[E. Shaun Russell]

Originally Posted by Alana A. Roberts

As an example take instrumental music. Its effect is entirely affective - it is in any informative rational sense a total blank. Yet people find such meaning in it they weep.

I have to take you to task on that comment. As a musician, I can listen to instrumental music and be simultaneously affected by the performance, the composition, the arrangement, and even the production choices. In an "informative rational sense," as you put it, my understanding of the relationship of notes, as well as the whole spectrum of music-education-related elements adds to my interpretation of a piece of instrumental music. I have, quite literally, commented aloud that I would have made a different note choice in a certain section of an instrumental piece written by another musician. Just because something isn't written in words doesn't mean it is wholly sensual and "informatively irrational."

Is intelligibility or something like it part of the definition of poetry? Can something be a poem, in other words, without being intelligible?

You would have to better define "intelligibility." Something that is completely open to interpretation can still be intelligible. When E. E. Cummings came along, many people considered his random punctuation marks, his deliberate typographical "errors," his bizarre syntax, and his general objectives to be "unintelligible," but here we are, a mere half century after his death, and his works are widely anthologized and studied. Some (like myself) might consider Cummings a detrimental figure to poetry, but clearly many others don't feel the same way. But ultimately, is Cummings' work unintelligible? That itself is open to interpretation.

Or, is general poetic virtue found in a balance between these opposing specific virtues? Or does the attempt to balance opposing virtues lead to mere dullness?

One of my favorite lines from Auden fits well here (from "Heavy Date"):

"I believed for years that
Love was the conjunction
Of two oppositions;
That was all untrue;"

I'm not sure where the idea of balancing opposites comes into this discussion. A good poem, like love, is not a mathematical formula. Once a subjective assessment has been made, there is room for an objective analysis. But it's rare for any lasting poem to evoke an objective response first that then elicits a subjective analysis.

What is the difference between a reader and a critic - does a critic have a responsibility to understand a poem before pronouncing a verdict on it? Do readers benefit from poetry they don't fully understand and if so how?

In a way, a reader and a critic are the same thing. Whether stated or not, a reader passes judgment of some sort on a poem he has read. If he likes it, he'll likely read it again, and read more works by the same poet. If he doesn't like it, he'll dismiss it and move on. The only real difference between a reader and a critic is that the latter is more inclined to delve into the reasons behind his initial opinion, likely elaborating upon them and fleshing them out...and sometimes posting or publishing them. Ideally, a critic will have experience with reading poetry, and even more ideally, a critic will have enough knowledge of the genre to explain the various nuances of a poem in intricate detail. But a passive reader might have those same tools but simply not use them (i.e.: all those MFA students who did well in their classes but found careers in botany instead).

Why do we write poems - is something being served by our efforts that is more important than certain, or all, types of intelligibility?

This is the ultimate subjective question behind any and all art. And you'll never nail down a definitive answer. It's staggering how often I have heard variations of this question already in my life.

Should a critic be allowed to hold a poet hostage to the limitations of a hypothetical reader?

Certainly. A critic is allowed to say whatever he or she feels is on point. But the less evidence (or at least, the less argumentation) a critic provides, the less credible he is in the eyes of those reading his critiques. Again, all readers are critics. In the workshop forums, if I were to read all of the critiques of a poem before I read the poem itself, there's a good chance that I would have no interest in reading the poem, because a critic I respected and admired pointed out all of its various flaws. There's something to be said for unaffected, personal opinion of course -- where would we be without it? -- but a well-thought-out critique can go a long way.

And of course, what would Elliot or Blake say about this discussion?

Probably something like "Pass the crumpets."

[Janice D. Soderling]

Bill, here is a link in English

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylistics_(literature)

which covers more than the French page you chose. (Don't even try to tell a professional translator that a machine translation can do the job . Don't even think about going there, amigo! )

I want to analyze my work with the personal and social conditioning in mind, because that is what my (ideal) reader will have when reading.

The way you describe your method (corraling verbs in one pen, nouns in another, I am crudely summarizing) seems a little like mind mapping and I have never appreciated that. So maybe that is why stylistics (as you described it, as I understand it) seems not to be a good tool for me.

By which is not meant that it isn't a good tool for you. While you are woodworking, I am weeding my garden. HA. Either way, it would be nice to have two chairs so we could sit and enjoy the fragrance of the jasmine. If Kate is coming too, as I assume, you'd best make three chairs.

[Alana A. Roberts]

Originally Posted by E. Shaun Russell

I have to take you to task on that comment. As a musician, I can listen to instrumental music and be simultaneously affected by the performance, the composition, the arrangement, and even the production choices. In an "informative rational sense," as you put it, my understanding of the relationship of notes, as well as the whole spectrum of music-education-related elements adds to my interpretation of a piece of instrumental music. I have, quite literally, commented aloud that I would have made a different note choice in a certain section of an instrumental piece written by another musician. Just because something isn't written in words doesn't mean it is wholly sensual and "informatively irrational."

You would have to better define "intelligibility." Something that is completely open to interpretation can still be intelligible. When E. E. Cummings came along, many people considered his random punctuation marks, his deliberate typographical "errors," his bizarre syntax, and his general objectives to be "unintelligible," but here we are, a mere half century after his death, and his works are widely anthologized and studied. Some (like myself) might consider Cummings a detrimental figure to poetry, but clearly many others don't feel the same way. But ultimately, is Cummings' work unintelligible? That itself is open to interpretation.

One of my favorite lines from Auden fits well here (from "Heavy Date"):

"I believed for years that
Love was the conjunction
Of two oppositions;
That was all untrue;"

I'm not sure where the idea of balancing opposites comes into this discussion. A good poem, like love, is not a mathematical formula. Once a subjective assessment has been made, there is room for an objective analysis. But it's rare for any lasting poem to evoke an objective response first that then elicits a subjective analysis.


In a way, a reader and a critic are the same thing. Whether stated or not, a reader passes judgment of some sort on a poem he has read. If he likes it, he'll likely read it again, and read more works by the same poet. If he doesn't like it, he'll dismiss it and move on. The only real difference between a reader and a critic is that the latter is more inclined to delve into the reasons behind his initial opinion, likely elaborating upon them and fleshing them out...and sometimes posting or publishing them. Ideally, a critic will have experience with reading poetry, and even more ideally, a critic will have enough knowledge of the genre to explain the various nuances of a poem in intricate detail. But a passive reader might have those same tools but simply not use them (i.e.: all those MFA students who did well in their classes but found careers in botany instead).


This is the ultimate subjective question behind any and all art. And you'll never nail down a definitive answer. It's staggering how often I have heard variations of this question already in my life.

Certainly. A critic is allowed to say whatever he or she feels is on point. But the less evidence (or at least, the less argumentation) a critic provides, the less credible he is in the eyes of those reading his critiques. Again, all readers are critics. In the workshop forums, if I were to read all of the critiques of a poem before I read the poem itself, there's a good chance that I would have no interest in reading the poem, because a critic I respected and admired pointed out all of its various flaws. There's something to be said for unaffected, personal opinion of course -- where would we be without it? -- but a well-thought-out critique can go a long way.

Probably something like "Pass the crumpets."

Hmmm.. you may be right... although Elliot may have called them English Muffins depending on which period you caught him at.

Well, this I can sink my teeth into. True, I didn't define my terms. That's where I'm going to come back at you on the music question. Like you, I don't believe that music is "wholly sensual" - as evidenced by my assertion that it's affective (derived from and pointed toward the human faculty for feeling) and that it has meaning or significance. But I do insist that the meaning it has is not a rational meaning or a meaning that gives information. I'm also fairly educated in musical theory, played and taught piano until my daughter was born, and direct a church choir. I believe that when we analyze a musical composition, we are being rational and gathering information about the music. Or better, we are doing so about our theories of how music is put together. That's not the same thing as the music itself conveying significance that informs our reason - that's something that doesn't happen. Music conveys a different kind of significance - a feeling one. I think the best proof of this is the fact that when we do want to convey an exact, explicit, rational content, we add words to the music.

So. You've asserted that, in a poem, all the meaning is in the text. I'll give you that but only when we allow for all the types of meaning that the words can bear - the varying and opposite kinds I've indicated in my scales, for instance. (And as I've been challenged on this before, I'll clarify that I believe certain kinds of meaning can only be approached through imaginative contemplation - a "reverie" to quote Bill's paraphrase again, that draws on the mental faculty of imagination. This faculty is not the ability to make things up, but the ability to make mental or philosophic images of things, and detect their qualities.)

So, if a poem can be put together in such a way that the sensory elements of the words partially coincide with the effect of a musical composition (mere rhythm does this, for instance) then a musical kind of meaning has been made intrinsic to the text. A good example would be Chesterton's Lepanto, on which I became intoxicated any number of times in my chaste, sober youth. It's the rhythm - it is the literary equivalent of battle drums. So far as this is true, the meaning, or that aspect of it, cannot be translated into a prose paraphrase. (The words "battle drums" do not get anyone drunk with the glory of the last crusade.)

You are right - I would have to better define intelligibility for the answers to matter much. Although I think for any definition or synonym we found, we could insert it, answer the question, and be better informed. My questions here are sort of a cabinet in which any conclusions we come to will be better organized, more accessible, and have more significance than if we entered them in our minds in a complete jumble.

In some sense a poem being intelligible has to be a bit like a mushroom being edible. It depends whose eating (or intelligence) we are talking about. And that's not even to imply that a person who finds a poem unintelligible is unintelligent. It may be that, but it may also be a case of someone preferring one side of the scales to the other.

I tend to agree with you about Cummings. Which is gets at why I'm trying to find a closely argued way of talking about this. I want to allow for all the proper types of meaning, frankly - even those which I or others may find difficult - while excluding non-meaning. I loathe so-called poetry which appears to offer meaning but doesn't - curiously enough because I find it dishonest. Next to that I also dislike poetry which offers none of the poetic virtues but just wanders around being slightly introspective and morose and ostentatiously using slang and telling a story the only point of which is to excite mingled loathing and pity. I think this mocks the search for meaning in a different way - by flouting our expectation of finding beauty in a poem. It implies an ideological approach which assumes, a priori, that beauty has no meaning and is unassociated with truth, and that goes back to what Bill said in his post about Hegel and so forth.

I think your point about love and Auden's lines is similar to my point about music. We can offer a description of love or music that is rational, but the music and the love itself (and the poem itself, despite how we have talked about it) is something else. Logic, though it is expressed in a somewhat mathematical way, is simply formalized reason. When someone says that a poem has its own logic he is using the word 'logic' in a metaphorical way. The best way of using actual logic is to show that someone has drawn a faulty conclusion - it is not a way to arrive at a non-rational meaning. At most, it points the way.

Balance of opposites - this refers to my scales I think, though its easy to get lost in the argumentation. But to say in a different way what I think I said:

Let's take the Figurative...Literal scale, which is something that everyone is familiar with already. Is poetic virtue (what makes good poetry good) found in being either consistently Figurative or consistently Literal? Or is it found in balancing the two? For this particular scale, I would guess that choosing one or the other would be preferable. I'm not sure about the other scales.

So how did that get into this discussion? Well, when a poem does have meaning (it's understandable, strictly speaking) but a reader or critic can't understand it or find the meaning, I'm suggesting that he may often be looking for one kind of meaning when the poem is offering a different kind. I think we can make judgments about whether or not a poem is understandable by employing the scales, but there may be questions about how to use them and this was one of those kinds of questions. I do feel that it expands on the question: "Should a poem be understandable?" but - when I have to spell out the connection I see that it looks laborious... maybe because I'm fluid in making intuitive connections but struggle with detailed examination, like the glib people in Bill's story.

"Whether stated or not, a reader passes judgment of some sort on a poem he has read."

True enough; and a critic needs to read. Those are the similarities. What are the differences? What distinguishes the two? That's what I was asking. The reason is that a critic has a certain authority vested in him by reason of public opinion and academic sanction, and can to a certain extent influence perception of a poem or poet. As for my question "should a critic be allowed" - yes, you're correct. I wish I had worded it,

Ought a conscientious critic to give a verdict on a poem he has not understood?

My own answer to this question would be, "Only if he is convinced it was not intended to convey any kind of meaning or that it is completely non-functional as a vehicle of meaning." (You see, in some cases I have asked questions with answers in mind, and in other cases have asked them with fields of inquiry in mind.)

as far as the question: "Why do we write poems - is something being served by our efforts that is more important than certain, or all, types of intelligibility?" Yes, it's one of those recurring questions - but that doesn't put me off from it. I have an idea that we may never come at a comprehensive answer but I think we still have to ask the question, and the more answers we get that make some sort of sense, that correspond to our artistic experience, the more true we can become to that experience.

So, I'm going to bring up two of my own favorite quotes on this topic.

First from Auden in his introduction to Owen Barfield's History in English Words.

"Though no human utterance is either a pure code statement or a pure personal act, the difference is obvious if we compare a phrase-book for tourists traveling abroad with a poem. The former is concerned with needs common to all human beings; hence, for the phrases given, there exist more or less exact equivalents in all languages. No poem, on the other hand, can be even approximately translated into any other language. A poet, one might say, is someone who tries to give an experience its Proper Name, and it is characteristic of Proper Names that they cannot be translated, only transliterated. Furthermore, precisely because writing poetry is a gratuitous act, in it, as Valery observed, 'everything which must be said, is almost impossible to say well.' "

Specifically, this idea of a poem being a Proper Name for an experience (this is analogical language, and I neglected to create a scale for it - I wonder what the opposite virtue to analogical language is?) is an insight for me though one I won't talk further on. But this idea of a poem having something in it which must be said is something that resonates with my experience of writing a poem.

There is something that "must be said" - and yet the act of saying it is "completely gratuitous."

So a poem is not obligated to serve any purpose outside its own, which is to say something that must be said.

I find a similar idea explicated in an obscure little collection called Oxford Lectures on Poetry, which is now a free e-book online. In a 1901 lecture on "Poetry for Poetry's Sake," Andrew Cecily Bradley said,

"...pure poetry is not the decoration of a preconceived and clearly defined matter: it springs from the creative impulse of a vague imaginative mass pressing for development and definition. If the poet already knew exactly what he meant to say, why should he write the poem? ... For only its completion can reveal, even to him, exactly what he wanted. When he began and while he was at work... it was not a fully formed soul asking for a body: it was an inchoate soul in the inchoate body of perhaps two or three vague ideas and a few scattered phrases. The growing of this body into its full stature and perfect shape was the same thing as the gradual self-definition of the meaning. And this is the reason why such poems strike us as creations, not manufactures, and have the magical effect which mere decoration cannot produce. This is also the reason why, if we insist on asking for the meaning of such a poem, we can only be answered, "it means itself."

I would love to hear what gems others have found in the attempt to answer this "ultimate question."

[Janice D. Soderling]

Now I have re-read that article and notice the quote from Crystal. That "the compact language of poetry is more likely to reveal the secrets of its construction to the stylistician than is the language of plays and novels."

So obviously I am in over my head here, Bill, and though I can appreciate the glibness of your explication of the Wilbur poem, it isn't the same poem I am reading. At least your synthesis is not what I get out of the poem. I'm not unfriends with Hegel, but darned if I find him useful or practical for making Wilbur's poem more meaningful. I get the same perplexity as when someone tries to explain Creationism.

I have the Cambridge Encylopedia of Language and even the Jakobson book (in Swedish) though I've never read the former cover to cover and the latter is so boring I've never been able to read the entire thing. So I am willing to concede that fault lies with me, HA!

And anyway the thread has turned into yadda-yadda now. It stayed interesting longer than most threads do, it really was a good one and all threads, like all parties, have to end sometime.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Janice D. Soderling

Bill, here is a link in English

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylistics_(literature)

which covers more than the French page you chose.

Dear Janice,

The reason I pointed to the one in French rather than English is precisely because the English one is so bad. Many of the concepts are from a single anglophone author (Widdowson) who seems schoolmarmish at best. I suspect it was written by one of his students. It is the stylistics of ESL teachers, useful in that field, but nearly worthless in poetics. In fact, the approach seems mired in the 18th century, or even before that. I kept expecting to read "Style is the man." I turn away from that kind of thing in horror.

The Spanish page is slightly better http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estil%C3%ADstica. It at least has a few lines about structural or functional stylistics. But even that page spends most of its time on neo-classical categories of style in the broadest sense, which are themselves hold-overs from the renaissance. One almost expects a discussion of Falstaff's diction, as opposed to the "once more unto the breach" speech. It's a little frustrating.

Here's an amusing exchange between Borges and an anglophone interviewer:

*******

INTERVIEWER

But you see I did a rather trivial thing, I counted the colors in . . .

BORGES

No, no. That is called estilística; here it is studied. No, I think you'll find yellow.

INTERVIEWER

But red, too, often moving, fading into rose.

BORGES

Really? Well, I never knew that.

INTERVIEWER

It's as if the world today were a cinder of yesterday's fire—that's a metaphor you use. You speak of “Red Adam,” for example.

BORGES

Well, the word Adam, I think, in the Hebrew means “red earth.” Besides it sounds well, no? “Rojo Adán.”

INTERVIEWER

Yes it does. But that's not something you intend to show: the degeneration of the world by the metaphorical use of color?

BORGES

I don't intend to show anything. [Laughter.] I have no intentions.

***************

It's a popular pose. He may not have "intentions," but he certainly has methods, even if he's not fully aware of them. Stylistics is one way of revealing how he constructs meaning...

Best,

Bill

(Ps. Please forgive the google translate thing. I know you don't need it, but was concerned other readers might...)

[Janice D. Soderling]

Thanks, Bill. I appreciate it. Maybe I will try to struggle through Jakobson before I die. (It'll be harder to do it afterward, won't it?)

[W.F. Lantry]

Janice,

Jakobson is a tough slog. It might be better to find a pony rather than trying to wade through that marsh...

Thanks,

Bill

[Janice D. Soderling]

I know he is. I already have it in Swedish and I fell asleep every time I tried to read it. My brain was decades younger then too! I think I'll wait with it until I'm dead.

[Janice D. Soderling]

When sorting papers I found a printout concernning the Wilbur poem which I thought I'd link to. Alas, since my accessing it two years ago, it has been "confiscated" into a pay-to-read site (similar to JStor?). So I can only briefly give the gist of this succinct text which illuminates the poem from another perspective than those above. I am not indulging in polemics with previous speakers, but hopefully broadening the contemplation of the Thyme poem.

The article title is Wilbur's Thyme Flowering Among Rocks; the author, Professor Isabella Wai, about whom google yields following;

Isabella Wai holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Wichita State University and a doctorate in English from McMaster University in Canada. Her prose and poetry have appeared in https://www.litencyc.com/php/members...ontribid=46107).

Isabella Wai writes, in this beautifully worded article, that

"the observer in this poem negotiates a compromise between the scientific and the artistic approaches to the world. The poem progresses from a metaphorical representation of the thyme to factual descriptions, then to a philosophical conclusion based on the observer's scientific finds. (...) Each of the first two stanzas presents a different view, subjective or objective, of the thyme. First, the observer looks at the thyme from an artistic point of view (...)".

[I am paraphasing in this next] When the observer sees the inadequacy of metaphors he adopts a casually objective perception where imprecise words, such as "many" or "countlessness" suggest a nonscientific objectivity which does not touch "the heart of things".

Later the author says (and this is again a direct quote)

The choice of words suggests an irreistible urge to establish a human relationship with the objects of the world and to keep a balance between subjectivity and 'facts'. The scientific approach, unaided by a poet's intuition, is inadequate (...) The concluding stanza of [TFAR] thus becomes an epigram which sums up the relativity of tuth of falsehood, facts and feelings--an idea carefuly developed throughout the poem.

Professor Wai mentions also the legato effect of the linking.

In conjunction with my search on your behalf I found a link to "The Richard Wilbur Forum" which his many admirers here might like to visit.

http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~tjconn...ilburforum.htm

I understand the idea of paying for entertainment as in pay-per-view television, but damned if I understand why the interested public should be required to pay for scholarly articles of any kind, whether scientific or in the humanities. Democracy rests on citizens having unlimited access to information of a non-personal nature, and while no country will fall because its citizens are excluded from a poem analysis, the premise stretches further, much further. (end of rant.)

[Janice D. Soderling]

Mor afterthought on depth and accessibilitiy.

Those interested in the question of accessibility might enjoy this link below to the Valparaiso Poetry Review. "The Ultra-Talk Poem & Mark Halliday" by David Graham.

Whatever their important differences, poets of ultra-talk as I conceive it share a number of qualities. The poems are highly discursive (Halliday terms Kirby "hyperjunctive," in contrast to the currently fashionable disjunctiveness of Ashbery and others); they are also garrulous to an extreme, quite often self-reflexive, determinedly associative, and frequently humorous. As has become common in poems of several brands today, ultra-talk poems are often in love with pop culture, and freely mix "high" with "low" in good postmodern fashion. Perhaps above all, they are, to use a very loaded term, accessible.

http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/grahamultra.html