The first line of the verse
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td> I sought a theme and sought for it in vain
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
could even be recast by context as a three stress line.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
i SOUGHT a theme || and SOUGHT for it | in VAIN
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Though such an endeavor might begin to sound less like meter and more like shaped verse.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Now northerly, now westerly I strayed,<br />
With wanderlust, and foolishness the same – <br />
I sought a theme and sought for it in vain.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It is to note that the commas play a role in controlling the sound of the lines, which is an example of how rhythm is established in context – an important example in that that context includes something other than the words themselves. It is also important to note I don't 100% buy my own effort, here. If you had come upon the text without any other information, would you read it as I attempt to cast it? In the first line it is difficult to put stress upon the "-ly" syllables, even within a run of unstressed syllables. But the three unstressed syllables in a row seem to push for the center syllable to be stressed. The question then: is my effort imperfect? (Could I find other lines that would strongly and insistingly establish the desired shape?) Or does the ear naturally want to put a stress in the middle of the three unstressed syllables (if as an inverted stress like above)? Or does my ear naturally want to make that stress only because most of this post has been about iambs, and the rhythm is now stuck in my head? This also gets us to the question of whether sprung rhythm is a natural rhythm in English or one forced upon the text. Which gets us to the question of even if sprung rhythm is artificial, is that necessarily a bad thing if it makes for an interesting aural effect? More questions follow, which is why I'll stop with that single, fundamental thought: meter is not a fixed quantity, but a relative quality.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="noind">
**************************
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
<i>Note: Here is a thought. If meter in English is entirely relative, then is the basis of meter not to be found in the ideas stress or unstress, but in the relationship between the two? That is, rising, falling, or unchanged?</i>
</p>
A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-47904526003241929762017-08-08T15:04:00.000-07:002017-09-26T10:29:21.661-07:00"In Memory of W.B. Yeats" by W.H. Auden<p class="noind">
<a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/memory-w-b-yeats">W.H. Auden's "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" can be found here [link]</a>
<br />
</p>
<h4>a reading</h4>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
<i>Because of the issues that arise out of Auden's revising of his texts it has to be noted that the version that I am addressing, the version in the link above, is the version of the poem found in Auden's </i>Collected<i>. To note, this is not the same version found in the </i>Selected<i>, which has the original version of the poem, the primary difference being Part 3 having different stanzas.</i>
</p>
<p class="ind">
In my previous post I took a look at W.H. Auden's <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i>, a literarily curious work but for me not a successful work, to give a moment's thought to the idea of difficulty. Within the post I made mention of Auden's "In Memory of W.B. Yeats," a work that is a favorite of mine, not just within Auden's oeuvre but in verse in general. In this post I want to pick up "In Memory," for no reason other than to give a reading of it.
</p>
<p class="ind">
I will simply start at the beginning and work through to the end, pointing out the ideation and structure I see at play within the text. At times I may move rather quickly. But then my aim is not to give some definitive reading. Indeed, there is no such thing. There is only ever one's own reading of a text. Which does not mean that every reading is equal in value. A reading's strength comes out in discourse, when its validity is tested by other people. This does not, however, carry us to the idea that there could be – or should be – found one ultimate, undefeatable "meaning" of any given text. There can be multiple strong readings of a text. Their value lies in whether and how they assist other readers in forming their own strong readings.[FN]
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<table class="fn">
<tr>
<td width="70px"></td><td>
************************<br />
[FN] While I attempt to keep this to a reading that comes entirely from the text itself, I cannot say that my reading of "In Memory" is not uninfluenced by my reading of Arthur Kirsch's "Introduction" to <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i> (Princeton UP, 2003).</br>
************************
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
Beginning at the beginning, Part I, stanza 1:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
He disappeared in the dead of winter:<br />
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,<br />
And snow disfigured the public statues;<br />
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.<br />
What instruments we have agree <br />
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Notice how the first line has something of an identity to itself. It is functioning as a beginning, as lead-in to what will follow. In its structure, it declares itself as a beginning, one that introduces what is to come. Now, Auden at his worst often reads as though he is far more concerned with how the words sound together than with what the words mean together (or independently). This is not, however, Auden at his worst.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Though the verse is free, it is aurally controlled. The lines generally are shaped to four or five stresses. And there is no small amount of aural composition.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Line 1: "disappeared" is echoed consonantly by "dead" and both assonantly and consonantly by "winter"
</p>
<p class="ind">
Line 2: "brooks" and "frozen" pair. More interesting is the word "almost," which gives us not only repetition of the initial "a"s, but also strengthens the sound of the s/t combinations within the last three words of the line.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Line 3: the use of "u" sounds. Etc.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Worth noticing across the first stanza as well is the willingness to repeat words: "dead"/"dying"/"death" and three "day"s. In combination with the use of "d" (with "t") sounds throughout this pulls the stanza together into a unit.[FN]
</p>
<table class="fn">
<tr>
<td width="70px"></td><td>
************************<br />
[FN] I am of the opinion that if a word is the right word for the moment, you should not be afraid of using even if you have just recently used it. A question worth having in mind while reading: when does repetition of words strengthen a stanza and when does it weaken it?</br>
************************
</td></tr></table>
<p class="ind">
But let's not forget about the ideation with that opening line. Though it is an in memoriam verse, the line does not open "He died." Rather, Yeats "disappeared"; it is the world in the depth of winter that is described as "dead." Which is how the world is described in the lines following: where there should be motion, in the brooks, there is stillness; so also where there should be activity, in the airports. And civic identity and history, as embodied in the statues, is disfigured. The energy of the verse is put into describing the world, not Yeats. And it is not because of Yeats's death that the world is dead; the world is not described as experiencing a symbolic death. Rather, the very nature of the day, as to which "what instruments we have agree", was in itself that of a "dying day."
</p>
<p class="ind">
This thought is given more shape with the second verse.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Far from his illness<br />
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,<br />
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;<br />
By mourning tongues<br />
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Note the structure: the stanza is one sentence, a list of three elements: the "wolves ran," the "peasant river" was "untempted," and the "death of the poet was kept from his poems." All three occur "far from his illness." There is an identity being established: the world of Yeats's poems is the world of peasant rivers and of wolves in "evergreen forests." There is also an opposition: the world of "the death of the poet" is not the world of "his poems."
</p>
<p class="ind">
In this, and in the first and second stanzas, we find what is the ideational core of "In Memory," a fundamental opposition. In the first stanza Auden establishes the material world, in the second he turns to the spiritual world. The material world is a "dying" world, while the spiritual world is "evergreen." And that spiritual world is what is found in Yeats's poetry.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
By mourning tongues<br />
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Not only "found in," though. Yeats's verse is not merely a verse <em>about</em> a world of evergreen forests. It doesn't merely document that world. Rather, it is equated to that world: that world <em>is</em> the experience of Yeats's poetry, and vice versa. And that world is to be opposed to the world of airports and public statutes, and even of brooks when thought of in their material reality.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The third stanza focuses on that final line of the previous, on "the death of the poet," the death of Yeats himself.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,<br />
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;<br />
The provinces of his body revolted,<br />
The squares of his mind were empty,<br />
Silence invaded the suburbs,<br />
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
</td><td width="35px"></td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The division is already established: the material Yeats and the spiritual Yeats are two things. Stanza 3 is primarily the description of the death of the material Yeats, worked in terms of a country. Yet, in that "he became his admirers," even Yeats's spiritual self is not unaffected by his death. This idea is picked up by stanza 4.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Now he is scattered among a hundred cities<br />
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,<br />
To find his happiness in another kind of wood<br />
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.<br />
The words of a dead man<br />
Are modified in the guts of the living.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Yeats will not be exempted from the fate of all thinkers: once they no longer can speak for themselves, other people will – and must – speak for them. This applies both to the material and spiritual realities: on the material side, Yeats the man – the civic individual – will "be punished under a foreign code of conscience"; on the spiritual, "his happiness" will be found "in another kind of wood." Though Yeats's words – whether it be those of his worldly self or his poetic self – continue to exist beyond his death, they can exist only "in the guts of the living."
</p>
<p class="ind">
Stanza 4 is for me a pessimistic stanza, which is to be opposed to stanza 5. (For me "In Memory" is as a whole a rather pessimistic verse, painting a very dark vision of the world). Thus the opening "but."
</p><table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
But in the importance and noise of to-morrow<br />
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,<br />
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,<br />
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,<br />
A few thousand will think of this day<br />
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That opposition can be read also as the opposition between the material and the spiritual
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The words of a dead man<br />
Are modified in the guts of the living.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
"<em>But</em>"
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
But in the importance and noise of to-morrow<br />
. . .<br />
A few thousand will think of this day
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Auden speaks between these two stanzas of two realities: the material reality of the many, and the spiritual reality of the few. It is unavoidable that "the words of a dead man" can only be spoken, considered, interpreted, and experienced by the living; and that applies both to the material and spiritual words. <em>But</em>, there is a difference between the many and the few. For the few, those who keep the death of the poet "from his poems," those true "admirers," those who are most participant in the spiritual reality of Yeats's poetry,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
A few thousand will think of this day<br />
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It will not be that great of a divorce. The day of Yeats's death will amount only to something "slightly unusual": the poetry, for those few, will live on mostly undamaged. It will live on mostly as it has always lived. (How is spoken of in Part II.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
Which brings us to the close of the first part, lines we have seen before.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
What instruments we have agree<br />
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Just as the first part has a defined opening, so also does it have a defined closing, the same lines that closed the first stanza. In a great part the repetition works to give the first part an aural unity. And there are other ways that the six stanzas are tied together. The most obvious is the structure of the stanzas: each one closes with a two-line statement, except for the third stanza, which closes in a one-line but two-part statement.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
What instruments we have agree<br />
The day of his death was a dark cold day.<br />
<br />
By mourning tongues<br />
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.<br />
<br />
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.[FN]<br />
<br />
The words of a dead man<br />
Are modified in the guts of the living.<br />
<br />
A few thousand will think of this day<br />
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
</td><td width="35px"></td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
With that final, two line stanza, the whole is closed just as was each of its parts, though also with the ending bending around to tie up with the beginning. As well, it is re-emphasized: it was not just Yeats that was dying that day but the whole of the world.
</p>
<table class="fn">
<tr>
<td width="70px"></td><td>
************************
<p class="noind">[FN] It is a worthwhile question to ask as a writer of verse why Auden did not break the final line of the third stanza to close it also with a two-line thought. I believe the answer lies as an issue of form. For me dividing the final line into two lines would diminish the punch of the thought.</p>
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,<br />
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;<br />
The provinces of his body revolted,<br />
The squares of his mind were empty,<br />
Silence invaded the suburbs,<br />
The current of his feeling failed; <br />
He became his admirers.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">The new final line would be but a two-stress line that has five unstressed syllables to those two stressed. It is a rather weak closing line, that would, because of the length of the stanza in the stanza beginning generally shorter than the norm across the Part, cause the stanza to trail off. Compare it to the structure of the close of stanza 2.</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr><td width="35px"></td><td>
By mourning tongues<br />
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">Which is not written:</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
By mourning tongues the death of the poet <br />
Was kept from his poems.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The stanzas are as a whole written to close aurally strong, if not emphatically.</p>
</br>
************************
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
Part II opens
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
You were silly like us
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
re-establishing, through contrast with the lines that close Part I, the primary opposition of the poem: the material world, the spiritual world; the world of the many, the world of the few. On that latter opposition: I believe it is false to read "In Memory" as being in any way elitist. First, while the "us" in the opening phrase can be read to apply only to poets, I believe it should be more expansively applied to both true poets and true readers of poetry. Second, the poem as a whole does not read as praising the few over the many; rather, it reads as a pessimistic acceptance of the dark, harsh nature of the world, in which so many are lost. As well, the expansive nature of the last stanzas of "In Memory," which speaks to the value of true poetry, defeats any accusation of elitism.
</p>
<p class="ind">
That said, the contrast between the closing of Part I and the opening of Part II marks a shift in subject. Part I is primarily about the material world, about the world of the many. Part II will be about the world of the few. Perhaps in emphasis, as we now entering the world of poetry, there also is a change in form. The free verse of Part I is dropped for iambic hexameter.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Note that that opening phrase is not written:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
We are silly like you.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That construction creates the idea of imitation, the group attempting to follow the character of the one. Rather, the text is written the other way around: the one carries the characteristic that is inherent to the group. It is as important to see that the clause is not only saying that Yeats was "silly," but that the whole of those "few thousand" are silly. It is the nature of those who inhabit the spiritual reality. Yeats was not individual, but part of a group: the group of true poets (and, by extension, true readers of poetry).
</p>
<p class="ind">
What does "silly" mean? Hold that question for a second. First, lets continue.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
your gift survived it all:<br />
The parish of rich women, physical decay,<br />
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The work gets a touch biographical, but does not lose the opposition between the material and the spiritual, implying here not only did Yeats's spiritual "gift" survive all the material turmoil and obstacles of his life, but even it was generated by that turmoil, especially as regards the country of Ireland. But while there may be a relationship between Yeats's material and spiritual realities, the latter had, in the end, no effect on the former.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.<br />
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,<br />
For poetry makes nothing happen:
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The famous and so often mis-read line. The verse is not saying "poetry makes nothing happen" period, end of thought. It is saying "poetry makes nothing happen" <em>in and from the viewpoint of the material world</em>.
</p>
<p class="ind">
And thus we come to an understanding of the word "silly." The Oxford Dictionary site offers as definition of <i>silly</i>:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
1. Having or showing a lack of common sense or judgement; absurd and foolish.<br />
1.1 Ridiculously trivial or frivolous.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
an idea that fits the thought of poetry from the point of view of the material world. Poetry has no effect on "the floor of the Bourse," no influence on the business of airports or the civic world of cities. As such, from the view of that world, it is trivial, frivolous; even absurd and foolish. But that does not mean poetry has no value or action; to understand the value of true poetry one must understand that it is not of the material reality; it is of another modality of being altogether. Continuing:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives<br />
In the valley of its making where executives<br />
Would never want to tamper, flows on south<br />
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,<br />
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,<br />
A way of happening, a mouth.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
True poetry does not have material effects. It does not engage the world in rational argument. And Auden is making an argument – if a poetic one – within "In Memory" for the nature of true poetry. Just as the world is divided into the civic many and the poetic few, so also is verse – and literature, and all of the works of humankind – divided. True poetry does not make things happen in the sense of material (or political) endeavors; rather, true poetry, a spiritual endeavor, is <em>a way</em> of happening. It is a different modality of thought from material, rationalistic, civic being. Rather than categorical thought, poetry is experience.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
What does that mean? Part I established the opposition between the material and the spiritual, but it was primarily about the material world. Part II gave us the relationship between spiritual "poetry" and the material world, and pointed to what poetry "is" with it being not a material event. In Part III, we are brought to the spiritual poet himself. We are given thought to what true poetry is: why Auden calls it a "mouth," and a "way of happening" rather than a thing that happens.[FN]
</p>
<table class="fn">
<tr>
<td width="70px"></td><td>
************************<br />
[FN] The word <i>mouth</i> is another word repeated through "In Memory." How it is used is worth pondering.</br>
************************
</td></tr></table>
<p class="ind">
Another part, another change in form. The verse has become very formal, rhymed lines of strict iambic quadrameter (without the opening unstressed syllable), set in four-line stanzas. The feel of the verse is most like classical poetry, most like something one might expect to hear at a funeral.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Earth, receive an honoured guest:<br />
William Yeats is laid to rest.<br />
Let the Irish vessel lie <br />
Emptied of its poetry.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Where stanza 3 of the Part I spoke of Yeats's death in material terms, here he is described as a spiritual creature: the material "vessel" is emptied of its spiritual "poetry." Using that division the first stanza introduces the Part 3.
</p>
<p class="ind">
It continues with description of the material world, here in as dark of terms as has been had thus far. (It is worth noting "In Memory" was written in 1940, in the early stages of WWII.)
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
In the nightmare of the dark<br />
All the dogs of Europe bark,<br />
And the living nations wait,<br />
Each sequestered in its hate;<br />
<br />
Intellectual disgrace<br />
Stares from every human face,<br />
And the seas of pity lie<br />
Locked and frozen in each eye.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
In opposition to that reality, Auden gives us the "silliness" of poetry.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Follow, poet, follow right<br />
To the bottom of the night,<br />
With your unconstraining voice<br />
Still persuade us to rejoice;
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
I read the verse as speaking specifically of Yeats but also generally to all true poets and to all who would aspire to such. This begins the ars poetica, the argument by example of what true poetry is and does. That argument begins with a plea for Yeats (Yeats's work) – and for those who would be true poets – to "follow right / to the bottom of the night," the dark night of material reality that was described in the previous two stanzas. There they are to speak with an "unconstraining" voice: another element of opposition between the material and the spiritual: constraining vs. unconstraining. With that voice, Auden begs of Yeats to continue to do, even after death, what his poetry has done all along.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Still persuade us to rejoice
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
I find that "still" to be one of the most powerful words of the poem. For it embodies the intensity of that plea: "<em>still</em> persuade us," for without poetry, life would become so dark as to be unbearable. But do not pass too quickly by that word "persuade": it gives to true poetry an action, as though reading it, the spiritual engagement of reading true poetry, shows the reader an opposition, a spiritual brightness, to "the dark cold day" of material being, a brightness that can persuade a reader to "rejoice" even in the face of the bleakness of material life.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The final two stanzas give example to that idea of rejoicing in the face of despair.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
With the farming of a verse<br />
Make a vineyard of the curse,<br />
Sing of human unsuccess<br />
In a rapture of distress;<br />
<br />
In the deserts of the heart<br />
Let the healing fountain start,<br />
In the prison of his days<br />
Teach the free man how to praise.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
I find it not amiss and to the point that the examples are internally contradictory: a vineyard despite, presumably, the curse that cast mankind out of Eden; a rapture of unsuccess; a fountain where there is no water; and freedom within a prison. But then poetry is experience, not material definition. And true poetry is irrationally symbolic, not rationally, categorically organized. One can not rationally argue a person into finding the will and desire to sing raptures in the face of continued distress; the "argument," as it were, must be an experience. Poetry "makes nothing happen" materially: it does not operate in rational or political argument. When a text does so it is not true poetry. True poetry rather is and must be an experience, a spiritual experience. It is a <em>way</em> of happening, a way of speaking, the only way through which can be generated the experience and modality of the spiritual.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="noind">
****************
</p>
<p class="noind">
Note: In reading "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" I am readily brought to think of Yeats's "The Tower," another verse about the spiritual and the material, a verse that is Yeats writing about his own death; and another verse written in three parts each in a different style. Stanza 2 of the first part always brings to mind the opening of the third part of "The Tower":
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr><td width="35px"></td><td>
I choose upstanding men<br />
That climb the streams until<br />
The fountain leap, and at dawn<br />
Drop their cast at the side<br />
Of dripping stone;
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
I've never read anything saying Auden had "The Tower" in mind when he wrote "In Memory," but I have not read that much on Auden so that means nothing, really. I would not be surprised, however, if it were the case.
</p>
A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-49055730572076608092017-07-07T10:23:00.001-07:002017-09-26T10:28:28.396-07:00The Sea and the Mirror by W.H. Auden<p class="noind">
<a href="https://allpoetry.com/The-Hollow-Men"><i>The Sea and the Mirror</i> is in Google books [link]</a>. You can scroll down to the Preface.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<h4>a note on difficulty</h4>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
<i>In admission, this post is a little dependent upon that you have (or have had) the same experience with the text that I had. If not, just play along anyway.</i>
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
I want to take a look at a moment in W.H. Auden's <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i>. The work, if you are unfamiliar with it, is, as the subtitle offers, "A Commentary on Shakespeare's <i>The Tempest</i>." It's various parts are written mostly in the voices of the characters of the play, set as though the play has just concluded and the characters have something more to say, comments that extend the play beyond its final curtain, and, even, beyond the stage. Through this Auden gives a philosophical response to <i>The Tempest</i> as he reads it.[FN]
</p>
<table class="fn">
<tr>
<td width="70px"></td><td>
****************************<br />
[FN] <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i> is found in the Vintage <i>Collected Works</i>. It has also been published in an individual volume, edited by Arthur Kirsch (Princeton UP, 2003), which contains also a thirty page introduction that is worth looking up; not only for what it says about <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i>, but for how it puts much of Auden's work in a philosophical context.<br />
****************************
</td></tr></table>
<p class="ind">
The reason I'm re-reading <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i>, the reason I'm presently reading Auden, is because I've gotten my hands on a little critical analysis of Auden's career: Gerald Nelson's <i>Changes of Heart: A Study in the Poetry of W.H. Auden</i> (U of Cal P, 1969). Outside of some small familiarity with a here and there verse ("In Memory of W.B. Yeats" is a favorite), Auden has been something of a gap in my knowledge of twentieth-century verse in English. Nelson's book is in effort to fill that gap, however lightly. To note, it is a book that attempts to defend Auden against the major criticisms that has been leveled against his work: that he failed to live up to the promise of his early work, that his return to Christianity had negative impact on his work; that Auden's career was "without development as a poet" and as such "the success of any individual poem [was] pure accident." (ix) As for my own response to Auden, I don't consider myself familiar enough with him to speak to that criticism; though, I will say that my own experience with his work, my various times browsing through his <i>Collected</i>, does permit it.
</p>
<p class="ind">
That criticism has little bearing on what I want to do here. I have a different question to ask. It is a question that is applicable to the whole of <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i>, though I will use only the one small part of the work – concentrating on a single stanza – as example to the whole.
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
<i>The Sea and the Mirror</i> opens with a Preface in the voice of the Stage Manager – the only voice in the work that is not a character in the play – speaking "to the Critics." I will focus on the first stanza; but let me give you the first two (out of four), so that first stanza is not completely isolated. Though this is but two stanzas, they represent sufficiently the whole of the Preface, and even can stand as representative of the whole of the work, if only for the question I wish to ask.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35"></td><td>
The aged catch their breath,<br />
For the nonchalant couple go <br />
Waltzing across the tightrope <br />
As if there were no death <br />
Or hope of falling down;<br />
The wounded cry as the clown <br />
Doubles his meaning, and O <br />
How the dear little children laugh <br />
When the drums roll and the lovely <br />
Lady is sawn in half.<br />
<br />
O what authority gives <br />
Existence its surprise?<br />
Science is happy to answer <br />
That the ghosts who haunt our lives <br />
Are handy with mirrors and wire,<br />
That song and sugar and fire,<br />
Courage and come-hither eyes <br />
Have a genius for taking pains.<br />
But how does one think of a habit?<br />
Our wonder, our terror remains.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Where this small sample is representative of the whole is in the difficulty of the verse. As Nelson describes, <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i> is Auden's most difficult and most complex work. "Many critics maintain that it is Auden's masterpiece, while others find it even more irritating than Auden found <i>The Tempest</i>" (21). And, in honest, "irritating" is one of the emotions I had when reading <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i>. It is, as you might see in the above, a dense work; more accurately a very <em>condensed</em> work – which is not the same thing. When something is condensed it can become dense, yes; but it does so through part of it being removed. Condensation is not in itself a negative thing. Indeed, I argue that it is an essential skill to sophisticated writing. However, being too condensed will have its negative effects. What is difficult can become obtuse; and what is obtuse can become impenetrable. Thus the irritation. When I read <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i> I feel as though Auden is skipping across his argument like a stone across water, making it extremely difficult to enter into the depths of that argument.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Let's look at that first stanza. It is readily noticed that it is not describing a performance of <i>The Tempest</i> but a circus. When I would read it (before reading Nelson) I would attempt to connect the circus to the play. After all, these are the first words of the <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i>, a "commentary" on <i>The Tempest</i>, so it is not afield to think the text would begin by connecting the reader to the play. In that way, it is natural to see "the nonchalant couple" as Miranda and Ferdinand. And as Trinculo is Alonso's jester, there is also a clown. Though, where in <i>The Tempest</i> to find a lady being sawn in half? There is a problem with the association of characters.
</p>
<p class="ind">
As Nelson reveals, connecting the opening stanza to the play is a false reading. In fact, the argument of the stanza lies not in the play (the circus) but in the audience. Let me give you the core of Nelson's reading, though I will present it in reverse order. There are at the end the children laughing at a lady being sawn in half. It is children laughing at death; and, children are able to laugh at such things because, being children, they have as of yet no real understanding of death. In the middle are the middle-aged audience, the "wounded," people who have suffered the pains of life, and as such people who experience not only the humor of clowns but also the pain and violence that so often underlies that humor. Finally (firstly), there are the elderly, the people nearest to death, who thus have the greatest fear of death, and who "catch their breath" at the tightrope walkers perilously high above the ground.
</p>
<p class="ind">
On one hand, once you see the structure it is fairly easy to see the structure. I can't now not read it so. But on the other hand, in order to see that structure I had to recognize that the description of a performance in a verse about <i>The Tempest</i> had nothing directly to do with <i>The Tempest</i>, and then shift the focus in a verse about a performance of <i>The Tempest</i> (remember, this is the stage manager speaking to the critics about a play just concluded) away from the performance itself and to the audience. On top of that, I had to negotiate condensed language: e.g., the whole of the relationship of middle-aged people to death is condensed to nine words, and one had to find middle-aged people in "the wounded." The sum effect is that the idea of death is so removed from the passage that it took someone saying "it's about death" for me to go "Ohhh! It's about <em>death</em>." Not the most easily reached conclusion. Which brings me to my question:
</p>
<p class="ind">
When is a work <em>too</em> difficult?
</p>
<p class="ind">
Reading beyond the first stanza the texts asks,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
O what authority gives<br />
Existence its surprise?
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Even with Nelson's reading of the first stanza in hand, can you anchor that question within an argument? Can you make sufficient sense of that question? Does adding the rest of the stanza help to flush it out? To say, the third stanza offers no help to understanding the second; it moves on from the second stanza as quickly as the second stanza moved on from the first.
</p>
<p class="ind">
When is a work too difficult?
</p>
<p class="ind">
Now, I will say, Nelson's reading of the first stanza, of the Preface, and of <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i> as a whole did much to bring some life to the work as a whole. And I think that if a person can present a successful reading of a text, as Nelson did of that first stanza, it is sufficient argument against the accusation that a text is too difficult. Just because a text is difficult to <em>me</em> does not mean the text is universally difficult. Which is an important point. Difficulty, in itself, is not – is never – sufficient to the condemnation of a text. In fact, difficulty should be something expected in the realm of literature. Climbing the learning curve of literature is in part the effort of learning to master – and enjoy – the difficulties one encounters in texts. It is also true that learning to <em>write</em> literature is in part the effort of learning to master the difficult. Complex thought requires complex presentation. (Is it equally true that simple thoughts should be presented simply?)
</p>
<p class="ind">
Difficulty for the sake of difficulty – for example the use of obscure words solely for the sake of using obscure words – will fail a writer. The pay-off for the reader should exceed their effort. For example, there is a sense of play to be found in Wallace Stevens's use of rarified words. The added difficulty does not get in the way of the pleasure of his texts but contributes to it. This gets us to the other side of the coin: just as difficulty is not sufficient to the condemnation of a text, nor is it in itself the means to the redemption of a text. The text still has to work as a literary text, as a literary experience. Defending a text by saying "well, it's a difficult text" is meaningless. Difficulty is not justification for a text that does not work on its own.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The opening stanza of <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i> is difficult. In the four or five times I read it before looking into Nelson, I could not make sense of the whole of it. However, after Nelson's reading I can easily see the structure in the text.
</p>
<p class="ind">
But Nelson does not stop at that reading. Rather, he comes to the following conclusion as regards the first stanza.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
This is the scene presented to the Critics by the Stage Manager; he is asking them to be aware of the audience as well as the show. What Auden is asking us to do is to be aware from the very beginning of <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i> of the possibilities inherent in the relationship between life and art, to be aware of the narrow boundary between illusion and reality. He asks us, in short, to try to place ourselves in the position of the Critics and to think about what we see. (26)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That is a lot gleaned from ten rather concise lines. Granted, it is a reading that is taking the whole of the work into consideration, but the reading must still be legitimated by the text itself. And, in working through the whole of Nelson's reading of <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i>, I was frequently questioning, however much Nelson's ideas may <em>fit</em> the text, whether those ideas could be said to have been <em>generated by</em> the text. A lot was often made of relatively few words. I cannot myself, even using Nelson's text, make the argument that above paragraph is to be found in that first stanza. And, as I said, <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i> is throughout a very condensed text. At every point Auden is continually asking the reader to make a lot out of very few words.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Which prompts my answer to my question. When is a text too difficult? When it is no longer difficult, but something else, be it poorly written or intricately inscrutible.
</p>
<p class="ind">
I myself in reading <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i> could not bring its various parts into a working whole. "What does this mean?", "What am I to do with this?" were frequent questions, that were rarely (if ever) answered by the text itself. It took an outside person to give me some sense of argument across the text. And I am not convinced that that argument can be found <em>within</em> the text. Nelson describes <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i> as "by far the most technically complicated of all of Auden's poetry, [. . .] also, perhaps because of its complexity, one of his most difficult works ideationally" (21-22). In contrast, those who were critical of Auden's work found his long poems "diffuse in thought and uncertain in technique" (ix). Which fits more with my experience of <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i>. The first stanza of the Preface is a difficult stanza, but one out of which a structure can be revealed. However, as Nelson's reading may show, bringing that stanza into the whole of the text seems to involve something beyond close reading, something other than explaining the difficult. Take a look at Nelson's reading of the second stanza. To save you having to scroll back, I'll will give you again that second stanza before Nelson's reading.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
O what authority gives<br />
Existence its surprise?<br />
Science is happy to answer<br />
That the ghosts who haunt our lives<br />
Are handy with mirrors and wire,<br />
That song and sugar and fire,<br />
Courage and come-hither eyes<br />
Have a genius for taking pains.<br />
But how does one think of a habit?<br />
Our wonder, our terror remains.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Now Nelson:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
<p class="noind">Once the Stage Manager has set the scene, he moves directly to the problem of man's existence. Since it is his job to eliminate real surprise [on stage] while maintaining the illusion of surprise [for the audience], it is only natural that he should begin his discussion of existence in theatrical terms. As a result, the scientist's nonaccidental, mechanical universe becomes one in which</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
. . . the ghosts who haunt our lives<br />
Are handy with mirrors and wire.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">This is a purely theatrical image of the universe and is applicable to what occurs backstage [. . .]. There is a solid natural order behind all things.</p>
<p class="ind">"But," inquires the Stage Manager, "how does one think up a habit?" How does rational order explain the completely irrational? The Stage Manager's notion of existence would seem to be this: the irrational, unconscious fears and needs of human beings, before which reason pales, permit only "our wonder, our terror" to remain.</p>
<p class="ind">So much for one answer to the problem of existence.</p>
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The connection between the reading and the stanza itself is not terribly concrete. (Is a habit "completely irrational"? What of the lines beginning "That song and sugar and fire"?) Nelson has a reading of the text, yes; but that reading does not come off as derived from the text in the manner that the base reading of the first stanza (that it is about death) can be shown within the text itself. Considering the nature of the reading, as you move through the second stanza and through the verse as a whole, Nelson's reading does not seem to be an explication of a difficult – or "technically complicated" – work. Rather, it seems to be someone drawing in the lines that connect the separate strikes of the stone upon the water, a layer of ideation set on top of the work. As such, given the apparently necessary nature of a reading of <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i> both in part and in whole, I am faced with the idea that <i>The Sea and the Mirror</i> cannot be called a "difficult" work. "Diffuse," or too condensed; but not "difficult."
</p>
A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-32277874405737744572017-05-29T13:13:00.000-07:002017-05-30T08:25:06.102-07:00"Taxing the Rain" by Penelope Shuttle<p class="noind">
<a href="http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/poem/penelope-shuttle/">Penelope Shuttle's "Taxing the Rain" can be found here [link]</a>
<br />
</p>
<h4>an exploration post</h4>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
Let's just explore some language in a bit a verse. Penelope Shuttle's "Taxing the Rain" passed by my way today in my FB scroll and it struck me as a curious thing. It's been put online by Jeanette Winterson <a href="http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/poem/penelope-shuttle/">on her page [link]</a>. (To note, it came my way formatted entirely in two-line stanzas, not as Winterson types it.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
The heart of the verse – its focus and its primary source of energy as presented – is the description of rain and what it does. And there are moments in there that might in themselves offer points for interesting discussion. (E.g., the <em>shape</em> of scented baths? Or, is it rain anymore when it is a bath? Or, notice how the verse uses a shift to abstraction, "dreamy complexity," to get the rain indoors.) However, what interests me most is the framing device that is used to get the verse to the idea of what the rain is and does: that is, the idea of people wanting to "tax the rain."
</p>
<p class="ind">
The idea as presented creates a difficulty. You can speak of "taxing automobiles," say, but it is clear from the idea that it is the owner that will pay the tax. It is the owner that is really being taxed. But who would be the once-removed target of putting a tax on rain? Nobody "possesses" rain; nobody "causes" rain for a desired purpose. Indeed, most of the text's description of rain is rather universal if not a-personal. How would the rain pay a tax upon itself? How would such a thing be leveed? What exactly would be collected? Does the phrase "tax the rain" make any sense in the everyday world? With any thought comes the recognition that taxing the rain is inherently an absurdity.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Now, the presence of an absurdity in a text does is not in itself a flaw in the text. The issue is not whether there exists an absurdity. The issue is whether the text can get the reader over the ideational hurdle of the absurdity. That is, to use a phrase, does the text successfully suspend disbelief so that the absurdity can become part of a vibrant whole?
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<p class="ind">
Look at how the idea is first presented in "Taxing the Rain":
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I think how many men and women<br />
<br />
would, if they could,<br />
against all sense and nature,<br />
<br />
tax the rain for its privileges;
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Under examination we see that the absurdity is being compounded, not eased. "I think how many men and women": we are not only being pointed to the loose fiction of taxing the rain, we are being pointed to the concrete idea that there actually exists people who presently <em>want</em> to tax the rain. "I think of how many men and women" – as though it is something we all should have come across by now, as though it is something we all have come across more than once, as though we've all met or known or heard a someone who has openly vocalized an earnest desire to tax the rain, and as such can we "think" of "how many" of them there are.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Let the rain be taxed, they say
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
As though people actually say that. As though if we read the papers we will see that very thing being said. The verse has attempted to ground the absurdity of taxing the rain, but has grounded it in a rhetoric that points to real life, and that points to something that does not exist. That is a problem. The text has not eased the acceptance of the absurdity, is has complicated it.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Notice how the text doubles down on trying to get the reader to accept the idea of taxing the rain. It does it twice. First, in the passage above with "against all sense and nature." Instead of weaving a suspension of disbelief the statement is merely insisting upon the believability of the proffered fiction. The text is only saying to the reader, "This thing makes sense; against all sense this thing makes sense." That does not make for a strong argument.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The second place is in the last stanza, which closes off the verse re-affirming what has been stated previously (without expanding on the idea). That closing, for me, the turning away from the description of the rain back to the supposed people who would tax the rain, makes me question the apparent point of the verse. Most of the energy of the verse is dedicated to describing the rain; but was the verse supposed to be about the rain? One would think that that is the point of the verse: to describe the rain as a positive thing, something so positive no one in their right mind would think to tax it. But if the main thrust of the verse is to be about the rain, why is it turning back to talking about the people who would tax it? The phrasing of that last line,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
even now, they whisper, it can be done, it must be done.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
puts a lot of weight into the motivation of such people and the nature of such people. But, then, if the verse is supposed to be about those people, why does it put so little effort (and so much repetition) into describing those people? Why does it take five lines even to get to those people? Why does it start not with those people but with a narrative "I"?
</p>
<p class="ind">
I find the opening five lines to be in error. It points the reader to an individual experience of the rain when the text is going to devote its energies instead to a general experience of the rain. The argument of the text begins at line 6,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I think how many men and women
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
and the verse should begin there as well. Starting there immediately points the reader to the arguments of the verse: the things the rain does; the people who would tax the rain for the things it does. The first five lines make for a poor lead-in.
</p>
<p class="ind">
But my main issue with the text would remain. "I think how many men and women" points to the idea that in real life we can – and ostensibly have, what with that word "many" – come across people who have <em>vocalized</em> the desire to tax the rain. (Again: "Let rain be taxed, they say.") The verse clumsily handles the introduction of the absurdity of taxing the rain, and for that clumsy introduction the absurdity becomes the more difficult to swallow.
</p>
<p class="ind">
What if the verse used a slightly different line? Not
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I think how many men and women [would tax the rain]
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
but
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I <em>imagine</em> many men and women [would tax the rain]
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
First, at the level of basic syntax, notice the difference in meaning. The former says "I think <em>how many</em>": the phrase is not about the tax or the rain, it is about <em>the number</em> of people. The syntax is misdirected. Saying, instead, "I imagine many people would" points straight to the people, to the idea of taxing, and to that they go together. The difference between the two creates a completely different rhetorical stance as well. Saying "I think how many" points to an experienced <em>reality</em>, as though the narrator has – and has many times – come across people who in seriousness have expressed such an intent, however absurd that intent. Saying "I imagine many" points not outward to a reality but to the imagined hypothetical that there are people who are of such a mind that it would not be beyond them to attempt to do something as absurd as taxing the rain. Rhetorically, one is factual, saying there are people who have in actually said this; the other is metaphorical, saying there are people whose minds and souls are such that this absurd idea gives workable description of them. Thus why I believe my suggestion preferable: presenting an absurdity metaphorically is, one would think, more ideationally palatable than presenting it factually.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Now, I might argue that the nature of the framing device points to another problem with the verse: that when the verse describes the rain it abandons the framing device and just plays with describing rain. (Thus the verse's apparent need for a repetitive reaffirmation of the device at the end.) But I'll leave that for your own exploration.
</p>
A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-40051817094849789002017-04-25T12:37:00.000-07:002017-09-26T10:31:31.462-07:00Introduction to "The Kekulé Problem" by David Krakauer<h4>the fear of empty space</h4>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
Here is a curious moment from something recently published on the web. The article is <a href="http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/the-kekul-problem">"The Kekulé Problem" by Cormac McCarthy, published on the <i>Nautilus</i> site [link]</a>. What caught my eye, however, lies in the introduction to the article. That intro begins:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Cormac McCarthy is best known to the world as a writer of novels. These include <i>Blood Meridian</i>, <i>All the Pretty Horses</i>, <i>No Country for Old Men</i>, and <i>The Road</i>. At the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) he is a research colleague and thought of in complementary terms. An aficionado on subjects ranging from the history of mathematics, philosophical arguments relating to the status of quantum mechanics as a causal theory, [. . .]
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It is necessary to context to know that the intro was written by one David Krakauer, himself a professor at the Santa Fe Institute.
</p>
<p class="ind">
My interest lies in the third sentence.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
At the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) he is a research colleague and thought of in complementary terms.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There are two things here. First, a moment of syntax.
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<p class="ind">
Hopefully you caught that there is an error in syntax in the list: specifically, the list is written as though it contained a parallelism that doesn't exist. The list is written as though the "is" applies equally to both parts of the list.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
[. . .] he is <br />
a research colleague <br />
and thought of in complementary terms.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That is, however, not true. In the first entry in the list the structure is that of noun-is-noun, the "is" being used as a copula [he – is – a colleague]. In the second entry in the list the structure is that of noun-verb, with "is" being used as an auxiliary verb [he – is thought of].
</p>
<p class="ind">
As a general rule, when you are listing phrases you should include in the element of the list the whole of the basic structure of the phrase. That way you avoid the stumbles such as that created above. The sentence should be written
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
At the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) he is a research colleague and is thought of in complementary terms.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
I say only "general rule": writing it out should be the default, varied from only when the writer is sure that the variation works, when it does not create an unwanted hiccup in the reader's ear (and is interesting enough to justify the variation). It should be a conscious choice when you vary from the default, not an accident of inattentive writing. The likelihood of creating something that sounds clumsy will exist almost entirely on the side of not following the default. For example, when giving a list of infinitive phrases, it should be the default to include the "to" in each element in the list. This becomes important when the phrases get long and the reader's ear could really use the repeated "to" to help organize. However, the construction is only the default. To the other side, when the phrases are very small, having the "to" on every phrase can sound repetitive and unnecessary. As well, when the phrases do not need the "to" keep themselves organized, the decision to include or remove the "to" can work to controlling tempo and other aural effects. Anaphora exists for a reason, after all.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Attentiveness to this applies doubly in verse, where line breaks and the pauses created thereby are added to the mix, as well where aural effects are (ostensibly) in play. It is all the easier in verse to lose the sentence structure when the phrases get long.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Speaking of anaphora, here's an example I just came across in prose, in the essay "The Crisis of Language" by Richard Sheppard, in Bradbury and McFarlane's <i>Modernism</i>.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Essentially, both the Dadaists and the Surrealists were anti-art. With them, literature and poetry cease to be supreme and become instead only one psychedelic means among others. With them, poetry becomes 'disposable', created for no particular purpose, and useful in an undefinable way. With them, language is displaced from its pinnacle and reinstated simply as one means of communication among many. With them, language ceases to be <em>the</em> tool for asserting human lordship over the universe and becomes a natural force in its own right, which creates as it will and over which human beings have only limited control. With them, man becomes the servant of his language rather than its master. [continuing for three more "with them"s]
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
A good example of a device used both to help maintain structure for the reader's benefit and to create an aural effect.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
But back to the sentence of concern. There is a second event going on with it – or least there is evidence of this second event: one can never be sure with such things when you move from "what is" to "why it happened." The event, or the evidence of the event, is very apparent to me because I see in it something I struggle with in my own writing, a source of bad habits that, in both my creative work and my essays, I must ever be alert to. Unfortunately, I may not be able to make the event visible to everyone (and probably won't). I'm hoping I can make it apparent by backing into it.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Here's the sentence again.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
At the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) he is a research colleague and thought of in complementary terms.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Beside the bad syntax, that sentence should catch your ear as somewhat odd. Why would someone say "thought of in complementary terms"? First, I don't think the guy would be a "colleague" if nobody could stand his presence, so the second half of the sentence is rather implied in the first. Technically, it doesn't <em>need</em> to be stated. Second, that's all that can be mustered? "Thought of in complementary terms"? He doesn't even make it to "is well liked"? It is all in all an oddly chosen phrasing. Disregarding the possibility that the phrasing is a poorly told joke (nothing in the rest of the introduction hints at humor), why does that oddly worded phrase exist?
</p>
<p class="ind">
I believe the answer lies in the first half of the sentence.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
At the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) he is a research colleague.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Now, it is correctly written "Santa Fe Institute" first, and not,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
He is a research colleague at the Santa Fe Institute.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
because the information being presented is not the fact of McCarthy's association with the SFI, but the nature of that association.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Read it again, in context.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Cormac McCarthy is best known to the world as a writer of novels. These include <i>Blood Meridian</i>, <i>All the Pretty Horses</i>, <i>No Country for Old Men</i>, and <i>The Road</i>. At the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) he is a research colleague.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Do you feel a slight tension? It is such a short, succinct sentence. Do you get the feeling that something's missing? That the sentence is somehow incomplete? Do you have a want for the sentence to continue on?
</p><table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
At the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) he is a research colleague <em>and</em> . . . .
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It is in that "<em>and</em>," in the desire for that "and," that I place the source of the poorly written second half of the sentence: a desire, an impulse to add something to the sentence because the sentence simply does not feel long enough or complete enough. An impulse to write more solely because it seems like there should be more.
</p>
<p class="ind">
It is an example of what I consider the verbal equivalent of the <i>fear of empty space</i>, the unconscious – and often conscious – need to fill in or occupy empty space in visual art and design.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
At the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) he is a research colleague.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That's all the information meant to be shared and all the information that needs to be shared; but the sentence seems, <em>feels</em>, somehow incomplete, inadequate, needing something more to give sufficient weight to justify its existence. Thus there is tacked on to the sentence the somewhat silly and syntactically clumsy
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr><td width="35px"></td><td>
. . . and thought of in complementary terms.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It might be argued that the same impulse can be seen in the first two sentences of the introduction.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Cormac McCarthy is best known to the world as a writer of novels.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That's the end of the thought. There is no need for more. But there was nonetheless felt a need enough to add a second sentence, a rather silly sentence considering the already attested to fame of Cormac McCarthy – he is after all "known to the world."
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
These include <i>Blood Meridian</i>, <i>All the Pretty Horses</i>, <i>No Country for Old Men</i>, and <i>The Road</i>.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Did we need the added list of titles for the first sentence to work? Or is it there because the general term "novels" opens the door for specificity, and we just <em>have</em> to walk through it?
</p>
<p class="ind">
Look at the introduction without the extra bits:
</p><table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Cormac McCarthy is best known to the world as a writer of novels. At the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) he is a research colleague.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Look at how well they work together. To the world McCarthy is a writer of novels. At SFI he is a research colleague. Unfortunately, that extra material got in the way of the elegant, core thought.
</p>
<p class="ind">
It is the natural tendency to fill empty space. Children will want to use up the whole of the page when drawing their pictures, either by making their subject fill the page or by putting things into the empty space. Musicians have to learn how to hear and use rests. A shelf with only one object on it looks devoid, like it <em>needs</em> more.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Such desire to add to where something needs not be is inherent to writing as well. There is the want to add adjectives to nouns (the foolish workshop-ism forbidding adverbs has grounding in the easily picked up habit of over-using them); the tendency to use adverbial phrases to bridge one sentence to the next (to fill in the empty space between the sentences, a problem I suffer from greatly); the tendency, as seen above, to see short as being incomplete, when short might be all that is needed.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Look at Pound's three principles of imagism. The first is the most tied to the imagist project itself; the other two, however, could – and I would say should – be considered groundwork for anyone's approach to writing verse (and not just verse).
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
1. Direct treatment of the "thing" whether subjective or objective.<br />
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.<br />
3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Three principles, three areas of concern: (1) the subject of the text; (3) the sound of the text; and (2) the construction of the text.
</p>
<p class="ind">
I do not believe it is coincidence that Pound's second principle recognizes that all writers have a natural tendency to put too much into the text, and that learning how to write well – both in verse and in prose – is learning to avoid and to get rid all that superfluous material, much of which exists simply because of the ever present want to fill in empty space.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
And nothing more needs to be said, so I'll end there.
</p>
A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-12824510805405849752017-02-22T15:09:00.001-08:002017-03-23T08:21:10.153-07:00"The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot<p class="noind">
<a href="https://allpoetry.com/The-Hollow-Men">"The Hollow Men" can be found here [link]</a>
<br />
</p>
<h4>some of Eliot's own line periods</h4>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
<i>Perhaps I move a touch too quickly with this post. In defense my intent here, as with other posts of this nature, is not to argue definitively but to prompt thought.</i>
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
Seeing a small word – an adverb or pronoun or conjunction – at the end of a line is these days a too reliable cue that the break is unpurposed, in continuation of the previous post that the line carries no sense of a line period, that it is not a constructed line; such words are too frequently strong evidence that the text is not verse at all but prose with line breaks pretending to verse.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Take, as a quick example, and possibly too easy an example, Philip Levine's "The Second Coming," <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/92049">which appears in the February <i>Poetry Magazine</i>, found online here [link]</a>. Out of eight lines, five of them end in small words: "the," "only," "is," "a," and "of." At first glance – indeed at that first "the" – a reader should know that the text is not verse, that it will show little of that fundamental quality of verse, the crafted line.
</p>
<p class="ind">
That the text is shaped does not defeat the assessment, it does not magically turn a prose text into verse. One need only think about the shaping of text in magazine advertisements as cases in point. There is nothing about concrete shape that excludes the possibility of crafting lines, as such
</p>
<p class="ind">
that
</p>
<p class="ind">
the text
</p>
<p class="ind">
is physically
</p>
<p class="ind">
shaped does not
</p>
<p class="ind">
excuse the author who
</p>
<p class="ind">
desires to write verse from
</p>
<p class="ind">
the requirement of writing lines.
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<p class="noind">
Indeed, my initial response to such texts – and this shaping includes breaking lines to be the same length– "wow, you didn't try very hard at all." Which is not a good thing.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Which is not to say that every time a line ends in a small word it is a poor line. A line with such an ending can yet be a crafted line. For example:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Reflecting light upon the table as (83)
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That is from <i>The Waste Land</i>, which was written after Eliot published the essay on Marlowe in which we find the phrase "line period," so ostensibly Eliot is crafting his lines with the idea of a line period in mind. How then does Eliot justify, textually, the construction?
Let me give you the full context, which is at the opening to "A Game of Chess." The excerpt starts in mid-sentence, and ends before the sentence ends.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out<br />
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)<br />
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra<br />
Reflecting light upon the table as<br />
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,<br />
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;<br />
In vials of ivory and coloured glass<br />
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, (80-87)
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The first way Eliot strengthens the naturally weak, closing "as": the text is blank verse and the "as" is a stressed syllable; as well, it is the closing stress of a very regular line.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td> reFLECting LIGHT uPON the TAble AS
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Second, he gives strength to the word by following it with the rhyming "glass" three lines later (a rhyme that finds companionship with the aural echo between "profusion" and "perfumes"). Third, the lines preceding and following have strong, independent identities, so it is a not a moment of weakness within a more general weakness. Finally, ending the line on "as" is stronger than the alternative, starting the next line with the "as." I add a word to keep the rhythm:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Reflecting light upon the lacquered table<br />
As the glitter of her jewels rose to meet it.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The double unstressed syllables at the front of the line would be a less welcomed choice, especially in that within a natural reading of the sentence the "as" begs to be stressed. Indeed, I would argue that setting the "as" as a stressed syllable on the end of the line gives the following line more strength of identity – which is no small matter.
</p>
<p class="ind">
In toto, the line – and passage – was not written with the "as" left dangling at the end because of an arbitrary break: there is a design to be found in the context that gives that "as" strength. The line is a crafted line with a line period, and the line can be read as having an aural 'period,' if a soft one, after "as."
</p>
<p class="ind">
There are a couple of other places we can point to in <i>The Waste Land</i>. To chose but one more, consider
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only (24)
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The word "only" finds much of its strength in that it is part of a textual event that is characteristic of Eliot: the use of the repetition of words across the ends of the lines. Eliot does it thrice in the broader context, with "only," with "red rock" and with "you."
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only<br />
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,<br />
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, <br />
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only<br />
There is shadow under this red rock,<br />
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),<br />
And I will show you something different from either<br />
Your shadow at morning striding behind you<br />
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; (21-29)
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Though the second use of "only" is a single word, the first word of a sentence set at the end of a line, it is set up by the first "only," which has its own semantic justification: it belongs with the whole of the line of which it is a part.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td> You cannot say, or guess, for you know only<br />
<i>Only what?</i><br />
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The repetition of <i>only</i>s strengthens the second "only." Though the second "only" does not have a line leading into it as with the first, the reader has already been told now to read it.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only<br />
<i>Only what?</i><br />
There is shadow under this red rock,
</td></tr></table>
<p class="ind">
With those two examples alone we have already a fairly strong understanding of the ways in which Eliot uses and strengthens small words at the end of the line.
</p>
<p class="ind">
There are but a few example in his works that preceded <i>The Waste Land</i>. One is found in "Preludes."
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Sitting along the bed's edge, where (35)
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Here too the word is strengthed with meter and with rhyme.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
You had such a vision of the street<br />
As the street hardly understands;<br />
Sitting along the bed's edge, where<br />
You curled the papers from your hair,<br />
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet<br />
In the palms of both soiled hands.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There is also created the same effect that was created with "only": a hesitation before the next line. As with the "as" in the first example, that hesitation is strengthened by the "where" being metrically in a place of stress.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The fifth stanza of "Gerontion" is filled with odd line endings. But the stanza is another example of how Eliot uses line endings to give shape across free verse lines.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now <br />
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors <br />
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, <br />
Guides us by vanities. Think now <br />
She gives when our attention is distracted <br />
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions <br />
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late <br />
What's not believed in, or is still believed, <br />
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon <br />
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with <br />
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think <br />
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices <br />
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues <br />
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. <br />
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Notice all the repetitions along the end of the lines. You have the trebled "Think now," "Think now", "Think." You have "Gives to late" and "Gives too soon." There is also "Unnatural vices" and "impudent crimes," as well as "whispering ambitions" and "subtle confusions." Here the verseform constructed across the stanza gives strength to lines that, in other contexts, might very well be points of weakness. (One should also recognize here a similar use of halting enjambement such as is found in the opening of <i>The Waste Land</i>.)
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
Let's move forward now to "The Hollow Men," a text that is mostly free verse. I want to look at six lines in the poem that resemble the kind of textual event that I have been discussing. The point is to see how the lines maintain their strength within the text, how Eliot does not permit the small words at the end of the line to be a weakness to the line. I'm not going to over state the case: much of the work has already been done with the brief discussion above. I'll mostly point out the line, give reasons why the line has strength, and move on.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Keep in mind that "The Hollow Men" is constituted mostly of short, choppy lines. This is a poem whose main body closes – before the final incantatory stanza – by emphasizing that halting nature of the text:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
For Thine is<br />
Life is<br />
For thine is the
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It is Eliot's aim to maintain that short, choppy presentation throughout. Greatly, the lines with the small words are crafted to work toward that aim.
</p>
<p class="ind">
I'll take the six instances in order.
</p>
<p class="ind">
(1) Line 4:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Now the final word of the line is a one word sentence, so it carries the strength of its own identity. For that it's really outside the discussion. But it is interesting in that whether it is placed on the end of line 4 or at the beginning of line 5 it changes the referent of the exclamation: either
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Headpiece filled with straw, alas!
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
or
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Alas, our dried voices
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Comparing the two is a small exercise in poetic semantics. Having it on line 4 is much preferable, working there as a despairing close to the opening statement (lines 1-4) of the nature and plight of the hollow men. It would be weaker if it led off line 5.
</p>
<p class="ind">
(2) Next comes that next line, line 5.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Our dried voices, when
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
In three ways is the word "when" given strength. First, there is the rhyme with the first two lines of the stanza.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
We are the hollow men<br />
We are the stuffed men<br />
Leaning together<br />
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!<br />
Our dried voices, when
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Second is the structural echo with line 4. But the strength of line 5 lies greatly as well in now it lends to the strength of line 6
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
We whisper together
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
which itself carries an aural strength by the echo between the two triplets of syllables:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
we WHIS per // to GE ther
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That identity and strength in that line would only be weakened if the "when" were dropped down to lead the line off – not to mention putting "when" at the end of the previous line also avoids leading off the line with two unstressed syllables.
</p>
<p class="ind">
(3) The next example is line 16, in the third stanza.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Violent souls, but only
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There is in the line the aural echoing across the comma found in the last example. But the main reason the "but only" works at the end of the line is, similar to the previous example, lies greatly in what it makes of the line following.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr><td width="35px"></td><td>
Violent souls, but only<br />
As the hollow men
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It preservers the choppy phrasing that was established in the opening declaration. By keeping the conjunctive phrase out of the following line, that line, with the line after, is made to echo the opening lines of the section.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
We are the hollow men<br />
We are the stuffed men<br />
. . .<br />
As the hollow men<br />
The stuffed men.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The section thus closes as opened.
</p>
<p class="ind">
(4) Line 25, in the first stanza of section II:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And voices are
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Again, here the construction of the line has strength in what it permits the lines around it to do: namely, echo, without becoming overly long. Again, keep in mind Eliot wants the line to be short and abrupt.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
There, is a tree swinging<br />
And voices are<br />
In the wind's singing
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
There is a musical quality to the triplet of lines. Of course, the "are" is strengthened also by the rhyme three lines later.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
And voices are<br />
In the wind's singing<br />
More distant and more solemn<br />
Than a fading star.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="ind">
(5) Line 48, in the second stanza in the third section.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
At the hour when we are
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Looking within, the line has its own rhyme and structural doubling with
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
At the hour // when we are
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
And in context, the line is greatly formed by the surrounding lines. Looking forward, it permits "Trembling with tenderness" to keep its brevity and its own aural unity. Looking backward, it is almost like the construction is dictated by the short statements leading in,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Is it like this<br />
In death's other kingdom<br />
Waking alone<br />
At the hour when we are
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
especially with the sense of dimeter established in the stanza.
</p>
<p class="ind">
(6) Line 61, opening the third stanza of section IV. This might be my favorite of the six.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Sightless, unless<br />
The eyes reappear<br />
As the perpetual star.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Though really there is nothing here that hasn't been seen before. There is the aural doubling within the line. And there is the strength given to the following line by it not having to carry the conjunction. But what I like best is the pause, the emotional reversal, created by the coupling of the two words:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td> Sightless . . . . . . . . . . unless
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That first, single word, "Sightless," is isolated by the comma from the rest of the stanza, the rest of the stanza being introduced by the second, single word, "unless": a hopeful word, but with it being paired with "Sightless," with it not escaping the line, a word that is emptied of hope as soon as it is uttered. As though the unseen final line of the stanza might be
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
But, yet, sightless.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
a line not unwarranted because of the actual final lines of the stanza,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The hope only<br />
Of empty men
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
that which again echoes the grounding, opening statement of the text.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Quickly through them, there. But, again, the aim here is to point them out and show how Eliot never permits such a line construction to be a weakness within a text. Always he strengthens the weak ending of the line through the line's own construction and/or the ending's interaction with the surrounding lines. Never is the line permitted to be questioned; never is the break permitted to look arbitrary.
</p>
A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-19384402456729298992017-02-07T15:04:00.000-08:002017-02-07T16:16:52.870-08:00Tamburlaine the Great, Pt 1 by Christopher Marlowe</p>
<p class="ind">
<i>Back from my break. To say, I was able to finish the project for which I had blocked off the time. Which is a good thing. Perhaps the final result was not as good as I had hoped for, but we can't expect the best results every time.</i>
</p>
<p class="ind">
<i>As I said on my last post, initiating the break, I am unsure how I want to proceed with this blog. The longer posts like this one are fun, but can also be laborious. And I would like to try to give more effort to smaller, "spur of the moment" posts, as well as more posts that respond directly to verse. Whether and how I might do that, however, I do not yet know.</i>
</p>
<hr />
<p class="noind"> </p>
<b>the line period</b>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
My launching point for this excursion is a moment from T.S. Eliot's "The Blank Verse of Marlowe" (found in <i>The Sacred Wood</i>). There is no reason not to get right to it, so:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The verse accomplishments of <i>Tamburlaine</i> are notably two: Marlowe gets into blank verse the melody of Spenser, and he gets a new driving power by reinforcing the sentence period against the line period. The rapid long sentence, running line into line, as in the famous soliloquies "Nature commended of four elements" and "What is beauty, with my sufferings, then" marks the certain escape of blank verse from the rhymed couplet, and from the elegiac or rather pastoral note of Surrey, to which Tennyson returned.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
We will pick up Marlowe shortly. Right now I want to focus on the concept the Eliot brings into his discussion of Marlowe, that of the <em>line period</em>.
</p>
<p class="ind">
It is a wonderful term. It is not synonymous with <em>line break</em>, and the reasons why are important and speak to its general superiority. For a line break can be arbitrarily had. Simply apply a carriage return and, voilà, you have a line break. However, a line <em>period</em> – as with the sentence period – speaks to a construction that is attending to far more than the mere question of where the line ends. A sentence period does not exist merely because it marks the end of the sentence. The presence of the period speaks to the nature of the words that precede it – and to the words that follow it in that a period also marks the beginning of a new sentence.
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<p class="ind">
A period – be it of a sentence or line – serves to mark not a break but a conclusion: the conclusion of a thought, or an idea, or some other semantic or other unit. It serves to mark also the "unitness" of the preceding words. A sentence period identifies a sentence as a unit sentence (even if that "sentence" is a fragment); so also does a line period mark a line as a unit line. At least, it does so when the line period actually exists: just because there is a line break does not mean there is a line period.
</p>
<p class="ind">
That is, just because one has written a line break does not mean that one has written a line.
</p>
<p class="ind">
To me, this is fundamental verse writing. And, to be honest, I do not see how verse writing can be conceived any other way. Indeed, it is arguable that every aspect of versecraft is built upon the element of the verse line. Not the line break, but the line as a unit, as a whole; in extension, the line as whole unto itself, the line as understood in conjunction with the lines that precede and follow it, and the line as part of the unity of the whole of the text.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Just as in free verse this is the rejection of the arbitrary line break, so also is this rejection in formal verse of the line defined merely by meter. That is but substitution of the meeting of a concept for the crafting of a line that uses the concept but attains a unity beyond the concept. Writing a line simply so that it fits a meter is not in that limited sense writing a line such as merits and carries a line period. In fact, writing a line as defined only by meter is not even necessarily writing verse, as we will see.
</p>
<p class="ind">
This is inherent to Eliot's use of the idea of the line period above. He is speaking of not just of endings but of how lines play against sentences and grammatical units in general. Let's take a look at the first passage to which Eliot refers, or at least the opening of that speech in <i>Tamburlaine the Great, Part I</i>.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The thirst of reign and sweetness of a crown,<br />
That caus'd the eldest son of heavenly Ops <br />
To thrust his doting father from his chair,<br />
And place himself in the empyreal heaven,<br />
Mov'd me to manage arms against thy state.<br />
What better precedent than mighty Jove?<br />
Nature, that fram'd us of four elements <br />
Warring within our breasts for regiment,<br />
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:<br />
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend <br />
The wondrous architecture of the world,<br />
And measure every wandering planet's course,<br />
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,<br />
And always moving as the restless spheres,<br />
Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest,<br />
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,<br />
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,<br />
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown. (II.vii.12-29)
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
As an example of blank verse it is perhaps an easily used passage toward the idea of the line period as only thrice does a line not end on a punctuation mark. Though, in all three of those lines we can readily see the unit idea.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
That caus'd the eldest son of heavenly Ops <br />
<br />
Nature, that fram'd us of four elements <br />
<br />
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend <br />
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The three lines are strong enough that they maintain their unit identity against the longer flow of the sentences. Which is Eliot's point: the text is written so that the listener hears both the unity of the independent lines and the unity of the independent sentences, and in turn the play between the two.
</p>
<p class="ind">
We need only manipulate the lines to reveal the unities of the text. Take the beginning of the third and longest sentence in the passage.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Nature, that fram'd us of four elements<br />
Warring within our breasts for regiment,<br />
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The phrase "for regiment" can be removed. Notice the change (you should be reading this so as to hear the aural effect):
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Nature, that fram'd us of four elements<br />
Warring within our breasts, doth teach <br />
Us all to have aspiring minds: our souls
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The meter is maintained, but the unity of the lines has been disrupted. The idea created by "warring within our breasts" now ends before the line ends. The next idea then starts too early, creating an even more fragmentary idea in the third line. There is little if any unity to be found in
</p>
<table class="quote"><tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Us all to have aspiring minds: our souls
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
even though it still fits quite neatly within the metric of iambic pentameter.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The next two lines in the text show how a long syntactic phrase can yet create line periods.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend<br />
The wondrous architecture of the world,
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The line period rests after "comprehend," at the division point between verb and object.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Notice how the lines are being crafted to be both five feet in length and also semantic units. The root clause is
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Our souls, which can comprehend the architecture<br />
of the world,
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The first line is still acceptable – if weaker – blank verse. However, it creates the issue of the splitting the next line in two. There is no unity that can be found in the resulting line (ignoring issues of meter).
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Of the world, and measure every wandering planet's
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The two lines are written in the original with the added words "whose faculties" and "wondrous", words that work to create two solid lines with functioning line periods. Note, though, they are also words that function to expand the ideas being generated by the text. "Wondrous" is not an empty or superfluous adjective, it is not mere metric filler material.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Following the rest of the passage you should be able to see for yourself how Marlowe was writing a sentence across blank verse without ever weakening the line unities within the sentence. Each line is a strong line – a strong iambic pentameter line – marked by its own line period. The play of those lines against the longer flow of the sentence is the art which Eliot finds in Marlowe.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Notice, though, Eliot states it as "reinforcing the sentence period against the line period," not the other way around. The art in Marlowe is that the sentence, running across the lines, gains strength when the lines themselves are not being conceived as sentential units. Without the unity of the lines being diminished, they can yet work together to create long, flowing sentences. Thus the "certain escape" from blank verse.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Take a look, for example, at this passage of Pope's, the opening moments to <i>The Rape of the Lock</i> (as presented in my Student's Cambridge Edition of <i>The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope</i>)
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
What dire offence from am'rous causes springs, <br />
What mighty contests rise from trivial things, <br />
I sing—This verse to <i>Caryll</i>, Muse! is due: <br />
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view: <br />
Slight is the subject, but not so the praise, <br />
If she inspire, and he approve my lays. <br />
Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compel <br />
A well-bred Lord t' assault a gentle belle? <br />
O say what stranger cause, yet unexplor'd, <br />
Could make a gentle belle reject a Lord? <br />
In tasks so bold, can little men engage, <br />
And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage? <br />
Sol thro' white curtains shot a tim'rous ray, <br />
And op'd those eyes that must eclipse the day; <br />
Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake, <br />
And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake: <br />
Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knock'd the ground, <br />
And the press'd watch return'd a silver sound. (I. 1-18)
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Notice that though the first six lines – and the last six lines, which begin a longer verse paragraph – are one sentence in length, the flow of the text does not carry across the couplets in the manner of Marlowe, where the reader hears both the line and the sentence. Rather, the flow of the text is defined by the couplets: though, technically, the sentence may not end, after every couplet the text yet comes to a very strong stop. And never would that stop occur within the couplet.
</p>
<p class="ind">
We can still, however, see the play of the lines within the couplet, and the art of writing blank verse at the time of Pope lay in the perfect form of the couplet, of two-line unit of verse. Take for example the one moment where a line does not end with punctuation.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compel<br />
A well-bred Lord t' assault a gentle belle?
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
We see the same unity of line we saw in Marlowe. The break occurs at a natural point between verb and object. As well, the interjected "Goddess!" in the first line and the adjectives in the second are not but filler for stress counts. The interjection gives emotional emphasis to the coming idea of "assault"; and the adjectives "well-bred" and "gentle" play off each other within the context of the story.
</p>
<p class="ind">
To show that rhymed couplets do not demand the heavy stops we see in Pope, we need only look to Browning. Look at the opening of "My Last Duchess."
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td> That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,<br />
Looking as if she were alive. I call <br />
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands <br />
Worked busily a day, and there she stands. <br />
Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said <br />
'Frà Pandolf' by design, for never read <br />
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,<br />
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,<br />
But to myself they turned (since none puts by <br />
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)<br />
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,<br />
How such a glance came there; so, not the first <br />
Are you to turn and ask thus. (1-13)
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Browning here seems to break away somewhat from the semantic unity of the line we saw in Marlowe, but he does so for a reason. He is simultaneously writing rhymed couplets and conversational monologue: he wants to establish a continuous flow of speech <em>across</em> the rhymed couplets. To do such, he has to disrupt the tick-tock tick-tock generated by the meter and rhyme we see in Pope. Though, he does not do it by completely ignoring the structure of the sentences within the lines. In the first instance, the opening two lines,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,<br />
Looking as if she were alive. I call
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
the short phrase "I call" at the end of the second line propels the reader forward against the stop of the second half of the rhyme, something especially important here because it is the first couplet: Browning doesn't want the reader to over-hear the couplet and underhear that the text is monologue. But the break is not arbitrary: the break comes between the verb and object, not, say (ignoring rhyme and meter) after "I". In fact, one can read the line with the presence of a line period: one can put a touch of emphasis on "call." Just as with the similar event at
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said<br />
'Frà Pandolf' by design, for never read
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
In fact the emphasis on "said" here created by the line period goes to the emotion of the lines, both in that they can be read with an aural emphasis on "said" and in that the next line begins with the words that Duke in his arrogance is himself emphasizing, "Fra Pandolf."
</p>
<p class="ind">
So we see that even when Browning seems to be going against the idea of line unity, there is design and purpose beyond mere syllable count and rhyme for that variation, purpose that functions beyond the line itself.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Where that purpose and design begins to break down is where we get into works that function to the opposing side to the definiteness of Pope's rhymed couplets: "the elegaic or rather pastoral note of Surrey, to which Tennyson returned." I'll use the opening of Tennyson's "Dora," a pastoral piece, as example.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr><td width="35px"></td><td>
With farmer Allan at the farm abode<br />
William and Dora. William was his son,<br />
And she his niece. He often look'd at them,<br />
And often thought "I'll make them man and wife".<br />
Now Dora felt her uncle's will in all,<br />
And yearn'd towards William; but the youth, because<br />
He had been always with her in the house,<br />
Thought not of Dora. Then there came a day<br />
When Allan call'd his son, and said,<br />
"My son: I married late, but I would wish to see<br />
My grandchild on my knees before I die:<br />
And I have set my heart upon a match.<br />
Now therefore look to Dora; she is well<br />
To look to; thrifty too beyond her age. (1-14)
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
In counter point to the strongly punctuated aural structure of the rhymed couplet as with Pope, here we have lines so broken up into phrases smaller than the line that the reader has to work to keep the rhythms of blank verse in their reading.
</p>
<p class="ind">
So also with the very casual movement from one line to the next. Take the first two lines:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
With farmer Allan at the farm abode<br />
William and Dora. William was his son,
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
To appearances the line break occurs primarily to preserve the phrase "William and Dora," as opposed to, say,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
With Allan at the farm abode son William <br />
and Dora.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Whatever the reason, there is in the first line hardly any presence of a line period. Though, it is to not that the line period is not abandoned by the text: the vast majority of the lines do break in expected places. The verse, however, is extremely conversational in sound, and as often as it is reinforcing the blank verse it is also breaking away from it. One might argue that the correct way to read it aloud is to let the sentence periods overwhelm the line periods. It is a very prosaic work, and the text might serve as example of where verse approaches (but does not become) prose.
</p>
<p class="ind">
That boundary can be explored with a very simple experiment. Let's go back to our original excerpt, that from Marlowe's <i>Tamburlaine</i>. To save you from looking back I'll give it again.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The thirst of reign and sweetness of a crown,<br />
That caus'd the eldest son of heavenly Ops <br />
To thrust his doting father from his chair, <br />
And place himself in the empyreal heaven,<br />
Mov'd me to manage arms against thy state.<br />
What better precedent than mighty Jove? <br />
Nature, that fram'd us of four elements <br />
Warring within our breasts for regiment,<br />
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:<br />
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend <br />
The wondrous architecture of the world,<br />
And measure every wandering planet's course,<br />
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,<br />
And always moving as the restless spheres,<br />
Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest,<br />
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,<br />
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,<br />
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Let's take that passage and shift the line breaks by two feet. The iambic aspect of the passage may take a little damage at the breaks, but overall the result is still workable to the experiment, as I need not break any words.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The thirst of reign and sweetness<br />
Of a crown, that caus'd the eldest son <br />
Of heavenly Ops to thrust his doting father <br />
From his chair, and place himself in the <br />
Empyreal heaven, mov'd me to manage arms <br />
Against thy state. What better precedent <br />
Than mighty Jove? Nature, that fram'd us of<br />
Four elements warring within our breasts <br />
For regiment, doth teach us all to have <br />
Aspiring minds: our souls, whose faculties<br />
Can comprehend the wondrous architecture<br />
Of the world, and measure every wandering <br />
Planet's course, still climbing after knowledge<br />
Infinite, and always moving as <br />
The restless spheres, will us to wear ourselves, <br />
And never rest, until we reach the ripest <br />
Fruit of all, that perfect bliss and sole<br />
Felicity, the sweet fruition of <br />
An earthly crown.
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Though the lines remain loosely iambic pentameter, they have for the most part lost their sense of having been written as lines. The lines no longer carry line periods. Rather, the line breaks in the passage appear entirely arbitrarily applied. They may be counted out – one, two, three, four, five, <em>break</em>; one, two, three, four, five, <em>break</em>; – but there is nothing about the lines themselves beyond the five beat count that gives them any identity or independent unity as written lines of verse.
</p>
<p class="ind">
While some lines fall into a new completeness, and it would be expected that by happenstance some lines would, even those lines are shown to be devoid of identity by looking at them in context. For example,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Four elements warring within our breasts
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
can stand as a completed line of iambic pentameter verse. However, within the context of what comes before and after
</p><table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Than mighty Jove? Nature, that fram'd us of<br />
Four elements warring within our breasts <br />
For regiment, doth teach us all to have
</td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
the 'line' seems completely accidental. Leading out of the line previous and into the line following, the flow of the sentence seems arbitrarily cut. In context – and texts must always be read in their full context – there is nothing to the text that would make a reader think that the writer was composing lines except through the counting out of one, two, three, four, five, <em>break</em>.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The perhaps startling conclusion to this experiment is that the text, considering it is devoid of written lines, can no longer be called verse. And I argue at that it is no longer verse: <em>it is now prose</em>. It may be iambic prose – and in calling it iambic prose we see one way in which prose may be given shape, in which prose can have a prosody – and the right margin may have been decided by a stress count rather than by an inch count – which may be a second way that prose can be given shape, though a poor one, that serves mostly to conceal the prose behind a false mask of verse – but without readerly confidence in the presence of written lines the text cannot be called "verse" in any real sense that is meant to distinguish it from "prose."
</p>
<p class="ind">
Where does this experiment lead us?
</p>
<p class="ind">
While the verse-prose spectrum is indeed a spectrum, and must be understood as being one, we may yet find a useful – which is to say pragmatic – dividing line between what is called "verse" and what is called "prose" at the idea of the written line. Note: I do not say there "line break", I say "<em>line</em>." The line that might be made: verse is written in lines, which is a prosodic unit; prose is written in paragraphs, which is a semantic unit. Though, it being a spectrum we should expect the line to be blurred. It is after all possible to write very short paragraphs that serve to function not unlike verse lines; as well, the verse stanza can (and, arguably, should) serve to function as paragraphs. In recognition of that, in recognition that verse lines are crafted also with semantic considerations, and in recognition that prose is not without its prosody, I immediately want to modify my statement:
</p>
<p class="ind">
Verse is written in lines, which is a prosodic unit (though it may also be a semantic unit); prose is written in paragraphs, which is a semantic unit (though it may also be a prosodic unit).
</p>
<p class="ind">
This is the conclusion I am pressing, a conclusion that speaks much to the so-called "free verse" that is being written today. The marking point between verse and prose is the introduction of a certain type of shape – the prosodic aspect of the written line – and the use of that shape to define the general character of the work. Without that shaping of the text into lines – which is accomplished neither by the mere presence of a line break nor by metrical counting – the text is not verse but prose.
</p>
<p class="ind">
And if it is prose, why is it pretending to be verse?
</p>A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-54695201818700418732016-12-23T09:35:00.000-08:002016-12-23T09:35:09.631-08:00Winter Break<p class="ind">
<i>Shows where my mind has been that I meant to post this a week ago.</i>
</p>
<p class="ind">
<i>The ol' blog will be on hiatus for a month or two while I survive the holidays, and work on another slow-going project that I want to dedicate as much time to as possible. Posting this will remove some of the guilt of not fulfilling my self-imposed time constraints.
</i>
</p>
<p class="ind">
<i>Looking forward, and I tend to give this blog a look forward every winter, I feel like I've gotten a little too hung up on writing long essays for the blog. Maybe a break will help me find some rhythm for including more frequent, shorter posts. I'm also contemplating a shift in focus back to including more responding to verse found on the web. Though, I'm not at all sure on that, and want to give it a taste test before I go live again.</i>
</p>
<p class="ind">
<i>So, Merry Holidays to everyone. See you on the flip side.</i>
</p>A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-76290045048659320972016-11-14T13:41:00.000-08:002016-11-16T11:51:27.002-08:00"the mind is its own beautiful prisoner" by E.E. Cummings<p class="ind">
The text of the verse <a href="http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1618/the-mind-is-its-own-beautiful-prisoner/">is found on-line, here [link]</a>. To note, there is variation in how the verse is published. In the <i>Collected Poems: 1922-1938</i>, it is published as presented on the website (so also, then, I presume, in <i>100 Selected Poems</i>, the named source for the linked page). In the <i>Complete Poems: 1913-1962</i>, however, the text is presented with spaces after all punctuation. (I do not know how the verse is presented in the most recent edition of the <i>Complete</i>.) As well, in both the <i>Collected</i> and the <i>Complete</i>, the text reads "Mine" in the second line, not "Mind": we can presume that is a typo.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<h4>the erotic and the merely sexual</h4>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
The presentation here is divided, the theoretic discussion first, the exploration of the verse coming after. Most of the work of this essay will lie in that opening discussion; as such, it will be a relatively short exploration. However, because the verse is such a good example for the ideas being presented, it is my thought that by keeping the verse in mind from the start both the verse might work as demonstration of the theory and the theory might work as explication of the verse even as the theoretic ideas are being presented. For that, and because of both the brevity of the verse and the differences in the online version and the version in the <i>Complete</i>, I will break from my normal habits[FN] and give the verse in full, here, to be read as part of my presentation. (As with most of Cummings's work, it is untitled.)
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
<br />
the mind is its own beautiful prisoner.<br />
Mine looked long at the sticky moon <br />
opening in dusk her new wings <br />
<br />
then decently hanged himself, one afternoon.<br />
<br />
The last thing he saw was you <br />
naked amid unnaked things,<br />
<br />
your flesh, a succinct wandlike animal,<br />
a little strolling with the futile purr <br />
of blood; your sex squeaked like a billiard-cue <br />
chalking itself, as not to make an error,<br />
with twists spontaneously methodical.<br />
He suddenly tasted worms windows and roses <br />
<br />
he laughed, and closed his eyes as a girl closes <br />
her left hand upon a mirror.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<table class="fn">
<tr><td width="70px"></td><td>
************************<br />
[FN] The main reason I do not normally give the text in the post is because having a link to the text permits having the text open in a separate window for reference.
<br />
************************
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="ind"> From very early on in my literary studies I have held to the belief that any theory of literature must successfully account for two test cases: the comedic and the erotic. That is, account for them as inherent to the proffered theory, without, as I have often seen, bracketing them in one manner or another as peculiarities lying outside the central ideas. While the test case of the comedic was to the fore of my puzzling early on, it has not maintained a central place in my thinking as has the erotic. In part, because it ended up being a puzzle solved by happenstance in my early theoretic studies. But in part also because my own creative writing, while often light hearted, is rarely out and out comedic: I thus had no practical impetus to study the comedic beyond a general understanding.
</p>
<p class="ind">
That is not so with the erotic. For not only has the erotic always and ever held interest to me as a field of study (not only in literature but across the arts), it has held and has maintained a position as one of the primary themes of my creative work. As such, I have continually been forced to confront, genuinely and in depth, the question of the relation between the erotic and the aesthetic[FN].
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<table class="fn">
<tr>
<td width="70px"></td><td>
************************
<p class="noind">[FN] In my own terminology, I have long used the term "the aesthetic" – including here on this blog – to refer to that mode of writing/reading/thinking that I have in the last however many posts been calling, after Owen Barfield's usage in <i>Poetic Diction</i>, the "poetic." As for the "prosaic" mode, I have come to use the term "nomic." The terms – <i>the aesthetic</i> and <i>the poetic</i>, <i>the nomic</i> and <i>the prosaic</i> – are not, however, synonymous. <i>The aesthetic</i> and <i>the nomic</i> are used in the broader sense, including not just literature and the arts but also culture and society. <i>Poetic</i> and <i>prosaic</i> I generally keep limited in use to referring only to their functioning within literature and the arts.</p>
<p class="ind">I might refer you to a small piece I wrote for my home site to clarify the aesthetic and the nomic,<a href="http://hatterscabinet.com/pages/genstate.html">"A Basic Statement on the Aesthetic" [link]</a></p>
************************
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="ind">
"All art is erotic": so it has been said. To a thinking mind the very statement, coupled with the prevalence of the erotic in art, prompts an honest confrontation with the possibility that all art is indeed erotic, even that art might be defined by the erotic. If such is not the case, then there is yet prompted the question of why a person might be led to say that all art is erotic. A quick answer might be seen in the idea of libido as presented by Freud and Jung. Freud uses the term "libido" to refer to psychic energies of a sexual nature: psychic energies that are qualitatively different from other psychic energies. For example,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
We have defined the concept of libido as a quantitatively variable force which could serve as a measure of processes and transformations occurring in the field of sexual excitation. We distinguish this libido in respect of its special origin from the energy which must be supposed to underlie mental processes in general[.] (<i>Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality</i>. Trans. James Strachey. NY: Basic Books, 1975. 83.)
</td><td width="35px"></td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Jung, however, extends the idea of the libido: for example,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
[T]he term "libido," introduced by Freud, is not without a sexual connotation, an exclusively sexual definition of this concept is one-sided and must therefore be rejected. Appetite and compulsion are the specific features of all impulses and automatisms. [. . .] The very fact that it is impossible to derive the whole mass of psychic phenomena from a single instinct forbids a one-sided definition of "libido." (<i>Symbols of Transformation</i>. Trans. R.F.C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1956.128-29.)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
In essence, Jung is arguing that psychic energy is a <em>system</em> of energy, which cannot be quantified into discrete types of energy coming from discrete sources. Rather, Jung defines libido by what it does rather than by what it may or may not constituted of: that is, as "psychic energy in its creative aspect" (124).
</p>
<p class="ind">
I do not hold that all art is erotic. I do hold that all true art is libidinous in the sense of Jung; that it engages the individual at the fundamental level of "psychic energy in its creative aspect." Indeed, I would argue that true art, which is to say all aesthetic art, is in no small way defined by being libidinous – which stands there as a loose synonym for the poetic, as opposed to the factual, mechanical prosaic. But with that idea of libido we can see, in that sexual energy can not be readily distinguished within the full system of psychic energy, how it might yet be said that "all art is erotic": in that all art – indeed all engagement with being – is libidinous, true art is always engaging at some level the sexual. Thus we can see how such works as Bernini's <i>The Ecstacy of St. Theresa</i> on one side or Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" on the other generate some level of sexual ideation, but also how they can carry that sexual ideation without it overriding the religious portrayal in the one case or the gustatory portrayal on the other.[FN]
</p>
<table class="fn">
<tr>
<td width="70px"></td><td>
************************<br />
[FN] Thus, also, why I would not call <i>The Ecstacy of St. Theresa</i>, despite it having something of a sexual element in its portrayal of ecstacy, "erotic art."
<br />
************************
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="ind">
How, then, are we to understand the idea of the erotic, not in the sense that lies in the broad-brush phrase "all art is erotic" but in a more pragmatic use of the idea of "erotic art" or "erotic literature"? By the presence of sexual content, of course. That is, "erotic literature" or "erotic art," as a category, is recognized by the subject of the work being in some part overtly about sex in specific or sexuality in general. Obviously, while an erotic work is necessarily sexual, a work with a sexual presence need not be erotic. A <i>Gray's Anatomy</i> addresses the sexual organs, with illustrations, but one would not call it erotic. Though, in such we see something of the difference between a prosaic sexual text and a poetic sexual text: the former may be sexual, and may be sexually charged (as with most porn movies); but it is only when we move from the factuality of the prosaic to the creative experience of poetic that we can come to understand the truly erotic as opposed to the merely sexual.
</p>
<p class="ind">
There is here a problem of terminology. Does the term <i>erotic</i> already carry in it enough of an assumption of the aesthetic that it can be used to refer only to aesthetic art of a sexual nature, or is it too contaminated by ideas of the merely sexual to be of use? I believe the term is sufficient to our needs; and, indeed, in texts about erotic art, I have found there is usually some level of distinction assumed between the erotic and the merely sexual (even when not always carried throughout the text). But what to call the prosaic texts? I have already answered the question as regards this post: the <i>merely sexual</i> or, simply, the <i>sexual</i>. (While the term <i>sexual</i> might be put to multiple uses, I believe context will keep it all straight enough.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
The thought did come to mind to call literary or artistic prosaic works of a sexual theme <i>pornography</i>. Mario Vargas Llosa, in <i>Notes on the Death of Culture</i>[FN], in the chapter "The Disappearance of Eroticism," makes something close to that very identification.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Without attention to the forms, to the ritual that enriches, prolongs and sublimates pleasure, the sex act would become again a purely physical exercise – a natural drive in the human organism, where men and women are merely passive instruments – devoid of sensitivity and emotion. A good illustration of this today can be found in the trashy literature that purports to be erotic, but achieves only the vulgar rudiments of the genre: pornography.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It makes for an interesting grounding of the term to define it negatively against the erotic: a sexual text is either erotic (poetic) or it is pornographic (prosaic). The question is whether the usage can survive the cultural connotations that have accreted around the term. If, say, someone of a religious orientation were to point to a text and say "that is pornographic," would it makes sense, from both sides, to be able to respond, "no, it is <i>erotic</i>, not pornographic, and the difference is not trivial" or, "you are right, it is pornographic, because it does not function in the modality of the erotic"? That is, if any two people were speaking of a "pornographic" text, would the term naturally carry some commonly shared idea?
</p>
<table class="fn">
<tr>
<td width="70px"></td><td>
************************<br />
[FN1] Trans. John King, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. I purchased and read <i>Notes</i> after reading the first chapter <a href="http://lithub.com/mario-vargas-llosa-how-global-entertainment-killed-culture/">on the LitHub site [link]</a>. The book is appropriately titled "Notes," as it is seven chapters each on its own subject if to a common theme; however, they are only partially set in any coordinated, extended argument. That said, I do recommend the book as a critique of contemporary culture, or the absence thereof.
<br />
************************
</td></tr></table>
<p class="ind">
My answer to that may be more instinctual than deductive, but I believe those cultural accretions are too heavy to permit the use of the term <i>pornographic</i> to label non-erotic texts. In truth, I rarely use the term <i>pornography</i>. It is one of those terms that are used in such a broad variety of ways that it is almost become useless, in the least greatly problematic in use when not accompanied by a definition. Vargas Llosa does provide something of such a definition in the above excerpt, calling erotic literature and pornography two ends of a genre. And I did use the term <i>porn</i> to refer colloquially to the sexually explicit film industry. But I don't believe, in Vargas Llosa's essay, that the term can be carried that far out from that sentence in which it is offered, indeed not even to two sentences before, which is not about literature but about actual sex: it takes something of ideational strain to consider sex in itself, from the point of view of the people involved, to be in some way pornographic.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Unfortunately, the chapter in <i>Notes on the Death of Culture</i> is somewhat at odds with itself because of its efforts to concern itself simultaneously with eroticism as it functions in literature and art and eroticism as it functions in sex itself. The two ideas obviously overlap, and necessarily must: both are, after all, libidinous. But there is a divide in that the two acts – that of sex and that of creating a work of art out of a medium – are as obviously different: only one is worked for a readership/viewership. That confusion has its effects on Vargas Llosa's grounding of his argument. For example, if we continue with the passage above,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Erotic literature becomes pornographic for purely literary reasons: a sloppy use of form. That is, when writers are negligent or clumsy in their use of language, their plot construction, their use of dialogue, their description of a scene, they reveal inadvertently everything that is crude and repulsive in a sexual coupling devoid of feeling and elegance – without a <i>mise en scéne</i> or ritual – turned into something that is the mere satisfaction of the reproductive instinct. (108)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
"pornography," the merely sexual literary text, is distinguished from the erotic by its lacking those qualities that define the erotic. Yet, earlier on in the chapter, when Vargas Llosa gives the most explicit definition of eroticism, in a passage is that is about sex and not about literature, he defines the erotic by the absence of a quality of the merely sexual.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
There are many ways to define eroticism, but perhaps the main way would be to call it physical love stripped of animality [. . .]. (102)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The confusing of sex and literature and the arts leads him to define both his terms negatively. The pornographic is that which fails to be erotic; the erotic is that which lacks the qualities of the pornographic. Indeed, it is difficult at best to carry that latter statement from sex into literature. First, how do we define "animality"? Is "animality" a question of perception, and thus something that changes from individual to individual? Why can't an erotic text utilize animality? After all, the prosaic and the poetic are not mutually exclusive modalities: while the prosaic may be defined through the absence of the poetic, the poetic nonetheless utilizes the prosaic in its functioning. You cannot escape that words have denotative meanings or that grammar function mechanically. In the erotic, you cannot escape that texts with a sexual theme will contain the brutely sexual. Thus, is there any reason why animality must be excluded from the erotic, or any reason why one cannot make animality erotic?
</p>
<p class="ind">
Far better – far more interesting – is the second half of that sentence. I will do a little editing to restart the thought:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
There are many ways to define eroticism, but perhaps the main way would be to call it [the] conversion [of physical love . . .] from the satisfaction of an instinctive urge into a creative shared activity that prolongs and sublimates physical pleasure, providing a <i>mise en scéne</i> and refinements that turn it into a work of art. (102-3)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">"Conversion" is a far better word, and one fitting with the transformation from the prosaic nature of a merely sexual text to the poetic nature of an erotic text. There is still the confusions created by him speaking of physical sex while trying to establish a definition of eroticism that fits both sex and literature and the arts. But there is that marvelous thought in the middle:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
[the] conversion [of physical love . . .], providing a <i>mise en scéne</i>
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
one that is repeated in the later occurring excerpt first offered above:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
sexual coupling [. . .] without a <i>mise en scéne</i> or ritual
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
I am going to hold off on the idea of ritual as my concern here is about eroticism in literature and art, not in sex itself. (Though, it can be understood through the idea of <i>mise en scéne</i>, contrasting the poetic idea of ritual to the prosaic idea of tradition for traditions sake.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
There are two ways to understand the idea of a <i>mise en scéne</i> . . . . Let me take a step back and give that a bit of grounding. Just as one may speak of a text being written in the prosaic or the poetic mode, so also we can speak of the discourse about that text, discourse about literature, discourse about anything, to also be in the prosaic or poetic mode. When it comes to it, to speak the nature of a poetic text requires speaking poetically: else the discourse will collapse the text into the prosaic against its will.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Once it is recognized that discourse itself can be understood as either prosaic or poetic it is easy to recognize in turn that a great many terms and ideas of literary criticism and theory differ in use, scope, and meaning depending on whether they are treated, handled, understood prosaically or poetically. <i>Mise en scéne</i> is one such term.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Using the term in its original context in drama, the prosaically understood <i>mise en scéne</i> is the facts of the production: the general setting of the stage; what is it; where it is laid out; even, the costuming and props as they are connected to that general setting. This is the dictionary definition, such as that offered by the OED:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The staging of a play; the scenery and properties of a stage production; the stage setting.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The play in its <i>mise en scéne</i> is this understanding the description of the play as would be given by a reporter fixated upon the who, what, where, when and occasionally why of the performance. The viewer is irrelevant in the prosaic understanding, as all that matters are the facts of stage with its setting and props, and facts are factual because they are consistently accepted by all viewers. (Or, they are rejected in a logical, yes/no opposition.)
</p>
<p class="ind">
Taking the <i>mise en scéne</i> from the poetic side means taking it from the focus of the viewer in engagement with the performance: it speaks to the experience of the viewer, and how the stage settings, etc. influence that experience and are a constitutive part of the experience of the whole of the performance. The base facts of the event (or thing) are pulled out of categorical factuality and are brought into and energized by a field of play: the "meaning" of the action and its <i>mise en scéne</i> are no longer logically coordinated: this event happened at this place, that place being constituted by these elements. Rather, they form a unity, something greater than the individual parts, something that becomes a unified <em>experience</em> for the viewer. As example, consider the presence of stair cases as part of the sets of television sitcoms, where they exist primarily as visual cue of the fact that the house of the characters is larger than the room in which they are gathered, and as a mechanical means to bring characters into and out of that room. Compare such usage to the long, stark, medieval staircase in Carfax Abbey in Tod Browning's <i>Dracula</i>, which brings an operatic visual to the set and the scene played out therein and thereon.
</p>
<img src="http://hatterscabinet.com/pages-images/dracula_staircase.png" width="400px" />
<p class="ind">
Understanding the <i>mise en scéne</i> poetically means that not everything on a stage must needs be understood as part of that <i>mise en scéne</i>, as when certain elements of the staging work are irrelevant to the thematics or even a distraction to the performance of the play. In literature, one need only imagine the extreme case of a text that spends inordinate energies in description of the characters, settings, and objects to get an idea of the prosaic use of fact, and how such description would but create a distraction to, if not disruption of the main ideational currents of the text. In terms of a poetic <i>mise en scéne</i>, it is usually quite irrelevant what is the color of the hair of the characters. For it is not information that creates a poetic experience but how the information is presented, how it functions in the play of the text, how it is made part of the microcosmos of the work. The presentation of fact for the mere purpose of the presentation of fact – giving a character's hair color for the mere purpose of giving the character's hair color – is a disruption in the creating of the poetic <i>mise en scéne</i>. You rarely find such details as hair color in the condensed language of sophisticated, poetic verse. That is, except where the describing of the character uses the factual detail to create for the reader something greater than a mere list of physical characteristics, when the hair color is used to speak to something greater than hair color.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The poetic idea of <i>mise en scéne</i> offers an excellent means to understanding the difference between the erotic and the merely sexual. The merely sexual offers but a factual, representative, even documentary presentation of sex and sexuality. Sexuality, as Vargas Llosa describes, when presented without a <i>mise en scéne</i>,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
if it is separated out from the rest of the activities and functions that make up the lives of men and women, [. . .] loses its vitality and becomes a limited, caricatural and inauthentic depiction of the human condition.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Separated out from the <i>mise en scéne</i> of being; presented without that "vitality" that is generated, in the literary and artistic, by the poetic mode, by creating texts that engage the individual via the unconscious, one is left with only the factual, documentary presentation of the prosaic. To use our cinematic example, without the operatic nature of the Carfax Abbey set, when Dracula brings Mina down the stairs, you would have only the factual action of Dracula and Mina descending the stairs. But with the long, curving, monumental, shadow-laden staircase, you have an experience of something beyond the presentation of fact.
</p>
<p class="ind">
With this we also have a greater understanding of that first quotation, above:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Erotic literature becomes pornographic for <i>purely literary</i> reasons [. . .]. (emphasis added)
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The difference between the merely sexual and the erotic is not a question of subject matter, it is wholly a <em>literary</em> matter, bound in the construction of the text, in the mode in which the text is written. As is hopefully apparent, the idea of <i>mise en scéne</i> is not limited to the erotic; it is central to the idea of the poetic text irrelevant of subject matter: the 'action' of a poetic text always occurs within a <i>mise en scéne;</i> prosaic texts lack that unified <i>mise en scéne</i> and present but the facts of who, what, where, when, and occasionally why. In such we see something of my opening statement: the importance of the erotic as a test case for any theory of literature and the arts. But the sexual is not solely a test case, it can also be an excellent subject for demonstration because of the inheretent potency of the subject matter. It is the <i>mise en scéne</i> that moves a sexual text from the merely titillating to the psychically erotic.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
Which brings us to E.E. Cummings and "the mind is its own beautiful prisoner."[FN] Though there is much that can be said about this verse, I am going to limit myself here only to showing how it functions poetically as an erotic text and not a merely sexual text, how the fact of sexuality is brought into the vitality of a <i>mise en scéne</i>.
</p>
<table class="fn">
<tr>
<td width="70px"></td><td>
************************<br />
<p class="noind">[FN] The verse is actually the nineteenth of twenty-four that is the "Sonnets Actualities" sequence published in his second collection, <i>&</i>. The verses generally are not traditional sonnets: they are sonnets in that they all are fourteen lines in length and sometimes more sometimes less follow a structured rhyme scheme. If you are unfamiliar with how Cummings organized his books, while the sonnets are numbered as a sequence and there is some repetition of words among them, they are not connected by a running narrative or such. The sonnets are meant to be able to stand alone and are often published as such. To say, though, I do possess an anthology that presents the whole of the sequence as a unit (<i>Poetica Erotica</i>, ed. T.R. Smith, NY: Crown Publishing, 1921, 1949).</p>
<p class="ind">In transparency, I hold Cummings to be at the pinnacle of writers of poetry in U.S. literature. He is undoubtedly the greatest sonneteer – and one of the greatest writers of erotic verse – U.S. literature has to offer. I consider him requisite study and his <i>Complete Poems</i> requisite possession, both for scholars of poetry and practitioners.</p>
************************
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="ind">
We begin at the epicenter.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
your sex
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
It is but a statement of fact: in context, "I see your sex." But, as said, the difference between the poetic and the prosaic is not the presence of fact but how the text uses fact: the prosaic never leaves the modality of the factual, which the poetic uses fact to generate and experiential engagement with the text.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The groundwork to such a poetic expansion was already laid, as, in a way, attention had already been called to the woman's sex:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The last thing he saw was you<br />
naked amid unnaked things.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The lines do not merely state that the woman was naked. It gives a potency to that nakedness: her nakedness discerns her from the otherwise homogeneous reality of unnaked things. That potency does (at least) two things. One, it calls attention to what would be most naked about the woman: her sex. It creates a synecdochic relationship between the woman as a naked whole and one naked part thereof. As such, the fact of "your sex" appears already within a field of play that is the woman in her environment, the woman contrasted to her environment. You cannot understand the sex of the woman without understanding the woman herself, in a manner that cannot be condensed into a neat, logical relationship. When the woman is described,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
[The last thing he saw was]<br />
your flesh, a succinct wandlike animal,<br />
a little strolling with the futile purr <br />
of blood;
</td><td width="35px"></td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
that synecdochic relationship is reversed, the sex of the woman being present in the language of the description of the woman, perhaps most especially in the elided noun. Simultaneously she is a "little" woman and a "little" sex strolling about with a "purr of blood." That is not the description merely of a naked woman, it is the description of a naked, sexual being, and a powerfully sexual being at that.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Two, the literary potency of the creative presentation of the power of the woman energizes the passage, so that when it does speak directly of her sex the language can move from that of vision to that of sound in what becomes a kind of synesthetic melding.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
[. . .] your sex squeaked like a billiard cue<br />
chalking itself
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">Of course, the sound is not real: it is imagined, it is an extension of what was seen. Yet it is also the most intensely sexual part of the verse: the man[FN] is seeing – simultaneously imagining – the physical effect of the woman's motions upon her sex, and those motions in turn has an effect upon him. I'll use that phrasing to make explicit the difference between the prosaic and the poetic.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
I see the effect your motion has on your sex<br />
<br />
your sex squeaked like a billiard cue chalking itself
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
One is factual; one cannot be read as factual. One presents a representation of the event; one invites the reader into an experience of the event: and all a text can ever do is invite a reader in, as reading poetically is reading actively – the reader must do the work of engaging the text.
</p>
<table class="fn">
<tr>
<td width="70px"></td><td>
************************<br />
[FN] In context of the sonnet series, it is explicit that the speaker is a man.
<br />
************************
</td>
</tr></table>
<p class="ind">
Remember, in the context of the verse, the primary engagement between the man and the woman is visual: ergo, "the last thing he <em>saw</em>." Yes, there is something of the visual – the twisting motion – to be found in the simile,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
your sex [. . .] like a billiard cue chalking itself
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
if one complicated by that word "itself." But similes are but one-to-one matchings; they are usually but restating a fact in different terms. The energy of the full phrase comes into being through the ideational dynamo of the word "squeaked." No longer are we in the domain of fact; no longer can we rest in the modality of factuality. Literarily, the text has moved from fact to metaphor, a metaphoricity energized by the coincidence of sound and sight and the coincidence of the possibility/impossibility of the woman's sex actually squeaking. At the same time, the erotic energies have been amplified through the text's being intensely focused – through the lens of the man's psyche – upon the woman's sex.
</p>
<p class="ind">
But that metaphoric linking of the woman's sex to chalking a cue is only the first level of poetic effect. We have already seen how the woman is first presented as an irruption in the "unnaked" world. The text extends those energies into a full – vibrant – <i>mise en scéne</i>: one generated through the "life" (to refer back to Vargas Llosa) of the man and woman, a vital relationship in which the man cannot be understood but through the being of woman, and the woman cannot be understood but through the being of the man. This expansion is worked first by giving if not purpose then direction to the chalking.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
your sex squeaked like a billiard-cue<br />
chalking itself, as not to make an error,<br />
with twists spontaneously methodical.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
"As to not make an error": the woman's sex is not a neutral thing, it is something that can be wielded, and not only does the woman plan on wielding it – in context it can only be assumed the man will be or is, in that very moment, the target of that wielding – she plans on wielding it with precision. This is not, however, a tale of sexual manipulation. The energies are already created that the woman's sex is in synecdochic relationship with the whole of her naked being ("naked" and "being" carrying there something of a synonymous relationship). It is her whole naked, irruptive self that is being "chalked," that is being wielded. And we see the erotic energies being pulled away from mere sex to the full, psycho-emotional relationships of desire between the man and the woman.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The description of the depth and extent of that relationship does not end there. There is yet one more layer, already offered in the first line of the verse.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Mine looked long at the sticky moon<br />
opening in dusk her new wings<br />
<br />
then decently hanged himself, one afternoon.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That is, the layer of the primary action: the most basic event of the man seeing the woman and the ultimate result thereof. Confronted with the potency of the woman in her nakedness his mind can do nothing but surrender: the word "decently" there may be the word on which the whole of the verse pivots.
</p>
<p class="ind">
I cannot help in closing but speak to the structure of the verse. It works backwards from how sonnets normally work: it opens with its 'argumentative' conclusion, the necessity of surrender before the nakedness of the woman, before the woman herself, her being revealed in her (sexual) nakedness. After presenting the conclusion, the verse backs up in time and gives the event that led the man's mind to hang itself: seeing the woman "naked amid unnaked things," seeing the woman discerned, emerged out from the uniform reality of factual existence. Finally, the verse moves forward to the action of the mind hanging itself:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
He suddenly tasted worms windows and roses<br />
<br />
he laughed, and closed his eyes as a girl closes<br />
her left hand upon a mirror.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Notice how Cummings does not even leave "hanged himself" in the merely factual, he metaphorizes that as well, completing the vibrant, complex, aesthetic, erotic <i>mise en scéne</i> that is "the mind is its own beautiful prisoner."
</p>A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409762275555781626.post-53735630797628987922016-10-05T15:01:00.000-07:002017-05-29T13:04:54.260-07:00"Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" by Wallace Stevens and "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" by Adrienne Rich<p class="noind">
<a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/rich-jennifer-tiger.html">Adrienne Rich's "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" can be found here [link]</a><br />
<a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/disillusionment-ten-oclock">Wallace Stevens's "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" can be found here [link]</a>
<br />
</p>
<h4>another example of the difference between the poetic and prosaic modalities</h4>
<p class="noind">
<br />
</p>
<p class="ind">
In writing the previous post, it was not my original thought to follow up with more examples to the same point. Though, a door had been opened (if not a new door); and I was not unaverse to holding to the line of thought if opportunity presented itself. Which it did, by two unrelated online incidences, the first of which returned Wallace Stevens's "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" to my thoughts, the second of which brought Adrienne Rich's "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" to my attention. By coincidence, both verses feature tigers and use them in similar ways. Plus there is the bonus that "Disillusionment" is one of my favorite short verses by Stevens. So why not.
</p>
<p class="ind">
This post will differ from the previous in three ways. First, I am going to speak a little more about verseform, about the material aspects of the works. Second, in this post I cover the poetic work, Stevens's, and before the prosaic, Rich's. Third, I'm not going to dwell as much on the theoretic aspects of the poetic and prosaic; indeed, I may take this post in a different direction.
</p>
<p class="ind">
That said, I will begin with the reminder that while the prosaic works in the modality of the factual and the poetic in the modality of the symbolic, that does not mean that the poetic cannot or does not use factual statements. In the two verses under examination here the tigers appear in sentences that, on their own, are factual statements.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen, bright topaz denizens of a world of green.<br />
<br />
Only, here and there, an old sailor, drunk and asleep in his boots, catches tigers in red weather.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
"On their own" is key to the point. A prosaic text functions through independent statements logically coordinated into a whole. The statements in a prosaic text never move outside their own factual being. Putting two factual statements into coordination with each other does not change the nature or reading of the statements, even when the logical relationship established is one of opposition.
</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<p class="ind">
In the poetic, however, the text functions organically, uniting into a whole that generates an experience beyond the mere factual interpretation of the individual sentences. A poetic text can contain and utilize factual statements, but that factuality will be undermined, subverted, irrupted, metaphorized, made paradoxical, made experiential, or in some way pulled beyond the rational and into the irrational.[FN] As said, this is not mere logical opposition, mere 'A is not B,' which is but the coordination of factual statements, functioning in the prosaic. This is a change in <em>modality</em>, from the mechanical to the existential, from the factual to the symbolic, from the rational to the irrational.
</p>
<table class="fn">
<tr>
<td width="70px"></td><td>
***********************<br />
[FN] The point should be made that the prosaic modality can often serve pragmatic purposes as well. In larger texts, for example, the prosaic can be seen to be used to do the work, to wit, of getting characters from the dining room to the living room.
<br />
***********************
</td></tr></table>
<p class="ind">
Greatly, it might have come to you with word "experiential" (and after the last post), we are touching on the classic writing dictum of "show don't tell." The problem I have long held with that phrasing, with how that concept seems usually addressed, is that it does not sufficiently convey the change in modality that is the nugget of 'truth' hiding within that now very hackneyed phrase (hackneyed because it is given far more lip service than deep thought). It is, indeed, quite possible – and fairly easy – to "show" without moving outside of the factual, without moving into the experiential modality that "show" is supposed to cue.
</p>
<p class="ind">
"Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" offers a great example to the point. It would be the epitome of "telling" to say
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The people here are imaginatively, creatively dead.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
At its root, Stevens is using a congruent statement to get to the idea of his unadventurous, unstimulating world.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The women here wear white nightgowns.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
In comparison to the first statement above it is much more "showing," moving from the basic statement of the situation to an example of the situation. But on its own it does not move at all into the poetic. How does Stevens make that move? Through two ways.
</p>
<p class="ind">
First (moving forward in the text) through the experiential. He creates through language the experience of what is lacking in the world of the verse.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
None are green,<br />
Or purple with green rings,<br />
Or green with yellow rings,<br />
Or yellow with blue rings.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The lines are trebly playful: there is basic play of repetition; there is that they are sing-songy in their nursery rhyme-like rhythm; and there is play of the chaining of the colors. Then comes the important word, "strange." The word speaks most directly what is absent in the world of the verse, but it functions in other ways as well. First, there is something of an onomatopoeic aspect to the word, especially after the fairly workaday language of the preceding lines. But it also works to queer that workaday nature:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
None of them are strange
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
We don't naturally use the word <i>strange</i> with nightgowns, even with more exotic styles,
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
With socks of lace<br />
And beaded ceintures.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Another onomatopoeic moment. The use of "strange" is pulling us aurally and ideationally out of the quotidian, even out of the unordinary, even beyond the sexual: the nightgowns that are missing from the world of the verse are nightgowns that would cause people "to dream of baboons and periwinkles." The onomatopoeia here comes to its fullest in the choice of words. But there is play also in the opposition: dreaming of baboons might be exciting, and dreaming of periwinkles might be quite ordinary; but dreaming of the two, of baboons and periwinkles, now that is a strange combination, two things one normally does not associate with each other brought into unity, as though of course people who wear strange nightgowns dream of such things! The playfulness of the lines – both in their material and ideational aspects – makes experiential what is lacking in this world.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Though: it is actually false to say that it is <em>lacking</em> in the world. And here we come to the second way that Stevens takes the core statement about nightgowns from the prosaic to the poetic: with the ideationally poetic first sentence.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The houses are haunted by white night-gowns.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The sentence can be seen as factual in nature. But that factuality is transformed when you let the words play against each other. Note that the sentence does not say:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The houses are haunted by women in white night-gowns.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Though a touch of metonymy cannot be avoided, if the reader engages the sentence as presented, the "ghosts" as it were are not people, they are things. Yet it is not normally "things" that are attached to the word <i>haunt</i>. We have an opposition, but not, in context, a logical opposition. It is an opposition that demands both parts to be recognized as possible at the same time: <em>things</em> don't haunt, and yet they do. The strangeness – I use the word consciously – of the situation is meant to be recognized: indeed, it is meant to be dominant in reading what follows as the text prompts in the reader the experience of "strange" nightgowns while simultaneously saying that the experience is not to be found. The world is haunted by things that are not. This is the central dynamo of the text, the simultaneity of what is and what is not present; it is the energy center that, so long as we actively engage the text, swirls around and through itself and the whole of the text without ever collapsing into a logical stasis. The text is not being rational, it is being irrational. It is not being factual, it is being experiential.
</p>
<p class="ind">
That dynamo is also energized by the last lines.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Only, here and there, an old sailor,<br />
Drunk and asleep in his boots,<br />
Catches tigers<br />
In red weather.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The second line here is that which links the end to the beginning. You have gentlepeople (to use a word) sleeping in houses and old sailors passed out and sleeping who knows where. Where in houses they do not dream of baboons and periwinkles, the old sailors do dream their version thereof, of tigers in red weather. The dynamo in the lines lies in the clothing: white night gowns versus boots. The sailors are dreaming exciting dreams, yet they are in boots: not exactly emblamatic of strange nightgowns. And yet, the world of the old sailors is very different from the world of those in the haunted houses.
</p>
<p class="ind">
It is through the dynamos in the text that we can engage the title of the verse. The presented situation is one of <em>disillusionment</em>: the revealing of illusions. And thus we get back to why it is actually false to say that "strangeness" and all that entails from it is lacking in the world of the verse. That playfulness, the strangeness, otherworldliness that is created through body of the text does exist: obviously, for you were brought by the verse to experience it. Yet it is for most people an illusion, an illusion that is paradoxically "revealed" by the presence of white nightgowns. The houses are haunted by the nightgowns: by the ghosts of what during the day was alive; but also by realities that reveal that what seemed alive during the day was not. Another dynamo, another coincidence of opposites working in the text.
</p>
<p class="noind"> </p>
<p class="ind">
"Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" works in a completely different modality: it is a prosaic, factual, logically organized text. Because the text operates mechanically, one statement after the other, we can – and it might be argued should – approach the text linearly.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The text is made of three stanzas, each with a clear purpose. The first stanza presents the tigers; the second stanza presents Aunt Jennifer; the third stanza repeats the ideas in the previous stanzas, bringing them into direct contrast by putting them in the same stanza. If that seems simply presented that is because "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" is simple, unsophisticated verse. In truth, it is stock pop-poetry, unexceptional, even clumsy at times. [FN] Because there might be something to learn from the faults of "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers," as their was from the qualities of "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock," I will give them some attention.
</p>
<table class="fn">
<tr>
<td width="70px"></td><td>
***********************<br />
[FN] For sake of transparency, let me say I consider Adrienne Rich a typical pop-poet: her fame has less to do with the sophistication of her work and more to do with the subject matter thereof. I came upon "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" looking to see how Rich was represented in the Norton Anthology of Poetry (Shorter Edition). While this is the simplest of the four texts presented, the other texts are also prosaic in nature, and as a group demonstrate, if one but confront the texts for what they are, Rich's pop-poetic sophistication. Granted, "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" is an early work; but nothing I have read by Rich has ever led me to any other judgment.
<br />
***********************
</td></tr></table>
<p class="ind">
The verse begins with the tiger:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,<br />
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.<br />
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;<br />
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
</td><td width="35px"></td></tr></table>
<p class="noind">
That fourth line is a poor line: "chivalric" is a poorly chosen word. First, because it is difficult to accept a large, carnivorous, predatory cat as being "chivalric." Second because the line is aurally bumbling:
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
they PACE in SLEEK CHIvalric CERtainty
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
Because of the dactylic nature of "chivalric," "certainty" is likewise pulled into the dactylic and the line loses it's intended iambic rhythm. A far better word, in both meaning and sound, would be <i>heraldric</i>. "Chivalric" was obviously chosen for the consonance. However, sacrificing ideation for sound is rarely if ever a good choice.
</p>
<p class="ind">
"Topaz" seems chosen for the same reason: the consonance with "denizens." But for me "topaz" comes off as a weak choice of word. First, topazes come in a variety of colors, not just yellow; but that is by far the lesser reason. Of greater is topaz's are not particularly "bright" in color: in fact the Oxford Dictionaries web page – the only dictionary out of four checked that even offered a color as definition to the word – gives "a dark yellow color," which seems to push against the phrase "bright topaz denizens."[FN] For me, the word seems chosen primarily for the use of z's, not for the meaning of the word. And to even have that thought speaks a weakness in the text. (Even denizens on its own seems forced.)
</p>
<table class="fn"><tr>
<td width="70px"></td><td>
***********************
<p class="noind">[FN] It is important to recognize that the phrase does not have a comma. It does not read:</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Bright, topaz denizens
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">That comma would have eliminated the clash I feel in the line.</p>
***********************
</td></tr></table>
<p class="ind">
Ideationally, there is not much to say about the stanza. It is mostly factual description of the tigers. There are two concepts presented that we are meant to pull forward: that Aunt Jennifer makes the screens with the images of the tigers, and the general nature of the tigers.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Having described the tigers, the text now turns to describing Aunt Jennifer.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool<br />
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.<br />
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band<br />
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
More factual statements: indeed, the latter two lines are bluntly presented: to the point that it creates something of a jarring shift in subject. The facts intended to be pulled forward from this stanza is the metonymic association between the wedding band and the apparently dead uncle, and the relationship implied by the "massive weight" of the band. To note, there is a slight ideational clash between "fluttering" – which implies dexterity if not skill – and "hard to pull" – which implies weakness and inability. The text seems unsure: is she competent at making the screens or not?
</p>
<p class="ind">
If the image of the ring is not enough to generate the idea of domination of Aunt Jennifer by her uncle, the first half of stanza 3 makes it explicit.
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie<br />
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.<br />
The tigers in the panel that she made<br />
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The prosaic nature of the text is clearly seen. The first stanza offers data as to the tigers. The second stanza offers data as to Aunt Jennifer. The third stanza restates more explicitly (if presented in a future time) the already provided and implied facts while making clear the logical relationship between the two sets of data: Aunt Jennifer is to be logically opposed to the tigers on the screen.
</p>
<p class="ind">
The text is entirely factual. It never escapes – nor does it ever desire to escape – blunt statement. The elements of the text work in mechanical relationships to each other: statement, restatement, and opposition. There is no generating of either the experiential or the ideationally dynamic as in "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock." The whole of the text collapses to a basic factual contrast: Aunt Jenny is X; tigers are Y; and X is not Y, with a side order of a second contrast: Aunt Jenny is J; Uncle is K; J is not K. Though the tigers and the wedding bands may be called the central "symbols" of the poem, they function prosaically, not – in the manner I am here using the term – symbolically. Tigers, here, stand for a fixed cluster of concepts, as does the wedding ring. Though, those clusters might be different from one reader to the next, the function of the tigers and the ring is one-to-one substitution, in the manner of the allegorical.
</p>
<p class="ind">
What is most interesting about "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" is not the rather mundane recognition of its prosaic nature, but in how the text uses the prosaic nature – uses that it expects its readers to be reading prosaically – to clean up (to skip over) the ideational problems in the text. For example, a careful reader might notices that logical error in the second stanza: how can the woman's finger(s) be fluttering if they are weighted down?[FN] The text however is trusting in the reader not paying that much attention and passively accepting the stated facts as presented. It is presented as fact that the band is a "massive weight" and that it weighs down the whole of Aunt Jennifer's hand. That fact is not to be questioned but accepted. Thus, though her fingers are fluttering, that fluttering should not be permitted to interfere with the fact of "massive weight."
</p>
<table class="fn">
<tr>
<td width="70px"></td><td>
***********************<br />
[FN] I'm see no reason why it's "finger" and not "fingers" in that line. To me it's another weakness in word choice. (To note, I do not have the text in print, and can only check it against how it is found online.)
<br />
***********************
</td></tr></table>
<p class="ind">
But it is not just smaller details that are being controlled through the factual nature, it is the reading of the whole verse itself. The text gives plenty of overt cues that it should be read within the context of feminism – in fact, the very name "Adrienne Rich" is now one such cue. The reader who passively accepts the cues will approach the text with a pre-made reading: this is a feminist text therefore it will be read according the how feminist texts are read. Thus we see, giving a quick survey of the web, such readings as
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The speaker tells us about the metaphorical weight of Aunt Jennifer's wedding band, and implies that her marriage was unhappy and held her back from the life that she wanted to live. The speaker then tells us that, when Aunt Jennifer is dead, she will still wear the ring that symbolizes the marriage that trapped her. (shmoop.com) [<a href="http://www.shmoop.com/aunt-jennifers-tigers/summary.html">link</a>]<br />
<br />
[The tigers'] freedom and dignity is contrasted in the second verse to the restrictions of marriage, symbolized by the wedding band that weighs down Aunt Jennifer's fingers as she sews. The themes are resolved in the final, third, verse: Even death will not free Aunt Jennifer from her "ordeals," but the tigers she has created will continue to appear "proud and unafraid." (enotes.com) [<a href="http://www.enotes.com/topics/aunt-jennifers-tigers">link</a>]<br />
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
and
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Aunt Jennifer's hands are 'terrified' because of the massive weight of household duties. They are heavily pressed. They have undergone severe trials. She is dominated by her husband continuously. 'Fingers fluttering', 'ordeals', 'mastered', 'hard to pull' indicate her fear. By mentioning that it is 'Uncle's wedding band', the poet suggests that Uncle owns Jennifer too and that as a female she is the property of her husband. (bachelorandmaster.com) [<a href="http://www.bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/aunt-jennifer-tigers.html#.V_UzlPArJhE">link</a>]
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
All standard feminist readings that fit in line with standard – we should say "conventional" – feminist ideas as found in feminist verse. Yet, if we read the text – if we actually <em>read</em> the text – we are told that the tigers and Aunt Jennifer are in logical opposition: Aunt Jennifer is not a tiger; what tigers are Aunt Jennifer is not. Tigers "do not fear the men beneath the tree" (notice these are tigers <em>in a tree</em>, not caged tigers); tigers are sleek and chivalric (ignoring the poor word choice); tigers are proud and unafraid. Thus, Aunt Jennifer is not proud, not unafraid, not sleek nor chivalric, and when in her tree she <em>feared</em> the men below. It seems to me the verse is saying that Aunt Jennifer is and always was a weak, fearful person. Indeed, is that not what is stated in the most explicit moment we have as to who Aunt Jennifer is?
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool<br />
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
The most direct statement as to Aunt Jennifer is the factual implication that she is weak. If we are to take the next sentence
</p>
<table class="quote">
<tr>
<td width="35px"></td><td>
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band<br />
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.
</td><td width="35px"></td>
</tr></table>
<p class="noind">
as representing the Uncle's strength; why are we not supposed to take the first as representing the Aunt's weakness?
</p>
<p class="ind">
Is there anything in the text that says she was not always weak? No. Yes, it says she was "mastered" by the ordeals of her life, but that does not mean she was not from the start a weak individual. The only thing that directly argues that Aunt Jennifer was conquered by her ordeals, was once strong but was made weak, is the external, the extra-textual "fact" that this is feminist verse, so obviously.
</p>
<p class="ind">
This is how convention works in texts: ideas that are not generated within the text are brought from outside into the text and the reader is asked to read the text by those ideas rather than by the text itself. This is also passive reading: the reader does not actively engage the text, it merely accepts the readily accessible appeals to external meanings and applies those meanings to the text, irrespective of what is actually there.
</p>
<p class="ind">
Now, granted, as regards "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers," this speaks greatly to the weakness of the text: there is less than hoped for word control and poor control of the concepts being offered. For it, the text accidentally creates an idea that works counter to how the text was intended (we assume, as externally cued) to be read. Prosaic texts are, at their core, logical arguments; and it is poor writing – whether the prosaic text be materially verse or prose – to exert insufficient control over the text to successfully present that logical argument. Which is not to say poetic texts can be more loosely controlled. I would argue that for success poetic texts demand even greater control than prosaic, for poetic texts both utilize and go beyond the prosaic.
</p>
A.E.M. Baumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645522810843138721noreply@blogger.com4