"Mrs Kawakami was quiet": A blackboard on Kazuo Ishiguro's "An Artist of the Floating World"

The blackboard from my class's discussion on 18 March of a passage from Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World. This passage, to be precise:

            Mrs Kawakami was quiet for a moment, as though listening for something amidst the sounds the workmen were making outside. Then a smile spread over her face and she said: 'This was such a splendid district once. You remember, Sensei?'

            I returned her smile, but did not say anything. Of course, the old district had been fine. We had all enjoyed ourselves and the spirit that had pervaded the bantering and those arguments had never been less than sincere. But then perhaps that same spirit had not always been for the best. Like many things now, it is perhaps as well that that little world has passed away and will not be returning. I was tempted to say as much to Mrs Kawakami that evening, but decided it would be tactless to do so. For clearly, the old district was dear to her heart – much of her life and energy had been invested in it – and one can surely understand her reluctance to accept it has gone for ever. (126-127)

"Being at Takeda's": A blackboard on Kazuo Ishiguro's "An Artist of the Floating World"

The blackboard from my class's discussion on 4 March of a passage from Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World. This passage, to be precise:

            'Being at Takeda's', I told them, 'taught me an important lesson early in my life. That while it was right to look up to teachers, it was always important to question their authority. The Takeda experience taught me never to follow the crowd blindly, but to consider carefully the direction in which I was being pushed. And if there's one thing I've tried to encourage you all to do, it's been to rise above the sway of things. To rise above the undesirable and decadent influences that have swamped us and have done so much to weaken the fibre of our nation these past ten, fifteen years.' No doubt I was a little drunk and sounded rather grandiose, but that was the way those sessions around that corner table went. (73)

"Lincoln Theatre", by Langston Hughes

-->

Lincoln Theatre

Langston Hughes

The head of Lincoln looks down from the wall

While movies echo dramas on the screen.

The head of Lincoln is serenely tall

Above a crowd of black folk, humble, mean.

The movies end. The lights flash gaily on.

The band down in the pit bursts into jazz.

The crowd applauds a plump brown-skinned bleached blonde

Who sings the troubles every woman has.

She snaps her fingers, slowly shakes her hips,

And cries, all careless-like from reddened lips!

   De man I love has

   Gone and done me wrong

While girls who wash rich white folks clothes by day

And sleek-haired boys who deal in love for pay

Press hands together, laughing at her song.

I read this beautiful poem this cold and dark morning and wanted to share it, but there's no complete version of it online, so I thought I'd rectify that.

(The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, ed. Arnold Rampersad, Vintage Classics, 1995, 360)
 

"Language leading us up the garden path": a line from Mimi Khalvati's "In Search of the Animals"

In Mimi Khalvati's poem "In Search of the Animals" (from The Weather Wheel, Carcanet 2014), the speaker looks "at a daylight moon behind drifts / of cloud" and sees it as "a platinum sun":

a frieze of haunches, heads, ears and mouths

evening out, dissolving back to cloud

"Evening", here, is not the noun but the gerund form of the verb "to even"; this leads the speaker to comment on her own language and arrive at a line break that takes an idiom and makes it literal:

And look how morning becomes evening

accidentally, heuristically, in the miracle

of language leading us up the garden path

a white rabbit crosses, a badger, our local fox

"To lead someone up the garden path" is the idiom here, and before the line break, the sense is clear: "the miracle // of language" deceives us, plays tricks on us – here, the trick of seeing or hearing "evening" as a noun when, in context, it is actually a verb. The relative clause that follows the line break, however, turns "the garden path" into a literal path that the animals can cross.

            Enjambment often generates such a doubling of meaning, from figurative to literal (as here), or in other cases from general to particular. This particular doubling stands out because "the garden path" has a third meaning associated with language: the "garden-path sentence." Such a sentence sets up a word or phrase to be read one way but then turns out to require a different reading. And that, of course, is what happens with examples of enjambment like the one above: "leading us up the garden path" goes from being figurative to being literal; it has to be reinterpreted for the two lines to fit together.

            Hence, this particular enjambment provides a general way to think about enjambment: as a "garden path" effect in which one reading is replaced and often even displaced by another. The garden-path sentence is further related to the rhetorical figure of paraprosdokian, which means "against expectation" – and that is precisely how enjambment works: it creates an expectation and then adds something that works against that expectation. So enjambment could be seen as a form of paraposdokian. But more generally, it's the idea that enjambment behaves like a rhetorical figure that seems useful to me – particularly strikingly so in the case of Khalvati's poem, where the enjambment involves a figurative expression that is also a term for a rhetorical figure. Or has the pun just led me, too, up the garden path?

A passage from John Ashbery's "The Skaters"

In the middle of this passage from John Ashbery's "The Skaters" is a description of a picture in a calendar:

A broken mirror nailed up over a chipped enamel basin, whose turgid waters

Reflect the fly-specked calendar—with ecstatic Dutch girl clasping tulips—

On the far wall. Hanging from one nail, an old velvet hat with a tattered bit of

            veiling—last remnant of former finery.

(John Ashbery, Collected Poems 1956–1987, Library of America, 162)

The poem does not say whether the picture in question is a photograph, a painting, or even a drawing, but the image of the "Dutch girl" is clear and vivid. It is a vision of ecstasy that also stands more broadly for a genre of pictures in whatever format–Dutch pictures, of course, with the tulips as further confirmation of the nationality of the image. The image is both complete in itself and an image of completion, of elements fitting together, of ecstasy as a momentary emotion of wholeness.

            Yet this moment of wholeness and even wholesomeness at the center of the passage is surrounded by images of broken and tainted things. The calendar that contains the image is "fly-specked"; it is seen only in its reflection in the water in a "chipped" sink; above the sink is "a broken mirror"; the "veiling" on the hat hanging on the wall is "tattered". A "broken mirror" does not produce accurate reflections; whoever looks into it will see a distorted version of themselves, and the room described so precisely here will also be distorted. The water in the basin is also a kind of "broken mirror" that also offers a distorted vision of the room. With the hat, the broken doubling of reflections is replaced by the concealment of a veil–but it, too, does not work as it should. The veil, like the mirror, does not serve its purpose effectively. All this "former finery" frames an image of the ecstasy that such finery could create, if it still existed. All that remains of ecstasy is the image of ecstasy–all that remains of an aesthetic of wholeness and sentiment is this "fly-specked" image from a calendar hanging in a room full of broken things.

Viral poems; reading Zagajewski in Poland

I've been teaching at the Pomeranian University in Slupsk in Poland this week, my second week here after a week in March. One of the courses I have been asked to teach is on contemporary literature, so of course I made it into a course on contemporary Anglophone poetry. 

I gave the students a collection of 20 poems published in the last 20 years, from Seamus Heaney's "The Rain Stick" to Danez Smith's "Dinosaurs in the Hood." I chose two of the poems not just because I find them worth pondering but also because they are poems that went viral: Patricia Lockwood's "Rape Joke" and Maggie Smith's "Good Bones".

Today, we talked about "Good Bones" and what features it has that contribute to its having gone viral. It was a combination of its simplicity (a fairly clear message) and its complexity (the message highlights the difficulty of communicating something simply and honestly). In addition, the poem's repetitions and variations amount to looking at its issues from a variety of different angles, which adds to its effectiveness.

We also discussed another poem that has often been shared after traumatic events around the globe, Adam Zagejewski's "Try to Praise the Mutilated World" (trans. Clare Cavanagh). I don't speak Polish, but we looked at the Polish original as well, and I considered how someone who knows only what the title means might be able to piece together something about the poem. 

In particular, I noticed the repetition of a line from the title through the rest of the poem:

Spróbuj opiewać okaleczony świat.
...
Musisz opiewać okaleczony świat.
...
Powinieneś opiewać okaleczony świat.
...
Opiewaj okaleczony świat

It's cheating a bit, of course, since I am familiar with the English translation, but I was struck by how much can be said about the Polish original just by paying attention to these lines. Each of the lines ends with the same three words, and the first line means "try to praise the mutilated world," so though I didn't remember which modals are used in the repetitions of the line, I was able to remember that the poem's variations are on the line are variations in modal verbs, and I concluded that the final repetition must (musisz?) be an indicative "I praise" or an imperative "praise". As with Smith's "Good Bones", Zagajewski's poem works as a theme with variations that provides multiple angles on a simple message. As a result, neither poem can be reduced to its message, and both can appeal to a wide range of readers, which offers a kind of explanation of what it is that makes a poem go viral.

A final note: the students in the course are studying to be translators, and they were all very impressed by Clare Cavanagh's translation.

The first paragraph of "Persuasion"

This is the first paragraph of Jane Austen's Persuasion as it appears in the Norton Critical Edition that I am using with my students:

A

            Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt. As he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century – and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed – this was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:

And this is the first paragraph as it appears in various online versions that I have come across, including whatever version it was I downloaded a few years ago for me and my students to work with:

B

            Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed. This was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:

The anaphora with "there" is much more effectively handled in B than in A, in which the last "there" is not part of the previous list of constructions beginning with "there".

The Norton Critical Edition says it is based on the first edition, but it makes me wonder about the punctuation of the first edition! And it also makes me wonder where B comes from!

Still, to my mind, the pattern of the words in this paragraph points towards punctuation along the lines of B, whose rhetorical structure is much more like Austen than A is.

Overtalk

The following poem is an erasure of the Grifter's part of an interview by David Muir on ABC on 25 January 2017; it is based on the transcript here.
 

Overtalk

a tremendous magnitude   the – the size of it The size

The top great   tremendous   the size   the size    these big

Ultimately    relatively    absolutely 100 percent

very stable very solid    Even more solid    a good thing

better than ever    much better    very serious   very simply

never said    make a deal    make a new deal

clobbered   nice and easily    immediately    I wanna

As soon    As soon    physically    I would say    Yeah I would say

Certainly    immediately   some really good really solid

They shouldn't be very    They shouldn't be very

a big heart    very strong    very solid    great   a good job

far less   I'm gonna tell   I will tell   the whole    great heart

criminals    really bad people    people    getting out

gonna get them out    gonna get 'em out   number one priority

We're gonna be talking    fantastically well    very proud

very very unfairly    brilliant    very good    fantastic

I'll be speaking    We will be talking    So let me tell you

so misrepresented    supposed to    you weren't supposed to

Sure And I do – and I'm very     and I mean it

But just so you – it was supposed to   Number two    somebody said it

It wasn't It was hardly even   I said it And I said it strongly    horrible

number one Number two I would've    if I was

I would've    I would've    I would've    And I would've

But as you know    It doesn't   So I would've

different   much differently    totally different

So but    you're just   I would've    much easier   I ended up    I got it by the way

But it turned out    You and everybody    said and almost everybody said

So I went   I went   And that's the beauty    

With that being said if you look    you look   you look   you look

You take a look   you're gonna    and we're gonna   Well we're gonna

But it could very well be    Absolutely   But we're gonna

In fact I heard    they were saying it's not    It's not    I said   He said

They don't wanna talk    You have people    You have people    in my opinion

David David David    Of course and I want    Sure Sure Sure   Sure done

No it hasn't Take a look    Really Then why    Excuse me then why

then he's – then he's    You know I always talk    when they wanna    you wanna

but not    wanna     or have to    We're gonna   And then the next time – and I will say

none of 'em    None of 'em    They would all be    None of 'em    

But when you look   a lot to look   There's nothing bigger There's nothing bigger

Let me just tell you you know    millions of people    when I say that if you would’ve

they're saying We agree    We agree    very smart people   people

people are saying they saw    I heard    But you're not talking about

But it's a small little    I will tell you     we're gonna have an idea

Now you're telling me    all of a sudden

But you have other    and you have other    You take a look    how many

Take a look     And you're gonna find    I didn't say there are    

But I think there could very well be    That's right   And I also say    and I also say    

I would've    But I would've    I wouldn't have    I wouldn't have

I wouldn't have   I would've    I would've    I never even

That’s true   That's true   very much   not at all   Not at all    No not at all

Believe me    And if you look at it they all    They all    They didn't    

I don't believe I got one    it would've been different

Now you have to understand I – I    Maybe she didn't She should've

She thought    in the bag She should've    she thought

you're talking about    you know   But they didn't I went   I went   I went   I went to all

That's all I    No no We're looking at it    No no    a tremendous

one of the great    ever In terms of    the most ever or just about the most ever

When you look at    One of the greatest    ever But again I    I didn't

What I'm saying is    if there are    there might be Look    if you look back

Chicago    Chicago    laughing    You look   you look

But take a look   very beautiful   Very beautiful And I    But look   Look

It's not    It hasn't    believe me   look what's going on    It's only

But    smiling and laughing    Now once    didn't do    All of a sudden

So here's the point    a lot of stuff    possibly I say probably But possibly

We're gonna    And then we're gonna    If people    I don't know

We're gonna    we talk about    we're gonna    so important

Now I'll say    I think   first of all would – would be a great thing

But I believe    And I believe    would've been    Well we're gonna   We're gonna

And – and by the way when I say you're gonna    You can never really

you know there are gonna be – no matter what    there are gonna be

But we will    OK so I'm glad    So I went    I have great    I'm – I don't have

But that's    But I have    speech     speech if you look   OK

we see    They said    one of the great    and – and    There was – somebody

paid great homage    paid great homage    In fact they said    the biggest

and they said    equal I got    a long    take – take out your    probably

I know    I know    a total    I could've     gotten

Absolutely   loved it    loved it    a long    They never even

very inaccurately I hate to say    you and you probably

but turn on    and see how    And see how    speech   speech

good speech And you and    speech    very very    speech

If I    there were like    wanted    but    couldn't They were all

I would say I would've    would've    speech    big   big success – success

And then I    and I    And they    Excuse me   Not you

but    – and they    speech And I know    speech    extraordinary

loved it Loved and liked And it was    extraordinary

No because you    Well you just    I didn't    I didn't wanna – talk about

speech But I think I did    really    You saw    I didn't

a massive    very unflattering   unflattering   a massive

In terms of a total    supposedly the biggest    And I    you would even

They say I had the biggest    speeches I'm    But I didn't    You just

Part of my whole    who have been    will never be    Part of that is when

unfairly    a massive    a crowd – I looked over that    Wow

And I've seen    Big big    That was some    When I looked

all of the various    the biggest    speeches I said    I was talking

I won't    demean    and    demean    faraway

more importantly    I'm saying   No I think you’re    talking    talking

I think you're    And that's why I think    And that's why you    pretty bad

Right   carnage    speech    tremendous – from certain    carnage

It is carnage It's    carnage This is    – is not like    being shot

Thousands    over a period – over a short period

This year   worse    last year   catastrophe  

want help   love to help    send in    send in

Maybe they're not gonna    Maybe they're being overly    Maybe there's

But you can't    Chicago   Chicago is    Chicago is worse

report    report about every    fix    shot in a city in a country

Maybe it's okay if    I want     fix    very easily fixable

They're gonna have to    But they gotta fix    I don't want

essentially    Chicago    Chicago And Chicago    a great

can be a great    can't be a great    Excuse me    can't be a great

a loaf of bread Can't be a great   But so far they have been    And I wasn't

So look    speech very nice speech    shot and killed    speech

You can't have    weren't shot    speech But    shot    speech What – what's

So all I'm saying    I say You have to    and you have to    because you can't

I want   It's a big    Well I'll be talking about that

So you'll be there and you'll be able to see    You're gonna see

Well I have    I have great respect    said – I was a little    said he's not

torture As you know    gonna be    as opposed to    who didn't

And he will I think    And he is – you know I haven't

But I will tell you I have    intelligence And they are big    waterboarding

Because they say it does    It does   I would do    I would do – I wanna    I wanna

When they're shooting – when they're chopping    people and other people

when they're chopping    people    nobody has ever    Medieval

would I feel    waterboarding   As far as I'm concerned    fire    fire

Now with that being said I'm going    I'm going    

I think    gonna be     I'm gonna    But I have spoken    the highest    intelligence

And I asked    Does it    Does    absolutely   I don't want people    or anybody's heads

Okay    or    or anything else I don't want – look    to have seen

much different You never saw    Now they    and they    and they

So we have    and we're not    We're not    even    I will say   I will

and    and my    And if they don't wanna    If they do wanna    I will

I wanna do    But do I feel    Absolutely I feel    Have I spoken    I haven't seen

But I think    Have I spoken    feel strongly    Absolutely

I wanna keep     no I wanna – I will    And I'm gonna    And if they don't wanna

100 percent    Do I think    Absolutely   Right   We're talking about – no it's not

But it's    tremendous    It's    we're going to    speech And it's    tremendous

in many cases or in some cases are looking    tremendous

You look    you'll be hearing    a whole    You'll be very

You're looking   in many cases in some cases    I don't want

They're    They're coming    I don't want    I'm gonna be

Now I'll absolutely    I think that    a tremendous    and various other

And all you have    take a look It's – it's    I don't want    have and    have

more    than ever    They – and it's from    So look look    Believe me I know

even better    They're deep    they're serious    We don't

You're going to see – you're going to see We're going to    extreme

And    extreme And we're not    we think    even a little

we're gonna    It's going to be    It's gonna be very very

I don't want    You look   You look   You look

Okay I mean take that    Anger   anger    How can you    Look David     David

I mean I know you're    The world    The world What You think this is gonna    The world

We went    We shouldn't have    We shouldn't have    The world

Take a look   Take a look    Take a look    And    and    and    The world    David

Well we should've    And you know it's very    you wouldn't

they got the money They got the money    leaving – when we left we left

which wasn't    It's not    And by the way and I said    And they were essentially

And    and    forever And    and it would go – it was just    We got in

I said    That's essentially    We should have    You wouldn't

Now I wasn't talking about    But had we   would've very good happened

They would not have    rather unbelievable    the world   Wait wait can you

Who are    who say    Fools   call    call    fools   We should've

excuse me We should've    you wouldn't    And we would have    We have

And    falling apart   Our roads – excuse me Our roads our    our     falling apart

We have    And    we can't    or we can't    And we can't    fix    We can't

Look    We've been    Nobody even knows    they don't really know

But it's time It's time   Well don't let it    we'll see    I mean we're gonna see

You know I told    and I told    wants to talk    I don't wanna

I wanna let – I wanna    take place    the talk takes place I watched

Then they'd say    Okay and I kept saying to myself    All right

I don't wanna do a lot of talking    I wanna talk after    not before

It's going to be – what my plan is is that I wanna    I'm not gonna    

Just so you understand people talk about    And I told    the best thing    nothing

And then we'll    and we'll    and – and    Believe    you'll have

And I told    except    I wanna get it fixed The best thing I could do

if I didn't do anything    begging me to do something But I don't wanna

So just so you   disaster   It's    It's    It doesn't    It's

You know    I know    And I said    terrific folks   I said Look

and I'm okay    We wanna    I said    They're gonna    it's gonna

That's the thing    But the right thing    So I wanna    Nobody's gonna

gonna be terrific And    very very happy    And now    don't even

They don't even    Remember    keep    keep    Remember    Remember

I mean you do admit that I think right    We are going to    if you look

We're gonna    So nobody ever    No no    here's what I can    we are going

a better    much better    much better    you can have    you want and    you want

We're gonna    much better    much less   And remember    I said

very good at this stuff    And why not    We're gonna    But I don't wanna

I wanna give great    much lower   You know when you     say no one I think no one

you’re talking about    And then you know knowing    on television saying how

Okay We want    We want the answer    But I will say millions

millions and millions and millions    It's too    and it's no

And    unfortunately    very very sad    very nice

but –    he said that    no longer   He's a staunch

He said    no longer    He made that    campaign trail

he said    is crazy It's crazy And you know what they were both right

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Mumbai? Kissmiss?

Here's a poem I wish I had read before Christmas last month, but a good poem is a good poem anytime. It's from Imtiaz Dharker's 2014 collection Over the Moon (Bloodaxe).

Mumbai? Kissmiss?

Of course! Who is not knowing this,

that after Happy Diwali comes Merry Kissmiss!

Impossible to miss, when allovermumbai,

Matharpacady to A to Z Market, rooftops

are dancing in chorus

and alloversky

is fully full with paper stars.

Hear! Horns are telling at midnight on every street,

Happy Happy Happy! We know very well

to make good festival, and Saint Santa is

our honoured guest in Taj Hotel.

We are not forgetting.

And allovermumbai alloversky

is fully full with paper stars.

See! Tree is shining and snow (cotton-

wool but looks good, no?) Small child also

face is shining, licking icing, this

must be what snow tastes like

under the paper stars.

And allovermumbai alloversky

is fully full with paper stars.

A Note about Philip Levine

In Philip Levine's poetry collections up to A Walk with Tom Jefferson (1988), the "Note About the Author" included the phrase "a succession of stupid jobs" to refer to what he spent his time doing in Detroit before he "left the city for good."

But starting with What Work Is (1991), that part of his biography had been rephrased as "a succession of industrial jobs."

Raul Fixing A Cosmopolitan

A poem from Glyn Maxwell's The Sugar Mile (2005).

RAUL FIXING A COSMOPOLITAN

See old Joey's sat back in his window.
I'm telling you in all of New York City
how many joints is that? Just yesterday,
Clint, you walk in here. You got the world
to choose from, and you didn't want nobody
taking all your time! Now it's tomorrow

and you look like shit. Stay at home tomorrow,
see your family, sit in your own window.
I'm kidding, hey. Don't like nobody
can't take my kidding. It's the New York City
style, you know it is, you seen the world
you like it here. It's another awesome day.

It's another peach it's just like yesterday.
I was kidding with you. Come back tomorrow,
Clint, the old guy will. Where else in the world
is he expected? Ain't no other window
waiting for the guy, no other city
left to move to. I never heard nobody

want to move from this. I mean nobody
left alone. Man I can't take Sunday.
It's slow, it crawls, Sunday in this city.
Hello? Yeah this is him. Not tomorrow?
Lemme write that down. Sun in the freakin' window
blinding me. I got it. Stop the world

 for breaking news ... What? Yeah 'on the world'
I know, I got it. Ciao. Okay. Nobody
gets to know. Hey, Joe, what's in the window?
See some babes? Can't be your lucky day
it's mine. Clint says he's stopping by tomorrow.
He wants to hear you bombed that Nazi city

back to the stone age. I said 'Nazi city'
Joey, I was kidding. What in the world
do I care, kill a Nazi guy tomorrow,
lighten up. – I haven't told nobody,
Clint, remember I told you this – that day
was it yesterday when Joey was in his window?

That there ain't nobody else in New York City
paid so high? Windows on the World.
Tuesday I start. Tomorrow's my last day.

Force

Force

They force fed protein-rich liquids through tubes inserted in their noses.

He forced his tongue down her throat.

They forced him down into the seat and buckled straps around him.

He forced her to the ground and made her perform oral sex.

They were forced from a bus and shot dead.

They forced a black man into the giant's gaping mouth.

They forced civil rights down the throats of people.

"Our wives and daughters": objecting but still objectifying

Mitt Romney’s response on Twitter to that Donald Trump video is welcome, but it’s also limited – and telling – in a way that many responses are (so it’s far from being just Romney here):

Hitting on married women? Condoning assault? Such vile degradations demean our wives and daughters and corrupt America's face to the world.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) 8. Oktober 2016

Even as he criticizes Trump for misogynistic sexual objectification of women, Romney still presents women as “wives and daughters”. That is, women are still objects of others (husbands and parents) rather than individual human beings in their own right. Even as Romney and others who put it this way object to one kind of objectification, they still objectify women.

(Thanks to Kei Miller whose post on Facebook helped me formulate this.)

Without a doubt

A student (a native speaker of German) used the expression "without doubts" to start a sentence. That sounds wrong to me; I would prefer "without a doubt". But instead of just marking it as wrong, I did a quick bit of research.

I searched the NOW Corpus at the Brigham Young University site with linguistic corpora. The NOW Corpus contains 3.3. billion words of data from web-based newspapers and magazines from 2010 to the present. And by the present, they mean the present: it's updated with 4-5 million new words every day.

There were 27 hits for "without doubts" and 7752 hits for "without a doubt." So I can correct the student's usage in good conscience.

And that is how a usage point can be resolved: check actual usage using a linguistic corpus like the NOW Corpus (or any of the other corpora at the BYU site).