E.E. Cummings, "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls"

Poem found here.

 

First lines:

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds

 

the proof is in the reading

 

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.

It is short, so read it a couple times to get the feel of it. Some quick notes toward that end:

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.

Suzanne Batty, "Jesus on a Train from Mumbai"

unity and effect

 

"Jesus on a Train from Mumbai" is found here.

 

First lines:
I was dragged from the train by English tourists as the tall man
from Tamil Nadu called “coffee coffee” in his soft, sad voice.

 

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.

Take a look at these well-known lines by William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheel Barrow":

so much depends upon   a red wheel barrow   glazed with rain water   beside the white chickens

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:

So much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.

An Engagement with Strunk and White

Something I forgot to mention —

Strunk and White 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).

If you are interested, it is found here [link]. 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.

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.

Laurie Sheck, The Willow Grove

just because it looks like poetry, doesn't mean it's poetry

 

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 The Willow Grove 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.

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:

pressed between the other, similar last names, laid down there in print deep black as the wires that carry one human voice to another.

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?

Then came "The Storeroom" (5), and such as:

And what tense in which the musty dampness holds the ovens like moldy, unrocked cradles, eye-holes, graves, and street-cries skip and flare above our listening, but they are muffled from back here, as if they could not touch us, yet still here?

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 in the abandoned bakery being felt within the storeroom? And at a very basic level you have to ask, why is 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.

Freda Downie, "Moon"

non-sequiturs and the composition

 

So I have been reading the British writer Freda Downie's Collected Poems. 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.

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:

And when she turned away to mark his music, He sighed and looked to the window to see His bicycle gleaming in the early dusk Against the rain-wet trunk of the apple tree.

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 poetic 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).

Life in the Cereal Aisle

the poetic line

 

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.

Take this phrase that I have been playing around with (unfortunately to little fruition):

time well spent in the cereal aisle

Except, that's not the phrase I'm playing with. This is:

time spent well in the cereal aisle

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:

time spent well in the cereal aisle spent well ------- cereal aisle speh / ell ---------- see / ayl seh / ell ----------- see / ayl

So that you can read it without going back up, and hear what is going on:

time well spent in the cereal aisle

vs.

time spent well in the cereal aisle

Do you hear the aural construction that is created by reversing the order of "well spent"?

Amanda Gorman, "The Hill We Climb"

bad verse is bad verse

 

Addendum before the text:

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 The New Yorker site [link]. 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 New Yorker page. And that should be recognized.

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.

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 New Yorker 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.

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 poetry. 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.

 
 

Recently an essay on the Chained Muse site [link] was brought to my attention, wherein its author, Adam Sedia, brought to task Amanda Gorman and her inauguration poem, "The Hill We Climb."

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, really 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.

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.

And, if may add a fourth, perhaps a show of solidarity is merited.

C.K. Stead and "Eliot's 'Dark Embryo'"

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.

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.

 

---

 

verse vs. poetry

 

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, The New Poetic: Yeats to Eliot (1964) and Pound, Yeats, Eliot and the Modernist Movement (1986). (Both of which I greatly recommend.) In the latter I came across again a moment in criticism that is a favorite of mine.

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, The Waste Land 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 as the mind moves, 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 The Waste Land was) it is hardly possible to say more than "Here is the territory – plunge in, experience it, and report back." (165-66)

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 The Waste Land is not merely in that it is in some objective way "better" than other verse, but in that it is fundamentally different from most other verse. It acts differently on the receptive reader.

Within the context of this blog, that difference is obvious: The Waste Land 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 true poetry.

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 The New Poetic. 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.)

The Knossian Oracles – Yours Truly

If I may take a moment to talk about something I made.

Let me introduce The Knossian Oracles. 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?

What is The Knossian Oracles? Here is the description I am using on the Amazon page:

 

The Knossian Oracles 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, The Knossian Oracles explores (what may be) its central theme: the hieros gamos, 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 The Knossian Oracles 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 The Knossian Oracles, how can you begin to distinguish what in the above is current and what is river?

While The Knossian Oracles 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.

 

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 "About The Knossian Oracles" page [link] on my website. If you would like to go directly to the text and see what it is for yourself, then here is the first page [link].

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, And the Light Falls, Remir. It is the climax and perhaps the high point of the book. Though, keep in the mind the Oracles 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.

 

Those links again:
     To: the "About" page
     To: the Title page

Update

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.

"A Bushel and a Peck"

Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser

 

two somethings worth two moments' thought

 

Something short; well, two somethings short, that have caught my mind recently, both about the lyrics to "A Bushel and a Peck."

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. (Here's a Youtube of the song [link].)

 

My first thing:

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.

I love you a bushel and a peck A bushel and a peck though you make my heart a wreck Make my heart a wreck and you make my life a mess Make my life a mess, yes a mess of happiness

The question that always popped into my mind: what would happen, if anything, if I broke the lines up?

I love you A bushel and a peck A bushel and a peck Though you make my heart a wreck Make my heart a wreck And you make my life a mess Make my life a mess, Yes a mess of happiness

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.

It's a little thing, but I find it interesting.

 

Second thing:

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.)

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.

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.

"Orgy" by Muriel Rukeyser

From The Speed of Darkness (1968) as found in Collected Poems (2005)

"Orgy" is found on PoemHunter.com [link], but there is an error in the text there (see below)
 

First lines:
There were three of them that night.
They wanted it to happen in the first woman's room.

 

a reading of poetic eroticism

 

Taking a look this time at Muriel Rukeyser's "Orgy," presenting a reading of the verse.

But first a word first about Rukeyser's work in general. I purchased her Collected Poems 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.

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.

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.

"Narrow Flame" by Linda Gregerson

"Narrow Flame" is found on poets.org [link]
 

First lines:
Sun at the zenith. Greening
            earth.

 

shape: what works and what doesn't

 

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.

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.

 

(1)

There's a interesting event in stanza 6, but I want to work my way there. Beginning at the beginning:

Sun at the zenith. Greening             earth.

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.

The action begins with the next line, with the horse.

Slight buckling of the left hind leg.

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

"Black Locusts" by Cameron Barnett

from The Drowning Boy's Guide to Water(Autumn House Press)
"Black Locusts" is found on Verse Daily [link]
 

First lines:
There are no gardens in my neighborhood,
just three black locust trees

 

after closer reading . . . .

 

— a little text added at the end, Nov. 2, 2017

 

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.

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.

 

(1) Begin with the simile that starts on line 4.

All spring, cream-white petals blooming like baby teeth,

(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?

"On Poetry" by Ai Weiwei

AI Weiwei's "On Poetry" can be found here [link]
 

on the transportive quality of poetry

 

The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's short statement on poetry found in an issue of Poetry Magazine 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.

Beginning with the statement in the second paragraph.

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.

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.

And then we also can consider this:

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.

That's the opening sentence to Ross King's The Judgment of Paris, 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.

"The Circus Animals' Desertion" by W.B. Yeats

W.B. Yeats’s “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” can be found here [link]
 

the contextual nature of meter in English

 

Trigger warning: this post is about scansion and meter. Results may vary.

 

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.

That line of verse is found in the opening stanza of Yeats's "The Circus Animals' Desertion."

I sought a theme and sought for it in vain, I sought it daily for six weeks or so. Maybe at last being but a broken man I must be satisfied with my heart, although Winter and summer till old age began My circus animals were all on show,

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.

i SOUGHT / a THEME / and SOUGHT / for IT / in VAIN, i SOUGHT / it DAI / ly FOR / six WEEKS / or SO. may BE / at LAST / being BUT / a BROK /en MAN i MUST / be SAT / isfied WITH / my HEART, / al THOUGH WIN ter /and SUM /mer TILL /old AGE / be GAN my CIR / cus AN / i MALS / were ALL / on SHOW,

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.

"In Memory of W.B. Yeats" by W.H. Auden

W.H. Auden's "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" can be found here [link]
 

a reading

 

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 Collected. To note, this is not the same version found in the Selected, which has the original version of the poem, the primary difference being Part 3 having different stanzas.

In my previous post I took a look at W.H. Auden's The Sea and the Mirror, 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.

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]

The Sea and the Mirror by W.H. Auden

The Sea and the Mirror is in Google books [link]. You can scroll down to the Preface.

 

a note on difficulty

 

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 want to take a look at a moment in W.H. Auden's The Sea and the Mirror. The work, if you are unfamiliar with it, is, as the subtitle offers, "A Commentary on Shakespeare's The Tempest." 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 The Tempest as he reads it.[FN]

**************************** [FN] The Sea and the Mirror is found in the Vintage Collected Works. 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 The Sea and the Mirror, but for how it puts much of Auden's work in a philosophical context. ****************************

The reason I'm re-reading The Sea and the Mirror, 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 Changes of Heart: A Study in the Poetry of W.H. Auden (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 Collected, does permit it.

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 The Sea and the Mirror, though I will use only the one small part of the work – concentrating on a single stanza – as example to the whole.

"Taxing the Rain" by Penelope Shuttle

Penelope Shuttle's "Taxing the Rain" can be found here [link]
 

an exploration post

 

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 on her page [link]. (To note, it came my way formatted entirely in two-line stanzas, not as Winterson types it.)

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 shape 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."

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.

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?

Introduction to "The Kekulé Problem" by David Krakauer

the fear of empty space

 

Here is a curious moment from something recently published on the web. The article is "The Kekulé Problem" by Cormac McCarthy, published on the Nautilus site [link]. What caught my eye, however, lies in the introduction to the article. That intro begins:

Cormac McCarthy is best known to the world as a writer of novels. These include Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, and The Road. 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, [. . .]

It is necessary to context to know that the intro was written by one David Krakauer, himself a professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

My interest lies in the third sentence.

At the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) he is a research colleague and thought of in complementary terms.

There are two things here. First, a moment of syntax.