[Chris Childers]

"Organic form" seems to me one of the most protean terms in poetics, in that it can be used to mean more or less what anybody wants it to mean. Though it has its origins in Plato's Phaedrus, the touchstone for its use in literature is Coleridge's distinction between mechanic and organic form in his Shakespearean Criticism. Here is the relevant passage:

No work of true genius dares want its appropriate form, neither indeed is there any danger of this. As it must not, so genius cannot, be lawless; for it is even this that constitutes it genius- the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination. How then is it that not only single Zoili, but whole nations have combined in unhesitating condemnation of our great dramatist, as a sort of African nature, rich in beautiful monsters- as a wild heath where islands of fertility look the greener from the surrounding waste, where the loveliest plants now shine out among unsightly weeds, and now are choked by their parasitic growth, so intertwined that we cannot disentangle the weed without snapping the flower?- In this statement I have had no reference to the vulgar abuse of Voltaire, save as far as his charges are coincident with the decisions of Shakespeare's own commentators and (so they would tell you) almost idolatrous admirers. The true ground of the mistake lies in the confounding mechanical regularity with organic form. The form is mechanic, when on any given material we impress a pre-determined form, not necessarily arising out of the properties of the material;- as when to a mass of wet clay we give whatever shape we wish it to retain when hardened. The organic form, on the other hand, is innate; it shapes, as it developes, itself from within, and the fulness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form. Such as the life is, such is the form. Nature, the prime genial artist, inexhaustible in diverse powers, is equally inexhaustible in forms;- each exterior is the physiognomy of the being within,- its true image reflected and thrown out from the concave mirror;- and even such is the appropriate excellence of her chosen poet, of our own Shakespeare,- himself a nature humanized, a genial understanding directing self-consciously a power and an implicit wisdom deeper even than our consciousness.

MH Abrams has observed that Coleridge's distinction is a metaphorical one, rooted in the opposition of machine vs. plant, and that Coleridge's criticism is a virtual jungle of botanical metaphor. Poems spring from seeds, they grow and develop and take in nourishment (from life and literature, presumably, as plants from sun, soil and air) and evolve spontaneously from within, "effectuate their own secret growth," as Coleridge puts it elsewhere. Be that as it may, Coleridge clearly believed that he discerned organic form in Shakespeare's writings, that it was a quality visible in the finished work, not only implicit in the subjective process of composition. He also did not feel it incompatible with traditional form; for him, "organic form" is a principle of organization to supplement, rather than replace, the traditional ones of meter and, sometimes, rhyme.

It seems to me, however, that since Coleridge the idea of "organic form" has been taken up to provide the theoretical backbone for a very different kind of prosody than anything Coleridge would have envisioned. Today it seems to be a kind of free verse, is even referred to, by poets like Denise Levertov and Hilda Morley, as a different (and superior) kind of verse to "free verse." Levertov has said that "most free verse is failed organic poetry," though she later qualifies that statement; according to Morley, "free verse" is "less personal, more public, more like the chanting of voices together," while organic verse "stays close to the poet's personal voice, that inward noise that makes use of intensely personal rhythms." Anyway, in this thread I'm curious about three things:

1. How do Sphereans understand the term "organic form?" Does it simply denote a kind of poetry with which you may or may not have any sympathy, or is it something you strive for in your own work, and if so, what does it mean to you?

2. What poets or critics, in interviews or essays, have written illuminatingly or interestingly about "organic form?" Are there any accounts of it or quotes you've found particularly helpful?

3. What poems (formal or free, classic or contemporary) do you feel have organic form, and what makes their form organic?

Obviously, this topic has affinities both with the thread we just had on depth as well as with the slightly disingenuous and half-hearted discussion of product vs. process over on GT right now. (The problem there is that pragmatic considerations overshadow the theoretical.) It belongs in Mastery because I hope it will involve discussion of individual poems of organic form; I myself will come back at some point and try to show the organic form implicit in Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight."

C

[RCL]

Emerson was very much aware of Coleridge’s distinction between mechanic and organic form.

Here is one of many comments Emerson made about organic form, The Poet (1844):

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem, — a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form. The poet has a new thought: he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune. For, the experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet.

He considered Whitman that poet in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass.

An example in Emerson's poetry:

The Snowstorm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of snow.

[RCL]

Here's Thoreau in Spring, Walden:

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviae from their graves. You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it are plastic like clay in the hands of the potter.

And here's the final paragraph of Walden:

Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.


I just remembered an ancient essay on the organic metaphor in PMLA, by an Adams? Also check Emerson bibs.

[Alder Ellis]

Hi Chris,

here's another bit from Coleridge (Aids to Reflection, as quoted by Owen Barfield in What Coleridge Thought):

"… in the world we see everywhere evidences of a unity, which the component parts are so far from explaining, that they necessarily presuppose it as the cause and condition of their existing as those parts; or even of their existing at all. This antecedent unity, or cause and principle of each union, it has since the time of Bacon and Kepler been customary to call a law."

This ties in to the definition of genius as "acting creatively under laws of its own origination."

I think the choice of molded clay to exemplify "mechanic" form was dubious on STC's part: the only "organic" form clay could assume is that of a shapeless blob. The more challenging distinction is between machine and organism. The parts of a machine & the organs of an organism are similarly describable in terms of functional relation of part to whole, and of course in scientific contexts organic bodies are often treated as being, not just metaphorically, but literally, machines. STC's distinction therefore depends acutely on the process by which the product is arrived at, as in your quotation: "it shapes, as it develops, itself from within." Is this a "botanical" metaphor? In a way, perhaps, but the assertion of this self-shaping power applies to the process of plant growth as well as to the process of imagination. It is really, for STC, the same process: the theory of imagination is also a theory of life. Or so Barfield convincingly argues -- if you're truly interested in this stuff you might want to look at What Coleridge Thought, it's a great book. (Many years since I read it, so I'm probably misrepresenting it.)

In the historical context, Coleridge is arguing against a tradition of intellectual condescension to Shakespeare which no longer exists, so it's kind of hard to appreciate where he's coming from. Shakespeare was bracketed off as being wild, untutored, remarkable in his way but not worthy of completely serious regard. Coleridge was among the first to take Shakespeare seriously in a way that we take for granted.

Regarding the appropriation of the "organic form" banner by latter day poetical schools or ideologies: one can only yawn. There is an all-too-obvious potential distinction between the "mechanical" regularity of formal verse and the "organic" irregularity of free verse, & no doubt this has been asserted many times, even though, as you point out, this is clearly not what Coleridge had in mind. The "mechanical" versus "organic" dichotomy and the "formal" versus "free verse" dichotomy have certain resemblances but are not the same: a tempting opportunity for lazy or unscrupulous rhetoric, but a difficult topic for serious thinking. As you say, the "organic" idea can be made to mean just about anything. But taken seriously, it is a subtle & challenging idea.

Re. RCL's posts: puts me in mind of Fahrenheit 451, where, in a world where all the books have been burned, people survive who have memorized the books. RCL would be the guy who has memorized Emerson & Thoreau. What brilliant quotations! Note to self: really gotta read Walden again before I die (or before it gets burned) ….

[Allen Tice]

Chris, what do you think about the Danae fragment of Simonides?

[Gregory Dowling]

Thanks for starting this thread, Chris. A fascinating subject.

Here is Timothy Steele, in Missing Measures, commenting on the use that Charles Olson makes of the concept of organic form:

Nature does not produce in free-form fashion. Its products exhibit definite and predictable formal characteristics [...] If the poet is like a tree whose fruits are poems (or like a gardener whose tomatoes, cabbages and carrots are poems), he presumably more resembles Wyatt writing sonnets, epigrams, and songs than Olson composing the Maximus Poems.

[Andrew Frisardi]

I’ve been enjoying following along in these M on M threads on form, although I can’t participate much online these days.

The passage from Coleridge quoted by Chris that stands out for me is:

The true ground of the mistake lies in the confounding mechanical regularity with organic form. The form is mechanic, when on any given material we impress a pre-determined form, not necessarily arising out of the properties of the material;- as when to a mass of wet clay we give whatever shape we wish it to retain when hardened. The organic form, on the other hand, is innate; it shapes, as it developes, itself from within, and the fulness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form. Such as the life is, such is the form.

Chris’s questions after the Coleridge quote got me thinking about Dante’s terza rima, which as everyone knows he invented for the Divine Comedy. Coleridge’s definition is vaguely dualistic or just plain vague, so no wonder it’s been misinterpreted at times. This is where Dante can be instructive. He’s clearer than Coleridge, although on a similar wavelength. Dante wouldn’t have conceived of form as arising from the material. For him, form was the stamp or impress of Mind-Spirit on the material--which itself has its essence in its intelligibility--and so is an imitation of God’s creating act in the eternal present. Art in scholastic philosophy was not the finished object or art object, but a mental predisposition to making things well--it was a skill that resided in the mind of the artist. Form was transparent to the reality that gives and continually gives it being, the reality in which all things consist, including the artist’s mind. That this was Dante’s view of form in his mature poetics can be seen in his use of terza rima.

It’s often been pointed out how brilliant an innovation terza rima was for the narrative Dante had in mind, how the pattern infuses a forward motion into the story, since each tercet begins with a rhyme on the middle line of the previous tercet--one tercet spills into the next. Terza rima (it’s been said) combines past and future in this way, the new rhyme looking forward the old rhymes looking back, which is exactly Aristotle’s definition of time (which Dante quotes elsewhere): “a kind of middle-point, uniting in itself both a beginning and an end, a beginning of future time and an end of past time.” This temporality is important since the whole DC is so soaked in history (historical figures, events, etc.), even as it pictures and reaches for transcendence. This forward-look of each tercet and its backward-twist to the tercet before it suggest the shape of a spiral, which itself mirrors the plotline of Dante’s story since the movement of Dante and Virgil through Inferno and Purgatorio traces a spiral, to the left and going down in the Inferno and to the right and going up in Purgatorio.

Then there’s the numerology behind terza rima: Each tercet is composed of 3 11-syllable lines, totaling 33 syllables, which is age of Christ’s ministry (traditionally he died at age 33 and 1/3, so the extra line that ends each canto provides this fraction as well). Each tercet mirrors the overall structure of the entire poem, which is made up of 3 canticles, each of which has 33 cantos (plus 1 in the Inferno which is a proem to the whole). 3 is the number of the Trinity, the 3-in-1 which each tercet and the entire DC imitates in its 3-in-1 structure.

This kind of conscious architecture seems to contradict what Coleridge says about form, since it’s hardly “spontaneous” in the trite sense that some have applied to Coleridge’s concept. Or does it contradict the organic-mechanical dichotomy that Coleridge posits? It could be said that terza rima “develops itself from within,” since it’s an imitation of the archetypal structure of the cosmos as Dante and his contemporaries viewed it (e.g., Augustine’s “traces” of the Trinity in creation, which was picked up by Aquinas and Bonaventure). But this would be so because the same structure forms the foundation of the human mind--so Dante’s imitation of creation is at the same time a rehearsal of his inner self. There’s no distinction between the two, in his view, so any form that arises from that intersection would have to be organic, natura naturans, an “imitation of nature in its manner of operation,” as Aquinas put it--not natura naturata, nature imitated as if from outside, which I think is the same (more or less) as what Coleridge says about mechanical form.

The idea that “organic” in Coleridge’s essay means “whatever pops into your head” is obviously easy to debunk. Our egos take up way too much of our line of vision for that approach to work. Terza rima is about as clear an instance as possible of form that arises from the nature of things (as Dante and many medieval mystics saw it), while at the same time it gave Dante a huge and supple and flowing edifice for shaping and drawing out his endlessly rich imagination and thought.

[Edward Zuk]

I think that Andrew brings up an important point. Coleridge’s distinction seems comprehensive at first glance, but there are poems—some of the greatest—that are hard to fit into the organic / mechanical categories. There’s also the complication that “mechanical” did not imply mindless, machine-like behaviour for Coleridge like it does for us. He would have used the word to describe the work of a skilled craftsman or artisan. Was Dante being a supremely skilled craftsman in coming up with the terza rima, or did the divine origins of the world necessitate its invention? That’s not clear, at least to me. [Edited in to add: I'm more than happy to be swayed by Andrew's arguments that the terza rima is organic, but at the least there's a cogent case to be made for the other side.]

In contrast, here’s an explication of a poem that shows organic form, Byron’s “When we two parted.”

WHEN we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

Byron’s subject is the end of a secret love and the narrator’s uncertainty about how to act and feel now that the beloved has been caught and ruined in another affair. The uncertainty comes through in the metre. Some lines begin with an unstressed syllable, others don’t. When the reader comes to a new line, there’s a slight hesitation about what’s to be stressed. The verse takes on an improptu, halting quality as a result, which matches the narrator’s state of mind.

Also, look at lines 5 and 8—there’s an extra foot. The kiss is “cold,” a fact so important that it’s repeated at the beginning of the next line. It’s as if the detail is forcing itself in.

The poem continues:

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow—
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me—
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met—
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

Note that the poem goes on to establish a pattern in stanzas 2 and 3: there’s a single unstressed syllable at the beginning of each line, two feet, and an extra unstressed syllable at the end of lines 1, 3, 5, and 7 of each stanza. As long as he’s not dwelling on that moment of the lover’s unfaithfulness to him, he can deliver his internal monologue with some degree of regularity and composure. In stanza four, though, the memories return to that hurtful moment (the stutter on ‘that thy heart’), and the uncertainty returns.

There’s a lot more that I could point out about the poem besides the metre, like the repetitions, especially with the pronouns, which border on obsessive. But I think I’ve said enough to show that the form is adapted to the demands of the verse.

One final observation: I find it easier to view a form as being “organic” if it shows some variation or irregularities in a pattern. I can then justify the deviations as being an adaptation to the inner logic of the poem. A perfect regularity always makes me think of the poet and the skill behind the lines.

[Heidi Czerwiec]

Most of the above comments go to the substance of "organic" form, and I largely agree. But I wanted to add that Tom Kirby-Smith has some interesting, useful, and amusing things to say about "organic" poetry in his book [i]The Origins of Free Verse[i], in particular in Chapter 2, "The Problems of Organic Form." His argument, in a nutshell, is that the problem arises out of following the thread that if God breathes through the soul into the poet, and therefore into the poetry (and he argues that 19th C American poetry and religion were pretty intertwined on this), then poetry is created independent of individual will. And yet, paradoxically, organicism hangs on because of the American cult of the individual, probably because of how organic poetry evolved in the 20th C, cf Levertov et al.

[Chris Childers]

I've held off responding for so long because I really wanted to see what people would say, and you guys haven't disappointed me! (Though I was kind of hoping someone would show up and say, "I write in organic form, and my idol is Charles Olson," but I guess those people either don't post on Eratosphere or don't read this board.) Anyway, anyone who hasn't responded because you felt unqualified or intimidated, I really am interested in what organic form means to you, assuming it has meaning--not what it meant to Coleridge, or what it really means, or what it should mean, but what you think it means. I'm just curious about what this term now means to the average contemporary reader. I want to know whether, if I say, "Now THAT's organic form!" you'll think I'm praising or criticizing. (I mean, if someone told me they found my form organic in the manner of Robert Duncan, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't feel complimented.)

Ralph, as soon as I saw your name on this thread I knew we'd be hearing from Emerson. Those are great passages and I need to sit down and read "The Poet" before I comment too far in depth. However, it seems to me in my current half-drunken state (well, it seemed the same when I was sober several hours ago, so if I was Persian I'd stamp and seal it), that Emerson bears a lot of the blame for the degeneration of "organic form" as a meaningful term in criticism. The emphasis on "process," to be sure, is already there in Coleridge; but Emerson fixed on it with a Yankee extremism, a Puritanical lust for purity, the desire to weed out anything a priori (e.g., meter), to weed and whack and trim down until all that's left is pure inspiration, the voice of the bard spontaneously channeling the Muse--one can see how the need for an organically integrated product could get lost in ideas about the organic process. But boy, could the guy turn a phrase! That's actually a big part of the problem, with both him and Pound: the well-turned metaphorical vagueness (e.g., the "metre-making argument") which can be interpreted in just about any way the reader wants.

By the way, one of my favorite bits I ran into from Emerson: he considered Poe a bad poet who occasionally wrote good poems, and Thoreau a good poet who usually wrote bad poems. I think most of our modern organicists are probably good poets who write bad poems.

I should say that not all of these latter-day Coleridgeans are as intellectually bankrupt as this thread assumes; Levertov's explanation (for example) of what she's up to is quite subtle and interesting, and not at all far from what Coleridge said. But the problem is the emphasis on process, and the implicit assumption that the use of any traditional element must be necessarily mechanical. I think the example of Dante (beautiful explication, Andrew!) pretty clearly shows how traditional elements can be used in the service of 'organic form.' Whether the poet views the form as spontaneously generated from within or determined from without seems immaterial to me: the evidence is in the poem that was written.

This, to me, is the key; all the description of how to make it happen is a red herring. A poem exhibits organic form when there is a certain inextricability of form and content--how the poem got into that state is of no consequence. The poet could have started from the material and worked slowly outward, finding the form as she went along; or she could start with the abstract form, and generate material to fill it. What's important is that the one be fitted to the other. A form is mechanical (I say) when it's just what you do without thinking: as pretty much everybody in the 18th century wrote heroic couplets, no matter what they had to say. Sometimes the form can take over the thought to the extent that the two appear molded together, as in pretty much all of Pope; and maybe somebody out there writes so damn many sonnets that they dream in sonnet form, and the thought seems organically molded to it. That's fine, but I (and I think Coleridge) would come down on the side of a more thoughtful, adventurous approach to form, one that seeks to match each idea to its form, and each form to its idea, regardless of what comes first.

Edward, thanks for the Byron. You do a lovely job of explicating the meter but I'm not sure that goes deep enough to be what I think of as "organic form." The meter conveys the poet's psychological state. That's a lovely trick, but organic form seems more philosophical to me, something about an equivalence between what the poem does and what it says. However imperfect it is, I may post tomorrow what I've written about Frost at Midnight, whose organicism, as far as I can tell, has little to do with the meter; it's rhetorical layerings, mirrors within mirrors.

Heidi, I've bought that book. Sounds like Kirby Smith has already done the research I've been doing! Wish you'd made that post yesterday, when I was still at Columbia, so I could have photocopied the relevant chapter. Anyway, I'm interested to read his argument; he sounds very Winters-like. Thanks again for your thoughts, all; I shall return.

Chris

PS: Allen, I currently have no opinion on the Simonides fragment you mention. Do you consider it organic form? (It was clearly preserved as a metrical riddle.) Do you want to explain?