90th Chorus
I thought I was a phantom
me, myself,
Suffering. One night I saw
my older brother Gerard
Standing over my crib with wild
hair, as if he had just
pee-visited the pail
in the hall of snores
and headed for his room
was investigatin the Grail,
Nin & Ma's bedroom,
Who slept in the same bed
and in the crib alongside.
Oily is the moment so
that phantom was my brother
only in the sense that cotton
is soft,
Only in the sense that
When you die
you muffle
in your sigh
the thorny hard
regret of rocks
of life-belief.
I knew, I hoped, to go be saved.
from Mexico City Blues by Jack Kerouac, Grove Press, New York, 1990. Copyright 1959 by Jack Kerouac. (text indentation not preserved by blogger.com)
"Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful."
from Manifestoes of Surrealism by Andre Breton: Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane, trs. Ann Arbor Paperbacks, University of Michigan Press, 1972, p. 14. Copyright University of Michigan, 1969.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
One More Before I Go
I think I've neglected a particular type of poet in my remarks, especially this year.
Since I began this project in January 2008 with the cafe society of Open Mic Night in mind, I'd like to try and make full circle by addressing certain members of that diverse group before I close the project, for now.
Poets who "slam" or write for performance are gaining in popularity, and it's easy to see why. Fast, competitive (in slams) and full of streetwise energy, the slammers and "performance" poets (more than just slam poetry without the competition) cook their creations with rapid-fire rhyme and pulse-pounding rhythms, then season with a dash of irony and a pinch of salt-of-the earth wisdom.
Their Milton and Shakespeare are Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski. Far-fetched? Maybe. But, like Milton, Kerouac wrote an epic poem -- Mexico City Blues. And like the Shakespeare of the sonnets, Bukowski wrote a sequence in memory of his lost love, Liz, many of them in The Roominghouse Madrigals.
Poets who "slam" or write for performance are gaining in popularity, and it's easy to see why. Fast, competitive (in slams) and full of streetwise energy, the slammers and "performance" poets (more than just slam poetry without the competition) cook their creations with rapid-fire rhyme and pulse-pounding rhythms, then season with a dash of irony and a pinch of salt-of-the earth wisdom.
Their Milton and Shakespeare are Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski. Far-fetched? Maybe. But, like Milton, Kerouac wrote an epic poem -- Mexico City Blues. And like the Shakespeare of the sonnets, Bukowski wrote a sequence in memory of his lost love, Liz, many of them in The Roominghouse Madrigals.
Whether Kerouac and Bukowski are anyone else's guiding lights is another question. But, based on my exposure to slam and performance poetry, these men's best-known work created the ground performance artists stand on and formed the very air slammers breathe.
Like the slammers and performance poets of today, Bukowski and Kerouac were strong individualists who seemed to thrive on being misunderstood outsiders. But, unlike some slammers and performance artists I've heard, they stayed in control of their works' imagery (when it could be controlled), and their diction was rock solid, when solidity was needed.
In short, they were good writers. The misunderstanding surrounding both of them is that they were labeled "beat" poets. Instead, they were both surrealists. While I believe this is the key unlocking the riches hiding inside their edgy verses, I'll leave that task to the literary critics. What's important for slammers and performance poets alike is that Kerouac and Bukowski were writers in the American "hard-boiled" tradition, poets of the New World surreal and visionaries of the post-war era who gave testimony with unparalleled tragi-comic candor.
That candor, I believe, included their personal faults. Still, they communicated, and they "kept it real" -- even when life around them got very, very unreal. And I think they stayed true to themselves and to their experiences, however ugly or misshapen those experiences, or however faulty their lives, ultimately became.
In the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free, they were. You can do the same. Just don't expect it to come easy. And remember, there is always a price to be paid, whatever course you choose.
I'll be seeing you. Look for me in the cafe during Open Mic. I'll be the middle-aged paunch at the back table, sitting by himself and listening.
In short, they were good writers. The misunderstanding surrounding both of them is that they were labeled "beat" poets. Instead, they were both surrealists. While I believe this is the key unlocking the riches hiding inside their edgy verses, I'll leave that task to the literary critics. What's important for slammers and performance poets alike is that Kerouac and Bukowski were writers in the American "hard-boiled" tradition, poets of the New World surreal and visionaries of the post-war era who gave testimony with unparalleled tragi-comic candor.
That candor, I believe, included their personal faults. Still, they communicated, and they "kept it real" -- even when life around them got very, very unreal. And I think they stayed true to themselves and to their experiences, however ugly or misshapen those experiences, or however faulty their lives, ultimately became.
In the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free, they were. You can do the same. Just don't expect it to come easy. And remember, there is always a price to be paid, whatever course you choose.
I'll be seeing you. Look for me in the cafe during Open Mic. I'll be the middle-aged paunch at the back table, sitting by himself and listening.
Make me smile.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
What You Say!
I used a term last time that literary critics employ in discussing poets and their work. A poet's "diction" is simply choice in language and phrasing.
To critics, diction is an important first reference in a poet's work, because that's what readers first encounter, especially when the poet is otherwise unknown to them.
But I'm putting it last because, for us, diction is more of a destination. Diction -- the term harkening back to poetry's roots as an oral medium -- is essential to your watermark. It's what people normally see lying directly behind your work, rather than those responses to innermost thoughts and experiences that create the watermark's stamp itself. The difference would be like that between the corporate logo and what (and who) made it.
I recall reading several years ago a book, Poetic Diction, that obviously went into detail about this subject. The thing I recall most distinctly is that the writer saw a profound difference between the phrases "prophets old" and "old prophets."
The first phrase, and its characteristic adjective/noun inversion, is -- of course -- Milton's. The diction critic was saying that the Miltonic phrase resounds with ancient echoes, while the term "old prophets" merely calls to mind elderly soothsayers. Milton's choice helped create his personal stamp.
All your work really is a set of choices. When those choices become so recognizably well-defined that readers know it's you almost immediately, you have your watermark.
And now you also have what I've been offering all along: poetry is the art of that definition.
The rest is up to you: lame habit or taut insight, loose usage or creative tension, string of cliches or a whorl of innovations.
It's all up to you, my friends. God speed.
(Note: text revised 3_31_10)
To critics, diction is an important first reference in a poet's work, because that's what readers first encounter, especially when the poet is otherwise unknown to them.
But I'm putting it last because, for us, diction is more of a destination. Diction -- the term harkening back to poetry's roots as an oral medium -- is essential to your watermark. It's what people normally see lying directly behind your work, rather than those responses to innermost thoughts and experiences that create the watermark's stamp itself. The difference would be like that between the corporate logo and what (and who) made it.
I recall reading several years ago a book, Poetic Diction, that obviously went into detail about this subject. The thing I recall most distinctly is that the writer saw a profound difference between the phrases "prophets old" and "old prophets."
The first phrase, and its characteristic adjective/noun inversion, is -- of course -- Milton's. The diction critic was saying that the Miltonic phrase resounds with ancient echoes, while the term "old prophets" merely calls to mind elderly soothsayers. Milton's choice helped create his personal stamp.
All your work really is a set of choices. When those choices become so recognizably well-defined that readers know it's you almost immediately, you have your watermark.
And now you also have what I've been offering all along: poetry is the art of that definition.
The rest is up to you: lame habit or taut insight, loose usage or creative tension, string of cliches or a whorl of innovations.
It's all up to you, my friends. God speed.
(Note: text revised 3_31_10)
Monday, October 5, 2009
Waking up in Eden
I finally finished Paradise Lost.
I was trying to make it in 90 days, just as a goal, but I missed by a month-plus (I started, as you can see from my earlier post, "My Summer Reading," in early June).
Starting at 80-100 lines a sitting, I eventually settled on a pace of one book of the epic per week, and except in busy times, I kept to that. But as I got deeper into the story, I found that I could read much faster. The final book, for instance, I read in two brief sittings last Saturday.
That last book, save for its poignant final lines, is mostly a Biblically oriented set-up for Paradise Regained. Though I felt that it fit the overall narrative smoothly, the final book contained no stirring moments for me.
But I was surprised to find that the epic as a whole contained many such moments. I grew up thinking of Milton as a staid Puritan whose epic poem was some theological exegesis hung out on a spare "Adam and Eve" narrative to dry. That was not the case, except for the aforementioned Book XII.
I also remember being told in school that Satan was thought of, at least by some revisionist critics in the 1970s, as a kind of epic hero -- a sort of Bad Odysseus. But that's only defensible in the first four or five books. After that, Satan is clearly a supporting character, and Adam is the epic hero -- if a tragic one.
Overall, I found a few places for the parochial Milton, but so few they could easily be set in the context of his place and time without detracting from the story. I suspect he first fell from favor for his diehard Puritanism and devout Euro-centrism back when I was a student. If his reputation in the English literary canon sagged as a result, I'm for putting him back up there -- now that I've read his greatest work as a middle-aged adult.
Many speeches in the poem foreshadow the poetic literature to come. Adam, lamenting his fallen state while awaiting God's judgment, sounds like a modernist in the throes of existential alienation. Also, I see the style of the Romantics in Satan's daring flight to freedom and in the many rhapsodic descriptions of Eve, as well as in her speeches.
There's more: the archangels spout Milton's moral and teleological (teleology is the philosophy of purpose) viewpoints, and both concepts and language balance out like Pope and the Augustans*. The Victorians (Hopkins loved Milton) owe Miltonic diction and prosody such an obvious debt that ... well, why go on?
There's something else I mentioned in "My Summer Reading:" the Koran containing some of Satan's backstory that could have influenced Milton. The Muslim holy book also views Adam as a prophet, a knower of divine wisdom. In Paradise Lost, Adam's savanthood quietly emerges as the poem marches toward its concluding verses. There truly is something here -- but exactly what, I can't say, except that I think this great, lost poet of the English Civil War (and after) deserves some careful consideration along those lines.
___________
*I originally wrote "Pope and the Alexandrians" and managed to leave it that way for a year and a half! Odd how mistakes are funnier than jokes you mean to write.
I was trying to make it in 90 days, just as a goal, but I missed by a month-plus (I started, as you can see from my earlier post, "My Summer Reading," in early June).
Starting at 80-100 lines a sitting, I eventually settled on a pace of one book of the epic per week, and except in busy times, I kept to that. But as I got deeper into the story, I found that I could read much faster. The final book, for instance, I read in two brief sittings last Saturday.
That last book, save for its poignant final lines, is mostly a Biblically oriented set-up for Paradise Regained. Though I felt that it fit the overall narrative smoothly, the final book contained no stirring moments for me.
But I was surprised to find that the epic as a whole contained many such moments. I grew up thinking of Milton as a staid Puritan whose epic poem was some theological exegesis hung out on a spare "Adam and Eve" narrative to dry. That was not the case, except for the aforementioned Book XII.
I also remember being told in school that Satan was thought of, at least by some revisionist critics in the 1970s, as a kind of epic hero -- a sort of Bad Odysseus. But that's only defensible in the first four or five books. After that, Satan is clearly a supporting character, and Adam is the epic hero -- if a tragic one.
Overall, I found a few places for the parochial Milton, but so few they could easily be set in the context of his place and time without detracting from the story. I suspect he first fell from favor for his diehard Puritanism and devout Euro-centrism back when I was a student. If his reputation in the English literary canon sagged as a result, I'm for putting him back up there -- now that I've read his greatest work as a middle-aged adult.
Many speeches in the poem foreshadow the poetic literature to come. Adam, lamenting his fallen state while awaiting God's judgment, sounds like a modernist in the throes of existential alienation. Also, I see the style of the Romantics in Satan's daring flight to freedom and in the many rhapsodic descriptions of Eve, as well as in her speeches.
There's more: the archangels spout Milton's moral and teleological (teleology is the philosophy of purpose) viewpoints, and both concepts and language balance out like Pope and the Augustans*. The Victorians (Hopkins loved Milton) owe Miltonic diction and prosody such an obvious debt that ... well, why go on?
There's something else I mentioned in "My Summer Reading:" the Koran containing some of Satan's backstory that could have influenced Milton. The Muslim holy book also views Adam as a prophet, a knower of divine wisdom. In Paradise Lost, Adam's savanthood quietly emerges as the poem marches toward its concluding verses. There truly is something here -- but exactly what, I can't say, except that I think this great, lost poet of the English Civil War (and after) deserves some careful consideration along those lines.
___________
*I originally wrote "Pope and the Alexandrians" and managed to leave it that way for a year and a half! Odd how mistakes are funnier than jokes you mean to write.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Does it work the other way?
Here's another comment in verse I made to a blog post that I read about a month ago. The question in the post asked if social media actually improve the users' lives in any real way, or does the phenomenon actually provide a false sense of sociability?
Here's my Petrarchan reply (fixed up considerably):
More Came
If, in this web of copper and concrete
And carbon, we could join our yielding souls
Any other way, I'd find this, our wholes
Inside these cubes of labor's being, sweet.
A blown kiss, or a gently waving treat
Tenders our memories' store more than touch foals
Taste or sense of soft-urging pressure's goals:
Greater longing, sooner blown down the street.
Still, love for love owns nothing we see;
Though nothing replaces skin on skin impressed,
Our nows deny it, even when framed art!
Electrons current our sharp need: the heart,
Despite its pumping pleasure, finds rest.
As ever, we bring what we send, thus free.
Again, I ABBA CDDC'd the draft I posted then. This is the (more or less) finished result.
What's odd to me is that this one seems to contradict the previous comment-poem I posted below, which actually was posted later in Blog-time.
Hmmmm ... .
Here's my Petrarchan reply (fixed up considerably):
More Came
If, in this web of copper and concrete
And carbon, we could join our yielding souls
Any other way, I'd find this, our wholes
Inside these cubes of labor's being, sweet.
A blown kiss, or a gently waving treat
Tenders our memories' store more than touch foals
Taste or sense of soft-urging pressure's goals:
Greater longing, sooner blown down the street.
Still, love for love owns nothing we see;
Though nothing replaces skin on skin impressed,
Our nows deny it, even when framed art!
Electrons current our sharp need: the heart,
Despite its pumping pleasure, finds rest.
As ever, we bring what we send, thus free.
Again, I ABBA CDDC'd the draft I posted then. This is the (more or less) finished result.
What's odd to me is that this one seems to contradict the previous comment-poem I posted below, which actually was posted later in Blog-time.
Hmmmm ... .
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Amends and Afterthoughts
Just because your poetry has a signature style does not necessarily make you any good.
I recall a line from (I think) Annie Hall in which Woody Allen's character calls some poem "McEuenesque." He did not mean it as a compliment.
Also, a signature style is not necessarily original. Your signature may well be that you imitate someone else (see "McEuenesque" above).
I think that goes for all of us, equally. Let the creator beware.
I'm not sure if the name Day-Lewis is hyphenated. I've seen it printed both ways.
My recollection of his poem comes from college. "Florence: Works of Art" was in that old Norton anthology, the one full of my scans of metrical poems (see "Pencil It In" in my May 2008 archive).
I now understand that the poem is a chapter in a longer poem, An Italian Visit. I assume it would be found in his collected poems.
"Florence: Works of Art" contains "pastiche" poems referring also to sculptures, as well as paintings, in Florence museums.
Afternote (10-4-11): UK publisher Bloomsbury has announced the release of both paper and electronic versions of An Italian Visit soon, along with many other classics in its back catalog.
I recall a line from (I think) Annie Hall in which Woody Allen's character calls some poem "McEuenesque." He did not mean it as a compliment.
Also, a signature style is not necessarily original. Your signature may well be that you imitate someone else (see "McEuenesque" above).
I think that goes for all of us, equally. Let the creator beware.
I'm not sure if the name Day-Lewis is hyphenated. I've seen it printed both ways.
My recollection of his poem comes from college. "Florence: Works of Art" was in that old Norton anthology, the one full of my scans of metrical poems (see "Pencil It In" in my May 2008 archive).
I now understand that the poem is a chapter in a longer poem, An Italian Visit. I assume it would be found in his collected poems.
"Florence: Works of Art" contains "pastiche" poems referring also to sculptures, as well as paintings, in Florence museums.
Afternote (10-4-11): UK publisher Bloomsbury has announced the release of both paper and electronic versions of An Italian Visit soon, along with many other classics in its back catalog.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Written in Water
There's a great metrical poem by Cecil Day-Lewis that has him going on an art tour in Italy ("armed with good taste, a Leica and a guide"), and, for each famous painting that stirs his poetic imagination, he dedicates a section of the poem to a famous contemporary poet.
Not only that, but, as students of Old Masters have for generations in art, he writes each section in the style of that poet. He has verses imitating Auden, Yeats, Hardy and several others. Each one is in a rhyme scheme and line structure that suits both the poem and poet. Yet, the "in-between" sections by the late poet laureate of England are truly his own art -- as are his "imitations."
It prompts something worth thinking about: what does your "stylistic stamp" look like? I know a lot of modern writing teachers like to talk about "finding your voice," but I think that's just a starting point. Your work's individual stamp -- in which a reader pretty much knows a poem is by you without having to see your name under it -- is really a goal, not a mere point of departure.
I'm calling this goal a "watermark" -- implying both a stamp of quality for fine paper and a means of digital security for electronic documents. It's really like both.
"No way Joe Buzznow wrote that! That's definitely by [fill in your name]." Now, wouldn't you like that said about your work?
So, how do you get there? I think that's completely individual, don't you? How on Earth can anyone do that for you, or even begin to outline a procedure that will secure your work forever?
In my case, it was a long series of personal events that stamped the work for me. They made an indelible impression on my mind (both conscious and unconscious), and my poetic reaction in response created, bit by bit, my watermark. I think you can see it hiding like undertext in a palimpsest within previous posts.
In other cases, it might be something completely different. But even if yours comes from the same basic process as mine, your watermark still would differ. No two recollections of 9/11/01 are identical, even though we all remember the day.
Your poetry's watermark is like a medieval lord's coat of arms -- both his possession and his description, his signature and his seal, his word and his bond.
I wish you luck in forging yours.
Monday, September 7, 2009
A Labor of Love
I've made some other changes, so I guess this is final (maybe).
To One Tired of the Tiring
"Mannered and obsolete," I can hear them moan,
Smirking over words forming ocean's rove
In stale modernist theories that reprove
Any effort past bland themes they condone.
Are there words with secret lives of their own,
Huddled, shrinking from a meek dread of love,
In a cold, dripping cave, who cannot move
Beyond the clapping hand of Elite's koan?
Pure faith in the sweet pull of longing's ache
Reveals the lore each limbed harp holds within
Her sweet cascade of lissome summer's chime.
There, I'd give more than I could dream to take,
In soft dalliance with firm rules' ken:
Pulsing Nature's touch pours out rhyme and time.
by William Mark Gabriel
I'll admit "moan" and "koan" remain a pretty broad slant, but it's the best I could do. You may also notice how, when you're just going through the normal process of revising, you can actually sharpen the poem's meaning by choosing a better rhyme word. I think I managed that in a couple of cases.
I posted on this last year (I think I called the post "Rhymes in Time" -- oddly fitting the last post. It wasn't deliberate.). Choosing rhymes and other formal aspects of verse are just parts of the writing process.
Yes, they are tougher to do than, say, fixing a comma splice in a sentence -- but that's what makes you a poet, right?
We enjoy the challenge, or we wouldn't be doing it in the first place.
Next time, I'll have some ideas on how to "watermark" a poem.
To One Tired of the Tiring
"Mannered and obsolete," I can hear them moan,
Smirking over words forming ocean's rove
In stale modernist theories that reprove
Any effort past bland themes they condone.
Are there words with secret lives of their own,
Huddled, shrinking from a meek dread of love,
In a cold, dripping cave, who cannot move
Beyond the clapping hand of Elite's koan?
Pure faith in the sweet pull of longing's ache
Reveals the lore each limbed harp holds within
Her sweet cascade of lissome summer's chime.
There, I'd give more than I could dream to take,
In soft dalliance with firm rules' ken:
Pulsing Nature's touch pours out rhyme and time.
by William Mark Gabriel
I'll admit "moan" and "koan" remain a pretty broad slant, but it's the best I could do. You may also notice how, when you're just going through the normal process of revising, you can actually sharpen the poem's meaning by choosing a better rhyme word. I think I managed that in a couple of cases.
I posted on this last year (I think I called the post "Rhymes in Time" -- oddly fitting the last post. It wasn't deliberate.). Choosing rhymes and other formal aspects of verse are just parts of the writing process.
Yes, they are tougher to do than, say, fixing a comma splice in a sentence -- but that's what makes you a poet, right?
We enjoy the challenge, or we wouldn't be doing it in the first place.
Next time, I'll have some ideas on how to "watermark" a poem.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The Rhyme in Time
And I didn't even need a thesaurus:
Mannered and obsolete, I can hear them moan,
Smirking over words that form ocean's rove
In stale modernist theories that reprove
Any effort past bland themes they condone.
I don't use a rhyming dictionary, either.
Mannered and obsolete, I can hear them moan,
Smirking over words that form ocean's rove
In stale modernist theories that reprove
Any effort past bland themes they condone.
I don't use a rhyming dictionary, either.
Friday, August 28, 2009
First Base
One of the problems with being a self-proclaimed "poet" (and this is true of any self-proclamation) is that you can get together with other self-proclaimed poets and proclaim each other poets.
That is OK in itself. It's basically an informal club, at that point. Unfortunately -- after decades of cultural neglect, abuse or just uncertainty re: poetry -- these kind of "clubs" can become the baseline for what a poet is. That's when you've got a problem.
The problem gets worse when an otherwise good linguistic theory -- the one propounded by I.A. Richards that I mentioned in a previous post ("Ug! Fire!") -- is so open-ended that it lends a false vitality to this impoverished situation.
I recently made a comment on a NY Times blog post about poets and the end of summer (or something like that), and my comment was in verse. The blog wistfully quoted some contemporary poets on the seasonal subject, but one commenter found the whole thing wanting.
My verse comment followed his comment, as a response in agreement. Here it is (tidied up some):
To One Tired of the Tiring
"Mannered and obsolete," I can hear them now,
Smirking over words that form ocean drops
In stale modernist theories, which stops
Any effort past bland themes they allow.
Are there words with secret lives of their own,
Huddled, shrinking from a meek dread of love
In a cold, dripping cave? They cannot move
Beyond the clapping hand of Elite's koan.
Pure faith in the sweet pull of longing's ache
Reveals the lore each limbed harp holds within
Her sweet cascade of lissome Summer's chime.
There, I'd give more than I could dream to take,
In soft dalliance with firm rules' ken:
Every human touch pours out rhyme and time.
"Them" in line one refer to those poets, however sincere, who may be operating from this clubby "baseline," and who don't appear to realize that their work is suffering as a result, while "they" in line four refers to the "modernist theories" that have become a de facto standard.
Frankly, I don't think my effort at a Petrarchan sonnet (with a cheat) is a whole lot better. But it's what I felt at the time, as best I could put it in then, however mannered and obsolete the form may appear.
My cheat is that a true Petrarchan sonnet's octave usually rhymes ABBA ABBA, not ABBA CDDC. Oh well.
Petrarchan sonnets (as I mentioned a year or more ago) are much harder to write in English than their Shakespearean cousins because our language does not contain nearly as many usable rhyme words as Italian does. Sticking with traditional English rhyme patterns works far better.
However, I've tried a couple other ones, and maybe I'll go into some interesting facets of the Petrarchan structure someday. Some people really like them better. An English writer who was good at them (I've mentioned her before, also) is Christina Rossetti. Her brother's translation of Dante's "La Vita Nuova" may also be a good guide for them, if you're interested. I'm not a fan of his original ones.
Maybe I'll even fix the rhyme scheme on this one, if it can be fixed.
That is OK in itself. It's basically an informal club, at that point. Unfortunately -- after decades of cultural neglect, abuse or just uncertainty re: poetry -- these kind of "clubs" can become the baseline for what a poet is. That's when you've got a problem.
The problem gets worse when an otherwise good linguistic theory -- the one propounded by I.A. Richards that I mentioned in a previous post ("Ug! Fire!") -- is so open-ended that it lends a false vitality to this impoverished situation.
I recently made a comment on a NY Times blog post about poets and the end of summer (or something like that), and my comment was in verse. The blog wistfully quoted some contemporary poets on the seasonal subject, but one commenter found the whole thing wanting.
My verse comment followed his comment, as a response in agreement. Here it is (tidied up some):
To One Tired of the Tiring
"Mannered and obsolete," I can hear them now,
Smirking over words that form ocean drops
In stale modernist theories, which stops
Any effort past bland themes they allow.
Are there words with secret lives of their own,
Huddled, shrinking from a meek dread of love
In a cold, dripping cave? They cannot move
Beyond the clapping hand of Elite's koan.
Pure faith in the sweet pull of longing's ache
Reveals the lore each limbed harp holds within
Her sweet cascade of lissome Summer's chime.
There, I'd give more than I could dream to take,
In soft dalliance with firm rules' ken:
Every human touch pours out rhyme and time.
"Them" in line one refer to those poets, however sincere, who may be operating from this clubby "baseline," and who don't appear to realize that their work is suffering as a result, while "they" in line four refers to the "modernist theories" that have become a de facto standard.
Frankly, I don't think my effort at a Petrarchan sonnet (with a cheat) is a whole lot better. But it's what I felt at the time, as best I could put it in then, however mannered and obsolete the form may appear.
My cheat is that a true Petrarchan sonnet's octave usually rhymes ABBA ABBA, not ABBA CDDC. Oh well.
Petrarchan sonnets (as I mentioned a year or more ago) are much harder to write in English than their Shakespearean cousins because our language does not contain nearly as many usable rhyme words as Italian does. Sticking with traditional English rhyme patterns works far better.
However, I've tried a couple other ones, and maybe I'll go into some interesting facets of the Petrarchan structure someday. Some people really like them better. An English writer who was good at them (I've mentioned her before, also) is Christina Rossetti. Her brother's translation of Dante's "La Vita Nuova" may also be a good guide for them, if you're interested. I'm not a fan of his original ones.
Maybe I'll even fix the rhyme scheme on this one, if it can be fixed.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
With All Due Respect
I hope there is never a baseline skill for being named "poet."
In other words, there should never be something external to the poem that makes your work "poetry" or not.
If being able to write a "formal" haiku or a limerick successfully, say, were the baseline skill -- Jack Kerouac would never have made the grade. As best I can recall, his many haikus did not fit any formal scheme -- they were what they were (and are). That's all that's ever needed.
There are lots of self-described "poets" out there. Like any similar self-description, they are made to give the describers a sense of self-importance they usually have not earned.
I like the definition I heard in Poetry 101 back in college: if someone whose opinion others respect calls something you wrote a poem, then you're a poet.
What that means, in effect, is that the work is what matters -- to you and to them. The label given to you for having written it is simply a means of identification -- a sonnet by Donne, an elegy by Tennyson, a haiku by Kerouac.
Your ability to write three balanced sentences in iambic pentameter that rhyme ABAB followed by a heroic couplet, for instance, does not necessarily make you a poet. It's something intrinsic, something at the core of such a work, that makes a given poem a sonnet. The form just reflects that essential fact. (And reflections can be very important!)
When you write one, someone else who loves sonnets (or elegies or haikus or whatever) is bound to notice, someday. If that person then calls you a poet, I think you can consider your dues paid.
P.S.: This post doesn't sound much like what I promised "next time" -- have patience. It serves as some necessary background. IMHO, baselines are vital -- just not in determining who's a poet! Or maybe, I just set one ... ?
In other words, there should never be something external to the poem that makes your work "poetry" or not.
If being able to write a "formal" haiku or a limerick successfully, say, were the baseline skill -- Jack Kerouac would never have made the grade. As best I can recall, his many haikus did not fit any formal scheme -- they were what they were (and are). That's all that's ever needed.
There are lots of self-described "poets" out there. Like any similar self-description, they are made to give the describers a sense of self-importance they usually have not earned.
I like the definition I heard in Poetry 101 back in college: if someone whose opinion others respect calls something you wrote a poem, then you're a poet.
What that means, in effect, is that the work is what matters -- to you and to them. The label given to you for having written it is simply a means of identification -- a sonnet by Donne, an elegy by Tennyson, a haiku by Kerouac.
Your ability to write three balanced sentences in iambic pentameter that rhyme ABAB followed by a heroic couplet, for instance, does not necessarily make you a poet. It's something intrinsic, something at the core of such a work, that makes a given poem a sonnet. The form just reflects that essential fact. (And reflections can be very important!)
When you write one, someone else who loves sonnets (or elegies or haikus or whatever) is bound to notice, someday. If that person then calls you a poet, I think you can consider your dues paid.
P.S.: This post doesn't sound much like what I promised "next time" -- have patience. It serves as some necessary background. IMHO, baselines are vital -- just not in determining who's a poet! Or maybe, I just set one ... ?
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Ug! Fire!
I'm not an academic.
While I've made that clear many times in the strict sense of the word (in that I don't have an advanced degree or a job in academe), what I mean by that now is, even if I read an academic work, I have no way to interpret it through the lens of academic discipline. I read it just as anyone else would, and I apply it as I see it amid the general hubbub of the street.
This is a proviso to what follows: that is, you agree to read this, knowing I'm not qualified academically in this (or any other) subject.
And the subject today is language philosophy. Last spring, I dove into a series of lectures given by I.A. Richards at Bryn Mawr College in the 1930s. The collection is called, appropriately enough, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (OUP, naturally, and pricey). The book massaged some brain muscles that hadn't been rubbed in some time, so I guess I can say (adjusting my pince-nez), "I found the book stimulating."
But in it, I really didn't find much I agreed with, which is an odd feeling: "I respect you tremendously, Dr. Richards, but I don't agree with you at all."
Richards taught that (and here's where I get unsteady) words themselves have no meaning other than what we choose to give them, but that "meaning" itself exists in something he referred to as an "ocean" or "sea." Of course, that latter reference is metaphorical, which provides a link to the heart of his "meaning of meaning" -- it's in metaphor. As far as Richards was concerned, all words are metaphoric in some way. The importance of this theory to poetry is obvious.
Clearly, you should read this book for yourself and not depend on my half-witted summary. I'm just trying to point out where the book went for me, personally. In a basic sense, Richards's theory just didn't "take." What did was a book I'd read a few years ago -- Language and Myth by Ernst Cassirer. I read the eight-dollar Dover edition with the English translation by Suzanne Langer.
Cassirer taught that (again, the previous proviso remains intact) language comes from myth -- not myths as we know them from "dead" religions, but from their root experiences.
In other words (this is my summary, not his, specifically): Unname the Caveman is out hunter-gathering one day as a storm brews up, and lightning hits a tree right in front of him. He runs off, as any other scared animal would, but he comes back later to watch the tree burn, fascinated.
Unname brings back to his cave the memory, and three things get invented in that cave: a (mostly sign-language) story, a particular grunt that means "fire," and a name for himself.
Unname is now Ug, the Fire Seer. From that, this Promethean experience eventually brings warmth (a sacred feeling), cooking (a sacred act), a sense of family (a sacred cultural essence) and, as the experience spreads from cave to cave, a tribe (the sanctity of shared experience -- the essence of "myth"). By then, it also makes Ug the Fire Priest. With great power ... .
Do I need to point out how firmly that book "took?" Perhaps equally obvious is the need to read that book for yourself, too.
I can just about guarantee that both books will benefit you. But one of them benefitted me more than the other one did.
And that (apparently) puts me at odds with the majority.
More next time.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Could it be ... ?
I've made some corrections and edits to my previous post. (I ought to know better by now than to write solely from memory, but ... !)
One thing from the back-cover blurb to my copy of The Portable Milton is a statement that claims the notion of Satan as a "radiant usurper" is more due to "Paradise Lost" than either the Old or New Testament, says the blurb.
That got me to thinking. The "backstory" of Satan's battle with God over Adam's creation is clearly related in the Koran.
So I checked. Yes, the first (slanted, I'm told) translation of the Koran in the West was in 1143. This same Latin translation was published in Switzerland thirty years before Milton was born in three editions, each with a preface by no less than Martin Luther!
Milton toured Europe, staying a while in Italy, as a young man, impressing all with his skill at Latin. He surely would have seen this translation in some form. Whether it influenced him as a poet is another matter.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
My Summer Reading
"My summer reading" is probably going to propel me well into October, at the rate I'm going. But at least I'm doing it.
Paradise Lost was, like Moby Dick, one of those works in the high school literary canon that high schools were rejecting by the time I came along, so I'd never read it before now.
My Viking Portable edition cost me all of 7 dollars (not used, but the copy had some cover fading). It has a very helpful glossary at the end.
It's taken me all month (reading in bits) to get through Book III (of the twelve), and I've got some early observations.
For one, it's not that hard to read, once you get past the introduction ("Sing, heavenly Muse," is the verb and subject of the first sentence, found six lines into the poem. You don't hit the first period until line 16).
Younger (and faster) readers will want an Oxford Concise Dictionary at their elbows and then maybe hold off researching the full context of the more obscure references to classical mythology. Older folks like me also may want Bulfinch (I think I paid a dollar for mine years ago -- a megabookseller's reprint) nearby.
That, a "good posture" reading chair, some imagination and some more patience may well see you through (We'll see: I'm working on it!). My favorite of Book I was Satan waking up, floating around on a stormy lake of fire (with the construction of Pandemonium a close second). Book II's highlight for me were the speeches of the demons -- each intended to fit a cardinal sin. Book III's description of the world between Heaven and Paradise was as clear as an etching.
The trick so far has been reading 80-120 lines at a sitting. Old Miltie conveniently set his poem into paragraphs (or groups of paragraphs) about that long, so -- there you go!
The 'graphing could be more than convenience -- maybe the poem was set that way, in part, to facilitate public readings (!).
I've had fun reading as The Ham Actor In My Head declaims to me his version of the poem, bit by bit.
BTW -- my earlier ref to an "etching" was not coincidental. If you've got the scratch (sorry) for Dore's plates to the poem -- you've got a 17th century graphic novel (kind of).
Paradise Lost was, like Moby Dick, one of those works in the high school literary canon that high schools were rejecting by the time I came along, so I'd never read it before now.
My Viking Portable edition cost me all of 7 dollars (not used, but the copy had some cover fading). It has a very helpful glossary at the end.
It's taken me all month (reading in bits) to get through Book III (of the twelve), and I've got some early observations.
For one, it's not that hard to read, once you get past the introduction ("Sing, heavenly Muse," is the verb and subject of the first sentence, found six lines into the poem. You don't hit the first period until line 16).
Younger (and faster) readers will want an Oxford Concise Dictionary at their elbows and then maybe hold off researching the full context of the more obscure references to classical mythology. Older folks like me also may want Bulfinch (I think I paid a dollar for mine years ago -- a megabookseller's reprint) nearby.
That, a "good posture" reading chair, some imagination and some more patience may well see you through (We'll see: I'm working on it!). My favorite of Book I was Satan waking up, floating around on a stormy lake of fire (with the construction of Pandemonium a close second). Book II's highlight for me were the speeches of the demons -- each intended to fit a cardinal sin. Book III's description of the world between Heaven and Paradise was as clear as an etching.
The trick so far has been reading 80-120 lines at a sitting. Old Miltie conveniently set his poem into paragraphs (or groups of paragraphs) about that long, so -- there you go!
The 'graphing could be more than convenience -- maybe the poem was set that way, in part, to facilitate public readings (!).
I've had fun reading as The Ham Actor In My Head declaims to me his version of the poem, bit by bit.
BTW -- my earlier ref to an "etching" was not coincidental. If you've got the scratch (sorry) for Dore's plates to the poem -- you've got a 17th century graphic novel (kind of).
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
The Song Remains Never the Same
I ran across an online article today regarding attempts by scholars and scientists to preserve some of the world's dying languages.
It's in the Science section of today's online version of The New York Times.
I hope these folks will remember to record the language's poems. Usually, in nonliterate traditional cultures, the poems are narrative: the Iliad, Beowulf, the verse Edda, etc. And these poems contain the language, IMHO, at its richest and finest. I remember in Greek class (I was no class hotshot, trust me) hearing that Homeric was really a collection of several regional Greek dialects, and I also read elsewhere since that "crafted" narrative epics like the Divine Comedy were also made from several regional dialects in Italian.
Maybe I'm still a Poundean (-ian?) at heart, since "poet as protector of the language" was one of his more prominent critical dicta. I do think it's true to some extent, though a lot of it would depend on the poet.
Still, I hope these language scientists don't forget the poems. They may tell the most about that culture of anything they might find.
BTW -- You may have noticed I haven't been posting weekly in a long while. I'll try to be more regular. I'm still averse to linking, as you can tell.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Done.
My Mandolin Sings
Like a thrush on the heather,
My mandolin sings.
Dancing as a tiny feather,
The joy that it brings!
If times be weighed by weather,
I'm lonely or sad --
Whatever my heart's tether,
My mandolin sings.
Her strings fly 'neath my fingers,
How happy our days.
Her high note chirping lingers
In air as she plays!
Deeply as a kitten purrs,
Her low notes uncurl.
Whichever part she prefers,
How happy our days.
Brooks babbling and firs swirling,
My mandolin cries --
Tails twitching, wings unfurling,
Their spirits arise!
As woodland winds are twirling
By day or by night
When there are dancers whirling
My mandolin cries.
by William Mark Gabriel
Once I figure out how, this post will indicate that it is covered by a Creative Commons license that permits commercial use, but no modifications, under United States copyright law.
For practical purposes, I am OK with people setting this to music, but my words must remain unchanged and be used with my name.
I would be happiest to see the words set to a tune already in the public domain, but adapted (if needed) as appropriate to the rules for a musician used by the organization publishing his or her work.
I am not doing this for profit, but as a shared learning exercise. Have fun.
_____
Afternote (10/26/10): It occurred to me recently that, for practical purposes, the Creative Commons copyright applies to all previous versions of this poem published on this blog. You can use any of them for the purposes stated above, provided you note that it's my variant (var.) version.
Afternote (2/10/11): It has also occurred to me I ought to make a technical note that the Creative Commons license I mentioned in this post is the Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. I think the HTML thing creativecommons.org sent me after I registered would have linked readers to that information. Since I don't permit links, it would have done no good to risk an HTML gaffe to put that in here.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The Song Remains the Same -- But Do We?
When we write a poem, just what is different? Is our world different, or are we? Is there a difference? How do we know and relate to that difference, if any?
I guess this sounds like nonsense. Maybe it is. But I think it's worth examining: I've posted before on how the poem may affect society, and how the poet can be the vehicle. Which I think is why so many chase our talent, try to tame it or steal it or what have you.
What I'm asking now is, is the poem's effect reciprocal?
I guess this sounds like nonsense. Maybe it is. But I think it's worth examining: I've posted before on how the poem may affect society, and how the poet can be the vehicle. Which I think is why so many chase our talent, try to tame it or steal it or what have you.
What I'm asking now is, is the poem's effect reciprocal?
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Just in time!
As for "My Mandolin Sings," I think this is going to have to be it -- for now:
Brooks babbling and firs swirling,
My mandolin cries --
Tails twitching, wings unfurling,
Their spirits arise!
As woodland winds are twirling
By day or by night
When there are dancers whirling
My mandolin cries.
Came up with the "u/irling" slant rhyme at the very last, when I was just about to give up. It felt great, because thinking of words in that rhyme gave me ones with visual images. Hooray!
To me, the first version posted May 6 works OK as a poem in "songform." I just thought, why not sing it? I did in my head, and it didn't work as a song lyric well in verses 2 and 3 -- particularly 3.
So, unless I come up with something better for verse 2, I think this is it.
But, what about a bridge or an intro? Hmmm ... .
Patience, readers. Patience.
Brooks babbling and firs swirling,
My mandolin cries --
Tails twitching, wings unfurling,
Their spirits arise!
As woodland winds are twirling
By day or by night
When there are dancers whirling
My mandolin cries.
Came up with the "u/irling" slant rhyme at the very last, when I was just about to give up. It felt great, because thinking of words in that rhyme gave me ones with visual images. Hooray!
To me, the first version posted May 6 works OK as a poem in "songform." I just thought, why not sing it? I did in my head, and it didn't work as a song lyric well in verses 2 and 3 -- particularly 3.
So, unless I come up with something better for verse 2, I think this is it.
But, what about a bridge or an intro? Hmmm ... .
Patience, readers. Patience.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
That's Embarrassing!
OK, here goes -- a set of revisions for "My Mandolin Sings" posted in this blog on May 6:
As I mentioned at the time, the second verse is a little wobbly in places, but not in so many that I can't live with it the way it is.
The third verse has issues that bother me, some of which I've mentioned. So, here is the first full try (after many cross-outs) of the third verse:
Brooks babbling and firs swirling
The mandolin cries
Tails twitching, wings unfurling
Their natures arise
The woodland spirits calling
By day or by night
Whenever mercy's falling
The mandolin cries.
I post this one with a red face -- because this is actually worse in many ways. Oh, "woodland spirits" and "natures arise" ... ecchh. They don't really mean anything, and they don't connect to anything else in the poem specifically that might suggest what these "natures" and "spirits" are or may refer to.
While it does correct the "-ing" issue with the first try at a third verse and puts the "-ever" word in the penultimate line as the other verses have it, the second try makes so many other mistakes, including even more artificial phrasing, that it "cries" for more work.
I have Try Number Three, and I'll try and post it soon.
Till then.
As I mentioned at the time, the second verse is a little wobbly in places, but not in so many that I can't live with it the way it is.
The third verse has issues that bother me, some of which I've mentioned. So, here is the first full try (after many cross-outs) of the third verse:
Brooks babbling and firs swirling
The mandolin cries
Tails twitching, wings unfurling
Their natures arise
The woodland spirits calling
By day or by night
Whenever mercy's falling
The mandolin cries.
I post this one with a red face -- because this is actually worse in many ways. Oh, "woodland spirits" and "natures arise" ... ecchh. They don't really mean anything, and they don't connect to anything else in the poem specifically that might suggest what these "natures" and "spirits" are or may refer to.
While it does correct the "-ing" issue with the first try at a third verse and puts the "-ever" word in the penultimate line as the other verses have it, the second try makes so many other mistakes, including even more artificial phrasing, that it "cries" for more work.
I have Try Number Three, and I'll try and post it soon.
Till then.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Regularly irregular
Trying to do this weekly, as I did with The Art of whatever it was (my 2008 posts). However, that may not work out as smoothly. Bear with me, and remember -- we're improvising more now!
I have made some progress on the songform thing. Stay tuned.
I have made some progress on the songform thing. Stay tuned.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Dancing Around It
One of the really dumb, but "good," mistakes I've made deals with a misconception that went on for years before I re-read the original and felt totally stupid.
Back in college, I pored again and again over a book of Ezra Pound's essays, trying to mine them for a metrical poet's secrets. In one essay, he rhapsodizes over the work of Algernon Charles Swinburne, especially one classically themed poem (forgotten which) in which (as I now recall -- I may still have it wrong) "cross-rhymes abound."
My overheated youthful brain kept misreading it "cross-rhythms" -- a nonexistent term, AFAIK. And I spent years searching for such things in poems and music.
When I went back to my old school and went into the library and found my old Ez book in the stacks, I went to my favorite essay on Swinburne and -- turned crimson in the face.
Cross-rhymes are used when writing hexameters in English to break up the monotonous sounding lines (probably not at all monotonous in the languages they were meant for, in English hexameters just drone on and on).
"Cross-rhythms" don't exist. Or do they?
See if you can read (aloud) the following verbal masterpiece by an American master about a pictoral masterpiece from a Dutch master in two ways.
The Dance
In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies, (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling about
the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Breughel's great picture, The Kermess.
-- by William Carlos Williams
See?
Sometimes it pays to make embarrassing mistakes.
Normally, I'd cite my source for the text. But I found lots of pages on Blogger with both the painting and the poem reproduced.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
"Now, how many was that ... ?"
I said at some point that, in this new version of my Blogger account, we will all be learning together.
I may one day wish I'd never said that (because when you learn together, you have to submit your mistakes to open inspection), but -- here goes.
The previous poem is an experiment in what some poets call "songform." What I think they mean by that is writing a (more or less) serious poem in a verse form reserved for music.
What I tried to do with "My Mandolin Sings" is not write strict pentameter or tetrameter lines, but try to parallel my syllable count, verse to verse, like a hymn.
Also like a hymn, I tried to suggest a tune with the action of the lines (while writing the first draft, I had a kind of hornpipe-y version of "Slane" -- an Irish tune churchgoers may know from the hymn "Be Thou My Vision" -- running in my head).
But you can see, I'm sure, that, while the first verse works OK, the second and third ones have weak spots.
I tried to correct a glaring error in rhyming, when I had all the lines in the third verse rhyme with some form of an "-ing" word, by going dialectical. That may turn out to be a "good" mistake. We'll see.
I'll keep you posted (by "post") on my progress, if any.
I may one day wish I'd never said that (because when you learn together, you have to submit your mistakes to open inspection), but -- here goes.
The previous poem is an experiment in what some poets call "songform." What I think they mean by that is writing a (more or less) serious poem in a verse form reserved for music.
What I tried to do with "My Mandolin Sings" is not write strict pentameter or tetrameter lines, but try to parallel my syllable count, verse to verse, like a hymn.
Also like a hymn, I tried to suggest a tune with the action of the lines (while writing the first draft, I had a kind of hornpipe-y version of "Slane" -- an Irish tune churchgoers may know from the hymn "Be Thou My Vision" -- running in my head).
But you can see, I'm sure, that, while the first verse works OK, the second and third ones have weak spots.
I tried to correct a glaring error in rhyming, when I had all the lines in the third verse rhyme with some form of an "-ing" word, by going dialectical. That may turn out to be a "good" mistake. We'll see.
I'll keep you posted (by "post") on my progress, if any.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
A work in progress
My Mandolin Sings
Like a thrush on the heather,
My mandolin sings.
Dancing as a tiny feather,
The joy that it brings!
If times be weighed by weather,
I'm lonely or sad --
Whatever my heart's tether,
My mandolin sings.
Her strings fly 'neath my fingers,
How happy our days.
Her high note chirping lingers
In air as she plays!
Deeply as a kitten purrs,
Her low notes uncurl.
Whichever part she prefers,
How happy our days.
Brooks babblin', pine limbs swirlin',
The mandolin sings.
Tails twitchin', wings unfurlin',
As nature it springs.
Whenever mercy's fallin',
By day or by night,
I grant my heart its callin' --
The mandolin sings.
by William Mark Gabriel
Like a thrush on the heather,
My mandolin sings.
Dancing as a tiny feather,
The joy that it brings!
If times be weighed by weather,
I'm lonely or sad --
Whatever my heart's tether,
My mandolin sings.
Her strings fly 'neath my fingers,
How happy our days.
Her high note chirping lingers
In air as she plays!
Deeply as a kitten purrs,
Her low notes uncurl.
Whichever part she prefers,
How happy our days.
Brooks babblin', pine limbs swirlin',
The mandolin sings.
Tails twitchin', wings unfurlin',
As nature it springs.
Whenever mercy's fallin',
By day or by night,
I grant my heart its callin' --
The mandolin sings.
by William Mark Gabriel
Friday, May 1, 2009
Now, the laurel ...
I recently bought an anthology of modern British poets, and I found myself really enjoying reading it.
Many of my favorites from the collection are by someone of my generation, Carol Ann Duffy -- whom the book said is the most popular poet in the UK.
I guess you could say she's "in charge" now.
Many of my favorites from the collection are by someone of my generation, Carol Ann Duffy -- whom the book said is the most popular poet in the UK.
I guess you could say she's "in charge" now.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
"... And the mome raths outgrabe."
I remember my old Poetry 101 professor reading us "Jabberwocky" in class one day and pronouncing the last word with a long "e" at the end: "out-grah-bee."
I felt violated. I was sure, just so sure, that the poem I first read in my aunt's old college English Lit textbook (found old and moldy in my granny's basement when I was but 14) had as its last word "out-grabe" -- rhyming with ... . Huh?
And that was the point. Other than Lewis Carroll's "portmanteau" rhyme in the poem ("wabe"), there isn't much that rhymes with "outgrabe," no matter how you pronounce it.
Carroll once explained, humorously, his concept of the famous "portmanteau" words used in his poem. But, like the piece of furniture they're named for, they can serve a variety of uses.
Last year, when I started this blog, I wrote about how George Boole discovered a flaw in classic Aristotelian logic -- called (I think) the "existential fallacy." In short, the terms of a syllogism do not need to exist for the syllogism to function. They can be abstract symbols, hence the name "symbolic logic."
Carroll (as math professor Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was a researcher in Boolean algebra, nonlinear geometry and similar topics. He made significant contributions to the academic literature on symbolic logic. And "Jabberwocky" is his (I think, successful) attempt to put some of those basic concepts into language.
The "portmanteau" words in "Jabberwocky" don't mean anything. (I believe Carroll's own definitions of the words are knowingly tongue-in-cheek.) They are true "nonsense" words, in the sense that they have no sense at all. Nor do they need to have any for the poem to make sense. In a sense.
If we are to examine those "interstices" of language I spoke of back then in the post on Boole, I think we need to more fully understand Carroll's accomplishment in "Jabberwocky."
BTW, the poem is satire. Just what it ridicules is what's important.
___
Afternote (2/12/19): Dodgson stuck to linear geometry.
I felt violated. I was sure, just so sure, that the poem I first read in my aunt's old college English Lit textbook (found old and moldy in my granny's basement when I was but 14) had as its last word "out-grabe" -- rhyming with ... . Huh?
And that was the point. Other than Lewis Carroll's "portmanteau" rhyme in the poem ("wabe"), there isn't much that rhymes with "outgrabe," no matter how you pronounce it.
Carroll once explained, humorously, his concept of the famous "portmanteau" words used in his poem. But, like the piece of furniture they're named for, they can serve a variety of uses.
Last year, when I started this blog, I wrote about how George Boole discovered a flaw in classic Aristotelian logic -- called (I think) the "existential fallacy." In short, the terms of a syllogism do not need to exist for the syllogism to function. They can be abstract symbols, hence the name "symbolic logic."
Carroll (as math professor Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was a researcher in Boolean algebra, nonlinear geometry and similar topics. He made significant contributions to the academic literature on symbolic logic. And "Jabberwocky" is his (I think, successful) attempt to put some of those basic concepts into language.
The "portmanteau" words in "Jabberwocky" don't mean anything. (I believe Carroll's own definitions of the words are knowingly tongue-in-cheek.) They are true "nonsense" words, in the sense that they have no sense at all. Nor do they need to have any for the poem to make sense. In a sense.
If we are to examine those "interstices" of language I spoke of back then in the post on Boole, I think we need to more fully understand Carroll's accomplishment in "Jabberwocky."
BTW, the poem is satire. Just what it ridicules is what's important.
___
Afternote (2/12/19): Dodgson stuck to linear geometry.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Throw me the ball! Ouch! Not that hard!
It was years ago I was reading something about Juvenal (I not only did not flunk Latin, I never took it *holds head in shame*). And this writer went on and on about how the word "satire" (the form for which ol' Juvvie was famouser than famous) may have come from a Latin word with two possible meanings: a word that meant either "a bowl of mixed fruit" or (by association) "a medley."
I have no idea whether any of that is accurate: you'd need to ask a true Latin scholar. But the notion stuck with me because of this: "satire" is a literary form where you throw out all the structured rhetorical categories, all the neatly clipped logic and the carefully considered ambiguities or ironies of the other classic forms.
And when you do that, you start making jokes. It's natural.
So, when we turn our thoughts to roguery (in the sense of "playful mischief"), it's only natural that we experiment.
But even then, we still have to think things through first.
More, next time.
I have no idea whether any of that is accurate: you'd need to ask a true Latin scholar. But the notion stuck with me because of this: "satire" is a literary form where you throw out all the structured rhetorical categories, all the neatly clipped logic and the carefully considered ambiguities or ironies of the other classic forms.
And when you do that, you start making jokes. It's natural.
So, when we turn our thoughts to roguery (in the sense of "playful mischief"), it's only natural that we experiment.
But even then, we still have to think things through first.
More, next time.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
A New Day
Change is good, right?
But I'm not going to change my contract with you, dear readers. It's just that, from now on, we're going to be learning together (sings: "... wherever we go-oooo!" *ends with old-school-vegas-floor-show flourish*).
We'll be exploring language, rhythm, rhyme and all sorts of related things, as we have all along.
But we're going to be leaving behind the classic stuff, and we'll be moving more toward the experimental.
So hang on ... !
And, stay tuned.
But I'm not going to change my contract with you, dear readers. It's just that, from now on, we're going to be learning together (sings: "... wherever we go-oooo!" *ends with old-school-vegas-floor-show flourish*).
We'll be exploring language, rhythm, rhyme and all sorts of related things, as we have all along.
But we're going to be leaving behind the classic stuff, and we'll be moving more toward the experimental.
So hang on ... !
And, stay tuned.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
For All Clowns' Day
from “Metrical Feet”
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot!, yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl's trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long.
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.
One syllable long, with one short at each side,
Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride --
First and last being long, middle short, Amphimacer
Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud high-bred Racer.
This and much more at
http://emule.com/poetry
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot!, yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl's trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long.
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.
One syllable long, with one short at each side,
Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride --
First and last being long, middle short, Amphimacer
Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud high-bred Racer.
This and much more at
http://emule.com/poetry
Thursday, February 5, 2009
A Note
There is an article called "How to Cite Sources" in wikiHow, in case anyone else is curious about that subject.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Oh, yeah. There is that.
On second thought, an encomium is very easy to pull off if you are insincere.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
In Defense of ... no, more like sympathy.
Here's an exercise for you: off the top of your head, think of all the poems you know that could be classed as an "encomium."
That's right. They're very hard to pull off.
That's right. They're very hard to pull off.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Cut and Paste, please ... .
For some reason, I had in my head today "St Patrick's Breastplate" -- the name of a hymn first in Gaelic, then translated into English by Cecil Frances Alexander (note the "e" in "Frances") in the 19th Century.
Later today, I found an article posted on poetryfoundation.org re: Gerard Manley Hopkins's "A Windhover" by modern poet Ange Mlinko. The biographical background on Hopkins alone makes her article required reading for anyone interested in his work, but there's lots more. I can recommend it with enthusiasm on many counts.
As loyal readers of this blog know, I've posted on Hopkins before.
Ms. Mlinko's article is
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/feature.html?id=182786
Later today, I found an article posted on poetryfoundation.org re: Gerard Manley Hopkins's "A Windhover" by modern poet Ange Mlinko. The biographical background on Hopkins alone makes her article required reading for anyone interested in his work, but there's lots more. I can recommend it with enthusiasm on many counts.
As loyal readers of this blog know, I've posted on Hopkins before.
Ms. Mlinko's article is
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/feature.html?id=182786
