Riddles of Form – One (part two)

Ways of Reading

Easy poem? Difficult poem?

In these sections I’m thinking of taking what for many students would seem a ‘difficult’ poem. Difficulty is often hard to define – is it a matter of vocabulary, an unusual layout, contorted syntax, ambiguity, etc.? However, difficulty can also lie in apparent simplicity. A student confronted with certain poems sits baffled. Where to begin? The poem is simply what it says. There seems to be nothing to get your teeth into. As Peggy Lee sings: Is that all there is?

I’m taking Lee Harwood’s poem ‘Green Summer Notebook’ as an example. I doubt many teachers use Harwood’s poetry in the classroom or that exam boards would set such a poem. Quite clearly it doesn’t deliver some of the expected features.

Is it an easy poem? Is it a difficult poem? Let’s see.

What about the title?

Green Summer Notebook. I’m interested from the start in the way the title seems to declare something rough and spontaneous about the text. Will the poem be directly transcribed or collaged from a notebook? Will it read like a set of diaristic entries? Voyeuristically, I prepare myself for glimpses into the poet’s mind or life or reading – perhaps all three!

In addition, I’m interested by the juxtaposition of the physical book, time of year and the clour green. Literally, then, this is Harwood’s notebook with a green cover which he kept during a summer? Or do we read “green” more figuratively – a “green summer” – the grass was lush, the leaves on the trees – or even to do with freshness, innocence, being untried ... ? The title seems to combine very particular items with a more abstract use of language – and this, I think, is something quite typical of Harwood’s poetry. And I’m reminded of Howard Hodgkin’s paintings – his frequent use of very specific titles for paintings which seem only remotely ‘figurative’.

The way the poem looks on the page

As printed in the Collected Poems, the poem has four sections. At first sight it might seem formless – there seems to be no concern for syllable count or rhyme or fixed meter to govern the lines.

Does this matter? Might such a scattered layout actually be true to the notebook mentioned in the title? The look of the printed page captures the spontaneity of the notebook jottings?

However, Harwood is a better poet than that. Our first impressions are not so much incorrect as a little too generalised.

Looking again, you start to see decisions have been made – even if we’re not quite sure why at this stage.

In the first section, Harwood seems to use a two-line unit in amongst longer or shorter line units.

The second section is barely one line made up of two imperative sentences. Strange – but a decision has been made to do this.

The third section contains one phrase in block capitals and two units double indented. The other lines are conventionally set to the left hand margin. There seems to be a recurrence of the earlier two-line unit.

The fourth section seems almost reassuringly ‘normal’ – four two-lines units (three of which begin “To - ...” ) with a final two word closing line.

Clearly it would be inaccurate to say the poem possesses “no structure”. We might not be able to say yet why Harwood is doing what he does – but that invites us to continue the reading.

So, rather than see the absence of any immediately obvious form as
i) an example of incompetence or
ii) a deliberate attempt to confuse

see it more as
i) a way to find a form which will allow the poem to ‘work’ and
ii) a way to draw you into the poem

Why doesn’t the poem use capital letters and ‘normal’ punctuation?

The poem looks strange on the page due to what again might seem to be poor writing skills on behalf of the poet. Forget capital letters or full stops and commas in an essay and you’ll be penalized. So why can Harwood do this and get away with it?

Why? Because this is poetry!

Harwood is very aware of the customary ways we capitalize and punctuate. One reason to abandon these customs might be – again – to be truer to the notebook and an informal way of writing. Another reason might be to suggest poetic writing has freedoms that critical writing or other forms of ‘proper’ expression demand. Certainly it gives the writing a more casual, spontaneous feel.

There’s a third reason. By removing capitals and conventional punctuation, a poet removes words from their habitual grammatical function – if you like, that words simply function as sentences and make logical sense. Now, words appear as little units – which, through printing, they most evidently are:

w – o – r – d – s

A poet can exploit the shape of words – for example

w - a - t - e - r

and

m - a - j - o - r

have a mirrored resemblance. More relevant to this discussion of ‘Green Summer Notebook’ is the sounds of words. The eye (and mind) is less preoccupied with the grammatical sense and words are freed to sound within and across their lines.


// placing Harwood’s work in a broader context it becomes apparent how his poetry draws influences from several important American poets of the early-to-mid 20th Century. Ezra Pound and Charles Olson are two obvious figures who abandoned conventions of spelling, capitalization and punctuation. Their reasons? A way of announcing a modern and immediate feel to their writing. Pound would be aware of Futurism and Dada two movements which experimented with typography as a way of revolutionizing language and thinking. He also telescoped words – “sd” for “said” – in his poems and correspondence. The effect seems to be one of a more direct speech and an egalitarian unpretentious style. Olson seemed to be particularly aware of the typewriter and the way it broke words into discrete printed shapes and spaces. However, as e.e. cummings’ poetry shows, all too easily such typographic subversion becomes a limiting mannerism of its own. //

Then, when Harwood does capitalize – as in section three “THE CENSOR LOOMS” – or section four the three recurrent “To –“ phrases – the lines acquire an added emphasis.

In terms of different indentation – as in section three – common sense suggests that Harwood is setting these lines off as a separate thought or a new idea within the context created by the other lines.

So, rather than see such liberties as wilful, see how the use of typography and punctuation can be used meaningfully.

Listening to the sounds

Here are the first five lines of the poem:

nearing mid-summer

sweet nights of light
and red skies

Venus appears in the pale air
the evening star
(delete whatever)

In terms of basic comprehension, there is little of any great difficulty here. The poet establishes the time of year, the time of day and the appearance of the planet Venus in the night sky.

What, then, to say about these lines? And there might be several readers feeling that my prose equivalent does the job as well. Why does Harwood feel the need to chop up the lines other than this makes it seem more like a poem?

I would argue that Harwood is not simply interested in establishing a factual account. These opening lines work more lieka first ‘theme’ in a piece of music. The sounds are being ‘arranged’ very deliberately and not simply to make the poem ‘pretty’ or ‘poetic looking’. Let’s listen closer.

What becomes evident to a closer reading for sound is the way Harwood is arranging a delicate modulation of end consonants in the words: “summer”, “air”, “star” and “whatever”. Despite these being consonant endings the ‘-r’ syllable is almost working as a vowel.

Why does Harwood do this? Perhaps to embody a sense of softness and gentleness appropriate for balmy summer nights. And let’s not confuse this with onomatopoeia. No one is saying we hear the sound of wind in the leaves or the tide at a distance. Harwood is not ‘copying’ nature. Instead, within the sounds available to him these have a quality, a ‘texture’ which suits this part of the poem.

Next, the bright long ‘i’ sounds and long ‘e’ sounds: “nearing”, “sweet”, “nights”, “light”, “skies”, “Venus”, “appears”, “evening”, “delete”. At this level of recurrence this has to be more than coincidental.

Why does Harwood do this? Again, let’s not assert that the sounds are bright and so we see the stars. Rather, that out of the available sounds such bright and clear sounds possess a quality which suits what is being stated (I hesitate to say described).

And why I hesitate to say “described” is that, as such, Harwood is not describing – think how a meteorologist or astronomer would tackle similar phenomena. What we find – and one of the most interesting aspects of Harwood’s poem – is that sound and sense are inextricable. The sounds are the sense, the sense is in the sound.

But what of that broken line? Another example of poetic affectation? The danger – as Harwood would be only too aware – of using too many long vowels (here the ‘i’ and ‘e’ sounds) is that the poem becomes saccharine. The ear cloys with too much sweetness – compare the opening lines of Shakepeare’s Twelfth Night. By breaking the line and using the short ‘e’ sound found in “red” , Harwood tones down the lush effect. (That the skies were red is neither here nor there. We’re thinking in terms of the poem as a composition. And we’ll come back to that broken line later).

Finally, the pattern of long ‘i’ and ‘e’ sounds also work to create a coherence to the lines. The sounds ‘thread’ the lines together suggesting connections – by no means simply logical – between the night, the sky, the planet Venus, and the act of writing and revising. That the lines are spaced apart is – again – more than a novelty effect. By means of this spacing Harwod stops the reader’s eye running to quickly along the grammatical sense of the poem, skimming the poem’s surface. Instead, a rhythm to the reading is established one which allows the sounds of the composition to work. That this might also relate to a slow and rather leisurely feel to the poem only goes to show how different elements of the poem are working effectively together.


OK, let’s talk about “sense”

The broken line is worth looking at again. Many readers would make the jump to “red skies at night/shephered’s delight”. It is interesting to see Harwood resist the proverbial saying, preferring instead to gesture towards it. And this, I think, is a characteristic of his poetry.

A lesser poet – no, let’s say a different poet – might have used the old saw directly. Harwood knows his reader will pick up on it and part of his reader’s delight is this little shared intimacy of language. A raised eyebrow, a nudge, - or as the closing words of the poem say: “you know”.

It would be wrong to suggest that this is elitist, that Harwood expects too much of his readers. He is not being ‘difficult’ by working off the unstated phrase. In fact, it is the very opposite of elitism. Harwood presumes a shared background of language and one that has been handed down generation to generation. This is a popular poet.

What then of line five which breaks with the stars and skies and – typographically – breaks the page by appearing in parenthesis.

(delete whatever)

It sounds dismissive, casual, uninvolved, as if he couldn’t be bothered. A cynical counter voice to the lyrical preceding four lines.

It could be an instruction to himself lifted from the green notebook. It could be a thought going through his head as he composes the poem – although, as a poem of he 1970s it is perhaps unlikely to be his computer’s Word programme sending up a text box instruction. Might it even be an imperative addressed to the reader?

And this, it seems to me, is the point. Within the first five lines Harwood has created a deceptive and flexible ‘space’ for his poem. There seem to be two voices – one ‘main’ lyrical voice with its sotto voce ‘bad conscience’ making snide asides.

Time is layered: the time of year, the time of day, the stored time of the notebook (from which, for all we know, every phrase derives); and the time of the actual writing of the poem.

What is exciting about this poem is the very real sense of the poem in the process of writing and of an uncertain ‘depth’. To borrow from the visual arts, ‘figure’ and ‘ground’ seem to move. What has seemed to be fixed in time and space is now in a process of being written and coming into being. Furthermore, if we – the reader – are to “delete whatever” – Harwood seems intent on bringing us into the poem. What are the consequences for sense and meaning?

Is it the poem, the poet or the reader who “makes sense”?

//Harwood’s indebtedness to New York poetry of the 50s and 60s can be traced here and its close links with Abstract Expressionism. Look at de Kooning’s retention of underdrawing in his paintings and the concern to keep the tactile sense of the sweep of the arm in the stroke made by the brush//

Where else do we see this immediacy of composition? Look at lines six and seven:

a warm stillness
a still warmness

Again, there is the look and feel of an actual notebook entry. The poet trying out the lines, the sound, the shape through variations. (See also section ii. “Take notes. Make outlines out.”)

The minimalism is deceptive and that is another delight. First, notice the cheeky ungrammaticality of “warmness”. Shouldn’t that really be “warmth”? Yet this would miss the poetic rightness of the two lines and the impudent effect. (How dull had the poem continued with more atmospheric writing before delivering some trite moral. Harwood has a sense of humour - and tact).

Second, the reader becomes aware of a formal logic declaring itelf : a series of corrections and errors. Thus:

- the earlier “delete whatever”
- “frost waits for no man” itself a revision of “time waits for no man” with Harwood’s additonal remark suggesting that the accepted phrase is inadequate
- in terms of one phrase reworking another, line eleven “someone should say” is modified into lines fifteen to sixteen “as/they say”
- “stuck in the basics of survivial” is rewritten as “stuck in the basements of survival”
- and section (i.) closes “I reread this as mistakenly”

The effect of this is to create a sense of provisionality. One statement exists for a time only to be rephrased, the terms redefined later.

Perhaps this is “the basics of survival” and the nearest we will get to an explicit statement of what the poem is “about”? Certainly the poem seems reluctant to make any definite statement. The lines are unresolved fragments, barely sentences in the accepted grammatical sense. Main verbs or clear subjects are hard to establish. And yet the lines seem to be ‘about’ something. And this is also a characteristic of Harwood’s poetry – an implied subject or centre of interest.

The “basics of survival” might apply to emotional survival (a love affair, a bereavement), to the tomato plants surviving a late frost, to military survival tactics (Harwood often collages phrases from spy and war novels), to the poem – poetry – itself? The phrase “the ground to work from” carries inevitable echoes for a reader of Robert Duncan.

Is this “trivial” – a poem which concerns itself with the light of a particular day, of the cyclical movement of planets (and which we take for granted), of the fruits that grow for us to eat, and of the writing of poems?

You feel that Harwood is suggesting – not lecturing – that these are all part and parcel of each other and certainly not “trivial”. That you ‘get’ this – or you don’t – and thereby the poet achieves another little pact with the reader. As he writes later:

To keep it that simple
the foundations built as you go

you know

Building the poem (the process of composition, the notebook, sitting at his writing desk) and building a life – relationships with people, seasons, times of day, books, tomato plants – all require adjustments, improvisation, rules of thumb and not hard and fast absolutes.

And that final flourish says it all:

you know

Cheeky again and open to multiple readings:

- we agree (a final wink to the reader) you and I
- tranferring responsibility – you know (but I don’t)
- initiating a new chain of thought – I’ve just thought of something else ...

and that the sounds of the phrase are so exactly in accordance with the preceding “as you go” upsets any reassurance. Here sound works deliberately counter to the possibilities within the statement.
*
(The “basics of survival” continued

I’m deliberately separating off a discussion of the third section since it relates to other issues to be explored elsewhere. What’s interesting is the way that a seemingly rather ‘occasional’ poem (I notice that it wasn’t published as part of the main ‘Boston to Brighton’ volume) opens up to include issues of poetic survival – i.e. what seems to be a version of Harold Bloom’s anxiety of influence.

In section three, Harwood opens with the intimidating block capitals “THE CENSOR LOOMS” followed by “back of all thoughts”.

The poem seems to be more and more about the habits and processes of writing, here, specifically about the nagging doubts that surround the writer concerning his work. Is it – am I – any good? Should this line be kept? Should I rework it? Refine and polish or trust first thought best thought?

There is then a witty cartoon western transition, playing on “back” – “meanwhile back at the desk” and the portraits (photographs or postcards?) stuck over the writers’ table. Significantly, these sources of inspiration (Harwood’s father, the poet F.T. Prince, the artist Rembrandt, the novelist R.L. Stevenson) seem indifferent, looking above or to the side. (Here Lacan will be relevant concerning the gaze and the sense of selfhood – I’m not up to that today!).

Interestingly the section closes with the line:

There are dreams and actions and responsibilities

Harwood wears his reading lightly and yet the weight of his poetic responsibilities are clear. This line reworks a line by W.B Yeats (“In dreams begin responsibilities”), which was in turn used by Delmore Schwartz for a short story, and – as I recall – used by John Berryman as an epigram for a volume of Dream Songs. An example of the “ground to work from” – the soiled layers of language of precursor poets. )


***


Interlude

To spend the best part of a day with one poem – is this a wasted day?

In the university you are expected to devour several volumes in preparation for a weekly essay. That’s not how to read poetry.

Poetry requires time. Reading unfolds. It doesn’t – if it is any good – give in one go.

Recipes, fire drill instructions, traffic signs – these are texts which deliver their message quickly and efficiently.

One poem out of a collection of three hundred? But who’s counting? If I read only one today I will read it well.

Reading a poem is to have an experience. You read and engage with the words which are part of you – of who you are and were and might become.

To read lazily or inattentively or to read using someone else’s words is to miss the experience.

Why read the menu when you can eat the meal?

Read another poem by the same poet and the poem will acquire greater resonance. It will not be identical with the first – why should it be?

As if by magic the previous poem will acquire greater resonance when I re-read it. It seems that I have not exhausted it. How could I be so presumptuous!

As Heraclitus might say:

You never read the same poem twice.


***

Rilke on reading poetry

Here I sit, reading a poet.There are quite a number of people in the reading-room; but one is not aware of them. They are inside the books. They move, sometimes, within the pages like sleepers turning over between two dreams. Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading! Why are they not always like that? You can go up to one of them and touch him lightly; he feels nothing. And if in rising, you chance to bump lightly against the person sitting next you and excuse yourself, he nods in the direction from which your voice comes, looking at you, but not seeing you; and his hair is like that of a man who has been asleep ...

‘Bibliotheque Nationale’, The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rilke (p36)

and which calls to mind Wim Wenders’ film ‘Wings of Desire and the angels walking through the Staatsbibliothek ...