Three versions of a paragraph

In my Intensive Composition course this morning, I gave the students an exercise that I took from Thomas Basbøll: they had 27 minutes to write one paragraph of no more than 200 words on a passage of their choice from Simon Armitage's poem "The Shout" (video below):

We went out

into the school yard together, me and the boy

whose name and face

I don't remember. We were testing the range

of the human voice:

he had to shout for all he was worth,

I had to raise an arm

from across the divide to signal back

that the sound had carried.

He called from over the park — I lifted an arm.

Out of bounds,

he yelled from the end of the road,

from the foot of the hill,

from beyond the look-out post of Fretwell's Farm —

I lifted an arm.

He left town, went on to be twenty years dead

with a gunshot hole

in the roof of his mouth, in Western Australia.

Boy with the name and face I don't remember,

you can stop shouting now, I can still hear you.

The Universal Home Doctor, 2002

(The poem is also the title poem of Armitage's American selected poems from 2005)

I did the exercise myself, too. The first time I tried this exercise in November, we were working on Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death," and I had enough time in the 27 minutes to do three versions (see below). This time I was able to do three versions as well.

One feature of the development of the versions is how they begin. The first begins with a descriptive introduction to the passage, but the second and the third take material from the end of the first and second versions, respectively, and use that material to introduce the passage more analytically than descriptively. I have not edited the versions beyond what I wrote in those 27 minutes.

Version 1
In the experiment described in "The Shout", two boys take advantage of the difference between the speed of sound and speed of light to "test the range / of the human voice":

he had to shout for all he was worth,

I had to raise an arm
from across the divide to signal back
that the sound had carried.

If the signals (a shout and a gesture; one acoustic, the other visual) that the two boys pass to each other both reach their destination, then the two boys are still within "range / of the human voice" from each other. Since sound is significantly slower than light, the shout will take more time to reach the other boy than the gesture will. The sound "carries," but the arm signal "carries" even faster. The experiment depends on this distinction to work: if at some point the shouting boy cannot be heard anymore, then the two boys will still be in sight of each other. They expect the "divide" to always be small enough for them to still see each other; that is, they expect "the range / of the human voice" to be less than the range of human vision.

Version 2

In the experiment, two boys take advantage of the difference between the speeds of sound and light to "test the range / of the human voice":

he had to shout for all he was worth,

I had to raise an arm
from across the divide to signal back
that the sound had carried.

There are two signals here: not only the shout but also the speaker's gesture in return. The former is acoustic, the latter visual. As long as these signals both reach their destination, the two boys are still within "the range / of the human voice". As sound is slower than light, the shout takes more time to "carry" than the gesture, even though the boy shouts as loud as he can ("for all he was worth"). The sound "carries," but the gesture "carries" faster. The experiment depends on this distinction: the two boys expect the "divide" to always be small enough for them to still see each other; that is, they implicitly assume that "the range / of the human voice" is less than the range of human vision, while also assuming that the voice's range is best measured by shouting.

Version 3

The experiment the two boys devise depends on an implicit assumption: that the loudest voice possible is necessary to "test the range / of the human voice":

he had to shout for all he was worth,

I had to raise an arm
from across the divide to signal back
that the sound had carried.

But there are two signals here, one loud and one silent: not only the shout (a matter of sound), but also the speaker's gesture in return (a matter of vision). As long as these signals both reach their recipients, the two boys are still within "the range / of the human voice". Sound is slower than light, so the shout takes longer to "carry" than the gesture, even though the boy shouts as loud as he can ("for all he was worth"). The sound "carries," but the gesture "carries" faster. The experiment depends on this distinction: the two boys expect the "divide" to always be small enough for them to still see each other. That is, they not only assume that shouting will measure the voice's range, but also expect that range to be less than the range of human vision.

*

In the course of the semester, I'll be doing this exercise with the students six more times, on poems by Adrienne Rich, Rob A. Mackenzie, Katy Evans-Bush, Andrea Cohen, Don Paterson, and Elizabeth Bishop.

Here's Armitage reading "The Shout":



*

And here are the three versions of the Dickinson paragraph (as I wrote them in November, without further editing):


Version 1
The third stanza of "Because I could not stop for Death" describes the scenery that Death and the speaker pass by as they ride along in Death's "Carriage":

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

From the "School" to the "Fields" to the "Setting Sun," the scene follows the course of human life from childhood to adulthood to old age (in this, it is reminiscent of the riddle of the Sphinx). The stages of life are bound together with the anaphora of "We passed" that begins the first, third, and fourth lines; the phrase is used transitively here, but its repetition opens up the possibility of reading it intransitively as a euphemism for death as well: "we passed" in the sense of "we died." This play of the transitive and intransitive is mirrored in the enjambment of the phrase containing the verb "strove" between the first and second lines of the stanza: read by itself, the children's "striving" points toward their efforts to learn at school; read with the next line, the "striving" is now a matter of both play ("At Recess") and struggle (the wrestling implied by "in the Ring"). Thus, the two verbs in the stanza, "passed" and "strove," are both made ambiguous by the poem's form: "passed" refers to both death and the passage of life; "strove" refers to both work and play.

*
Version 2
The third stanza of "Because I could not stop for Death" describes the scenery that Death and the speaker see as they ride along in Death's "Carriage." The stanza contains only two verbs, "passed" (anaphorically repeated at the beginning of lines one, three, and four) and "strove," which is emphasized by its enjambed position at the end of line 1:

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

From the "School" to the "Fields" to the "Setting Sun," the scene "we pass" follows the course of human life from childhood to adulthood to old age; the anaphora links those stages while also drawing attention to the isolated phrase "we passed" as a euphemism for death itself. Thus, the anaphora connects the passage of human life and the passing of human life into one figure of "riding with Death." This formal construction of an ambiguity is repeated in the enjambment between the first and second lines of the stanza: read by itself, "Children strove" points toward their efforts to learn at school; read with the next line, the "striving" is now a matter of play ("At Recess") as well as playful struggle (the wrestling implied by "in the Ring"). Just as "passed" refers to both death and the course of life, "strove" refers to both work and play—and both of these ambiguities are created by the poem's form.

*
Version 3
The third stanza of "Because I could not stop for Death" contains only two verbs, "passed" (anaphorically repeated in lines one, three, and four) and "strove," in an enjambment at the end of line 1:

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

From the "School" to the "Fields" to the "Setting Sun," the scene "we pass" figures human life from childhood to adulthood to old age. The anaphora links those stages while also isolating the phrase "we passed" as a euphemism for death itself; the passing of human life is thus contained in the passage of human life. The enjambment with "strove" repeats this formal construction of an ambiguity: read by itself at the end of the first line, "Children strove" refers to their efforts to learn at school; read with the next line, the "striving" becomes a matter of play ("At Recess") and of playful struggle (the wrestling implied by "in the Ring"). Again, one perspective is embedded in another, contradictory perspective; here, the striving of work is contained in the striving of childhood play.

Fleck and the Bank

The Chinese character for 'crisis', he reads,

binds together danger and extreme

caution, averse to risk and opportunity.

("The Bank" III)

Even before the Internet (remember that?), vaguely attributed quotations from "exotic" languages (for our purposes, "non-Western") made the rounds as tidbits of wisdom that could be used as guides to good living or success. Here, Rob A. Mackenzie bitingly mocks the spurious idea (see Victor Mair's dismantling of it here) that the Chinese character for "crisis" is a combination of "danger" and "opportunity."

The "he" in question is the main character of Fleck and the Bank, a banker friend of "Rob" (to whom a letter in the book is addressed) who disappeared in August 2011. These lines rebuild a cliché of contemporary "management wisdom" so as to turn it on its head: "danger + opportunity" becomes an aversion to both. 

Such dismantling appears most strikingly in a prose poem called "Now and in the Hour of Our Death," which is ostensibly the note that Fleck left behind when he disappeared. Near the end of it, there is this wonderful sentence:

There's too much in life: you can't describe it, yet he who dares to speak of it, bears witness, and calls to witness him to whom he speaks.

In the notes at the back of the book, this poem is described as "a collage of cut 'n' pasted sources from the first and/or last lines of books stacked along a single shelf in Fleck's kitchen." Before the Internet, research on this would have involved a trip to the library (and one with as wide-ranging a collection as Fleck), but now I was able to quickly discover the source here—or rather, sources: "There's too much in life: you can't describe it" is the last line of Les Murray's verse novel Fredy Neptune, and the rest comes from Martin Buber's I and Thou. The "it" in Buber refers, however, to "God's existence," not the "too much in life" that can't be described in Murray. Mackenzie's revision of the orientalist cliché about "crisis" turns it upside down; here, he disorients both Murray and Buber, finding a new opportunity in their juxtaposition.

Rob A. Mackenzie and Katy Evans-Bush, reading in Basel, Thursday, October 20, 2011

ESP (English Seminar Poetry) presents:

Salt poets Rob A. Mackenzie and Katy Evans-Bush will read from their poetry on Thursday, October 20, 2011, in Room 11 of the English Seminar of the University of Basel, at Nadelberg 6 in downtown Basel.

For more information, click on the image of the flyer below.

The next ESP reading will feature Michael Hulse and Quinn Latimer on November 21, 2011.

Voices

Why should poets try to find a "voice" when there are so many voices in our heads? And mostly it is the welter of other people's voices that speaks to us most truly. (Insert Borges reference here.) Something overheard in a bar, something murmured and misunderstood, something someone didn't mean to say. — Just a few thoughts after re-reading this poem, "Voices," (the first of the two at the link). It's from Rob A. Mackenzie's The Opposite of Cabbage.

(And once you've read it, too, get yourself a copy of Rob's book here!)

Poetry or Tags

Rob Mackenzie neatly summarizes and tellingly quotes from a Cleanth Brooks essay here. You need to read Rob's post for the full contextualization of the telling quotation, but here it is anyway (the poem in question is Robert Herrick’s Corinna’s Going a-Maying):

What does this poem communicate? If we are content with the answer that the poem says that we should enjoy youth before youth fades, and if we are willing to write off everything else in the poem as ‘decoration,’ then we can properly censure [modern poets such as] Eliot or Auden or Tate for not making poems so easily tagged. But in that case we are not interested in poetry; we are interested in tags.

This implies that what "modern" poets do is write poetry without such "tags," such simple messages that one can glean from a poem. And note that the three poets Brooks lists as "modern" could not be more different from each other.

What comes to mind for me is something I read sometime last year in which a non-reader of poetry responded to Carol Ann Duffy's poems by calling them "difficult." For readers of contemporary poetry, this is a bit of a shock: one may or may not like Duffy's poems, but they are not difficult (at least not compared to those written by the vast majority of contemporary poets with several books to their names).

But perhaps the difficulty in question is the absence of such "tags."

Edinburgh Reading, Feb. 8, 2009

Here's Rob Mackenzie introducing the poets at the "Poetry at the Great Grog" reading on February 8, 2009, in Edinburgh.
If the venue does not look like a bar (which is what the Great Grog is), that's because it not: it's a beautiful room at St. Cuthbert's Church. The reading was relocated after Rob realized that the Great Grog would probably be full of rugby fans in the evening after a Scotland-Wales match in Edinburgh!

The first reader was Alan Gay.

Then came me.
My set list:

The Day after Writing a Poem
Doggerel
Expat
The Seven-Year-Old Atheist
Edge
Pipe Smoke
Origin (by Dieter M. Gräf, tr. AS; note that the poem is incorrectly titled at the link)
In the breaks between the trees (by Ilma Rakusa, tr. AS)
The Letter Scale (by Jacques Réda, tr. AS)
Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong
Aftermath
City
September Rain

After me came Jane McKie.


And then Tim Turnbull.


When I'm a participant, I find it hard to comment on the other readers, but I did enjoy them all, each in their own way! One thing's for sure: I'm glad I did not follow Tim, who is a wonderful performer!

Two Readings

I'll be reading in Edinburgh on February 8 as part of the Poetry at the Great Grog series organized by Rob Mackenzie. Rob has posted a poem of mine on the Poetry at the Great Grog blog. He's also put together a Facebook event page for the reading if you want to tell us in advance that you can come! Also reading that night are Tim Turnbull, Jane McKie, and Alan Gay (see the Poetry at the Great Grog blog page for links to their work).

I'll also be reading at the Literaturzoll in Basel on February 22. My reading will be in English (mostly); the other readers will be reading in German. The event is hosted by Guy Krneta, Katrin Eckert, Martin Zingg, and Andreas Mauz; the other readers are Daniel Berner, Martin Gelzer, and Regula Schröter.

The Ensemble, by Floyd Skloot

It seems like every time I read a poem by Floyd Skloot I like it. Today's example is on Poetry Daily: "The Ensemble."

I love the way it approaches Shakespeare without too much awe and reverence, but also without too much ambition; the poem seems pitched at just the right level. And, as Rob points out, the rhymes are delicious, as are the line breaks.

Gonna have to get me a Skloot collection one of these moons.

Edinburgh

Yep, that's me listed by Rob Mackenzie among the poets reading at his Great Grog series in Edinburgh next February. Gonna be buying me an EasyJet thing or the like! :-)

Gatekeeping

There's an excellent discussion going on over at Scottish poet Rob Mackenzie's blog—many UK poets chiming in on how the poetry publication "system" in the UK works.

I suspect it would be of great interest to those frustrated by the "system" in North America as well—if only for the contrast between the two sides of the Atlantic. Check it out if you have not already.

And while you're at it, order a copy of Rob's wonderful chapbook The Clown of Natural Sorrow.

Publications

Today, in a new experience for me, my mailbox contained not one but two journals that contain poems of mine.

The latest issue (number 27) of "The Reader" contains two of my poems, "Wind" and "September." Nice company: for example, R. S. Thomas and Tom Paulin. "Wind" is on-line as a song I recorded back around 2000.

The latest issue (number 141, Summer 2007) of "Orbis" (the only literary magazine without a website?) contains my poem "Go Ogle" (and the issue even, honor of honors, has my name on the cover!). The poem has already been commented on as "a take on obituaries which is very funny in places"; the commenter (Tony Williams) has two poems in the issue as well. There's also a review of John Ash's latest by Rob Mackenzie.

If anyone who reads the issue of "Orbis" and my poem wants to tell me what they think the poem is about (as I was delighted to hear that it is "a take on obituaries"), I'd love to hear your ideas. I wonder what people might make of it.

I also recently had a poem in "Cadenza" (issue 17): "Fever," which can also be heard at the link for "Wind" above. If you get a look at the issue, don't look in the poetry section for my poem, which is well hidden.

Songs and Poems

A comment on a post by Rob MacKenzie (and the comment on that post by Ben Wilkinson):

I'm teaching a course on poetry and songwriting right now, and many of the students are in bands (and though they are Swiss, they sing in English). Reading their texts, I am very conscious of the distinction between songs and poems: songs, as Ben put it so well, "lack the singularity that the good poem possesses."

This is a matter of phrasing: writing that can work well in songs often falls flat if read without music, because the presence of the music allows the songwriter to prop up phrases that are unable to stand on their own (too cliched, for example).

That said, I'll defend Dylan (and Tom Waits) as contemporary songwriters who have written many texts that stand up on the page, without the music.

Clown of Natural Sorrow

Rob A. MacKenzie sent me a copy of his chapbook, "The Clown of Natural Sorrow." It's well worth getting; of the poems I especially liked, two are on-line:

Girl Playing Sudoku on the Seven-Fifteen (scroll down a bit)

Happiness