Anacoluthon and the Physicality of Prose

This blog is all about ‘anacoluthon’, which Harman and Holman’s A Handbook to Literature defines as “the failure, accidental or deliberate, to complete a sentence according to the structural plan…the device can act as a powerful index of anxiety or disturbed coherence.” I came across this term in my EN 2470 class on prose narrative, the text in discussion was “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The technique is one in which the writer begins a sentence, but somewhere in the middle abruptly changes the context and meaning, so the two halves do not match up. Although it can be used in poetry and prose, I am more interested in its prose usage. I found it very interesting that such a physical element of writing existed in prose. I have always enjoyed poetry because of its physicality, yet that same physicality is created in prose through anacoluthon. Just as a poem can use meter, rhythm, enjambment or caesura to create emotion and meaning through shape and physical feeling, so can prose with anacoluthon. Transition in the sentence is almost always marked by a hyphen, so like enjambment or caesura, the change is seen as well as read. The physical make up of the sentence conveys the emotion with as much weight as the meaning imparted by the words. Here is prose’s response to breaking lines in order to alter rhythms and tempo. As a result of this reaction, anacoluthon also started me pondering the tempo and rhythm of prose. I have begun to notice that whenever I am reading there is a pace, as opposed to a meter, that is controlled by the author. Such instruments as syllabic collapses and other literary techniques seen in prose can create a tempo just as palpable as a poems meter and rhythm. All of a sudden it seems the physicality of poetry translates quite easily into prose as well. Next time you are reading prose, note the places where your reading slows and speeds up, then try and discover why, what similarities do slow passages have, what similarities do fast passages have? Is it simply a matter of climactic moments and boring ones? Or is there something more subtle at work, a conscious effort on the part of the author to create these tempos and paces?

Satire....Where Were You?!?!

I love satirical poetry, unfortunately, it is a mode of poetry I was never introduced to until University, which I believe is an absolute shame. Maybe it was just me and my school but love poetry and poetry of gloom and doom were the only subjects we ever saw. I think that satire at that level would have been a God send to all those students with pre-conceived notions of sappy sonnets and pitiful lamentations. I mean, what high-school student relates to ideas about their own immortality? Or the idea of pure undying love? Most adoloescent males I ever knew, myself included, thought two things in high scool 1) I'm immortal and 2) Well, it concerns love, but not from an emmotional standpoint. Of course, I cannot delve into the psyche of the high school female, simply because I am not one, and I do not want to guess and make a fool of myself (did enough of that IN high school) But I can imagine immortality, the passage of time, etc, were not the forefront thoughts in their minds. However, there was always one unifying theme in high school, beautiful, pure, teenage angst. And what better relation to teens than through this angst? Why give them sappy and gloomy when they can have insulting, bitter, witty insinuations and insults? All the foundations of poetic structure exists in satirical works, some great poetry is satire. So why not teach through a mode that students will relate to and love? Break all the silly preconceived notions of poetry, the ones that made it so damned "uncool" and show that some of the greatest poets used verse to, very eloquently and powerfully, say...*@^& you.

Love Poetry: What do you think of?

This blog is just to point out a few curiosities I have noticed about the way we think of love poetry. The first relates to what immediately springs to mind when most of us hear ‘love poetry’. This is the Elizabethan era, an era of men worshipping women, and poets like Shakespeare. I am trying to figure out why we automatically think of this era, and how this affects our perception of love poetry. Perhaps the main reason we think of this era is Shakespeare himself, because he is seen as the ‘master’ of love poetry. Often credited as the best, he is one poet that all of us know from as far back as grade school. And as a result, he is forever linked to love poetry in our minds, and with him comes his era. Other key factors are the characteristics of this era. Here is a time when love poetry was ‘cool’. Every young man was writing love poetry to his sweetie in courtship. It was an accepted and often expected part of the ritual. Love poetry was a far more public and popular thing in this period, more so than any other I can think of. So, with love poetry at the height of popularity, and with Shakespeare creating some of the best ever, there is a strong link between love poetry and this era. Now, what effect does this have on us, love poetry readers? Well, I think the most noticeable one relates to the way female love poets are seen. In the era we associate with love poetry, it was men who were writing all of the love poetry, or most of it, and the women they were writing about seem to be voiceless characters. All of this means that there is no link to women where love poetry is concerned, unless it is women as the subject of love poetry. I think that this is the reason all of us are a little surprised to discover that Sappho, the female poet, was one of, if not the, earliest documented love poet.

Taste Our Own Lies

Today in tutorial Roger asked us why love poetry is so hard to write, and my response was that all love poetry is lies, and we can taste our own lies, or clichés if you rather. When we write “our lover’s eyes burn like the sun” it is B.S. they most certainly do not, they are just eyes, always have been, always will be. What we really mean to say when we write this is that “you are beautiful and I love you” this is the sincere message that lacks all the elaborate depth that we feel is so necessary to impress and create a good love poem. This is all very similar to what I think Roger meant when he was giving the lecture on the Grief Letters, that whenever we write of an important matter, particularly conveyance of an emotion, we tend to go for the elaborate over the sincere, because it is what the reader wants to hear. The sincere message is too stark and cold, even if it does say everything you want, and so we lie and exaggerate in order to beef up the original message. The most interesting part of it is the fact that the lies can only be tasted by the writer, and not the reader. This is because love poetry, even though it is all lies, needs only to CONVEY sincerity. In essence, the reader needs only to believe that you mean it, on other words, the lies are convincing. What I wonder is how much this ties into my variation on the tired cliché “love is blind”, my variation being “love is blinding”. We have all heard of rose-colored glasses, and maybe it is this blinding nature of love that camouflages the taste of the lies in the reader’s mouth, they want to believe that the writer truly believes these romantic things, and so they do.
The issue of lies relates closely to the issue of clichés. I think that we are so tempted to use clichés in love poetry for two reasons. Firstly, we are already lying, even if we use our own words, so why should we not say it in someone else’s? I mean, how can the use of a cliché deaden the sincerity of what is meant to be a lie? Of course, we must realize that the difference between the lie and the cliché is the ever important conveyance of sincerity. I thins that a cliché in love poetry becomes a cliché when everyone has realized it is a lie, therefore is loses the ability to convey sincerity. The second reason we use clichés stems from the issue of shyness. Most people are terrified to admit to love, let alone write there feeling down in a way that exposes them to the whole world, and so they resort to clichés as a safeguard. A cliché is the vague generality that lets you say pretty much what you are feeling, without the deep revelation of personal soul. Behind a cliché the writer is safe, same as if they were to cut and paste a Shakespearian sonnet or any other poem which is not their own.
Although we fear and shy away from clichés when we are trying to write love poetry, they are very necessary to the survival of love poetry that does not use them. How would Shakespeare’s anti-cliché poem function if he did not actually use the cloches themselves in it? Clichés of love poems are always in the back of our mind while we are reading love poetry because they give us the frame-work for how ‘bad’ love poetry sounds, which in turn tells us how ‘good’ love poetry sounds. In essence, a good love poem is a series of new lies, or old ones told in a new way.

Poem of the Everyday

In tutorial last week Roger asked us to find poems about the everyday for this week. Well, this is perfect because one of my favourite peoms is definetly about the everyday, and so I will post it and give my interpretation of it.

"This Is Just to Say"

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

By: William Carlos Williams
Firstly, the title. I love the way that it functions as the first line of the poem, and it instantly sets the mood. "This is just to say", gives the poem an almost whimsical quality, as if the note (oh yes, I of course see this as a delightful note placed under the fridge magnet after a midnight forage into the fridge) did not need to be written, it was just a little urge as if to say "oh by the way" or "FYI". This helps along the playful sarcasm that is palpable throughout the poem. Also helping establish this is the use of white space, lack of punctuation and enjambment. The first stanza provides a slow revelation of exactly what happened and what the note is about, you can almost feel the rising aggravation of the reader. (I picture two lovers by the way, old or young, it doesn't matter, I just feel this rings with the tension of an inside joke or runnign gag between two very closely bonded people. There is a certain intimacy in this) Then there is a white space, a little pause to let everything settle in. Then the second stanza, which banishes any idea that maybe, just maybe, the partner did not realize the plums were not meant to be shared. Again, the tension mounts, the wry little smile grows a little bigger, both while the second stanza was being written, and on the mouth of the reader. You can almost hear the thoughts of the reader (why, you little...) And from there it only gets worse. The exact details and accompanying enjoyment of the plum's demise is spelled out. But of course, this is done after the plea for forgiveness. The first line of the third stanza would make you think a reason, or an excuse for the actions is to follow, but oh no, not even close. The rest of the stanza is almost rubbing the reader's face in it, oh yes, I ate them, and I loved it. What I love so much about this poem is the fact that it can be written out as an actual note, prose, without changing a word. But only as the poem you see can it truly convey every nuance of the wiriter's wry wit. Every time I read this poem I end up smiling.

Literature as Movies

This is just a little blog regarding Roger and his lecture about movies and literature. He made the point that the frustration we often feel when watching a movie based on a book we read is the result of the discrepencies between the directors vision, and our own vision. Since the vision that we have in our heads is the best possible one for us, of course we will reject in some ways any other version. However, I would like to point out that seeing a movie version of a book can be just like hearing a lecture on the book, it is providing you with a different lens. A diferent lens with which you can view the work, and maybe gain a better understanding through a synthesis of your vision and someone elses. Everytime I see a movie based on a book I read, and I feel that frustration, I ask, why? Does the movie really just suck, or is there something more subtle, and more substantial creating that tension? Is there something about this different interpretaion that I did not see in my own? Granted, a movie usually commercializes and sensationalizes literature, but it can still be a tool to aid your own interpretation.

Classifying, Vivisection and Boredom

Classifying, vivisection and boredom. Well, in my opinion, the first two will inevitably lead to the last. The reason for this is that classfying something, for instance, into a genre, stifles the creative. This is an effect not only on the reader, as they are forced to try and put this thing (a poem) into a neat little box, and failure to do so results in frustration. As for the writer, well, they are trying to find an outlet for creativity, and so they do not want to be critiqued on how well they fit into a little box. If artistic expression is designed to be unique and original, then how can you possibly classify it? Is there ever a case where you were so involved in finding out what type of poem it was, that you ould not even call to mind the meaning? Have you ever judged a poem so strenuoulsy on its ability to fit into its supposed genre that you let its failure to do so convince you it was bad? Or has the oppisite ever happened? A poem fit perfectly into its genre, but it was actually terrible. When we begin classification, we tend to repress and ignore the creative. Where vivisection is concernec, I feel that this relates back to the horrible experiences had by some in their high school english classes. I know that I was often forced to break down a poem to such an extent, all in order to extract the 'meaning' of it, that I became horribly confused and frustrated with the ordeal. How can one extract a meaning from a poem by dissecting it into little bits?!? A poem can only function as a whole, one line does not capture what an author was trying to convey. Poetry cannot be explained using a reductionist apporach, it must stand as a whole, not a collection of individual, stand-alone parts. Now, a combination of classification, which stifles creative input, and creative perception, coupled with dissection of a piece of writing desinged to function as a whole, leaves you with one cluttered, confusing mish-mash of ideas of how to read and interpret a poem. At the same time you are trying to find the genre it fits, you are trying to find out what each line, stanze, verse, etc. means, but the most important part, is your missing the big picture. ENJOY the poem! Roger told us, a while ago in tutorial, while we were discussing poetry and the way it is taught in high school, that a huge mistake is to read a poem, dissect it, and be done with it. You must...MUST read the poem after it has been dissected, to leave it as a pile of disconnected pieces will never serve to show you what the dissection was meant to, the meaning, the BIG PICTURE.

Guest Lecture

For this blog, Roger asked that we critique and discuss the lecture given to us by our guest speaker, who, because of Roger's absence, was also my tutorial leader. In regards to the lecture, I found many of the things discussed concerning the Illaid to be helpful in my understanding of it. A lot of time was spent talking about the Illaid in terms of a histological piece, one desgined to pass down the history of a culture. I really enjoyed the symbolic link that was drawn between Achielles dis-respect for the dead, and the respect for the dead that is given through appreciation of history, which the Illiad stands for. In addition, I enjoyed the section of the lecture where Jeremy dealt with the way humans want always to classify in black and white, while so much is grey. We want to force things to fit one mold or another, in order to remove the in between, because we cannot comprhend the in between. I found this intersting, because the 'in between' or grey, is matters like life and death, which are beginning and end, wheras the in between of these, is what we do comprehend, living life. Have I talked myself in a circle? We do not know of our birth, and we do not know of our death, but between the two is life, the whole middle sandwhiced between the two. We undertand the middle, the weird area in between the two extremes, yet it is the middle of all else we wish to cut out of our classification. This was the way my mind was spinning after the lecture. And I think that poetry realtes largely to this, especially when we consider the Illiad, etc, as a means of relaying history. Poetry itself is grey, no one poem has a set meaning, etc. So i find it interesting that the first way to pass on history (the beginning, one of those grey areas) was thorugh poetry, another grey area. We chose the medium that matched the message.
Moving on to tutorial. We spent the majority of the time reading out loud, poems in middle-english. I enjoyed it not only for the humour in hearing some of the words, but for the fact that depsite having little to no idea what the meaning behind the words were, the poems were still greatly enjoyable. It was the rythym (which many of us destroyed in our attemots to read, hahaha) that these poems had that allowed me to follow them and get a sense of their meaning. Two poems were compared, one with, as Maggie perfectly phrased it, a skipping rhythm. This followed with the meaning of the poem, describing a girl the speaker admires. You could actually feel (let alone hear) the words bouncing along so lightly. I think that the fact that I could not understand the words highlighted the rythym because it was the only thing I could decipher. It was the one thing I could understand and grab hold of in an attempt to find meaning in this poem. A similar experience occured when we read the heavier poem, whose meaning was not given to us in any way, except for the heavy, droning pattern behind these words. Another point I would like to mention is when we were informed that these poems were acted and danced as much as read/sung. This helped to highlight the physicality, the rythym of these poems. The experience was a very enjoyable one, and I can now relate to what people mean when they can hear poems in a different language and still thoroughly enjoy them. In relation to the grey areas discussed above, here is a great example of the greys ability to crytalize and convey the most meaning. I had no idea what the words meant, what the exact meaning of the poem was, but these poems taught me more about rythym, than any other before them. They carried more weight and power for their ability to only hint at a meaning than any perfectly understood poem could. So it is little wonder that the Gods, the all powerful, are entrusted with the meaning of life and death, because the greay ares, the ones we do not understand, are far more powerful than the black and white which we do.

Chant

Roger mentioned in Monday's class his experience with the priests at Oxford and there unique way of delivering the sermon. This story reminded me of a chapter of my life, that like Roger's, sparked, or renewed an interest in poetry, and the period from which chant came. When I started high-school I listened only to heavy metal music, and at the time there were certain bands making a name for themselves in small cricles for chant. These bands wrote songs, but snag/delievered them only in chant. I hope to find some of these cds or lyrics to publish on my blog, but I thought it was interesting that one of the earliest froms of poetry is still being used in a contemporary way, delivering a message far different from the original.

Is Poetry an Archetype?

It is a testament to the power of verse that such old works, like Caedmon's hymn, or the Illiad, have trancended the ages, and several languages. To read or hear these works in a language different from that in which they were created, and still be able to make sense and enjoy them makes me think of poetry as an arcehtypal force. The comment that Roger made about poetry starting in societies that were illeterate really hammered this point home. Even without words as we know them, these people were driven to sing, rhym, etc in such a way that even our modern society can understand and enjoy it. The fact that poetry sprang up in all sorts of cultures, without any communication between them, points to it being an innate urge shared by all cultures. In addition to this, it is the ability we have to understand and enjoy these poems, even when the translations are not exact, or the meter is not the same in our language that shows there is some inborn understanding of poetry within us. Just as each culture has its own religion, laws, etc, each culture has its own poetry.