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Friday, February 25, 2005
Don’t Know Much About Poetry Part Six: Finding The Hidden Structure
As your Curmudgeon has said previously, there is poetry which, though it appears to depart from the conventions of rhyme and meter, will reveal surprising amounts of structure on a careful reading. However, more often than not, the reading must be repeated -- aloud -- several times before the poem will yield its secrets.
T. S. Eliot's Modernist verse is of that kind. At first the rhyme scheme seems arbitrary and forced. The meter appears to be wildly variable. But a few readings, done calmy and with due attention to the placements of the words and lines on the printed page, evokes a startling sense of careful design.
Several English-language poets of the early Twentieth Century mastered the trick of burying the structure too deeply for a casual observer to find it. One of the foremost of these was Robinson Jeffers, once Poet Laureate of the United States. Today he's best remembered for his verse meditations upon the wilderness and its creatures, but one of his lesser known poems, written around 1941, when all the world had been set alight in war, is a treasure trove for the determined analyst:
The Stars Go Over The Lonely Ocean
Unhappy about some far off things
That are not my affair, wandering
Along the coast and up the lean ridges,
I saw in the evening
The stars go over the lonely ocean,
And a black-maned wild boar
Plowing with his snout on Mal Paso Mountain.
The old monster snuffled, "Here are sweet roots,
Fat grubs, slick beetles, and sprouted acorns.
The best nation in Europe has fallen,
And that is Finland,
But the stars go over the lonely ocean,"
The old black bristled boar,
Tearing the sod on Mal Paso Mountain.
"The world's in a bad way, my man,
And bound to be worse before it mends;
Better lie up in the mountain here
Four or five centuries,
While the stars go over the lonely ocean,"
The old father of wild pigs,
Plowing the fallow on Mal Paso Mountain.
"Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy
And the dogs that bark revolution,
Drunk with talk, liars and believers.
I believe in my tusks.
Long live freedom and damn the ideologies,"
The gamey black-maned wild boar
Tusking the turf on Mal Paso Mountain.
-- Robinson Jeffers --
Most of us read poetry casually; few read it aloud, even when it's plainly meant to be read that way. But Jeffers's jewel above can only be appreciated by one who applies his voice to it, not once but several times, until the scansion reveals itself to him from his own throat.
But just as few read poetry aloud, even to themselves, few will take seriously the exhortation to do so, regardless of the promised reward. So your Curmudgeon, as is his wont, will take up the baton:
Thoughts?
Comments
Nicely done. Hope you do more soon.
Posted by og on 02/25/2005 at 09:57 PMThe Og fella is quite correct, “Nicely done!” (ever thought about doing books on tape or some such, you have the pipes for it).
Listening one thought came to mind. Feeding the remnant. Or am I missing so much more then I am gleaning?
Posted by GuyS on 02/26/2005 at 04:27 PMJeffers has strong half-rhyme and alliteration in that poem. Do you read Seamus Heaney and Yeats? I keep Heaney at my right hand and Yeats at my left.
“But all is changed, that high horse riderless,
Though mounted in that saddle Homer rode,
Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood.” from Yeats’ Coole and Ballylee, 1931Posted by Kerry on 02/26/2005 at 07:40 PM
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