Sam Coleridge Goes to the Superbowl

an exercise in deep reading

 

So, as I am sure everyone knows, there has been no small squall over "the play" that ended the Superbowl, Sunday last. Seahawks coach Pete Carroll has taken on a lot of abuse for the call that resulted in an interception and a victory for the Patriots: the most commonly uttered seven-word phrase in English today is "the dumbest play in Super Bowl history." Even I, at first glance, was questioning, "Why in the world didn't you run it?!?!" Though, quickly enough, I did come up with one possibility: Seattle had only one time-out in pocket, and three downs to get into the end zone. Calling a pass play on one of the first two downs (which would either result in a score or an incompletion) would save the time out for if a called running play fails to get in. If you ran on the first play, defense would know the odds of a pass play on the next would be much higher.

Admittedly, that is not the strongest of arguments; but, it is an argument. Since then I have found out a bit more information.

"Journey of the Magi" by T.S. Eliot

poem can be found here

 

line construction, and sham or genuine poetics

– minor editing, Jan. 20, 2015
 
This post has been added to the Hatter's Cabinet site via its Best of the Poetry Daily Critique page
 

Perhaps it is not as often the case as once might have been, with pop-poetry being so inundated with bad free verse, if not defined by bad free verse, that the question of enjambement is one of the first, major, creative explorations in poetics for novices. Though, in truth, that statement does not fit my own experience with younger explorers of poetry. That experience points to that the natural tendency is to write in defined lines and explore through defined lines, even if not formal lines, and enjambement is a complexity added much later to that base idea. But then again, looking at poetry posting sites online, that individual experience may not be telling of the statistical norm. Irrespective, I know I am not the first person to say that free styling culture of poetry of the last half century has had a detrimental effect on the ability to read and hear poetic structure.

You would have to work to convince me that even a substantial minority of pop-poets have any real, organic idea of the line, or write their poetry through any such idea. There is far too much bad prose with line breaks being published in books and chapbooks and mags. This goes for formal poets as well, who to most appearances defer the considerations of writing lines (couplets, stanzas) to the mechanical procedure of rhythms and rhymes.

In my own introductions to writing poetry the idea of enjambement was something counter – contrapuntal – to the beginning want to write lines; it was an idea that was at the start not wholly trusted, something that had to be explored, justified, before being implemented. It was (for me) introduced through what I am sure are familiar phrases: a means to have the flow of the poem cross lines; a means to create importance or energy by varying from a norm within a poem of end-stopped lines. Given such justifications, my fellow, novice writers would merrily introduce enjambement into their writing – or increase its frequency if already present. They would then learn how to defend the use of the running lines through the same or similar phrasings: "It creates a more natural flow" or "It creates an interesting moment in its variation." And you will hear the same and similar justifications by poets higher up the learning curve, even for poetry that exhibits a dearth of end stopped lines. Lest I forget, there is also that most important one: "that is how contemporary poetry is written."

My Life by Lyn Hejinian

My Life (Sun & Moon Press, 1987) – apparently this is a second edition, differing from a 1980 edition also published by Sun & Moon Press.

 
Other works:

William S. Burroughs. The Soft Machine, The Ticket that Exploded, The Nova Express (Grove Press, originally published 1961, 1962, 1964)

Marjorie Perloff. The Dance of the Intellect: Studies in the Poetry of the Pound Tradition (Northwestern UP, 1985).

 

a question of confidence; an issue of strength

 

Hejinian's My Life is usually classed as prose. But because of (1) the nature of the book, (2) Hejinian's relation to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and (3) the issues covered, it fits well on this site.

This full length essay has been posted as well to Hatters Cabinet site, here. On that page is a link to the essay in pdf format.

 

I have read Lyn Hejinian's My Life twice (if I remember correctly). And with "read" it should be understood that both times I was forcing my way through the book. I did not get to the end by the energies of the pleasure of reading; I got to the end because, for essentially academic reasons (if self-imposed), I felt it necessary: the first go through was because I felt I needed a basic familiarity with the book; the second was because I wanted to affirm or reject my first response. If that response has somehow evaded you in this paragraph I will be blunt: no, I do not hold My Life to be meritable literature.

I picked it up again a couple months ago (indeed, I pick it up here and there when I come across its name to test it yet again) and it has since sat within arm's reach at one reading place or another, though mostly I have only been re-reading the first few chapters. The reason I picked it back up this time was because I have recently finished re-reading Burroughs's Nova Trilogy, and wanted to explore the differences between the works, as both present a fragmentary text though of different methods and natures. (For the record, that was the second time I had read the Nova Trilogy straight through; though, unlike My Life, I first came to the trilogy because Naked Lunch and Cities of the Red Night had already made me an admirer of Burroughs.)

The question that I was and am exploring is a simple one: why do I revel in and praise Burroughs but am bored by and reject Hejinian?

"Metzengerstein" by Edgar Allen Poe

Story found here

 

it takes two to tango

 

A quick post on something I caught last night while chilling with Poe. It is from a short story, yes, but the event applies across literature. The moment lies in this sentence:

Stupified with terror, the young nobleman tottered to the door.

Compare it to this construction:

Terrified, the young nobleman tottered to the door.

The difference between the two is that in the latter, the idea of terror is merely stated, while in the former, the idea of terror is given energy through effect. It may seem a very simple thing but it is actually an example of something central to literature: a direct statement is energically dead without a second idea with which to interact.

That said, we need to add one more construction:

Terrified, stupified, the young nobleman tottered to the door.

Is the "with" relationship necessary? I would say not necessary to the end of coupling the two ideas, but definitely to greater success. It is not that you are giving the reader guidance as to how to couple the ideas. You are, for sure. But what makes it better is that you creating a structure out of the two words rather than merely dropping them onto the page, leaving them there for the reader to find something with which to do with them.

 

Which, now that I write it, is a curious thing. I have been thinking recently about the difference between William S. Burroughs's cut-up, Nova Express Trilogy and works such as Lyn Heijinian's My Life, asking myself why I find the former so interesting and the latter so banal. And I am wondering if it has to do with that even though Burrough's cut-up is fragmented to the nth degree, books written with the intent of creating "novel[s] presented through a series of oblique references," there is still, within the texts as a whole, relationships being generated between the elements. But in My Life, the ideas presented are more like a jumbled, disorganized list.

I have been planning on rereading My Life (again), having recently reread Burroughs and large parts of Williams's Paterson (which is related, though it may not be clear why). Now I have an hypothesis to carry in to the book. I will let you know what I find.

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

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

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

an exploration of poetic structure

 

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

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

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

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

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

"Mariana" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Originally published 1830.
Poem found here

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

poetic structure: aesthetic ideation vs. brute factuality

 

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

 

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

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

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