Three Poems by Sarah Arvio -- Poetrty Daily, 2/27/13

from night thoughts: 70 dream poems & notes from an analysis (Alfred A. Knopf)
poem found here
 

First lines:
there are still the bad dreams I have to say
a dram in the thought of a bad bad night
 

poetry and the dream; technique and the poetic whole

— reformatted, minor editing 1/26/2014
— this post has been added to the "Best of the PDC" page on my Hatter's Cabinet site.
 

Now, if you haven't looked it up yet, the book from which these poems come is a collection of poems created from actual dreams, with accompanying notes as to how those dreams played out in psychoanalysis. As such, the poems within the book as a whole probably has a context that is not carried outside the book. As such, there is no reason not to permit that the poems do not work as well outside the book as they would within. (Same as often happens when a chapter is excerpted out of a novel.) In fact, and especially because of the nature of the book, I rather expect it to be so. (Possibly, even, dramatically so.)

Nonetheless, I believe these poems offer something of interest for discussion as they stand on their own, either singly or as a triplet. But before that, a comment on dreams and creative writing.

As a general rule, it is a false step, a very poor approach, to translate your dreams into stories or poems. While the dream may have -- and obviously will have -- unity in your head, where is is an extension of your unconscious, that unity rarely translates onto the page. The exceptions to this rule prove the rule, because in most every exception the writer has used the dream as material to the making of a work (as opposed to simply writing down the dream). (If I remember correctly, Yeats's "The Cap and Bells" is such a poem.) And notice here I am not in any way saying do not let your dreams be source material. In fact, I insist that a writer should be listening to their dreams for source material -- it is in your unconscious, after all, where true creating originates. What I am saying is do not simply transcribe a dream onto paper and expect it to work some dream-like, mysterious effect. That effect must be created by the writer; it won't simply be carried in as dream by the mere fact that it originated as a dream. (There is also the obverse of this: don't write stories or poems that are, in context, a dream. It rarely works, almost always is a bad idea from the get go. Do it to try it out if you want. But recognize it will probably be far more interesting to you than to any sophisticated reader.)

 

That said, what do we have here? Most obviously, they are not dream journal. They are worked poems. She is not transcribing: the events of the source dreams are, for the most part, but raw material to a creating of micrcosmoi. (Let's hold for the moment the question whether or not they are wholly successful in this creating.) Narrative, such as the dreams offer it, is not at the forefront of these poems. And it should be acknowledge that narrative is not a necessary constituent of a poem-as-microcosmos. It is but a tool, and raw material, to such creating. In fact, when narrative becomes the central point of a creative writing, it will lead you away from the aesthetic, not toward it. (Such is genre, after all.)

What, then, is the nature her creating? There is, of course, a degree of control over the lines: the Amazon blurb calls them "irregular sonnets." Though, in that they hold to sonnet form only in their being fourteen lines, and in the lines hovering around but in no way clinging to five accented syllables per line (I wouldn't even say they were iambic), I have trouble calling them sonnets of any manner. What makes a sonnet is less the count of fourteen lines and more what happens within those fourteen lines. But that quibble is with the blurb; there is, nonetheless, a formality to these poems. (Perhaps my quibble is with the need to call them anything? Why can't it simply be that she is playing with a form of her own?)

But the real energy of Ms. Arvio's poems -- and looking at the Amazon preview of her second book, Sono, it may be this is very much her style -- is in the play along the lines. There are three techniques, here. First, stringing out sounds, as with "a bad potion potent with impotence" in the first poem, and "in a quarrel a quarrel of squirrels / showing their teeth I feel queasy & sick" in the third. Second, there is stringing out ideas, as with "cat . . . wildcat . . . manxman . . . catpal . . . kittened" in the second poem, or the play with "heart," "hole," and "hell" in the first.

But, what for me is the dominating technique (or should I say over-arching, or over-guiding technique) is the syntactic stringing together of phrases, as with the first poem's first four lines. On this, it is not simply that she eschews punctuation. She crafts the lines so that not only is punctuation not needed, but is not wanted. (There is a huge distinction between leaving out commas and writing lines that do not want commas, something which so many poets do not seem to understand.) 

What is the result? Obviously, every poem has a running, non-stop flow to it, without pause, without break. Also, the continual presence of her techniques creates a kind of mesentery that pulls the various elements of each poem together into a unity: they are not best described as a running, linear flow of words. The words, the sounds, the ideas, all interconnect within each poem. They are, to use Joyce's word, a great word (and these poems do remind me of Joyce's own manner of play), wordspiderwebs, something which very much gives description to the organic nature of the aesthetic work.

What I am inartfully trying to get at is that these poems are not merely technique. Three comments on technique:

1. Technique is but a tool. I have seen many works (in literary and other media) that are built with attention to technique but to no purpose of a greater creating. This very often with artists playing with mixed media, as though they believe that the technique of mixing the media is sufficient to a successful work. (And while we're here, let's accept it, people: most of John Cage's works are experiments of technique: essentially, he was a creative explorer, constantly asking, "what happens when I do this?", but not equally concerned with the unity of the result. They are often wonderful, intriguing, thought provoking experiments; but, still experiments.) The idea that technique is not sufficient to itself to art is why it is said, in the plastic arts, that mere reproduction of life is the lowest form of art (so also as I say with mere narrative and reportage): such art is, in the end, nothing but technique. 
2. Nonetheless, there can also be true creativity in technique, in that without technique, without interesting technique, the poem (or whatever) will rather lack in life, and become extremely vulnerable in its making to banality or conventionality. This may be what distinguishes the accessible to the inaccessible composition: the more complex, the more irregular the technique, the less easy it will be for someone unsophisticated in the medium to enter the experience of the work. (Consider the difference in compositional technique between Brahms, who is very accessible, and Mahler, who is less so, and then Schnittke, who is far less yet again.)
3. Technique made a purpose unto itself falls into conventionality and genre. Genre works are readily accessible to their readers because their technique is readily recognized and understood, and rarely changes. (U.S. drama is ridden with technique substituted as art. As a quick example to that rather sweeping statement: listen to the music of Rent; listen to the music of Hair. The former is a direct descendant of the conventions that were created out of the techniques brought to play in the latter. I will admit I have only seen the film and perfmormed scenes/exceprts of the play: but to me it is apparent Rent is a remarkably un-creative, derivitive, generic play.)

The question always to be thrown at technique is, "ok, there is a technique; but what are you going to do with it?" Which is the question which must be cast upon these three poems. There is fascinating technique here, very playful, very experiential; and the poems are brought into a kind of unity with those techniques. But do they truly succeed as individual and whole poems? or, are they more what I call "five-finger exercises": works imperfect in that they are not unified, independent creations, but which still perform to a somewhat-worthy degree, usually as a demonstration of some technique or form of play? A more common word is to call them fragments rather than poems. 

(I pause to remind you we are artificially taking these poem as we find them, outside the context of the book as whole.)

In that they play with dream-like experience, are they of the nature of surrealist experiments: interesting, but (as Batailles would point out to Breton's consternation) incomplete and insufficient as true poetry (true literature)?

Art, that is, the aesthetic when it is concerned in the creating of art (including literature and music), is inextricably about medium. This is much of what lies behind the truism that an aesthetic painter paints (in the end and most honestly) for other painters, a writer writes for other writers: that is, for the people who would most be able to appreciate their creations out of whatever medium, those people who themselves have dedicated themselves to the study and exploration of that medium. A poet, a writer, is supposed to be a lover of words and language. If not, then they are not a literary person, they are a diarist, a documentarian, a reporter merely. So, when someone does things like the play you see in these three poems, true literary people get off on it. It goes to the jouissance of literature; it is the very pleasure of literature (see Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads if you don't believe Derrida, Barthes, et al), it is the experience of the aesthetic. More simply, it is the point of it all. But not only: there is also -- there is more greatly -- the making of the microsmoi that are works of the aesthetic, the enjoyment of that wholeness, of the being, as it were, of the work. More accurately, the engagement of the individual with that work.

Literature as an aethetic endeavor is the attempt to create a cosmos out of words. (I resist the want to say 'create something new' because, in aesthetic creation, every work is, by definition, something new, is its own microcosmos, is its own experience. Thus the distinction between the aesthetic and the generic/conventional/cultural: the aesthetic creates microcosmoi, the generic reproduces the set conventions of the nomoi.) It is in organic that creative works have the most to offer the reader.

Thus the question: are these poems successful poems, or are they fragments? Do we have, here, three successful microcosmoi? My answer to that question is no: I believe the true microcosmoi being attempted here is not the individual poems but the book as a whole: and, as I said, I am very interested to see if that whole is successful. But, irrespective of that question, these poems (and we'll permit the word) are fascinating, enjoyable experiences, carrying even with only this small number of them much to discuss about poetry and the aesthetic, as I hope I have demonstrated. So, while I may not accept them as successful wholes, I gladly accept them as successful explorations of the aesthetic. 

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

from The Southern Review (Winter 2013)
poem found here
 

first lines:
A measurement of time
In which dogs live
 

lists and short lines

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

---

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
•

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

"The Caravaggio Room" by Ron Smith -- Poetry Daily, 2/22/13

from Plume (Issue 19)
poem found here
 

first lines:
"Yuck," you heace in front of that sick boy
with the grey face. "Bacchus, my ass," you say
 

center formatting

-- reformatted, some editing 1/10/2014
 

All you poets, all you poets in training, all you poets-to-be, let it be known throughout the realm:

 

Do Not Center. Ever.

 

Never ever. Never ever ever. Those occasions where center formatting works -- which is to say is a benefit to the organic whole of the poem -- are such rare occasions they are truly exceptions that prove the rule. The urge to center is a giveaway for poetic immaturity -- which is reason enough not to do it. It can make a good poem look like a fourteen-year-old's personal discovery blog. Do it in private to get a feel for the effect; but do not ever do it in public. Trust me on this. Nothing will deflate a sophisticated reader's anticipation, a reader you are hoping to get advice and constructive critique from, more quickly than being handed a page with a centered poem.

Most of the time, centering accomplishes little more than making the poem difficult to read. Not infrequently, very difficult to read. Especially, as here, where line lengths vary greatly, when your eyes have to work to find the beginning of the every next line. Even when the visual of the poem has the words spread about the page, you have to consider how easy it is to read, whether the poem flows with or against the natural, anticipatory reading movements of the eyes. This is, atually, an important consideration with poetry -- you can make a poem suck by making the reader have to work to hard to read it. Successfully working the space of the page takes practice, exploration. It is just like developing your ear. There are far greater issues that should be the concerns of people climbing the learning curve. Which is why you should take the advice and just don't do it.

"The Ruin" by Jacob Polley -- Poetry Daily, 2/21/13

from The Havocs (Picador)
poem found here
 

first lines:
What walls and gables, wonders still of workmanship.
Whoever's stronghold this was, havoc's jumbled it
 

lines and line breaks

-- reformatted, a lot of editing, and a footnote added 1/10/2014
 

In a guesture toward transparency: As I have said, every moment in a writer's work is burdened with the task of leaving the reader wanting the next moment. Mr. Polley succeeded in that task with me: The Havocs is now on ye old wishlist. But that does not mean I don't have comment.

I hate . . . . I cannot understate this, I hate "muscle women." It is far too slangy a phrase for the tone of the poem. Why not "muscled women"? Same idea, but in vein.[FN]

--------------------------------------- [FN] Now, interesting question, does "muscle women" sound the same on the other side of the ocean? But I should add, within the context of this blog, where texts are explored through engagement, that question is irrelevant. ---------------------------------------

But let's move to something a little more fruitful: the opening lines of the second stanza.

What happened? Ruin already had root. Plague came, within and without. No one, however high, whatever wit,

I have been writing a lot about line breaks. It is not merely incidence of the poems presented. I find the issue of lines and line breaks to be a fundamental issue of the medium of poetry -- and one that is grossly unstudied and unquestioned by most poets of the level you normally see in journals sites such as Poetry Daily. In most poetry, it seems a given that the line breaks were acts of convenience, or are typographical considerations rather than aesthetic considerations. Yes, line lenght is a consideration: poems are visual as well. But you do not simply pull out pruning shears and hack off the lines two inches above the 'V.' If line length is important, you craft lines that fit the length (as, for example, did William Carlos Williams).

In blunt: the visual aspect can never be allowed to override the more elemental notion of crafting a line.

It is one of those peculiarities of the English language that even with formal meter line lengths can vary greatly. After all, "end" and "strength" are both one syllable, no? (Same goes with the aural aspect, which is one of the reasons why it is impossible to write true haiku in English. But, that's beside the point.)[FN] And I find it a peculiarly humorous when, with a sonnet, for example, one line sticks out an inch beyond the others. But that is just how it goes. English is a very strange language when it comes down to it, and for it there is created a great many peculiarities in literature.

--------------------------------------- [FN] Unless, that is, they actually paid attention to writing syllables that, in English, had nearly the same aural length. Something I have never seen, and yet something that, to me, seems obvious. ---------------------------------------

So I wonder, then, if it there was influence from the visual side of things that led Mr. Polley to split the phrase "within or without" at the line break. Unfortunately, for me it created an odd reading. Yes, you can say that the line break creates a pause -- which one often hears when such a phrase is spoken in conversation. But that pause sounds for me rather against the rhythms of the rest of the poem. (Indeed, more than rather: wholly against it.)

Also, the pause as written is against how the poem is written. Usually, you make such a pause in speech in order to accentuate the second word: a pregnant pause, as it were. But, here, it is the first word that is the more unexpected.

Because of the break, the reading is put off a touch. And in an otherwise smooth read that little bit off comes off as a big bit off. A well crafted poem establishes and holds to (even with variation) its rhythms. A sophisticated reader looks for those rhythms, and reads the poem within them. A break from that sound can only sound like a mistake -- if it is not crafted to sound intention (which, in the end, is still of the rhythms of the poem). Yet, if Polley had not made the break, that first line would have been a long one, visually. (There is not a set measure for each line, so that is not in consideration.) So, again, I wonder if the visual pushed him into a slight clumsiness. Which is odd, because it seems to me there is an elegant solution: cut "came" to get "Plague, within and without," and keep it on one line.

But, then, would line two have looked, felt, seemed too short?

A Cup of Water Turns Into a Rose (excerpt) by Lawrence Raab -- Poetry Daily, 2/20/13

from A Cup of Water Turns Into a Rose (Adastra Press)
poem found here
 

first lines:
On the radio a choir was singing
"I want to be a crocus"
 

line breaks and poetic structure

-- reformatted, with some editing 12/10/2013
 

First off, a note on my choice of texts: I will generally avoid commenting on fragments (unless, as here, my point has only to do with some small detail within the fragment) and with translations (since I rather want to avoid the (weak but bothersome) defense, "well, that is how the original goes"). Both situations carry a context that usually makes explorations too problematic to be worth the while. Though, with the former, there is still an avenue of approach: simply pretend the fragment offered is the whole of the poem: something completely valid when the point is not to make comment about the poem but to explore poetics or such, in which case the limits of source text can be whatever aids the exploration.
 

Two days in a row with grammar, though, this time with both a negative and a positive example.

First, the negative: line 4: "One of the three men who wasn't me."

Did you catch it? The verb should be "weren't."

As written, the restrictive who-clause applies only to the one man, which rather doesn't make sense because then the restrictive nature of the syntax as regards the "the" in "the three" is isolating the group of three from . . . well . . . there's no larger group from which to isolate them. Also, in that the who clause is restrictive, it needs to apply to the group, not just the one man, other wise the syntax -- not necessarily is incorrect -- but feels slightly off.

So, now it's "One of the three men who weren't me." Is there now a problem with the restrictive clause? No: the three men are being isolated within the larger group of four people, the three plus the speaker. Now, it should be noticed that it does limit the total of the group to four. Which is not a problem, here; that is the case. But I wanted to complete the thought.

Now to the positive: the first stanza. Notice that there is an absense of commas where they would normally be with regular grammar as concerns quoted speech. This is ok here -- especially ok here -- in that Mr. Raab uses the line breaks to substitute for the commas. It works well enough.[FN]

******************************** [FN] Personally, I would be unsatisfied with the overall result, and would indent that second line. If no indent, I'd include the commas. Except in that I wouldn't write it that way at all: I hate the sound -- and visual -- of the whole stanza. "I want to be a crocus" doesn't seem to me strong enough to merit occupying the whole of the line. But that's me. And, yes, there should, technically, be a comma after "mournful"; but that is often dropped under the law of "poetic license." Not necessarily correctly so, though; and, here, I think it should be there. ********************************

Except that it is rather odd that the writer decided here not to use commas when the fragment as a whole is replete with them, flooded with them (with the occasional dash substituting at points for reasons I of which I can't quite convince myself their validity). Talk about runaway run-ons, I tell ya.

But there is now a problem. In the first stanza of his poem, he establishes that he is willing to use line breaks as a kind of punctuation. Yet, within the rest of the fragment of the poem (as presented) -- which comes to some 85 lines if I didn't miscount -- there is no evidence that he at all is paying attention to line breaks. So, as a reader who is paying attention, what do I get: first, the use of line breaks as punctuation in the first stanza now stands out as an aberration in the poem; even, an error, in the sense that the first stanza does not follow the rules of the rest of the poem.

This creates a new problem. So maybe, then, the reading that the line breaks are substituting for commas is incorrect (since it is not repeated), and the words in quotation marks is not the words the choir was singing, but the title of what the choir was singing -- the grammar for which would not require commas. But, then, the words are not capitalized, so that's not right either. But then there is a problem in that the stanza is not using the same rules as the rest of the poem . . . so I am still left in a quandary.

Then, of course, as a reader who is paying attention, I also ask myself, why the hell isn't he paying attention to line breaks? Especially when the nature of the syntax of the poem (i.e., the stringing together of phrases into long runs) would greatly benefit from such: it would make the reading a bit easier. With line breaks being meaningless, I am looking to the syntax to help me guide the reading rhythms of the poem; and with the grammar being that the text is, essentially, run on sentences, the poem reads with the same not-right-ness of prose constructed out of run-on sentences.

Yes, you can successfully create poems that have run-ons. Often this is accomplished by having the semantics be of lists; and, there are other ways. Here, however? I am not sure how successful it is. It seems out of control to me. But, again, it is but a fragment, and I wanted to limit myself to the points of grammar. So I will stop here. (Except to say you would think someone would catch a basic grammar error like on line 4.)

"Ars Poetica" by Natania Rosenfeld -- Poetry Daily, 2/19/13

from The Gettysburg Review (Spring 2013)
poem found here
 

first lines:
"Peace," says the soprano,
retired to the sea, "is the tide
 

free verse and the poetic ear (and grammar)

— reformatted, some editing 12/10/2013
— This post has been added to the "Best of the PDC" page on my Hatter's Cabinet site.
 

Note after the fact: I wrote this still early on in finding my sea legs. I rather don't like the tone because it is ambiguous as to whether I am speaking of the poet or the poem -- and I generally want to speak of the latter more than the former. Most definitely, the end of the stanza is terrible. But the cause behind the problem I wanted to leave open, and merely posit ideas to ponder. There is benefit to exploring the question of whether a poet is writing above or below their ability: a question I believe one should always be asking oneself. (Also made a couple of text corrections.) -- April 16, 2013
 

I'll begin in grammar . . . for in that the commas in lines 4 and 5 break so far from basic grammar, and because the syntax and the grammar, both before and after, are conventional, those commas are wrong. Incorrect.

Now, normally, I try to avoid using words in the domain of incorrect  -- terms that are of the modality of yes/no -- when talking about literature. I try to stay in the realm of sophistication and validity -- terms that reside in discourse and function only as and towards discourse, rather than truth. But there are time when, flatly, something is incorrect. Here, because

1. it involves grammar, which is not wholly manipulatable, being part of the medium of the work (specifically, here, the English language);
2. the work establishes itself within fairly conventional grammar; which is also to say, the work does not make effort to establish variations in conventional grammar;
3. the break from conventional grammar is severe.

As a sophisticated reader, there are two consequences. First, the reading is greatly disrupted. The lines are as clumsy as a drunk, bow-legged ox on platform shoes. Second, more importantly, I am left with the impression that either (1) the poet doesn't know how to use a semi-colon; or (2) the poet doesn't have a developed enough ear to hear the problem for themselves; or (3) the poet has an attitude toward their art that permits such laxity and apathy that they don't feel the need or obligation to learn their medium, or the need or obligation to give the degree of attention to their art to eliminate such problems. Whichever the reason, it makes the poem something not worth reading (or, greatly less worth reading), and diminishes the interest in the poem's maker. (Which is not a good thing.)

Of course, I could try to say it more simply by saying the writer of such a work is not terribly sophisticated (which is not the same as saying that the work does not show great sophistication, which is true); except that saying such eliminates an important distinction: there is a difference between a person whose work is unsophisticated but still at the level of the poet (or, hopefully, at the level of the poet striving to be better then where they are) and a person who is not bothering, who uses reasons and rationales (or a fundamental apathy) to permit a lackadaisical method and style. Which is why people like me condemn the permissibility in creative writing instruction of free verse: a poet has to develop their ear and ability through formal verse. I will give two general (and associated) reasons:

• First, it is harder to hear elegance, fluidity, control, in free verse than it is in formal verse (or, in reverse, it is easier to develop your poetic ear through formal verse).
• Second, it is far easier to develop bad habits -- and rationales for inattentiveness -- through free verse. (I should say, I have known many instances of such rationales being propagated through workshops and formal classes.)
• (If you need a more formal reason, then I point you again to Gombrich and his Art and Illusion, to the idea that an artist develops through education through schema, and learns in sophistication to break from schema.)

To sum (and we have been for a while wholly in the general): there is no excuse to not know your medium-language; there is no excuse for getting grammar wrong (which is to say, there is no excuse to not being proficient in grammar, and well-equipped in syntax); and, once again, such errors come off to sophisticated readers wholly to the disfavor of the poet. Always.

Which brings me once again to the question of publication: the editor in this case failed their journal, pure and simple. There is sophistication also in editorship, and, unlike the poem, which speaks only of itself, in terms of editorship such lack of attention speaks to the whole of the publication.

 
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An aside: I toy every once in a while with this question: "is it possible to tell from reading a poem whether the poet is of a lesser sophistication and trying something difficult to them, or whether the poet is simply not trying very hard." Given a large enough sample I think the usual case is yes. On a smaller sample, however, I flip flop. Sometimes it is obvious, as when errors are obviously mistakes (seen in comparison to the rest of the poem), or when the the nature of the attempted work speaks of exploration beyond the poet's current ability. Sometimes it is not so obvious. I am not sure what you can take home with this other than awareness of the question, which I think is more important than you might at first realize. And there you go.