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.

 

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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.)

"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.

"The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot

"The Hollow Men" can be found here [link]
 

some of Eliot's own line periods

 

Perhaps I move a touch too quickly with this post. In defense my intent here, as with other posts of this nature, is not to argue definitively but to prompt thought.

 

Seeing a small word – an adverb or pronoun or conjunction – at the end of a line is these days a too reliable cue that the break is unpurposed, in continuation of the previous post that the line carries no sense of a line period, that it is not a constructed line; such words are too frequently strong evidence that the text is not verse at all but prose with line breaks pretending to verse.

Take, as a quick example, and possibly too easy an example, Philip Levine's "The Second Coming," which appears in the February Poetry Magazine, found online here [link]. Out of eight lines, five of them end in small words: "the," "only," "is," "a," and "of." At first glance – indeed at that first "the" – a reader should know that the text is not verse, that it will show little of that fundamental quality of verse, the crafted line.

That the text is shaped does not defeat the assessment, it does not magically turn a prose text into verse. One need only think about the shaping of text in magazine advertisements as cases in point. There is nothing about concrete shape that excludes the possibility of crafting lines, as such

that

the text

is physically

shaped does not

excuse the author who

desires to write verse from

the requirement of writing lines.

Tamburlaine the Great, Pt 1 by Christopher Marlowe

Back from my break. To say, I was able to finish the project for which I had blocked off the time. Which is a good thing. Perhaps the final result was not as good as I had hoped for, but we can't expect the best results every time.

As I said on my last post, initiating the break, I am unsure how I want to proceed with this blog. The longer posts like this one are fun, but can also be laborious. And I would like to try to give more effort to smaller, "spur of the moment" posts, as well as more posts that respond directly to verse. Whether and how I might do that, however, I do not yet know.

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the line period

 

My launching point for this excursion is a moment from T.S. Eliot's "The Blank Verse of Marlowe" (found in The Sacred Wood). There is no reason not to get right to it, so:

The verse accomplishments of Tamburlaine are notably two: Marlowe gets into blank verse the melody of Spenser, and he gets a new driving power by reinforcing the sentence period against the line period. The rapid long sentence, running line into line, as in the famous soliloquies "Nature commended of four elements" and "What is beauty, with my sufferings, then" marks the certain escape of blank verse from the rhymed couplet, and from the elegiac or rather pastoral note of Surrey, to which Tennyson returned.

We will pick up Marlowe shortly. Right now I want to focus on the concept the Eliot brings into his discussion of Marlowe, that of the line period.

It is a wonderful term. It is not synonymous with line break, and the reasons why are important and speak to its general superiority. For a line break can be arbitrarily had. Simply apply a carriage return and, voilà, you have a line break. However, a line period – as with the sentence period – speaks to a construction that is attending to far more than the mere question of where the line ends. A sentence period does not exist merely because it marks the end of the sentence. The presence of the period speaks to the nature of the words that precede it – and to the words that follow it in that a period also marks the beginning of a new sentence.

"the mind is its own beautiful prisoner" by E.E. Cummings

The text of the verse is found on-line, here [link]. To note, there is variation in how the verse is published. In the Collected Poems: 1922-1938, it is published as presented on the website (so also, then, I presume, in 100 Selected Poems, the named source for the linked page). In the Complete Poems: 1913-1962, however, the text is presented with spaces after all punctuation. (I do not know how the verse is presented in the most recent edition of the Complete.) As well, in both the Collected and the Complete, the text reads "Mine" in the second line, not "Mind": we can presume that is a typo.

 

the erotic and the merely sexual

 

The presentation here is divided, the theoretic discussion first, the exploration of the verse coming after. Most of the work of this essay will lie in that opening discussion; as such, it will be a relatively short exploration. However, because the verse is such a good example for the ideas being presented, it is my thought that by keeping the verse in mind from the start both the verse might work as demonstration of the theory and the theory might work as explication of the verse even as the theoretic ideas are being presented. For that, and because of both the brevity of the verse and the differences in the online version and the version in the Complete, I will break from my normal habits[FN] and give the verse in full, here, to be read as part of my presentation. (As with most of Cummings's work, it is untitled.)

the mind is its own beautiful prisoner. Mine looked long at the sticky moon opening in dusk her new wings then decently hanged himself, one afternoon. The last thing he saw was you naked amid unnaked things, your flesh, a succinct wandlike animal, a little strolling with the futile purr of blood; your sex squeaked like a billiard-cue chalking itself, as not to make an error, with twists spontaneously methodical. He suddenly tasted worms windows and roses he laughed, and closed his eyes as a girl closes her left hand upon a mirror.

 

************************ [FN] The main reason I do not normally give the text in the post is because having a link to the text permits having the text open in a separate window for reference. ************************

From very early on in my literary studies I have held to the belief that any theory of literature must successfully account for two test cases: the comedic and the erotic. That is, account for them as inherent to the proffered theory, without, as I have often seen, bracketing them in one manner or another as peculiarities lying outside the central ideas. While the test case of the comedic was to the fore of my puzzling early on, it has not maintained a central place in my thinking as has the erotic. In part, because it ended up being a puzzle solved by happenstance in my early theoretic studies. But in part also because my own creative writing, while often light hearted, is rarely out and out comedic: I thus had no practical impetus to study the comedic beyond a general understanding.

That is not so with the erotic. For not only has the erotic always and ever held interest to me as a field of study (not only in literature but across the arts), it has held and has maintained a position as one of the primary themes of my creative work. As such, I have continually been forced to confront, genuinely and in depth, the question of the relation between the erotic and the aesthetic[FN].

"Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" by Wallace Stevens and "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" by Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich's "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" can be found here [link]
Wallace Stevens's "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" can be found here [link]
 

another example of the difference between the poetic and prosaic modalities

 

In writing the previous post, it was not my original thought to follow up with more examples to the same point. Though, a door had been opened (if not a new door); and I was not unaverse to holding to the line of thought if opportunity presented itself. Which it did, by two unrelated online incidences, the first of which returned Wallace Stevens's "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" to my thoughts, the second of which brought Adrienne Rich's "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" to my attention. By coincidence, both verses feature tigers and use them in similar ways. Plus there is the bonus that "Disillusionment" is one of my favorite short verses by Stevens. So why not.

This post will differ from the previous in three ways. First, I am going to speak a little more about verseform, about the material aspects of the works. Second, in this post I cover the poetic work, Stevens's, and before the prosaic, Rich's. Third, I'm not going to dwell as much on the theoretic aspects of the poetic and prosaic; indeed, I may take this post in a different direction.

That said, I will begin with the reminder that while the prosaic works in the modality of the factual and the poetic in the modality of the symbolic, that does not mean that the poetic cannot or does not use factual statements. In the two verses under examination here the tigers appear in sentences that, on their own, are factual statements.

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen, bright topaz denizens of a world of green. Only, here and there, an old sailor, drunk and asleep in his boots, catches tigers in red weather.

"On their own" is key to the point. A prosaic text functions through independent statements logically coordinated into a whole. The statements in a prosaic text never move outside their own factual being. Putting two factual statements into coordination with each other does not change the nature or reading of the statements, even when the logical relationship established is one of opposition.

"Patterns" by Amy Lowell and "Garden" by H.D.

This ended up more an academic essay than a verse exploration post – not that I haven't posted essays here before. Despite it not turning out as planned, it fits in the mission statement, so I'll post it here as well as to the home site [link to page].

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Amy Lowell's "Patterns" found here [link]
H.D.'s "Garden" found here [link]
 

demonstrating the difference between the prosaic and poetic modes

 

Obviously, as one would guess from the title, Robert Duncan's The H.D. Book is an engagement with the works of H.D. (particularly her Trilogy). It is also an extended meditation upon the idea of Poetry: that is, capital-P Poetry; not "poetry" in the broad, populist, use of the word but in the sense of that literature that is the rarity in any and every period, that is that rarefied experience that separates Poetry from mundane verse. The primal scene of the book, the opening scene, is his first experience of what Duncan calls that "second order" of literature, in a high school classroom, in his having read to him by his teacher H.D.'s "Heat." It is a scene of revelation, in the context of the book a first initiation into the possibilities of that higher realm of literary (and artistic) experience. I will permit myself one extended quotation from The H.D. Book, one that speaks to that "second order" of literature:

More than sensation, then, more than impression, gave force to the image. It was not only a vivid representation of sensory data but an evocation of depth. Image in Amy Lowell's poem ["Patterns"] had meant that words could illustrate and give mood. But in this poem "Heat," image conveyed not only the appearance of things or the sensual feel of things and moods, but experience, the reciprocity between inner and outer realities. There was another working of the image, more than Amy Lowell proposed, back of sense and mood, partly conscious and partly unconscious. I was aware that sensual intensity in this poem of H.D.'s, like the sensual intensity in Lawrence's work, demanded some new beginning in life from my own intensity. Such images were more immediate and real than likenesses of seeing, hearing or smelling were. (42-43)[FN]

Duncan sets up Amy Lowell, specifically as regards the verse "Patterns" as counterpoint to H.D. and "Heat": both verses involve gardens, and both H.D. and Lowell were considered (or called) Imagists, though Pound did not consider Lowell all that much of an Imagist and H.D. was and remains the foremost Imagist. (As Duncan points out, Pound would later say he created Imagism primarily to promote H.D.'s work.) For Duncan, Lowell is of that "order of poems and stories that we must know all about if we were to be accomplished students" (38). Though, Duncan, there, is speaking both of texts that are of the same modality as "Patterns" and of the reading of texts in the manner that texts like "Pattens" can only be read. That is, I believe he includes the act of forcing second order texts to be read as though of the first order, turning them into those culturally requisite – which is also to say culturally safe – texts. (While Duncan does not explicitly make that statement, I believe it is inherent in his wording. The H.D. Book would not be written as it were if Duncan was not quite aware that there is no small body of literary criticism that strives to treat literature universally in just that way.)

Miller Lite

the question of -ly

 

A simple little note here on something that has been catching my ear on television. Currently, Miller Lite has in their ad campaigns gone back to pointing to the spelling of "lite" and how they began that habit. The catch phrase you hear on their commercials with this is

Spelled different because it is brewed different.

Which, obviously is grammatically incorrect. Those are adverbs, so the words should be differently.

Now, it does not surprise me that there would be language errors in an ad campaign: advertising, particularly what I hear on television and radio, seems to be permitting a greater and greater degree of sloppiness in their work. I frequently hear conjunctions and adverbs misused; it is not infrequent that I hear nouns or verbs used to the wrong definition or out and out clumsy sentence constructions; and occasionally I even here gross errors in fact. For example, I recently heard a local radio ad that used Little Red Riding Hood as an example of being choosy – the correct reference being of course Goldilocks. The ad didn't stay on the air very long, but there still waves the question of how did it get on the air in the first place.

But back to Miller Lite. Language changes over time. Everyone knows that. One of the changes that is happening in English today is that the -ly that marks adverbs is being dropped more and more. I have heard it said that the -ly is "disappearing from the language." From my listening, though, it does not seem that it is disappearing but that it is become permissibly optional. (Far, far more in speech than in writing.) If you drop the body of people who are mis-speaking because of dialect, lack of education, or lack of attention, it has seemed to me, from my listening, that people (and this includes myself) will sometimes use the -ly and sometimes not, and often for a purpose related to the utterance. For example, there is a sort of punch that you can create to a statement by using the adjective form instead of the adverb form, especially when the adjective form is one syllable. (You hear this used often in colloquial or slang constructions.) I also believe that people with a more developed poetic or musical ear will sometimes drop the -ly for the sake of rhythm.

Drinking to do

Yes, this is the first thing I've added here in nearly three months. Yes, it's a silly little thing. Get over it.

 

playing with composition and a note on ornament

 

So last week I was cleaning up a pile of loose notes, print ups, unlabeled manilla folders, doodle pages and the like, one of those piles that tends to grow on the back corner of your desk, or on top of your dictionary, or, as this one, on the shelf beside the notebooks, and I found in a beat up, mini, spiral notepad that I used to carry in my hip pocket (now I just carry folded paper) this little, quickly written ditty. (I copy it exactly as I found it. If there was prompt or purpose behind the note, I've forgotten it.)

Get off your asses There is beer in the glasses That are waiting for us just down the street. There's drinking to do when we get out of this stew And I'd rather not drink in defeat.

Since I seem temporarily incapable of writing something in depth for this blog, I thought it might be an interesting plaything.

 

Looking at the first stanza, the base rhythm should be familiar – not that it's from any particular work but it's commonly enough heard. It's essentially paired dactyls

` - - ` - - ` - - ` - - ` - - ` - - `

Only the last syllable on the first and second line is moved to the beginning of the next lines:

` - - ` - - ` - - ` - - ` - - ` - - `

The second stanza has some extra syllables – actually, enough extra syllables that it creates an extra foot. It is also not a repetition of the first stanza but a variation thereon: the first stanza has feminine rhymes: asses/glasses. The second stanza has masculine: do/stew. However, there is a kind of a slant feminine sound to the lines that echoes the first stanza.

. . . to DO when . . . this STEW and

How do we write the lines? If we follow the first stanza and go for the same rhythm, we get this.

there's DRINKing to DO when we get OUT of this STEW and i'd RAther not DRINK in deFEAT

Only, this shows that there is a flaw in the writing, created out of the combination of that extra syllable in the front of the fifth line and in that the syntactical phrase begins at the end of the fourth line. The natural reading is

there's DRINKing to DO when WE get OUT of this STEW

That extra syllable – which is really an extra foot – is a problem that has to be fixed before considering how to write the lines. But how to fix it? There are no contractions to work as written, but there may be with different wording.

there's DRINKing to DO when we're THROUGH with this STEW and

Fun rhyme but it doesn't mean the same thing at all. Same with

we're DONE with this STEW

Again, the wrong meaning. Really the phrase needs to be "out of." There is the simple fix of keeping the contracted "we're" but dropping "get."

there's DRINKing to DO when we're OUT of this STEW and

Which fits and works . . . . but is boring: between the "d" of "do" and the "t" of "out" there's not a hard sound to be found. That "get" is very much missing.

What about eliding that annoying "when"?

there's DRINKing to DO we get OUT of this STEW and

It's odd, but it works – but the oddity of it will have to be justified by the verse as a whole. To the negative it destroys that faux feminine rhyme, which pretty much kills writing it in the same manner as the first two lines. But with the rhythm already well established, do we really need to write the line as two lines?

There's drinking to do we get out of this stew

That's working for me. Plus, having the "and" slip down to the final line is not a catastrophe.

and i'd RAther not DRINK in deFEAT

Because the first two syllables are small words ("and I'd") and neither wants to pull the accent from "rather"; as such, the double lead-in is not out of bounds.

But it has to pass a certain test. Looking at the scansion,

- - ` - - ` - - `

you can see that there is the threat that the line might be read not as two dactyls but as three anapests.[FN] Reading the line out loud, however, demonstrates readily that that shift does not happen: the natural rhythm stays dactylic.

**************************** [FN] As example for such a shift, notice how the the extra and shifting syllable turned the dactylic get OUT of this STEW and [I'd] into the iambic when WE get OUT of this STEW. ****************************

This gives us as a final two (not three) lines:

There's drinking to do we get out of this stew And I'd rather not drink in defeat.

Which works just fine. Though, that colloquial elision still needs to be justified to be stronger.

So, back to the first three lines. There is the extra syllable in line 2, but that's easily fixed with the contraction.

Get of your asses There's beer in the glasses

Which leaves us with that mess of a third line.

That are waiting for us just down the street.

We'll keep

JUST down the STREET

and try to fix the rest.

The easy solution is "awaiting"

aWAITing us JUST down the STREET

But simply put I don't like it. It sounds too passive. However, the subject of the phrase could just as well be "beer", not "glasses." Indeed, it should be beer, because no one thinks ahead to empty glasses, no matter how cooled they are. As such, it should be "that is" not "that are."

that's WAITing for us JUST down the STREET

There's still an extra syllable. Why not elide it too? We'll also change "that" to "what" for the sound. Punctuating to taste, and this gives us, as a whole, this.

Get off your asses, There's beer in the glasses What's waiting us just down the street. There's drinking to do we get out of this stew And I'd rather not drink in defeat.

That's a nice enough little piece of light verse. It does have a semantic issue in that "getting out of a stew" rather implies victory of some sort, which would clash with the last line. Though, it need not imply victory; one can also merely get of the a stew with minimal damages.

But there's one more thing I'd like to try. How about another colloquialism – if it can even be called that; perhaps these quirks are better called idiom? That is, adding an -s to "off."

Get offs your asses

It's ornamental; but, ornament is an important part of any artistic endeavor. And like all good ornament it is not divorced from context of the work – after all, composition is everything.

 

Get offs your asses, There's beer in the glasses What's waiting us just down the street. There's drinking to do we get out of this stew And I'd rather not drink in defeat.

 

It adds to the susurrus of sibilants already present throughout the first four lines. But it also adds a soft, forward echo of "what's". Plus, it adds to the general, idiomatic flavor. Also, notice how the /fs/ combination slows down the annunciation of that first line? I like that too.

Not, it's not the king's English; it's not even ordinarily spoken English; but so what? It's interesting – which is what verse should be. Yeah, it's something of a judgment call, and I'm not saying the result is great verse by any means, but it is interesting. Which is one job – labor, pre-requisite to labor – that so many contemporary verse writers (free and formal) don't seem to recognize (or don't seem competent at): there's no reason to write verse if you're not making the verse – the material aspect of the text, the words, the reading of the words – interesting. Indeed, that is a rather usable definition of the difference between verse and basic, communicative prose: verse is prose made interesting in itself. (Note that meter and rhyme do not in themselves necessarily make verse interesting, just as arbitrary line breaks do not necessarily make prose interesting . . . . or even verse.) As long as it's justified by the whole of the verse – here, idiom that only lasts a single line would have come off as a cheap gimmick to permit a line of verse – then go for it. Make it interesting. There's nothing more pointless than uninteresting verse, no matter what the subject is. I'd rather read clumsy interesting verse than clean uninteresting verse any day. At least the former shows possibility.

"Year of the Cat" by Al Stewart

from Year of the Cat (1976)

similes, and metaphoricity

 

corrected some formatting errors with the block quotes – Apr. 28, 2017

 

A few months ago I heard Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat" (1976) for the first time in a long, long while – heard it where I could stop and listen, not heard it as, say, background music during a shopping tour. It was one of my favorites, once upon a time: you have to like its tapping into noirish thematics (both lyrically and musically) and its preference for musical understatement; and there is a strangeness to it, an "I am unlike the rest," even for it being but good pop. But that is touching only on what strikes me about it, and is neither here nor there elsewise.

However, the opening stanzas of the song offer an excellent text for demonstrating and exploring the difference between simile and metaphor, a line of thought I opened a couple of posts ago in part VI of the Poetry Magazine series [link] with hopes of finding just such an opportunity (perhaps not the last).

So, here's a youtube of the song if you are unfamiliar or want to hear it again. (It is patient in its leading in, so the lyrics don't start until just after 1:00.)

And here are the opening stanzas.

On a morning from a Bogart movie In a country where they turn back time You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre Contemplating a crime She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running Like a watercolor in the rain Don't bother asking for explanations She'll just tell you that she came In the year of the cat

There are two similes in the stanzas. The first one ("like Peter Lorre") is straight forward, and offers simple example of what a simile does. The second ("like a watercolor") is part of a tangle of ideation that gives us the contrast necessary to see what a simile does not – and cannot – do by way of what a metaphor can do.

Some notes before continuing:

The Grass at Wivenhoe Park

What with the Poetry Magazine series over, after that series of very long posts; what with the opening up of the variety of posts I put up here that had been going on previously; and what with me having some things to catch up on now that that last series is out of my head; I am going to permit some new rhythms on this blog, and post things for a while simply as they come to mind, not worrying about how in depth they run, or how astutely they present themselves or even how immediately or particularly they apply to verse. As well, after the bog of bad verse that was the terrain that series, I need to actually enjoy literature and language for a while.

---

 

a note on confidence

A little writing observation:

In a comment I wrote on a wandering Facebook thread I gave the sentence

"Related to that is when Constable painted grass that was lit by sunlight a yellow color."[FN]

First draft I wrote the sentence more condensedly:

"Related to that is when Constable painted grass lit by sunlight yellow."

It's a better sentence in my eyes; tighter, more controlled; exhibiting more control. Completely correct grammatically and syntactically. But there is that semantic wobbling in whether "lit by sunlight" belongs to "grass" or "yellow." (The wobbling is amplified by rhythms that want to push "lit my sunlight" away from green and toward yellow.) My interest, the question the sentence raised in my head, was in that semantic aspect: the balance that must be weighed is whether the degree of ambiguity created is too much to permit the much more interesting construction? (I am mostly but not completely ignoring that this was in a Facebook post and not a formal text.)

************************* [FN] In transparency, to prevent accusations of shenanigans, the original sentence was actually, "Related to that is when the Impressionists in England [. . .]": a fact I knew immediately after hitting "Enter" to be incorrect. And as quickly I was off track down and correct the error. I could not find an exact reference, but am now 98% confident that the event of which I was thinking involved Constable's Wivenhoe Park. Though, that 2% is not rhetorical. If anybody has the reference for sure . . . . *************************

Now, grammatically, the sentence as written, if the sentence could be assumed to be written by someone who knew how to wield their grammar with skill and grace, declares the modified noun to be "grass." If it were meant to modify "yellow" the modifying phrase could – and it might be argued should – have been written with hyphens: "lit-by-sunlight yellow."

A worthwhile point of grammar. But, it points to an even more interesting phenomenon, one I talk about not infrequently on this blog: confidence in the writer, or, more exactly, confidence in the text (and in the writer as generated by the text). If I had no confidence in the writer of such as the above, or, directly, if I did not think their writing was strong enough that they would know that the use of hyphens would clarify the situation, then I would be more likely to consider the phrase problematic and would advise against its use.

When a text is prone to clumsiness, a sophisticated reader is quite likely to read a cleverness as but one more clumsiness. If the text tells the reader that the writer is not clever enough to pull off such a thing, at best the event looks half-accidental – still not to the merit of the writer. To the other side, if the text as a whole gives the reader confidence as to the writer's technical abilities, the reader will be more likely to accept the phrase as a cleverness, as successful playing with writing.

In sum: Technical skill goes to far more than what you can do with language. It also goes to what the reader believes you can do with language.

Of course, the sophistication of the reader plays in the game as well. The crowds reacted violently against painting grass yellow: after all, what kind of an idiot paints green grass yellow? Except, in England, grass under sunlight does appear yellow. The viewing public was so bound by the conventionality of realist painting they could not recognize that the yellow was in fact a real event.