A Matter of definition

Weldon Johnson in God's Trombones talks of an old time preacher who began his sermon by saying 'Brothers and Sisters, this morning I intend to explain the unexplainable - define the indefinable - ponder over the imponderable - and unscrew the inscrutable!"

:-)

Unscrew the inscrutable indeed. As if all of reality could come undone with just one turn of the screw. I wish he were around today to help us deal with those who continue to churn up verbal fogs to confuse our understanding of poetry by claiming that it's beyond understanding, beyond definition yet they know it when they see it, even if they can't tell it when asked about it.

I disagree. I think it is quite possible to define poetry once you're willing to commit yourself to understanding what it's all about. Just like songs don't require a degree in Music for you to enjoy it, poetry does not require a degree in literature or the services of a middleman for you to appreciate it's art and it's abiility to transform you. That being said, to enhance our enjoyment we should learn to appreciate it's basic dimensions. Perspectively speaking I'd say Poetry could be said to be about three things in particular viz form - the arrangement of the right words in the right order, emotion - the arrangement of the right feelings with the right ideas in the right sequence and music - the arrangement of the right sounds in the right progression and about something larger than just the business of ordering sound, meaning and ornamentation, it's about the creation of a new vocabulary of experience that will reorder the sum total of our experiences into something quite new in a way that will both entertain and enlarge us. Unless it does all this it is not poetry, yet when it does all this but yet escapes definition in such precise terms, it is then that poetry comes into it's own and creates a language awake to it's own meaning. That is the holy grail all poets seek, to master the rules yes, but then to be able to rise above the rules and dance in freedom from such mere acts of servitude.

Back to more mundane issues - forms come in two types closed and open. Forms refer to all of the arrangement of lines (stanzas), words (denotations, connotations, puns etc), syllable counts (meter). The closed forms are those in which these arrangments have been defined in finite terms by way of strict rules. Villanelles, Sestinas etc are examples of closed forms. Open forms refer to arrangements that are more organic in nature, and are structures that adapt to the requirements of the content and don't therefore adhere to rules beyond the need for establishing cohesion and congruence by any means necessary. Blank verse, prose poems etc are examples of open ended forms.

Music refers to the ordering of words to arrange them as vowel/consonant combinations and/or as syllable combinations (low/low or low/high, or high/low or high/high or any further combinations thereof) to create tonal arrangements. This in fact is one of the more scientific aspects of poetry and has received exhaustive attention and the taxonomy itself is established to the point where it could be taught without difficulty to anybody. The least common denominator that has gained acceptance in this sense is the metrical foot (the combination of a pair of syllables) and the metrical line (the count of metrical foots in a line). But sounds can work with sensations too by suggesting effects. For eg, Surrey's line 'Calm is the sea, the waves work less and less' the use of the letter s in the right combination of consonants creates a swishing sound that contributes greatly to the poem's effect. Walter De La Mare's classic 'The Listeners' also uses the sounds in consonants and vowels to amazing effect to create an unseen pitter / patter of scurrying noises that greatly enhances the ghostly presences and mystery of the whole theme. Dylan Thomas in telling how he began to write about poetry, said that from early childhood words were to him as '"the notes of bells, the sounds of musical instruments, the noises of wind, sea and rain, the rattle of milkcarts, the clopping of hooves on cobbles, the fingering of branches on the window pane, might be to someone, deaf from birth, who has miraculously found his hearing". I understand his point, and in trying to be a poet I recognize that for readers sounds can exert a magical spell, most powerful when it points to meaning as well. This is what is referred to as euphony. But more about all this in some other column. The task at hand is to create a broad conceptual framework on which we can detail out the flesh and blood of what poetry is all about and I think we have enough of a skeleton here to start working with the anatomy of poetry in general and poems in particular.

Oh before we forget, the last dimension, Content refers to the distillation of emotion, and the use of paradoxes, allusions, connotations, puns, allegories, metaphors etc to create a whole larger than the sum of it's parts, and this is where the skill of the poet can go beyond mere mechanics to reach out and create hitherto unseen connections between images and sounds and concepts to create whole new worlds of meaning. To illustrate how well this can be done let's look at a two line poem by Robert Frost called 'The Secret sits' written in 1936

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

Nice poem huh? But a bit of a puzzle eh? Yeah, I scratched my head for a bit when I first read it too, and then when I turned and looked at it sideways the secret in the middle winked at me and I was blown away for a minute by the brilliance of the metaphors in this tiny gem. It's a neat trick to take such an apt metaphor (dancing for creating poetry and ring for form) and then with one deft twist turn a well known concept (secret) into a mysterious entity with it's own being that then takes on a life all it's own to loom larger than life over the poem, and in so doing turn the tables on us the readers by leaving us pondering on how a poem is indeed a secret that sits in the middle (heart) and knows and knows... Of course, this is my own interpretation of the poem and I could be way off base, but somehow it rings so true that I don't feel the need to try and search for another meaning and that's indeed the hallmark of a great poet, leaving you content with what you have gleaned from his poem safe in the knowledge it's revealed it's secret to you but yet it knows and knows more than you :-)

The truly great poets create poems that work on all three dimensions and to help us come alive in all our being,beyond song, beyond meaning, beyond rhyme and reason. Good readers therefore have to work hard to develop their own sense of discernment and enjoyment and grow their inner spaces so that they can in turn keep pace with the twists and turns of poets as they dance through our imaginations. Somebody once said that it's the oldest works that age the least. To that I'd like to add that it's the truest words that are as old as time itself. And it's this quest that makes me yearn to read and write poetry above all else.

Adam
by Anthony Hecht
Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew?

"Adam, my child, my son
These very words your hear
Compose the fish and starlight
Of your untroubled dream.
when you awake, my child,
It shall all come true.
Know that it was for you
That all things were begun."

Adam, my child, my son,
Thus spoke Our Father in heaven
To his first, fabled child.
The father of us all.
And I, your father, tell
the words over again
As innumerable men
From ancient times have done.

Tell them again in pain
And to the empty air.
Where you are men speak
A different mother tongue.
Will you forget our games,
Our hide-and-seek and song?
Child, it will be long
Before I see you again.

Adam, there will be
Many hard hours.
As an old poem says,
Hours of loneliness.
I cannot ease them for you;
They are our common lot.
During them, like as not,
You will dream of me.

When you are crouched away
In a strange clothes closet
Hiding from one who's "It"
And the dark crowds in,
Do not be afraid---
O, if you can, believe
In a father's love
That you shall know some day.

Think of the summer rain
Or seedpearls of the mist;
Seeing the beaded leaf,
Try to remember me.
From far away
I send my blessings out
To circle the great globe.
It shall reach you yet.

[1967]

Note: Adam is also the first name of Anthony Hecht's first son.

Epigraph: "Hath the rain a father ..." These words are spoken to Job by the voice of God in Job 38:28
- posted by Subash @ 3:43 PM