Footholds

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Authors Ross, Joan Moffitt, 1939-

Publisher The University of Arizona.

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FOOTHOLDS

■by-Joan Ross

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of theDEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the„Degree ofMASTER OF ARTS

In the Graduate CollegeTHE UNIVERSITY OF/ARIZONA

1 9 6 9 i

SSAfEHEHI BY AUTHOR

This thesis has "been submitted in partial ful­fillment of requirements for am advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Libraryo

without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department of the Dean of the Graduate College when in his judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author.

This thesis has been approved on the date shown below;

Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable

SIGHED;

APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR

ASk.-l.K7 UCWtiLV .K .K k* K?k? V.-KDate

AGKNGWLEDGMEIO?

The author wishes to express her sincere appreciation to Dr. Barney Childs for his encouragement and guidance. Without them, the poems would not have been written.

I.

H o

f ABIE OF GOHTEHTS,

PagePREFACEHhat Some Patterns Are For « » o « , « « » » « = 1POEMSFrom a Painting "by Edward Hopper » « » » 0 - o , 24-Pro s criptive Poem . 0 0 0 0 . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 25Closet Protom 0 0 0 0 0 0 . 0 0 0 0 0 . 0 0 0 0 2S Nebuchadnezzar 0 0 0 0 . 0 . 0 0 0 0 0 0 . 0 0 0 27Eegmner 0 0 0 0 0 0 . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 . 0 0 0 0 0 28At Rancho Secco o. 0 0 0 . 0 0 0 0 . 0 0 0 0 0 25God 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5̂ ^From a Letter of Saint Jerome . . . . . . . . . 31From a Discourse on Devils . . . . . . . . . . . 32Night Garden l . o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o . 33 Night Garden 2 o o o o o o o o o o o . o o o o o 34 Morning Variations on a Theme of Robert's . . . 35In a Dry Canyon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36Anecdote of Cold 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 . 0 0 . 0 0 0 37Connecticut Sycamore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 ̂ -aNorth 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 35The Persian Doctor . . o o o o o o . o . o q o . o 40The COUSin O O O O O O O O O O O O O O . O O O . 4* 1

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS— ContinuedPage

Odysseus at Home 0 0 0 0 9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4̂2P^am s 3,1d 2. li 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 “̂3Birdeatehmg 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 *̂̂*Mir&beam Bridge o » 0 » 0 0 . « » » » 0 0 . « 0 4-5Rhyme on Returning 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 46Rhyme insrde 0 0 0 0 0 * 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4*̂Rhyme With Wo Room » 0 0 0 0 0 0 o o o o o o o o 48

LIST GF REFERENCES ' . » » o » « . 6 6 » •» 49

PREFACE

"WHAT SOME PATTERNS ARE FOR , ,

I have called this collection Footholds, not "because each poem is part of a progress of many poems towards a goal, but because any individual poem is a solution, momentary and particular, to momentary and particular poetic problems= A poem, formally speaking, exists in relation to the patterns it opposes, it is the result of a labor to manage the resistances of a difficult medium. It is complete, yet partial— only one of an infinite number of possible solutions. A finished poem is a place where one may for a moment stand securely to look at experience through a peculiar optical instru­ment. The instrument and the way it seems to clarify or distort visual objects, to press the metaphor, has no exact duplicate. The visual objects themselves are of less interest to the student of poetry than the way the optical lenses work.. I will attempt, therefore, in this preface to discuss not the ideas or subjects which my own or any other poems treat but some of the techniques of their poetic embodiment.

Poetry expresses not ideas but embodied ideas.Poetry is not prose. Valery writes of the relation ofpoetry and abstract thought in this anecdote:

1

2The great painter Degas often repeated to

me a very true and simple remark "by Mallarme»Degas occasionally wrote verses, and some of those he left were delightful„ But he often found great difficulty in this work accessppy to his paintingo (He was, "by the way, the kind of man who would bring all possible difficulty to any art whatever=) One day he. said to Mallarme % “Tours is a hellish craft.I can't manage to say what I want, and yetI'm full of ideas . . And Mallarm^ answereds "My dear Degas, one does not make poetry with ideas but with words="1

Elsewhere, Yaliry writes that the poet's use ofwords is quite unlike the common use of words as a systemof signs for acts or ideas:

The poet's use of words is quite different from that of custom or need. The words are without doubt the same, but their values are not at all the same. It is indeed nonusage'— the not saying "it is raining"— which is his business; and everything which shows that he is not speaking prose serves his turn. Bhymes, inversion, elaborated figures, symmetries, and images, all these, whether inventions or conventions, are so many means of setting himself in opposition to the prosaic leanings of the reader . . . The impossibility of reducing his work to prose, of saying it, or of understanding it as prose are imperious conditions of its existence, without which that work is poetically meaningless.2

It is not, then, merely words that are the material elementof a poem. It is in the many patterns into which words maybe organized— patterns of imagery, patterns of cadence,patterns of sound, patterns of diction— and in the conflictand interaction of these patterns with prosaic uses of

1. Paul Valery, The Art of Poetry, trans. Denise Folliot (Hew York: Pantheon Books, 1958), p. 63=

2. Ibid., p. 98.

3language» that poetry exists« The words of a poem are experienced in relation to. a set of norms. The vitality of any poem comes from the tension between pattern and anti-pattern <, Ho poem exists without establishing original or implying conventional patterns.

The most important patterns of a poem are those involving time. In this respect poetry is closely related to music. Stravinsky,- in his Poetics of Music, speaks about the element of time in music as follows;

The plastic arts are presented to us in space: we receive an over-all impression before we discover details little by little and at our leisure. But music is based on temporal succes­sion and requires alertness of memory. Conse­quently music is a chronologic art as painting is a spatial art. Music presupposes before all else a certain organization in time, a ehronomy— if you will permit me to use a neologism.

The laws that regulate the movement of sounds require the presence of a measurable and constant values meter, a purely material element, through which rhythm, a purely formal element, is realized.In other words, meter answers the question of how many equal parts the musical unit which we call a measure is to be divided into, and rhythm answers the question of how these equal parts will be grouped within a given measure . . .

Thus we see that meter, since it offers in itself only elements of symmetry and is inevitably made up of even quantities, is necessarily utilized by rhythm, whose function it is to establish order in the movement by dividing up the quantities furnished in the measure.3

3° Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music, trans. Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 194-7), p. 28.

4This valiiaSle distinction applies to the element

of time in poetry as well as to the element of time in musico For poetry, like music, is a chronologic art. Although a poem on a printed page is presented to us in space and therefore may have certain effects that are intended for the eye alone (as is the case when the first letters of all the lines in the poem may he read down the page as an anagram, or when the poem, like some of those by Dylan Thomas, appears on the page in the form of a lozenge), poetry is and always has been intended primarily for the ear. Whether one is fortunate enough to hear the poem read.aloud by a skillful reader or must read it silently to himself, he experiences with "the mind's ear" the physical rhythm of a poem, which he perceives in relation to the system of regular pulsation, the meter, that has been established in the opening lines of the poem. The chief effect of a poem on the ear is that of an interplay between what the meter demands and what the rhythm gives. Rhythmic excitement in a poem comes from the rhythm's continually resisting the demands of the meter— -having little revolts against it. Stravinsky puts it as follows t

o . « What strikes us most in this conflict of rhythm and meter? It is the obsession with regularity. The isochronous beats are in this case merely a means of throwing the rhythmic invention of the soloist into relief. It is this that brings about surprise and produces

the unexpected. On reflection we realize that without the real or implied presence of the beats we could not make out the meaning of this ^ invention. Here we are enjoying a relationship.

The relationship between meter and rhythm ishandled very excitingly in the following of John Donne'sHoly Sonnets:

I *_>> I iv --- | I w | w IBatter my heart, three person'd God; for, you1 v-1 ■ "" | vy -- | — — — 1 v j ' | w — — IAs yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mendI l_y ■— | —— | '-y | v/ v_y ■ - 1That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee, and bendI w —— • ( vv — — I — • [ vy -— | ----- — - jYour force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.

I— ' ( — — | | 1 w — II, like an usurpt towne, to another due,I — V I — * I w -- I vy | — — ILabour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,I — w | t_y — - I <y v/ — | v-y I fHeason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,( Vy I -— * ^ | i > ■— • | '■ — vy J uy - — /But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.I lV — I v_y vy • I i_y vy — - I vy |<y jYet dearely I love you, and would be loved faine,I vy -—— | vy • I o — ( vy •— |«y •— •/But am betroth'd unto your enemie:I v/ —— | vy <-V -— ' I < i | vy — I vy •— - |Divorce mee, untie, or breake that knot againe,I'— vy | I <y — | cy — I w ITake mee to you, imprison mee, for I

L«y -— 1 l- vy -— ■ | vy |«y * | vy — — Ixcept you enthrall mee, never shall be free,I vy .— (vy { y •— | vy — • | w> — j cNor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

Donne can take considerable freedom with the meter even from the beginning, for iambic pentameter is the meter traditionally used in the sonnet and is part of the

4. Ibid., p. 29•5. John Donne, The Divine Poems, ed. Helen

Gardner (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 11.

expectation of pattern that the reader brings to the work. The very first foot, "Batter,,l is a trochee, dramatizing in rhythm the destructive action the word denotes.

The dominant meter of the sonnet is iambic, but there is an unusually great degree of variation from it: of the seventy feet, forty-six are iambic, nine trochaic, seven anapestic, and eight spondaic. The variations seem to emphasize rhythmically the kind of violent overthrow of the soul, the change of spiritual equilibrium, for which the poet prays. For example, in line two the third foot is a spondee, so that "knocks, breathe, shine" is a sudden "battering" on the ear of three consecutive stresses, like the blows to the heart by the "three person*d God." The same rhythmic variation takes place in line four with "breaks, blows, burn"; but this time the "blows" are strengthened by the repetition of the percussive consonant »b.»

Just as the dominant iambic, meter establishes a pattern against which the rhythm moves to create excite­ment and pleasure, the pentameter line creates an expectation of regular cadence in relation to which the phrasing of the poemAis experienced. The eye sees the line on the page. 4h§ ear hears rhyme and grammatical stops emphasizing the length of the line. In the sonnet by Bonne, only four rhymes are used, and all but three of the lines end with strong syntactic breaks; furthermore,

the tradition of the iambic pentameter line for the sonnet influences the reader's expectation about cadence= Departures from such a clearly established pattern are formally very powerful» For example, in the third line, a stronger cesura occurs after the third foot, "and stand," than at the end of the line. After the pause, the sentence gathers speed. One feels the line push energetically into the next as the voice hastens to follow the verb "bend" with its object "Your force." This technique of pushing through the cadence dramatizes the sonnet“s theme of the overthrow of defenses. The same technique is used in line twelves the line ends with the grammatical subject "I," and the cadence is then further delayed by the interruption of the adverbial clause "Except you enthrall me." This postponement of conclusion is particularly strongly felt here, before the final couplet, the couplet being perhaps the most important element of the English sonnet's sententious form.

In addition to the relation between meter andrhythm, many other relations may exist in the poem, many.

6kinds of interplay between "patterns of expectation" and the forms which go counter to these patterns. The uses to which a particular form, such as the sonnet, has been put establish.another norm against which the poet may

60 John Giardi, How Does a Poem Mean? (Bostons Houghton Mifflin Go., 1959) 9 i>.

effectively work. For example, the pleasure one experi­ences in reading the sonnet by Bonne is derived not only from the relationship of metrical pattern to rhythmical innovation, but from the relationship of the subject- matter, imagery, and diction traditionally associated with the sonnet to Bonne's peculiar handling of the forme Bonne has taken the Petrarchan treatment of woman as a religious object and reversed it, addressing the divine t'three-person'd God" in erotic language; without the religious reference, the poem might be addressed by the "proud rebel" to the Petrarchan lover. Phe octave uses a scheme of metaphor derived from warfare, used in sonnets by Petrarch, Wyatt, Surrey, and numberless less skillful sonneteers to describe love as an invading force. Paradox, also part of the sonnet tradition, is skillfully employeds Season, which rightly should be on God's side— His "viceroy" in man— opposes God's entrance; man must be battered down in order to rise, imprisoned to be free, ravished to be chaste. A shift of focus takes place before the sestet (the point of balance between the two parts ofthe poem in countermotion— what Giardi calls the fulcrum

nof the poem).' Just as in his love poems,.Bonne seems to reduce the great world to an incidental backdrop to his personal drama. A poem which begins with the metaphor of

7= Ibid., p. 995- ,

a besieged city shifts to the intense language of the narrower? more personal relationship of lover and beloved» Of course» the use of erotic metaphor for the religious experience is not original with Donne; nevertheless, there is an intensity of expression, a direct, physical quality in the language— the sensuous appeal of such words as "batter," "knocks," "enthrall," and "ravish" makes the metaphor concrete and personal— that helps this manipula­tion of well-worn Petrarchan themes to seem fresh*

Another relationship that a poem can make the hearer experience is the relation between the diction and the grammatical patterns of "ordinary speech" and the condensation and manipulation of language that is essen­tial to poetry* ¥* B= Teats in 1913 wrote to his father,"1 have tried to make my work convincing with a speech sonatural and dramatic that the hearer would feel the

8presence of a man thinking and feeling*" Poets must use"natural words in a natural order," Teats wrote * "Our

qwords must seem to be inevitable."y And yet this is only half the story; for the illusion of natural speech, gained for Teats through effortful."stitching and unstitching" of lines, is not felt to resemble prose* The artifice of

8 * The Letters of ¥» B* Teats, ed« Allan ¥ade(Hew Tork: The Macmillan Oo», 1935)9 P» 583«

9- - Letters on Poetry from ¥* B* Teats to Dorothy .Wellesley (Hew Tork: Oxford University Press, 194-0), p* 68*

10"naturalness" of syntax becomes exciting only within the context of an exacting form; "naturalness" of diction is powerful when it is heard in combination with powerful rhetoric. What Yeats understood so well was that manipu­lation of syntax or diction for any sort of effect implies a basic dependence on the ordinary> patterns of speech, for the poetic effect is felt as a divergence from the norm.

Energy, in an English utterance, is in the verbs.A poet's choice of verbs and his placing of them in the sentence may make all the difference between a static poem and a dynamic one. In H. D.'s poem "Heat," the verbs givethe poem its effect of emotional energy:

I ̂ | | * Lv I vv *—* I0 wind, rend open the heat,| — | iv I ^ ' Icut apart the heat,1 — j w -— |rend it to tatters.I 1 U-V v-> -— IFruit cannot dropI I — I fthrough this thick air—I | IV IV * / tv IV Ifruit cannot* fall into heat1 tv — j v — I o —— ■ Ithat presses up and bluntsI iv -——■ { <_y — |the points of pears| —— | *v - —* Iand rounds the grapes.I — I ^ — ICut the heat—I — " | — Iplough through it,

11I - W I iv I CV Iturning it on either side11-’ — I inof your path.

There are several things one can discover about the importance of verbs by analyzing this poem. First of all, of the thirty-two major stresses one hears in the poem, five fall on verbs in the imperative mood; five on verbs in the present tense, indicative mood; five on prepositions immediately following and idiomatically connected with verbs; and one on a present participle. This is a far greater crowding of verb forms than one usually finds in prose, and is unusual even for verse. The insistence on verbs gives the poem its characteristic power. Further­more, the verbs chosen are expressions of force, of powerful transfer of energy. "Rend," "cut," "press," "blunt," "round," "plough"— these are acts of creation or shaping, set forth in words. Still further, the sounds of the verbs are those which require energy to produce: thelips and tongue must be active to produce the consonants "d," "t," "p," "f," "b," "r," "k."

When one compares the poem by H. D. with the first stanza of Keats' "To Autumn," also an apostrophe to an abstraction from nature, one sees how much more essential to the character of the poem are the verbs than is the paraphrasable "idea" of the poem:

10. H. D., Selected Poems (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1957)» p. 1?.

12\ --- I O’ — I c — I \ J — 1 V 1Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

-■ — — “ 1 I ' " J | W JClose bosom-friend of the maturing sun;\ ̂ — | v -— I v/ — • \ v-v — [ -— JConspiring with him how to load and blessI J iv - | W — - | uv | w ■— JWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;I 1— ' I W —■ J V-̂ v->' -J ' /To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,| W ‘ I — — * | I V | X - V I W -IAnd fill all fruit with ripeness to 'the core;| — —' | X— ■ | X z ----- | ^--- --- - | —---- - ITo swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells1 v* v J -—■ x_< 1----- -- | — • | w — |With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,1 v '—■ j "I o - ) V I V -- IAnd still more, later flowers for1 the bees,I LV — I v I -- -— • 1 L J —— j V j |Until they think' warm days will never cease,I V — * I — — J V / - I L V — J L V -| 1 1For Summer has1o'er brimmed their clammy cells.

Of fifty-eight stresses in the stanza, only nine fall on verb forms, two on participles, and one on a preposition ("round") which is idiomatically linked with the verb.Of the verb forms, seven are infinitives, one is a present perfect tense. These verb forms have less immediacy and dynamic force than H. D.'s imperatives and present indica­tives; they create the effect of a continuous flow of motion rather than that of a series of abrupt changes in equilibrium. Many of them have the consonants "s" and "1," which are continuing sounds rather than stops.

Donald Davie has written, "The mind that is active produces poetry that finds room for verbs and hence (other

11. The Poems of John Keats, ed. Sidney Colvin (New York: Brentano's, 191$), II, 24-5•

13IPthings "being equal) for syntax<>" A good example of the

poet1s "finding room for verbs" is in the great increase in energy of the later poems of W. B= Teats ..over that of the early poems. Tents' consciousness as a mature poet Of the importance of syntax is illustrated by an incident from his biography. At the rehearsal for a radio broad­cast in which his verse was to be read, he heard the beginning lines of "Sailing to Byzantium":

That is no country for old men. The young.In one another's arms, birds in the trees . . .

Teats interrupted, calling the lines an example of "theworst syntax I ever wrote." He changed the first line,for the broadcast, to read, "Old men should quit a country

- ]%where the young . . ." The change gives a strong forward motion to the stanza and dramatizes more clearly a human dissatisfaction with the mortal condition. The changed syntax becomes another manifestation of the theme of the journey.

"Sailing to Byzantium" is among the best illustra­tions, from Teats' work, of Davie's statement that Teats' syntax demonstrates "faith in the intelligible structure of the conscious mind and the validity of its activity.

12. Donald Davie, Articulate Energy (London;.Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955)? P° 124.

13° Joseph Hone, ¥-. B. Teats, 1863-1959 (Hew Tork; The Macmillan Co., 194*3), P° 488.

14. Davie, op. cit., p. 95°

In the second stanza, for example, the speaker gives"evidence" for the incompatibility of old age with thelife of sensuous experience;

An aged man As hut a paltry thing,A tattered coat upon a stick, unlessSoul clap its hands and sing, and louder singFor every tatter in its mortal dress,Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence;And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.15

The speaker uses the word-patterns of logical discourse,such as "is = . . unless," "nor is . . . but," and thenconcludes the list of "reasons" for his journey as onemight conclude a demonstration in logic. "And thereforeI have sailed the seas and come . . ."

A strong poem is not merely "written about" a subject, but is a speculation on human experience; it is characterized not by the sensitive choice of adjectives and nouns but by the energy of its syntax. Depending upon the greater or lesser force of its verbs and energy of its syntax, a poem might be classified as "poetry of happenings" or "poetry of things," poetry of "thesis" or "subject."

Imagist poetry at its weakest is "poetry of things, the concern for precision and accuracy in rendering the image overwhelming all other poetic concerns, the poem being reduced to a simple equation-like statement. A

15= The Collected Poems of ¥. B. Yeats (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1959)9 P- 191»

15comparison of the syntax of Yeats8 "Sailing to Byzantium"with that of William Carlos Williams” "To Waken an Oldlady," also on the subject of old age, demonstrates theloss of energy which poetry suffers when its verbs areweakened:

Old age isa flight of smallcheeping birdsskimmingbare treesabove a snow glaze»Gaining and failing they are buffeted by a dark wind—But what?On harsh weedstalks the flock has rested, the snowis covered with broken seedhusksand the wind tempered by a shrill 16piping of plenty=

The most important verb in the poem is "is," a kind of verbal "equals sign" between the tenor and vehicle of the metaphor» Of the four other verbs in the poem, "are buffeted," "has rested," "is covered," and is "tempered," three are combinations of the verb "to be" with the past participle; they express passive states rather than activities or choices»

A poem may be poetry of sensibility only, poetry of tasteful perception rather than of adventurous specula­tion, judgment, or choice, if it uses few or static verbs=

16. The Collected Earlier Poems' of.William Carlos Williams (Norfolk: Hew Directions^ 1951), p. 200=

!

16If a poem is weighted with "things" and their "qualities," — that is, nouns and adjectives— it is likely to he static rather than dynamic o The poetry of Amy Lowell is an example of "thing--centered" poetry= Most of her poems, even the better ones, are a stringing together of repeti­tions and variations of the same perception. The following passage from "Lilacs" illustrates my point:

Maine knows you,Has for years and years';Hew Hampshire knows you,And Massachusetts And Vermont.Gape Cod starts you along the beaches to Rhode Island; Connecticut takes you from a river to the sea.You are brighter than apples,Sweeter than tulips,You are the great flood of our souls Bursting above the leaf-shapes of our hearts,You are the smell of all Summers,The love of wives and children,The recollection of the gardens of little children,You are State Houses and ChartersAnd the familiar treading of the foot to and fro on a road it knows.May is lilac here in Hew England,May is a thrush singing "Sun up’" on a tip-top ash tree, May is white clouds behind pine-trees Puffed out and marching upon a blue sky.May is a green as no other,May is much sun through small leaves,May is soft earth,And apple-blossoms,And windows open to a South wind.May is a full light wind of lilac From Canada to Harragansett Bay.-*-7

Here, as in her other verse, Miss Lowell uses the connec­tives "and" and "but," simply putting one "thing" next to another, rather than connectives which create order,

I?. The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955)? p» 44-7.

17hierarchy5 choice<, She uses "knows," "starts," and "takes," verbs of no particular thrust or excitement; and she uses "is” and "are" eleven times= The poem, as this small part of it demonstrates, is infinitely too long, lacking the intensity that selection and concentration might give ito In a poem which depends for its effect on nouns and adjectives, Hiss Lowell takes time to call children "little," clouds "white," a flood "great," She finds "brighter than apples, sweeter than tulips" a comparison worth noting. The effect of the poem is not only static but saccharine.

My reading of poetry has made me conscious of the force which a poetic statement can acquire through the substitution of a dynamic verb for a static one, I have attempted increasingly to use this knowledge in my own writing of verse. For example, in "Birdcatching," one of the earliest written of the poems in this collection, the only verbs used are "is" in interrogative statements and "may be," The result is a slight poem, tentative in feeling. In a more recently written poem, "Odysseus at Home," the verbs "steadies," "cling," "seeks," and "drives" are the result of conscious searching for energetic, active verbs, In "Nebuchadnezzar," the verbs "lifted," "paid," "shaped," "curbs," "strips," and "claw" are attempts to set forth in words the activities of creation and destruction and to dramatize the energy

18required to work in a resistant medium= The repetition of ”t9 H Mp," "k, *' ’’"b9" percussive consonants, is intended to emphasize the idea of creative pride and rebellion which Nebuchadnezzar represents. The verbs "thrust" and "pack" in the poem "In a Dry Canyon" are also the result of a conscious search for energetic verbs. "Thrust" is the final replacement for the original choice, the more static verb "rise." The placement of "pack" at the end of one line, and offits object, "Unnatural hopes," at the start of the next, is meant to enforce the sense of crowding that the word "pack" itself denotes.

My aim is to write verse not of sensibility but of active response, of judgment. The noun is not enough.

Of the twenty-five poems which are included in this collection, ten are based on iambic pentameter, tetrameter, or trimeter lines, and attempt to play rhythmically against the metrical pattern established, lor example, in the poem entitled "In a Dry Canyon," a series of end-stopped lines establishes a strong pattern; the pattern is then broken in line seven with the verb "pack," which hurries the reader on to its object, "Unnatural hopes," at the beginning of the next line.This rhythmic invention is an attempt to dramatize by the ' "packing" of words the idea of the verb "to pack." A similar attempt at appropriate rhythm occurs in these lines from the poem "From a Letter of Saint Jerome":

Hy parched eyes would mark the change of tide*The glare of rocks briefly became softer.Evenings before the abrupt shift to cold.To stars hanging in the cold.a moment Before the day returned „ <= «

The first of these lines is a grammatically completestatement, and the second, too, could stand by itself asa grammatical unit, although it does in fact go on. Thesefirst two lines have in part the purpose of identifyingthe line as the measure of the poetic phrase, ofestablishing that a cadence should come regularly at theend of five feet. Yet these are not strictly conventionaliambic pentameter lines. The first line is slowed by theabsence of the unstressed syllable in the second foot. Ithas the slow, steady rhythm of the periodic rise and fallto which the words refer. In the next line, the third andfifth feet are trochaic, the slight rhythmic variationemphasizing'the idea of a slight, noticeable change in thephenomenon of light, and the feminine ending speeding upthe transition to the following line. In the third line,the words "the abrupt shift" vary the rhythm as an anapest(which, in the iambic line, speeds the rhythm) followedimmediately by a one-syllable foot, which, as the second

I VJ Iconsecutive stress, slows the rhythm again: "the abruptI ■— . Ishift«" The rhythm is like that of a sudden foot-change in marching or dancing. In the fourth line, the last word of the previous line, "cold," is echoed in the fourth foot; the effect of this is to make the shorter part of the

fourth line seem to he equivalent to the third line; that is8 the word "cold" creates a cadence, and when it is repeated, the sense of a second cadence occurs, so that the time taken for a phrase becomes rapidly shortened«The fact that "moment" echoes the vowel sound of "cold" makes it, too a cadence, an even shorter rhythmic phrase. This telescoping of rhythm is the appropriate expression for the telescoping of time which the speaker is describ­ing.

Of the other poems in the collection— those not based on iambic meter— almost all are syllabic; that is, the number of syllables, rather than of feet, determines the length of the lime. The object in these poems is to avoid establishing a predominantly iambic or trochaic pattern— to move stress and cesura around within the given framework only of a line of a certain number of syllables. In normal English speech we tend to stress some syllables more heavily than others and to regularize the distance between stresses; that is, to make the time that occurs between stresses of: nearly equal length, Formally we hear cadence in terms of a number of stresses rather than of syllables. However, the syllabic line as a unit of time is not a merely intellectual creation of which the ear must always remain ignorant, I have experimented in several poems with ways of establishing a norm in terms of number of syllables. One way of emphasizing the shape of

21the syllabic line is to reinforce it with rhyme, or lighter echoes of sound, and with syntactical breaks« For example, in "Odysseus at Home," the eight-syllable line is

J -

reinforced by heavy end-stops (for all but three lines ofthe poem) and by organization in terms of obliquely rhymedcouplets ("dark" - "back," "Quarrel" - "level," "keeps" -"ropes")o In the poem "North," a five-line stanza isestablished, the lines being of nine, nine, eleven, eight,and five syllables respectively, rhyming abacc» It mightbe argued that this is a subtler pattern of time than theEnglish-trained ear can fully appreciate, that the patternis as much for the eye as for the ear; but it could not beargued that the poem "sounded like prose." "Night Garden2" is a pattern as much for eye as for ears the twostanzas, each composed of lines Varying in length from twoto four syllables, mirror each other. "Ehyjjie Inside" iscomposed of four-syllable lines grouped as couplets;.theabsence of punctuation is intended to indicate that theline is a unit of breath and that each couplet is a

1 A"motion and counter-motion." The shortness of the linesmakes it possible for the ear to hear as well as for the eye to see strophe and anti-strophe, "Birdcatching" is also made of couplets, these varying in syllabic length but being clearly established by partial rhymes ("this" - "is," "open" - "sun," "sure" - "more"). "Rhyme with No

18. Ciardi, o|>. cit., p. 994.

22Room" is an attempt at a syllabic sonnet s it is composed of three quatrains and a couplet, with a combination of * half and full rhymes in the pattern abed abed abed dd=Each quatrain is unified by the limitation on and close echoing of both vowel and consonant sounds= "Nebuchad­nezzar" is a kind of truncated sonnet» It has twelve seven-syllable lines, the last two of which have the epitomizing function of the closing couplet of the Shakespearian sonnet. The final consonants of the lines echo each other in the pattern abed abed abed. End- stopping helps to educate the ear sufficiently to the line-length so that the enjambment of lines eight and nine is heard as rhythmic variation.

The only poem in the collection that is composed as "free" verse nevertheless establishes a pattern through which it is possible to experience rhythmic change: "Morning Variations on a Theme of Robert's" gives the effect of having lines nearly equal in length (most of the lines are between six and eight syllables in length and have two or three major stresses); the length of the lines is determined in this poem by the need for break in logic or for physical breath. The longest and slowest line, coming after nine lines of preparation by shorter lines with fewer stresses, reads as a long, slow line, appropri­ate rhythmically for its idea of a slow, continuous phenomenons "The leaves open in continuous light."

23Ho verse is "free,11 of course o A poem which is

not "based "on a traditional English metric scheme must bear the full weight of responsibility for establishing a scheme of its own, Yvor Winters' six-syllable poem,"Noon,"

Did you move, in the sun?1^ is complete as a poem, is heard as two parts nearly equal in time and in pattern of stress; the slight variation in weights of syllables is powerful in creating form in such a reduced temporal scale. Pattern and counter-pattern make the poem.

19- Yvor.Winters, Collected Poems (Denver; Alan Swallow, 1952), p. 16.

KEOM A PAINTING BY EDWARD HOPPER

In silence Sunday early, in the Waldorf a space estranges tables to unite him sipping coffee, her beside the window, a table washed, by the eternal light.

PEQSCKIPTI7E POEM

A. poem is of moments«It is not to be dwelt on Hor to be thought wholePhilosophy. Look at it once, Serving what recognition You must. But let that fail.It inclines to lie.Once true I won’t caution.You mores honor it little.

CLOSET DICTUMjTo take the cloak for the work or the occasion for speaking for, itself, the speech,Ion, is mistakeno Poet takes occasion or subject to ignore it, to perfect ithe puts on a metric dress and hopes to out­wit what he is noto

EEBUCHADEEZZAE

I lifted pride out of stone»Mines paid into my turned palm*I shaped my hard height, my gate,My contradictory toweroThe earth knows what I have done» Though king, I am overcome As hy some wizard's feat0 His art-confounding powerCurbs my hand, strips off my sewn Coat, reforms me' to beast's form*Grass is flailed, my body caught;I claw the earth with bird-hard claws.

BEGI1HER

Well walled, still these gardens confess The gnarled trees8 top branches behind The wall, hung with a heavy mass Of brown and yellow fruit»Bo the fruits take him? Wot with shhpes He knows them at home better formed, ;; Fitting well in the palm, the ripe Flesh close to its cover«Color? It can8t be, when he8s had The choice of his mother8s table, Shadowed around the base with red,In a napkin, perfect»These fruits run from a green too tough To eat (tasting them would bend him,He knows, like his hinged pocket-knife) To soft ones, dropped, ruined,Here and there rotting on the wall«Wo thought of sweet juice on the tongue, Comes from this neighbor garden8s smell= His father’s trees bear betterFruit for all the senses. Why climb, Then, this difficult vined brick, risk Being beaten, then throw to dumb Wumbers of grunting pigsWhat his blind expert fingers rob?The boy couldn’t say what pleasure He finds best food, not in those drab Pears, but in the thieving.

29A T BANCHO SECCO

At three the work of breath wakes me.Morning cuts no square in the close- Loeking bricks. Strict around my chair The dark has tightened a zone. May Amendment of the body be All that this night's wait will impose.Roommates breathe on their cots. OutsideAt intervals among rocks breatheThe quiet bodies of snakes = PaleMoths beat through the dark. Hush now. Wait.The time is made of breath. Is it Owls, rats?, chirp in the space beneath The roof?. I sense the presence, death Here like an indifferent doctor,Gloved, with competent instruments.The moment I wait for might cure Breathing, lend power to locked throats To open, widen self's prison.How. * The first bar of day reflects Walls. A tightening shuts the air.

30GOB 9

That senile Craftsman, still Mutters around the shop <=The help, patient untilHe shuffles out, redoThe botched engines and wipeThe floor of dribbled glue.He hacks expensively, His mind Trembling like His fingers = Once in a while you findHis earlier works: a small Silk lizard casting its gray Perfect shadow on a wall.

FROM A LETTER OF SAIET JEROME

Hear Glialcis, on a flat shake of sand Between the rocks» my stiff hack became Ethiopian black. I heard no sound.My own crying and loud prayers to him Were weak voices in my head; they made Ho ripples in the heavy cloth of air.My parched eyes would mark the change of tide.The glare of rocks briefly became softer,Evenings before the abrupt shift to cold,To stars hanging in the.cold a moment .Before the day returned. The light filled My eyes; my flesh was ignorant. Down sunburnt Walls of mountains wild pigs and lions Game sometimes. Those only and scorpions Were company to my bread, my unwilling sleeps.I was near dead as to the flesh, some dried Bones stinking in a sack, my puffed lips Alone moving in the space bounded By sight. Waiting to hear him, to touch his feet With wetted beard, my thin body would shiver,All but rid of itself. That one stood ever Before me a woman, binding my thighs with heat, Come to taste even my corpse in the desert.

FROM A DISCOURSE OH DEVILS

The sun, indiscriminate, urges growth Of those parts of the growing thing that are In the seeded fruit to "be drawn into air, Expressed, extended; matter, "bedded in earth,Can’t choose the shape of its change once the seed Is thrown in the sun. Observe the desert garden. Erratic tides, long droughts, exaggerated Wets— these nourish life that "baffles reason, Growths that persist, prosper, in steady sun Forget to die through lack of proper period For death and new "beginning," right proportion. Monstrousness increases here, unnoticed Until one meets on his path pets such as Destroyed the calm in Brother Anthony’s eyes.

NIGHT GARDEN 1

Nights5 I have no prayers.But I lie eyes awake„Through the glass electric Lights hiss like pale flowers=

NIGHT GARDEN 2

Lady,'When you sang MusicWas a cradle:In it all loss Was arrested Endlessly,,0 Lady,Your pale hope UnfoldsAs music stillo Stars, light-years cold Bloom to our sight Finallyo

HORNING "VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF ROBERT'S

loA circle of children, slow. Clasping, dances in the mind.The clear space that separates them Is like the blue between branches Of mulberry this morning:The earliest daylight blue .In which the leaves are cut=

2,Hands are shut in the mindTight as curled leaves before daybreak.The leaves open in continuous light.

5oI lay this morning on the wall,Watching the pale negativeAbout the leaves sharpenAnd, with the stars' slow passing,Fill with this present blue«

I E A BEY CANYON

Single cacti thrust from the wall upward Their green carriage rooted among rocks.Close, the eye is hit with one’s high weight, Two tons vertical, yet it moves with wind,Bistant they are a rhythm of single strokes.On the desert, we humans live together.Our houses have ambitious plumbing, packUnnatural hopes. Cacti, old survivors,Are separated by the facts of water.

37A1B0D0TE OF COLD

The quick scythe frost. took its harvest of "buds (undone in a light cope of air, soft, inviting life to press outward in winter), of white "bracts (expanded "bud scales like petals, perfect) of flowering dogwood»Like, syntax to thrust of thought, the "buds lost their taut sap-swelled out­lines, In snow, the tree looked gone; thaw-straightened, "began again strong, insisting., on further spring.

COSZECTIGOT SYCAMORE

With "beggared hark, young taperingTrunk, crooked hranchlets, crown spreadingWithout stops, this open strange treeAbhors strict forms« Like old LohansIn scrolls, Chinese, its lines are inkflowOr unfixed motion. Not that noOrderly idea's the issueOf these long solid limbs; but, allPaths implied in it, it is growthItself; old, flexible, ableTo hold change with no shock, break, fall.

39NORTH

After a short summer, cold shut tightAround us. The fist had to openSlowly, we knew from past confinements. At nightWe got what body's warmth we couldFrom acts understoodIn cold climates by cold bones as heat.We could wait the harshest weather out,Sure of the regular climax, the repeat.The certain ripening of shoots.Winter made the rootsGrow tough. Spring was no meager season But a thrifty year's extravagance.This was the promise. Still it was no reason For patience with northern weather.We knew no other.

THE EERSIAN DOCTOR

He loosens his silk tie. Finished^ he tilts back His lips soft, anticipating a cigar.The trivial satisfies: his columns work.Twenty-eight, a student, just money enough—To the young women who would like him leaner,He denies -he is materialisticBut likes a few small bodily luxuries.In life he looks for a laugh, an excellent Lunch. A moment of snow is all surprise.His talk is composed of such soft clarities.Yet it makes these yankees, crass romantics, balk

THE COUSIN

From the French of Gerard de Nerval

The winter has its pleasures, and Sundays, often "When sunlight faintly gilds the snowy ground You venture out of doors to walk with a cousin.And don't keep us waiting long for dinnerSays mother. And when at the TuileriesYou have seen the flowers aproning the "black trees,The lady is cold, politely then you noticeThe damp evening mist "beginning to rise,And you come "back talking of your regret The day has gone so soon, and of,timid emotions. And coming in you smell with wakened appetite From the Bottom stair— the turkey on the spit.

ODYSSEUS' AT HOME:

Her "breath steadies me in the dark Bed; I cling to her oblique back.We speak little, still less quarrel.Love early seeks its-level,I served the craft® Route nor rudder Were mine, but kept me in water.Some ports I will never visit.Ears stopped, I clung to the mainmast.If wish alone governed such things,Who, for what wife, would pass those songs? Reason, not want, drives towards what keeps Longest. Reason, wax, and strong ropes.

43

From the French of Apollinaire

In Cologne along the High-StreetShe 1 d walk "back and forth all eveningAnyone"s piece completely cuteThen tired of the sidewalks she’d drinkIn one-eyed "bars till it got lateShe made it on straw mattresses For a pink-faced pimp a red-head He was a jew with garlic breath On his way home from Formosa he'd Picked her up at a Shanghai houseI know people of every sort Hone of them are up to their fates Like dead leaves carried without weight Their eyes are lights not quite snuffed out Their hearts sway open like.their doors

BIRDCAICHIM

Is she less than this shadow of wings, isan eye "bright, open a moment of sunsudden, who may "be sure? Fragment of flight, no morethan moment's warm "beating in the closed palm—is she, only afterward, in thought, captured?

MIRABEAU BRIDGE

From the French of Apollinaire

Below Pont Mirabeau flows the Seine And our loves

I must recall again Joy was always following painGome the night chime the hour Bays go by I - endure

Hands locked let's stay face to face While slow beneath Arms' bridge will pass The tired wave of our eternal gazeGome the night chime the hour Days go by I endure

Dove goes like this water's current Love goes Oh life is so Slow and hope so violentCome the night chime the hour Days go by I endure

Go on the days the weeks go on Time past Nor love come back again Below Pont Mirabeau flows the SeineCome the night chime the hour Days go by I endure

KHIHE ON SETNENING

What lady makes her way With impiety Of intricate dances To that place of undersea Palaces, pretty Secret from Janus,Pity her turning awake In the statued world leet stiffened, all The immaculate men Mocking, the god’s Double lip curled.

RHYME INSIDE

Wind at the door at the heart thoughtin the house I sit I hear itrain whips outside torn from the eyedead this storm eye "blinks not at outcast violent wind at the door

EHYHE WITH HO ROOM

The heart is not cautious Wor tolerant; it tasks Exactingly, entrusts Freely for no reason.Know its precarious Stops $ nor "be one who asks Why a wide chamber shuts Out blood or bursts open.It does mortal service.Let bodies be still masks For its irregular starts. Show it to no person.If it spills confusion Give it quick poison.

LIST OF REFERENCES

Ciardi, John» How Does a Poem Mean? Boston; Houghton Mifflin Co., 1959= 1

Davie; Donaldo Articulate Energyo London; Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955°

Donne, John* The Divine Poems* ed. Helen Gardner.London; Oxford'University Press, 1952.H. D. Selected Poems. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1957°.Hone, Joseph. ¥. B. Yeats, 1865-1959° New York: The Macmillan Co., \Keats, John. The Poems of John Keats, ed. Sidney Colvin. New York: Brentano“s, 191$.Lowell, Amy. The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell.

Boston; Houghton Mifflin, 1955°Stravinsky, Igor. Poetics of Music, trams. Arthur Knodel and Ingolf^DaEX. Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 194-?.Valery, Paul. The Art of Poetry, trans. Denise Folliot. New York: Pantheon Books, 1958.Williams, William Carlos. The Collected Earlier Poems of

William Carlos Williams. Norfolk: New Directions, 1951°

Yeats, W. B. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1959”

Yeats, W. B. The Letters of W. B. Yeats, ed. Allan Wade. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1955°

Yeats, W. B. Letters on Poetry from W. B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley. New York: Oxford University Press, 19^0

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