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FORM OF POETRY
Section
001 / Fall 2004 / Susan Tichy / Tuesday 7:20-10:00 / Thompson Hall 106
FOUNDATIONS OF ENGLISH POETRY, WEEKS 2-5
READING FOR WEEK 5: Annotations for Poetic Closure
Herrnstein-Smith's
Poetic Closure
Important terms:
- closure
- formal vs. thematic elements/structure (6)
- poetic structure (6, 24)
- formal structure (6)
- framing (24-25, 148)
- saturation (75)
- paratactic structure (99>)
- sequential structure (109>) including temporal structure
(129), logical & pseudo-logical structure, syntactic structure, temporal
punctuation
- associational & dialectic structure (139>), simultaneous
composition (129)
Closural devices related to structure:
- terminal modification 44, 53, 76 (end of sonnet, couplet in
blank verse, etc.
- return to norm after deviation 44, 148
- heightened tension just before close 77
- increased density of sound effects, etc. at close
- delayed coincidence of formal structure with syntactic or
thematic structure: i.e. Milton's counterpointed blank verse 82-83
Non-structural closural devices: (chapter 4)
- a sense of truth-telling or authority, usually achieved by
a combination of formal and thematic elements; may include unqualified assertion,
summing up;
- nonstructural repetition of formal devices, including: metrical
regularity w/ monosyllabic diction, which asserts a sense of control, authority,
and a strongly articulated norm; alliteration, assonance, internal rhyme;
balanced antithesis, repetition of whole words; terminal recurrence of
key words or dominant sounds; 160-161
- puns, parallelism, antithesis or other linguistic structures
contributing to epigrammatic effects; 171
- closural allusion, i.e. reference to endings, death, fall,
night, etc.
- reflexive reference, i.e. to the act of writing or telling,
or other framing or "coda" device to mark the end of "what is told" and
a return to awareness of the speaker's intervention between reader and poem;
The complexity of closure has everything to do with the double nature
of language.
- "Formal elements are defined as those which arise from the
physical nature of words, and would include such features as rhyme, alliteration,
and syllabic meter. The thematic elements of a poem are those which
arise from the symbolic or conventional nature of words, and to which only
someone familiar with the language could respond; they would include everything
from reference to syntax to tone." (6)
Poem as Speech:
- On 17-18 Smith describes the poem as comprising not merely
the words of an utterance, but a "total speech act." In other words,
all that we learn from a live speaker's facial expression, intonation, pauses,
emphases, gestures, and so forth must be expressed in the words of the
poem.
- The poem as a possible utterance, the representation of a
possible utterance, on which Smith builds her arguments, is one of poetry's
most stable conventions, but not, of course, unchallenged. The challenge
lurks in all formalist theories which treat the poem as a linguistic structure.
It surfaces explicitly in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets' critique of the discrete,
autonomous self.
- Relevant to recent non-avant garde poetry is Smith's distinction
between the narrative lyric and the narrative poem proper -- the former being
related to the personal anecdote, the latter to the tale. Current "free
verse narrative lyric" poetry still falls into these two types.
Closural problems for poems with dialectic structure:
- p.142: notes that Shakespeare's sonnets and soliloquies prefigure
the later (Romantic) introduction of dialectical poems which do not end
in firm resolution
- p.144: and that the increasing demand on readers to construct the
poem's context is historically progressive, and leads to Modernism
- p.145: similarly, notes the historical progression from the
dramatic soliloquy to internal monologue & dramatic monologue to the
unresolved or interrupted monologue, the monologue as process
- p.147: and that it is possible to leave the poem's speaker
in instability while allowing the poem to exert sufficient closure (by other
means) that the reader reaches stability. See Marjorie Perloff's "Unreal
Cities" in The Poetics of Indeterminacy on a related point: that one
may allude to or describe indeterminate ideas or conditions without constructing
an indeterminate poetics; or Nathaniel Mackey's discussion of poems using
the open associative processes of jazz vs. those that just talk about such
processes.
- p. 150: points out that reflexive reference to the act of writing
the poem is rare in Romantic and post-Romantic poetries where preservation
of the illusion of utterance is important. In our time both conventions
flourish: the unified, ontologically secure speaker on whose authenticity
the entire poem turns, and the self-reference of an ironic, bardic, or fragmented
speaker, on whose self-consciousness the entire poem turns.
The paradoxical truth that inconclusiveness can be more stable than
conclusiveness -- when the process is reliable, the product suspect.
Smith relates this to our suspicion of language, which lures us into
saying other than what we thought we were saying. Yes, I'd say; but also,
in the huge, compounded, on-going culture shock of a society (now
a world) where change is so rapid and constant that to cling to any fixity
is to doom yourself to loss, to commit only to the flux itself -- in this
case, the discourse of poetry rather than the poem as object -- is to achieve
a certain predictability. Like floating instead of swimming for a receding
or simply illusional shore. (240)
Ways to avoid unwanted finality:
- p. 244: terminal suspension, "a whimper, a question, a dying
fall," stated contradiction, withheld comment, irrelevant comment, refusal
to make assertions -- and every other kind of anti-climax.
- p. 258: points out that a nonassertive conclusion "heightens
the apparent significance of everything else in the poem." In other
words, it tends to equalize, to direct our attention over the entire surface
of the poem -- like a painting without a focal point.
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