"Cold Tea Blues" by The Cowboy Junkies

So, it has been six weeks since the last post, and it wasn't much of one. I intended to slow down but not this much. In part, the length of time lies in that I am trying put energies into other projects that refuse to take off. But in no small part I had simply stalled out, or had grown bored with the critical endeavor, if not wholly put off by the thought of looking through bad poetry – and most of the poetry out there right now is bad poetry – looking for something on which to write, good or bad. There is a point where I have had enough of yet another of Poppoetry Magazine's monthly offerings of yet-more-of-the-same (no matter how they try to convince me through gimmicked thematics it is not).

Indeed, I had stopped reading 'poetry' in the general sense altogether. What I have done is I have started rereading Finnegans Wake, this time coming at the text as I have wanted to, coupled with the endeavor to create an outline of the text's levels ideation. This includes a new drawer dedicated to the Wake in the Cabinet, which has taken some time. For sure, though, the Wake is poetic, poetry at its highest. And it has perhaps brought me back around to interest in talking about poetry on this blog. Though, I doubt posts here will increase in tempo all that much, especially during this period where a lot of my energies are going to establishing the groundwork for the Wake venture. Plus, there are those other so very obstinate projects . . . . .

 

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from Pale Sun Crescent Moon (1993)

demonstration of poetic form

 

I am going to risk an over-simplification and say that there are three aspects to a literary object:

1. the words on the page
2. the meaning of the words on the page
3. the sound of the words on the page

The reason I am risking the over-simplification is because those three are really aspects of one overarching aspect: form. None of the three are wholly independent of each other; they all speak to the form (or structure) of the work, if each from a different angle.

Before continuing with that idea, a couple of points of explication (if not correction) need to be made.

First: The use of the word meaning is problematic, because that word is generally associated with the nomic, with the prosaic, with language understood as a tool for the communication of information. This is why I generally prefer using the word "ideation," which is a broader term, one that can include nomic "meaning" without excluding symbolic language. It is not uncommon to see "idea" and "concept" distinguished in such a manner, where "concept" is relates to the rational, the factual, the hermeneutic approach to language as a means to communicate "concepts," and "idea" is the broader term, including not only theoretic language (concepts) and symbolic language but even broader, more abstract psychical experience (like the "idea" that is created by a rhyme scheme).

Second: there is also a similar issue with the use of the term structure, since that word is often used to designate particularly structures that have become established through convention. For example, examining the 'structure' of language would point to examining standard grammatical structures and variations therefrom (the discourse begins first upon established conventions and then moves out from that basis). As such, you will occasionally see the term structure set against the term form, where the former is used as just described, to label more concretized or mechanical organization, and the latter is used to address organization in the organic sense, where you start not at established convention but with the object-in-question as it defines itself. (Thus, mechanical structure and organic form. There might be a parallel there with the difference between anatomy and physiology: the former is a theoretic classification, the latter is a more organic understanding of the same object.) I will here try to follow my own general usage with form as the broader concept, which includes within itself the idea of mechanical structure. As Coleridge says, while the mechanical text (the text of Fancy) is not in itself poetic, the poetic text (the text of Imagination) nonetheless requires the use of mechanical thinking. I try to use structure when used, as in the analogy above, anatomically. (I admit up front, however, that maintain strict rigor with these is for me difficult at best.)

"Pelicans in December" by J. Allyn Rosser — Verse Daily, 9/13/2014

from Mimi's Trapeze (U of Pittsburgh Press)
poem found here
 

First lines:
One can't help admiring
their rickety grace
 

an exploration of poetic structure

 

Fortune smiled on me and gave me a poem right after my last post that might prove an interesting exploration of poetic structure and poetic ideation ("poetic" being in the sense put forward by the last number of posts, as opposed to "prosaic"; as "organic"; as aesthetic as opposed to nomic; as creative as opposed to representational).

What I want to do first is trim down the poem to its core structure, to the basic statement. For this poem is of the nature of something not infrequently seen in pop poetry: it consists of a core structure, one that is not terribly complex, which is flushed out (one might say "made poetic") through description or modification of the elements of that core structure.

When I pare away those modifications, I find three basic statements.

1. One can't help admiring [the pelicans'] grace and feathers. 2. They pass in silent pairs. 3.a. The wind tips them into a wobble, 3.b. like old couples arm in arm on icy sidewalks, 3.c. mildly surprised by how difficult it has become to stay dignified and keep moving.

Nothing should be surprising, there, structure-wise, since the poem is constructed of three sentences. What may be surprising, though, is the nature of those three sentences. The second is simple and straightforward. But the first presents what cannot avoid being called an odd pairing.

"Mariana" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Originally published 1830.
Poem found here

First lines:
With blackest moss the flower-pots
     Were thickly crusted, one and all;
 

poetic structure: aesthetic ideation vs. brute factuality

 

A Note before beginning: "Mariana" is a more difficult poem than one might think at first read. It is a dense poem, and attention to detail is important. Yet, it is very easy to get lost in the sound of the poem and lose that attention. So, before reading the below, I recommend giving the poem – if you are unfamiliar with it – more than a couple of reads.

 

Tennyson's "Mariana" is one of my all time favorite poems.[FN] In reading Tennyson criticism you will hear it said that it is one of his best; and you can occasionally hear it said that it is can be comfortably held among the best of English poetry, or at least Victorian poetry. I have had a print-out of it on my desk for a short while now, wanting to do a post, though not really sure how to approach the effort. It has been more than a couple of weeks since my last offering here, so I figure I will give this a go and post whatever results, whether it comes to complete fruition or not.

-------------------------------------- [FN] To note, Tennyson wrote a second poem on the same theme, "Mariana in the South." It is not as great a poem, which may be why Tennyson essentially rewrote it in the years after its first publication. Or perhaps the fact that Tennyson so greatly rewrote it speaks, in itself, that it is not so great a poem. --------------------------------------

An opening note: it may seem as this progresses that I am veering away from my normal approach of exploring poetry from the viewpoint of the writer and moving toward a straight act of criticism. I definitely am doing the latter, but I am not in it abandoning the former. Yes, there is a gap between a critical exploration of a poem and the question "how do I learn to write like that?" That gap, though, is one that can only be bridged by the explorations and attemptings of the writer. The step I am (hopefully) providing may not be part of the actual stepping, but it is the revealing of a place to which to step. But, then, how is that any different than any other post here?

"Rocket" by Todd Boss -- Poetry Daily, 11/13/2013

from Poetry (Nov. 2013)
poem found here
 

first lines:
Despite that you
wrote your name
 

the very important importance of lines

 

Lines, again, I know. I am constantly returning to lines or line breaks. But in truth no matter how I might want to go explore and strengthen other arguments to different conclusions, I invariably return to the primacy of the "line" in poetry and for poetry. If there is to be any sophistication to the writing of poetry, then it must begin in the idea of the "line."
 

--- And immediately I recognize that there is in the above an issue with terminology as to the word poetry. Though, rather than address it here in very-brief, I will give it its due in a separate post, to follow this one. ---
 

Now, why the quotation marks around the word line? Because I want to leave open exactly what a "line" is, and give definition to it that only goes as far as "a discrete visual unit on the page." That way, the idea includes such things as vertically typeset text (where a line more narrowly defined might only include a single letter); visually broken or stepped lines; concrete typesetting (which I consider mostly a gimmick but which inhernetly proposes the idea of the visual structure being a "line"); and even, possibly, the prose poem (which, in its finer forms, might be considered a very long but nonetheless one-line poem).

To me, not crafting lines is the equivalent of etching an image into the side of a large block of marble and calling it "sculpture."

"You do realize that sculpture is rather inherently an exploration of three dimensions?     "I'm postmodern."     "You're a looney."

"Going Back to Bimble" by Maurice Manning -- Poetry Daily, 5/20/2013

from Smartish Pace (#20)
poem found here

 

First lines:
If I went I'd go through Shepherdtown
and Burning Springs; I'd cross the stream

 

exploring content and structure, and poetic laziness (with, first, a grammar/syntax point)

— reformatted, with some, small editing 9/30/15

First, a brief grammar/syntax point. I want to bring it up because it opens the door for something beyond a basic grammar comment. Hopefully on your own you stumbled when it occurred. Line 11 (I give 9-12)

another rope and took in twice the tithes of the last two months and said, hellfire, he ought to shoot that bell more often; and then in a mile

The site of stumbling is the "he." It should be I, as the natural reading is that it is the preacher who shot the bell, it is the preacher who is speaking, and "hellfire" is the introductory interjection to that speaking: thus, it should be

another rope and took in twice the tithes of the last two months and said, hellfire, I ought to shoot that bell more often; and then in a mile

Now there is another possibility in asking: what if the only part meant to be dialogue was "hellfire"? In that case, the "he" would be correct, as it would be the narrator saying "he ought to shoot that bell more often." But, if that is the case, then there arises a need for a semi-colon after "hellfire," like this:

another rope and took in twice the tithes of the last two months and said, hellfire; he ought to shoot that bell more often; and then in a mile

Do you see why? Two reasons: (1) it serves the purpose of eliminating the appearance of a grammatical error with the he/I issue; and (2) there is a strong enough break in flow and ideation that the system of the poem demands it. That is the purpose of semi-colons in the poem: to divide the thoughts/moments. And, even though the "he ought to" phrase is still very tied in to the story leading up to it, the fact that it changes from mere narration to commentary on the event justifies the semi-colon.

Now, you could also do a dash:

another rope and took in twice the tithes of the last two months and said, hellfire – he ought to shoot that bell more often; and then in a mile

Which kind of works but I don't think as well. Also, being the only dash in the poem sould give unwanted emphasis to the fact that that phrase is the only commentary on the narrative in the poem. Parentheses are also a possiblity:

another rope and took in twice the tithes of the last two months and said, hellfire (he ought to shoot that bell more often); and then in a mile

But it has the same end result. In fact, in experimenting with the grammar, I am now wholly burdened with the idea that there would be a problem with it being the only direct commentary in the poem. Which is enough, for me, to say it should be spoken by the preacher, and it should be an "I" after all.

 
•

Complete aside: shouldn't it be "twice the tithing"? That is, am I correct in the "twice the tithing" means twice as much net money, while "twice the tithes" means twice as many donations? Now, I'm not saying "tithes" is an error; I'm just pondering words.

 
•

Now onto the relationship of content and structure. I really like the flow of this poem: the iambic quadrameter gives a great rhythm to a poem that is a flowing journey of places – places with lively names (which is important). But let's look at the content.

Most of the poem is the movement from one place to the next, as though you were listening to someone talking about a trip, and visually following their finger funning a line across a map. As I said, because of the liveliness of the names (lively without becoming comedic), and, because of the care taken in connecting the places, it works very well. Look at the different "and then there was" phrases:

I'd cross the stream / some people still call and pass through then in a mile / or so I'd go through till it crosses and then / in no time I'd be at and that's about halfway to

And so on. The pleasure of the poem is not just in the list of places (and their relationship to each other) but also in how the list is presented. Very worth attending to – both in reading and in writing. I cannot tell you how many published and online poems I read that have a halfway decent idea but utterly fail in their execution of the idea. Pretending this was such a poem, it is as though the poets think that the idea itself – the idea of a travelogue of a journey – is sufficient to the writing of the poem, and so the execution of the poem gets half effort (if that much).

Indeed, if there was one complaint about contemporary poetry that I would scream out above all others, it is that the exceeding majority of it seems the result of not trying very hard, of not trying to do something that is very hard, of not trying to do something that merits a loud "look, ma! no hands!" I tell you, I would love to have a symposium with this subject to debate: "Contemporary poetry is a culture of literary laziness." We'll take Tennyson as exemplar: comparing the grand efforts of the Idylls and In Memorium to the lackadaisical efforts after being named poet laureate. Begin . . . .

In that vein, but removing any sense of accusation and turning instead to exploration and pondering, let me ask a question of Manning's poem: This is a 39-line poem. Within those lines there are twenty-two place names (including naming Bimble and Shephardtown twice). Which speaks much to the success of the diction of the poem, in that it never gets repetitive or silly. But of those twenty places, only five get discussion: Pinhook Chapel (with the bell), Bad Jack Branch (with the ancestor), the Fork (the best stretch), Big Rock House (a marvel of design) and Bimble/Redbird bottom (and Mrs. Jonsee).

This is the question (and it rather is a similar if not the same question I asked of the Jill Osier poem, here): is that the right balance? Would it be a better poem – even if somewhat different poem – if there was more description given to more of the places? Then, with more description, would there need also be more places? Or, would adding more kill the rhythms of the poem? Would you be able to sustain the rhythms by keeping descriptions and their diction short-ish?

Let's rephrase the question. Is this a poem that is about description, or is this a poem that is a journey through places, and descriptions are added to decorate and make interesting the connections between the places? With that question, I have to ask of the poem as it stands: is the preacher/bell story too long for the poem? Does it get far too much time and energy for the size of the poem and thus does it imbalance the poem? Notice, also, how, unlike the other places, the story drifts away from "why it's a place worth mentioning" to the subplot of "I ought to shoot things more often" – which I, personally, think is an error in the poem, and an ideational problem that does imbalance the poem. And if the answer to the question is "yes," that it does imbalance the poem, is the problem in that the preacher/bell story is too long, or is it in the poem is too short? (or both?)

If this were my poem – and I mean that as stated not by a critic looking at "Brimble" but as a writer brought to thought by "Brimble" – and I noticed that problem in the drafting, my solution in the error would be to expand the poem, to see if I could write not a 30 line poem but a 150 or 200 line poem that sustains this flowing rhythm and style: that is, focusing on the places being passed through, and only ever very indirectly refering to the person passing through.

But, then, that would also have been my initial approach: I would naturally start such a project long, and contract. And, now, with saying that, it is my impulse to write, "But that is my personal writing style/method, not necessarily those of others." Except for what I wrote above: maybe it is important to start big and contract, because only then are you pushing yourself beyond something easy. There is a curious aspect in the development of a person's composition writing as they move through education: it starts off with writing 300 words, and those 300 words are difficult. Then they are pushed up to the 6-page essay, and 300 words becomes easy.[FN] Then, when the 12 and 15 page essays come along in college, 6-pages are what you write just brainstorming in the library. And then comes 30-pagers and beyond . . . .

--------------------------------- [FN] And, you know, if hight school juniors and seniors were constantly writing 6-page essays, they would probably have a far better understanding of the paragraph by the time they reached the U than they do now. And before you teachers start bitching about "but we have so much work we have to do already" blah blah blah, let met explain to you: grading them would be nigh irrelevant to the learning process (as grading papers are now, actually, nigh irrelevant to the learning process); the learning would be in the doing. (And the discussions, in class, before and after.) ---------------------------------

(Or, at least, if we had an education system that actually focused on writing and thinking skills, that is how it would be. But don't get me started.)

It seems to me, that in this culture of 50-words-or-less poetry, that what you see in print is a result of the extent of the poets' striving. And I wonder if, in creative writing education, there should be a lot more effort in getting people to write long works: because if a poet can conceive of writing a 500-line work, can approach a task with confidence, then writing a 100-line work (instead of a 15-line work) would no longer the huge task it now seems to so many. And then, in learning to struggle with sustaining value and intensity through 100 lines, they can learn how to really pack 30 lines with power. And then, perhaps contemporary poetry would be more about "I had an idea and I took it to its limit (whatever the final size)," rather than what it seems like, today: "I had an idea and I jotted something down."

To offer example, in the current issue of Poetry we can find these poems by Kay Ryan: "Party Ship," "Album," and Still Start." My most honest question to Poetry: how do they at all pass the "So what?" test?

Anyway – let me say again: don't apply those accusations to "Going Back to Bimble," which I think is well executed poem, one given ample thought and playtesting. Apply only the questions, and, most importantly, the pondering. (And, then, hopefully, the experimenting.)

"Spook House" by Benjamin Myers -- Verse Daily, 5/12/2013

from: Lapse Americana
poem found here

 
first lines:
The first. I heard of Dante
was at the county fair when I was ten,
(Obviously, Verse Daily has shown us again their love for laxity.)

 

ideation, depth, and bombs

-- text added, 5/16/2013
-- reformatted to current style, and italicized text added up front, 9/23/13

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Note: this post, and the comments that follow it, spawned a full-length essay on poetry culture posted to this blog: "#Poppoetry: The Unsurprising Culture of Poetry in the U.S." The essay can also be found on my website, here.

---

 

Another poem with a emotion bomb, here. It's probably obvious of what I am speaking: the single-lined, fifth stanza, "But there wasn't a war then." Though, unlike your most blatant bombs this bomb does have some ideational play within the rest of the poem. I still identify it as a bomb, however, because of the structure of the poem.

I'll start on why it is not a pure bomb (a line that has no or trivial ideational unity with the rest of the poem): the obvious presence of death throughout the poem: there is Dante's Inferno; there are the cars like gravestones in the sixth stanza; there is the suicide in the fifth; there is the drought and its dead grass; and there is the executioner; and, finally, the final lines:

as we watched our friends before us disappear around a dark curve.

So there is a fudge swirl of death throughout the poem. But, there is still that the war line is one line, a lone-lined stanza, sitting in the middle of the poem all by itself, very much heavily accentuated by the structure. So let's explore:

First, take out the line. Does the poem significantly change outside of giving it an historical moment? In all the references to death, there is only one that can be said to engage a pre-war historical moment: that of the final image of the disappearing cars in the dark of the ride the Inferno. As such, the entirety of the "war" energies lies only in those two moments. Because of that, such things as the suicide moment lose their potency.[FN] Indeed, if you keep the war idea fully in mind while re-reading, the suicide moment feels quite out of place, as though the poem has a split identity: is it a war poem? or is it a mild suicide poem? (I don't think it can tell.)

----------------------------- [FN] Indeed, if you take out the war line, is there anything else in the poem that engages the suicide moment? Is there anything about the drought that moves beyond basic scene setting? One could say the Inferno, but then really the drought just becomes a hell-like scene-setting: but still nothing more than scene-setting, since the Inferno idea is never taken anywhere. -----------------------------

Or is it that the poem is only supposed to be a poem generally about death? and all the death ideas are supposed to be equal in power? Which is a possibility, but it fails against the fact that the structural isolating of the war line gives it so much power that it nigh demands to be the ideational locus of the poem. (And I do see the structure of the poem as stating that everything is meant to flow out of and into the war line.)

But then there is the problem with the reference to the Inferno. There is the bookended references of the fair ride, and then at the end there is the reference to the multiple translations on the speaker's shelf and desk. That reference, actually, is never flushed out. In fact, it is so thin it makes me wonder if Myers has even read the Inferno, or, if he did, whether he understood what it was. Because, in truth, nothing in this poem flows out of the nature and ideas of Inferno. In fact, when I look at the end of the first stanza:

and booths with stacks of old-fashioned milk bottles: two dollars for three throws and you could win a mirror painted with the rebel flag or with a half-naked lady, or with a naked lady half-wrapped in the rebel flag. [. . .]

I am rather taken with how much energy and time that one little moment gets. It's not like it goes anywhere: what does a naked woman and a rebel flag have to do with war? Or death? But that one scene gets more energy even than the Infernos owned by the speaker. In fact, it gets far more effort and energy than the contents of Dante's Inferno: and you would think that if the poem intentionally moves to emphasizing that since the time of the primary scene the speaker has now collected multiple translations of the work, then the text of the Inferno would actually have influence on the poem.[FN]

----------------------------- [FN] And, in truth, the closing idea of the cars going into the dark of the ride -- in its metaphoric energies of death -- really could not be said to exist at all within the Inferno. -----------------------------

Finally, it should be noted that there is a problem with the line that exacerbates the bomb aspect. A conjuctive "but" works in the idea of "X, but Y." So here, Y is "there wasn't a war then." What is the X? What in the previous lines sets up a "but"? With what can the "war" idea interact with through a "but"? In fact, the immediately preceding stanza is the suicide and drought. So we have

suicide and drought . . . . . . BUT . . . . . there wasn't a war yet

That is not a negative, but a positive: there was suicide and drought, yes; but at least there wasn't the war. Not exactly the idea that is meant to be carried forward into the final scene. (Or into a book on a desk.) And however I try, I cannot get the "but" to work any other way.

Let's bring it together. Hopefully by now you can see that while there is effort within the poem to have ideas flow into and out of the "war" idea, the poem itself betrays and defeats that effort in a number of ways. As such, the war line becomes a bomb: the single line's ideational and emotional energy works in an attempt to make up for the poem's poetic and ideational failures. (And if the poem was not meant to flow through that one line, the structure of the poem brings that in turn to failure.)

The curious thing is what if the war line were taken out? Let me refer you to another poem: James Wright's "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio," which can be found here.[FN] It is a short little poem flooded to the fill with the ideas of ego and humility, in both their positive and negative aspects. And what is present in "Spook House" that is absent in "Autumn Begins"? The overt, anchoring statement. "Autumn Begins" is a powerhouse of ideational energy: precisely because it avoids explicative statements, and it weaves together, quite delicately, the ideas that are presented. Yes, it can be said that the "All the proud fathers" equates, in a way, to the war line in "Spook House." But the line is not isolated by the poem's structure (in fact, it is immediately brought into balance with the two following lines), and the line does not attempt to become a focus of the poem. The fathers, the wives, and the sons all play equal ideational roles; and, they all serve the ultimate goal of the unified poem.

----------------------------- [FN] I am going to here talk about "Autum Begins" through an assumed stance of it being a perfect poem. I leave it to you to question just how effective is the ideation of "Autumn Begins." Though, you have to admit, it is a damn good poem. -----------------------------

"Autumn Begins" is a great poem to intruduce the idea of depth. Depth in common parlance -- and by common I include MFA/workshop parlance -- refers to some emotional poingancy, or some socio-political statement, or some form a moral that lies beneath a text. In reality, at best, that nature of "depth" never achieves more than a second level signification (what Barthes talks about in Mythologies), or a pallid second level metaphoricity, or sentimental emotionalism. True depth, organic depth, aesthetic depth, is a depth that is best described as that ideational/emotional field created by the words of poem (or whatever work), that exists as an ideational field that does not lie in the surface of the words themselves.

And I am dissatisfied with that statement, but it will have to do for now. It's an idea difficult to paraphrase or make compact. But imagine if you will two forms of text, one each for the two modes of being/thinking/language, the aesthetic and the nomic. The latter functions as a plane: everything operates on the surface; and, if there is depth, that depth is merely a second plane lying on the first. The aesthetic, however, is better pictures as a sphere of finite surface area (the actual physical words on the page) with infinite radius (the ideational field of play created out of those words). Critical to this geometric metaphor is recognizing that the surface of a sphere has zero depth; and that the depth is not visible from above the surface.

Again, not really going very far right now, but I'm only beginning my presentation of this idea. So it is enough for now.

"Wander" by Andrea Hollander -- Poetry Daily, 4/6/13

from Arts and Letters (Spring 2013)
poem found here
 

First lines:
What we don't know we don't know,
so accept it. If your mother wandered
 

poetic structure

— reformatted Mar. 8, 2015
 

To note, I originally posted this with Ms. Hollander's name as Adrian. My apologies for the mistake.

Let's explore the first four stanzas. First, let's write them out in sentence form:

What we don't know we don't know, so accept it. If your mother wandered when your father was stationed in France during the war before you were born, before you were even conceived, so be it. No matter what her sister told you years later, after your mother died, what does this matter now?

First, and quickly, notice how clumsy that third sentence is. (The same clumsiness exists in the poem, not just in sentence form: the line breaks do not save it.) Part of the reason is because the "what" is semantically irregular, perhaps even bordering on bad writing, even when you remove the middle "after" phrase:

No matter what her sister told you years later, what does this matter now?

The "what" issue, however, may be side effect of the greater issue: there's also a major problem with time, with a clash between "years later" and "now." The phrase "no matter what her syster told you" generally is read to be a lead-in to a comment about the time of whatever it is about which the sister is speaking. For example:

No matter what her sister told you, your mother did not shoot the sherriff.

For this you should also be able to see how the "years later" does not fit smoothly within even that sentence:

No matter what her sister told you years later, your mother did not shoot the sherriff.

Throwing in the middle "after" phrase just makes it all the weaker. It is a sloppy sentence, and I would not be surprised if when writing the poem, if the author had written it in sentence form, she would have seen it herself. It is very easy to hide clumsiness from yourself when writing sentences as poetic lines -- especially when you are arbitrarily breaking the lines (which means you are not paying much attention to the rhythms of the text). To me, it seems the author here is trying to do too much in one sentence, and it using the idea of 'poetry' to try to get away with it.

The issue is that the sentence has far too many times in it:

1. the now of the poem
2. the time of the mother's action
3. the time of the mother's death
4. the time the sister spoke about the mother's actions

That's a lot for one sentence. It needs to be broken up to fix the chaos. First: recognize how "years later" is superfluous. The context itself creates the idea. So let's just leave that out. Second: why say "no matter" twice? Doesn't the "what does this matter now" only repeat the first "no matter"? I broke it up, but killed the superfluous parts. So, in the end, there still need only be one sentence:

What does it matter now what her sister told you?

See how the "years later" is rather implied? Granted, it only works if the idea that it was, in fact, years later is not essential. If it is, we can bring that back in. But now we do need to break up the sentence:

It was years later her sister told you. What does it matter now?

Let's get wacky sophisticated and use a semi-colon:

It was years later her sister told you; what does it matter now?

So, how does this effect the poem?

What we don't know we don't know, so accept it. If your mother wandered when your father was stationed in France during the war before you were born, before you were even conceived, so be it. It was years later her sister told you; what does it matter now?

The "what does it matter now?" remains its own line, and we've removed a ton of clumsiness.

Let's move to the second sentence. I take issue with "during the war" and "stationed in France": I find them redundant. One or the other can readily be gotten rid of, when looking at just the sentence. (I'll add the missing comma.)

If your mother wandered when your father was stationed in France, before you were born, before you were even conceived, so be it.

Or,

If your mother wandered during the war, before you were born, before you were even conceived, so be it.

Much better sentence, that, and I do find this latter option the much more interesting because of what it does not take time to say. What with the later lines about the field hospital and the nurses, the poem does make it clear that it was the father who went to war, and the mother stayed home. (Remember: the assumption that everything in a poem must be wholly understood when it is first read, each line and stanza understood when it is first read, is wholly fallacious.)

So what do we have now?

What we don't know we don't know, so accept it. If your mother wandered during the war, before you were born, before you were even conceived, so be it. It was years later her sister told you; what does it matter now?

Has the tone of the poem changed? It doesn't seem so to me. Just a bit more condensed. But, when you realize that that which was removed served no great positive purpose in the poem (and did insert no small negative), condensation is less condensation and more tidying up. So the next question: was anything lost in that tidying up. (Actually, a rather important question.) What the lost phrases did add was an extension of the rhythm of the stanzas.

Which is, actually, what first brought me to talk about this poem. There is in those first stanzas an aural effect of listing phrases:

If your mother wandered    when your father was stationed in France    during the war    before you were born,    before you were even conceived, so be it.

My thought when reading it was, what if the structure of the poem recognized this? What if the structure of the poem both played on and emphasized the structure of the phrasing? (Of course, now we are rewriting – exploring different, new possibilities and potentialities – so it is not longer merely the same poem tweaked.)

What we don't know we don't know,       so accept it. If your mother wandered during the war,    before you were born,    even, before you were conceived,       so be it. (Years later her sister told you.       What does it matter now?)

(I like the period over the semi-colon in that form.) Makes for an interesting idea, no? The rest of the poem would get thrythmically boring (if not flat out silly) if this was the only structural idea of the poem. Though, perhaps, the rest of the poem could be reworked in a way that flows out of this. Could be an interesting experiment (an experiment in a form other than that of arbitrary line breaks).

 
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A note:

I decided not to put a comma in the first line, like this:

What we don't know, we don't know,

It's not necessary. I would argue (though without much force) that it is permitted since it does help with the reading. But, I actually think it changes the meaning of the sentence. With the comma in it, it becomes a list, as though this was the opening phrase of a sentence such as:

What we don't know: the guy's name.

and you were repeating the first "what we don't know" for emphasis, as with this:

What we don't know – we don't know –: the guy's name.

Obviously, as I wrote it it is something of a silly idea, so we read it the way it is intended, as statement and clarification. But, that 'list-ness' – to me at least – still lingers.

"What Befalls You" by Ethel Rackin -- Verse Daily, 4/4/13

from The Forever Notes
poem found here
 

First lines:
I could no longer stand the trees
when a stand of them began to blossom.
 

poetic structure

— reformatted Mar. 8, 2015
 

There is something very worth pointing out in this poem. Notice the apparent contradiction that arises in line 3: The first two lines are about trees beginning to blossom. Not a summer image. And yet line 3 states "summer."

But is this a contradiction? Yes, but only up until line 5, and "fall." At that point, the words of the poem reveal an overarching structure. As I read it:
        lines 1-2 = Spring
        lines 3-4 = Summer
        line 5 = Fall
        lines 6-7 = Winter
And, then, the last two lines, which are the end of the year, a kind of summing statement. (I believe it can also be read in a sense that lines 5-7 are Fall, and 8-9 are Winter & the end of the year combined. This idea and the previous rather blur together; I don't think the poem requires fixing on either.)

What is worth pointing out is that there is no need for the word "Spring" in the poem. Just as there is no need for the word "Winter." In truth, if Ms. Rackin did not wish it, she could have also left out "Fall" and "Summer." All that was need, all that is ever needed, is (1) wording enough to speak to the reader the structure of the poem; and (2) for the poem to actually have and support that worded structure. You do not need to spell things out for your reader: the 'things' need only be present ideationally. In fact, the more you spell it out, the 'easier,' and, usually, the less interesting, the poem gets. Generating ideas is far more interesting, far more sophisticated, and far more enjoyable, than having the ideas simply laid out before you.

The second point there sounds rather obvious, but it is not. I have seen plenty of poems that establish a structure with the ideas generated, but fail to follow that ideational structure with the actual structure of the poem. (Or vice versa.) It is not enough to say "Well, the ideas establish the structure, so you are supposed to overlay that structure on the poem." In such a case the poem is at odds with itself. Not a good thing: it is clumsiness, a failure to pay attention, a failure to generate poetic unity. It results only in a lesser poem. The ideas and the structure must work together. (And, need I say, it is always best when they are both working.)

 
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To be honest, for all the above, I don't think the poem succeeds wholly. It's a little loose (and occasionally trite) in the words chosen, by my reading. For example, it took a number of readings for me to realize that the first line was not about the moment the trees blossomed (which is the natural reading of the sentence), but meant to say:
       I could no longer stand the trees;
       then, a stand of them began to blossom.

"Two Poems" by Charles Simic -- Poetry Daily, 3/18/13; and "Ealuscerwen" by Edward Mayes -- Verse Daily, 3/18/13

Simic's two poems ("Fear" and "Note Slipped Under a Door") are from Selected Early Poems
and is found here

"Ealuscerwen" is from Crazyhorse (Fall, 2012)
and is found here

 

line breaks

— reformatted with editing, April 8, 2014
 

OK, I admit it, I am perhaps over attentive to line breaks. Except that, it seems to me most poets today are severely if not chronically under-attentive to line breaks — if attentive at all. In that vein, the poems offered today on the two sites (Poetry Daily and Verse Daily) make for an interesting contrast. So let me look at both.

Yes, the poems are different in style. I want to focus only on line breaks and poetic flow. Yes, Simic's poems are, perhaps hyper attentive to flow: but it is to an end, which we will see.

I should also say in effort to maintain transparency that I am not a terribly big fan of Charles Simic, though that is more a statement about taste than anything else. He is, simply, not a poet that floats my boat in the manner such that I would pull him off the shelf solely for pleasure's sake. (Though, I will sooner or later purchase and read his collected/selected. And, actually, I rather like "Fear," for the short little thing it is.)

 

Let's start with Simic's two poems.

"Fear" is a short, imagist poem. It uses one image, moving of leaves on a tree, to generate an idea: that of the self-energizing contagiousness of fear. What I love about the ideation of the poem is that the core idea generated by the image: that of fear being self-energizing (when caught as a contagion), is never directly expressed in the poem — ergo the imagist aspect. (Something people who study H.D., particularly Trilogy, very frequently forget.)

The structure of the poem also emphasizes that imagist flavor: the first stanza setting up the image, the second opening the image to reveal the idea being generated thereby. But let's look specifically at the lines.

First stanza: four lines of four stress, two stress, four stress, two. Stanza two: two five stress lines. No, it is not necessary that you as a reader notice that on the first reading. What is necessary is that you look for it, as you should be looking to every poem for structure in meter and rhyme. Why? Because once you see it, it should then modify how the poem sounds. This is the musicality of the poem, and it should not be missed, otherwise, you are missing a great part of the poem. Poetry is an aural art. To not look for aural structure is tantamount to playing sheet music with no attention whatsoever to the length of the notes.

Let me see if I can describe it. Even though the lines can be called accentual meter (though, to me it reads as though the lines were designed by sound, not by meter), it is sort-of-kind-of iambic, and four-beat lines have that certain sing-song quality that is utilized by ballad measure. (Popular music, after all, is primarily 4/4 measure, no?) Of course, the shortened, two-beat lines create a kind of staccato-esque emphasis: this made all the greater because of the structure of the lines and the line breaks. Each four-beat line (and the two-beat lines) stands naturally as a poetic phrase (the second slightly less so, but within the norm). The two-beat lines are modifiers of the idea in the 4-beat phrase. The end result is that the stanza's structure is not merely visual, nor is it merely aural, but it works with the reading of the poem to emphasize the ideation of the phrases in the poem.

Then you have a stanza break, and the more conversational sound of an iambic pentameter couplet (even with a soft rhyme). It creates an aural difference from the first stanza. It also gives nod to sonnet form, and the two line couplet that closes such in Shakespearean sonnets. In such, it also gives nod to the idea of the volta, which the two line couplet is meant to emphasize. Finally, in that the stanza is a well crafted unit, soft rhyme and all, it gives emphasis that it is there that the central ideation will be worked; in turn, giving aural echo to the ideational structure of the poem.

In sum, line structure, rhythm, rhyme, stanza forms, stanza breaks, the linear flow, and image and ideation, all work together to generate an organically whole poem, a poem with experiential depth and aesthetic pleasure. Even though the idea presented is relatively simple (it is, after all, only a twenty-syllable poem), I enjoy reading it, I get pleasure from reading it, again and again, to experience how it all comes together . . . . . which is not quite the right phrase, but it is difficult not to fall into phrases that beg the question of what it is that is being experienced. If I may risk it: it is the pleasure of experiencing a whole and vital poetic microcosmos.

"Note Slipped under a Door" is a list poem, and as such will from the start probably be not as tight as "Fear"; but, then, I don't think it tries to be. The experience here is more linear, the following of a list; there is not very much ideational development up and down the list, not very much development into unifying the list elements into a whole (outside of the flow of a non-random list). But, that's ok; that is not what it is trying to do. It is being its list-self, and should be accepted as such. (In fact, it works for me quite well.)

But let's look at stanzas and lines. Simply enough, notice how, again, every line is sufficient in itself, and in itself defines itself as a line. Also, every idea has its own stanza. There is no attempt or want to force the poem into a regularized stanza length. To say it again, there is no need in the poet to force regularized stanzas upon a poem that does not require or want it. There is no attempt to break the lines into lines of generally equal length. The decisions on lines and stanzas was generated from within the creating of the poem, not applied to the words as a kind of forced structure.

Which leads us to "Ealuscerwen."

(But, first, I can not help myself to point out "from a great purple distance." It's a simple idea, but wonderful. Do you get it, in that at a distance mountains, hills, whatevers, tend to move into purplish hues? It's a natural event. But, here, completely unexplained. And dammitall if poets and writers would strive figure out that you do not have to explain everything. Actually, you rarely have to — or should — explain anything. Poems are so much more fascinating when you do not. This event in its larger, prosaic forms it is called an "information dump" in creative writing circles. (Its origin lies, I believe, in science fiction/fantasy, where the need and want to explain are often greatly felt by the writer.) Information dumps are a no-no in prose. Likewise, and even more so, in poetry, where it occurs just as often, but on a smaller scale. But I've digressed. My point is, merely, what a great line, that.)

•
So, "Ealuscerwen." A quick look reveals no rhyme. Also, no meter or measured stress count. Also, no apparent relationship between semantics and lines. It is a sentence/paragraph organized text broken into relatively even lines and four-line stanzas. (Should I have pointed out how sentence/phrasing and line structure informed each other's creation in Simic's poems? Too late now.)

Here are the questions to be asked:

• Is there anything in the poem's text, semantics, flow, or ideation, that gives purpose to the presented structure?
• To say it a different way, as a reader, what attention can be seen, here, to have been given to the line breaks and stanzas outside of the application of some arbitrarily chosen visual structure?
• Is it not a natural assumption that, if a poem is broken into lines, then there should be some purpose behind those lines?
• What effects on the reading of the poem is created by the line and stanza breaks?
• Do the line and stanza breaks contribute to the reading and reception of the poem? Or do they hinder it?
• Can there be said to be any poetic (or organic, or aesthetic) unity generated with the structure, the text, the sound, the ideation, etc.?

Consider this idea: if you are not using line and stanza breaks to an end that will generate an even more pleasurable reading of the poem, are you "using" them at all?

The follow-up to that: if you are not using them, why the hell not?

Inattentiveness is the accusation. An arbitrary structure applied to sentences/paragraphs is not "writing" lines, it is applying lines. (In fact, to me it looks like the visually clumsy hyphenated breaking of "hellkind" was generated out of the want to control visual line length.) Such structuring is, in its purest labeling, nothing less than striking lines and stanzas out of the writing process completely. As I have said in previous posts, this is little more than writing prose and shrinking the width of the page.

And the thing is, there is a proven negative effect to such writing. When a person reads, they are not moving from letter to letter, word to word. The mind naturally looks forward and back in order to generate a sense of the semantic and grammatical structure of the text, which permits the mind to more accurately and fully read the text. If it were not so, people would not be able to read a text without first reading the whole of the paragraph and getting the long list of words and their structure half memorized. (In fact, in a book, when you are reading a line, you mind is also giving faint attention to the lines above and below.)

The more you contract the length of the line in prose, the more and more difficult it becomes to read out of the structure and phrasing of the sentences. So, by breaking this poem into short lines like this without giving any thought to the lines themselves (or to the syntactic and grammatical structures of the text), the only thing being accomplished is making the text difficult to read.

For example, if you restructure the poem into normal prose, you will find that there is a very natural paragraph break right before "What we missed" (the first line of the fourth stanza). That very natural pause – that reading affected and reading effecting pause (I think I got those vowels right) – is lost, entirely, in the application of this arbitrary line/stanza structure. The line breaks also create problems with the flow of the sentences in the second half of the poem: especially with the last, beginning with "And we," in the third to last stanza.

Also, the fact that there are line breaks present creates in the reader an expectation of pause at the end of the line: the mind naturally looks for structure and organization; presenting organization through line breaks tells the mind there is a reading-structure to be found there. When that structure is not found, in fact when that structure is working against the natural reading of the words (as it is, so much so, with that last sentence), only bad things can happen.

Really, to read this poem successfully, you have to do what I said above: read it a couple, three, four times until you have a loosely memorized idea of how the sentences work, and ignore everything visual.

Another question: what value, what purpose can be said to exist in a chosen line structure when alternative choices have no real effect on the poem? Is there any difference to the reading of the poem if I make the lines slightly shorter:

We weren't there that fall in Rome, 476. Our terminus a quo for our Middle age was much later, and Ended with our terminus a quem, Later too. Time to take the hem Down again, we'll tell someone With the sharpest pair of scissors, Or take up the hem again we'll Ask someone with the quickest Stitch. Although we ourselves have Starched our crinoline collars, we've Never wanted to do anything more

or so that there are three lines per stanza, and the lines in each stanza decrease in length:

We weren't there that fall in Rome, 476. Our terminus a quo for our middle age Was much later, and ended with our Terminus a quem, later too. Time to take The hem down again, we'll tell someone With the sharpest pair of scissors, or Take up the hem gain we'll ask someone With the quickest stitch. Although we Ourselves have starched our crin-

or if we do this little visual shape:

We weren't there that fall in Rome, 476. Our Terminus a quo for our Middle age was much later, And ended with our terminus a quem, later too. Time to take the hem down again, we'll tell Someone with the sharpest Pair of scissors, or take up the Hem again we'll ask someone with the quickest Stitch. Although we ourselves have starched our Crinoline collars, we've never Wanted to do anything more Exuberant than, let's say, the cancan. What we've

So the final question: if there is no apparent purpose to the chosen line and stanza structure, how are you not saying to your reader, "You know, poetically speaking, there isn't that much here; so, don't expect too much; you might even just want to move on to the next poem."?

 
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(Final little note: the final little definitional paragraph is fun. Except for one point: at the very end, after the word canard, there is a colon. Seeing that, I immediately went back over it. "Did I miss other colons?" Not finding any, I ask, "Do I see places that would be a typo, where the Verse Daily people left out a colon?" And not finding any of that, either, I am then perplexed. "Why is that colon at the end of the line? Why wasn't that structure used throughout the list?" Well, perhaps that colon is the typo, and it should be a semi-colon (which is possible since they obviously typoed the italicizing of "our" in line 4). If so, what an unfortunate typo, because it throws the whole of the list into chaos.)

"A Moment" by Philip Schultz -- Poetry Daily, 2/24/13

from The Southern Review (Winter 2013)
poem found here
 

first lines:
A measurement of time
In which dogs live
 

lists and short lines

-- reformatted, editing and some rewriting 1/10/2014
 

---

A note after editing: while on rereading I stand by my observations, here. I should point out that it is a nearly unavoidable effect of speaking to points as "unsuccessful" that it sounds like you mean "glaring unsuccessful." Such is not the case, here. Much of the below is speaking about effects that are less than glaring, perhaps merely "present." But, as a reader, a stumbling point is a stumbling point is a stumbling point, irrespective of the size of the stone. And as a writer (speaking here in the general), finding such is a key skill. Sophistication develops when you learn to see and here stumbling points to which you were previously you were blind and deaf.

I should also add that I do not think the below is itself at all successful in what it wanted to do. Not one of my better posts. Possibly one of the worst. -- 1/10/2014

---

Lists. A staple of literature. I will admit, I love them. (I have not yet read Rabelais, the first great master of the list, but I have Joyce.) And not just lists qua lists, but lists as syntactic and semantic devices as well. (French literature (fiction and non) is filled with such.)

So, here, a list. What do I think of this poem?

First, starting with the obvious, there is the line length. Why so short? This is how the poem reads to me: "A measurement of time." "In which dogs live." "Without regret." "Or desire to enhance." "Their reputation." "And personal worth." "An idea designed." "To shelter contentment." "And regulate fretfulness."

Do you hear how clunky it is? To my eyes and ears, this is not a poem that is intentionally designed to to have short lines. It is sentences broken into short lines: there is no organic interaction between the line length and syntax (or rhythm). "Oh, but you should read it smoothly," one might say in defense. Then why break it into short lines? What was supposed to be gained in the act? Why not have longer lines (Whitman style); even, one line per sentence? In the least that would be recognizing the structure of the wording of the poem.

"Well, it creates a visual effect," one might try again. Except that poetry is by its nature aural. You have to give the reader overt reasons to not read a work aurally (as with much concrete poetry). So the response is, how can you justify a visual effect that creates such a terrible aural effect? 

"Well, then, it creates an emphasis on the phrases in the poem." Nice try, but no. Yes, it does create an emphasis on phrasing -- that is, perhaps, the fundamental effect of line breaks: to create, visually, "phrasing." Except, here, where so much of the language is abstract, if not of syntactic purpose alone, the idea can not stand justified by the poem: really, what is being highlighted, is that the "phrases" of the poem are actually quite uninspired, banal, even trivial. It is worth noticing, also, how, far down the poem, periods suddenly start appearing within the lines: a giveaway that structure was mis-attended to by a poet. Perhaps the phrasing would be more justifiable if the whole of the poem continued like the first half. But by the time you get to

of sanity. An end without a beginning. A room in which bad news resides. A wall

can there be said to be any reason behind the short lines except that the nature of the poem was simply "the lines will be short lines"? Now, that trailing away in short lines is somethin of a pop-postry convention, so you do see it. But the issue is does it work? Even the first half of the poem, do the short lines work? Is that over-punctuated aural effect a success for the poem?

(To note, I am not, actually, stating as fact that "phrasing" as such is the fundamental effect or purpose of line breaks. Nor am I saying it is not. But that statement is definitely something to throw into the ring to ponder and discuss.)

And what of the sentences? (Yes, obviously they are not proper sentences, but they are still sentences: the repeated "it is" -- or something such -- is implied.) There is a decreasing length of sentences, which is an oft seen structure. Of course, that structure is betrayed by the line lengths, which cuts everything down into short choppy phrases. But there is also the content of the sentences to examine. (It is not a bad idea to write the poem out into its constituent sentences. Not a bad idea to do this with any such poem, so as to see clearly the ideas that are -- or are not -- being generated.) So, we can presume the title is the first organizing element: so, what does it say? A moment. Singular. But what do we have in the body? 

Sentences two through seven ("An idea" through "A plea") work well together. (I am passing over phrasing: "a horrid memory or fear of the corner" does not work for me.) The first six are all descriptions of a moment's pause, which can work in their differences as creating a more complex idea than might be generated with a single statement. (Though, not a wholly successful execution thereof.) The final sentence of the group, "A plea," begins to expand out from the small container or the other six, moving out of "moment" into more an action.

But then the next one: "A ubiquitous cave of sanity." That phrase only works when you don't think about it. The minute you do, it becomes daft. There is the ideational clash between "ubiquitous" and "cave": one is expansive, one contractive. There is then the off-syntax: normal English would be "ubiquitous caves." (Or "ubiquitous cavey-ness" or such. And not that you have to stick with normal syntax: but when you vary, it has to work, and here it doesn't.) Then there is the ideational clash with the earlier lines, for example, "in order to regain one's reasonableness and equilibrium." The earlier line is a positive emotional idea, like the general tone of the others, giving the idea of "a moment" taken to move to the positive. But then you have "cave" -- which is not exactly something that fits with a theme of "coming out of a bad place into a good" -- and the longer "cave of sanity" -- which, even with the loosely positive idea of sanity is itself internally contradictory, again in that cave is contractive, while sanity is expansive.

From that point on, the sentences deteriorate. "An end without a beginning." Could you have a more trite usage? Yes, it is something that could very easily appear in "Four Quartets," say; but such a poem is crafted to generate ideas that fill phrases like "an end without a beginning" with complex, vibrant meaning. Throwing out phrases like that to do the heavy lifting rarely works. Here, it is little more than a cheap ploy to to bring in some koan-like profoundity. Besides, how does that fit with sentences 2-6? Does it even carry a successful idea? It should have been killed the moment it was written.

"A wall behind which nothing more waits to happen": possibly an interesting phrase on its own -- though its poetic utility I would question until proven otherwise. Here, it does not work for me. It does not meld with what precedes it. It doesn't aid to poetic unity. (There is even a clash in semantic rhythms, but that is something too subtle for this context.)

And the rest? How are they anything but a jumble of clashing phrases? The aim of a poem structured like this would be (generally) to have the ideation be both developing and congealing as the poem moves along. But can either be said here? especially when the title frames the poems as "a moment"? Far more accurate a statement is that the poem loses control of itself and becomes, merely, a list. And not a very interesting, nor very good one at that.

But, again, this is very much a type of poem you see in pop-poetry, both in subject and in form, from the short lines to the shifting rhetoric. So I can see how it looks like a successful poem. And, because it follows a type, that type will for many readers be sufficient to its success. But that is a poor way to read anything.

So, to go back to the first question, why the short lines? First, I would say, because of the influence of pop conventionality. But also, perhaps, because once implemented, it they serve to hide the problems with the language of the poem. But then I could also say the problems of the poem were created by the short lines, no?

And it is very important that: I see it not infrequently how arbitrary lines create an effect that hides what a natural reading would reveal; and also how they create as many problems as they artificially cure. So care with those line breaks. They very well may be getting in the way of your own crafting of the poem.

To say it a different way, if you are crafting a poem with short line breaks, and you are not intentionally designing each line to succeed as a short line, then you are failing.

To say it yet another way: Don't make line breaks; craft lines.

So what do I think about this poem? All in all I think it fails. Though, breaking a bit from the above, it does read to me like an interesting experiment that did not work -- which makes it a profitable poem from which to learn.

 
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On the positive -- though, because of the distance involved it is underplayed here -- I want to point out the two phrases "regret" and "regulate fretfulness." Do you notice how well they work together aurally? Not just work together, but play together. That is some of the goodness of poetry right there, I tell ya', bud.