Riddles of Form – Seven

Louis Zukofsky

1.

che di lor suona su nella tua vita

I walked out, before
"Break of day"
And saw
Four cabins in the hay.

Blue sealed glasses
Of preserves - four -
In the window-sash
In the yard on the bay.

Further:
The waters
At the ramp
Running away.

(from ‘Anew’ 1935-1944)

*

“Texts don’t have meanings, except in their relations to other texts, so that there is something uneasily dialectical about literary meaning. A single text has only part of a meaning: it is itself a synechdoche for a larger whole including other texts. A text is a relational event, and not a substance to be analyzed ...”
(Bloom, ‘Kabblah and Criticism’, 55)

*

i.
By way of an introduction

I was reading Bloom just before we went away to France and so it’s appropriate to resume by quoting from his text Kabbalah and Criticism. More and more the issue – it seems to me – is to focus on what ‘meaning’ means when we talk about poems and what reading a poem really involves. As Bloom says:

“A theory of poetry must belong to poetry, must be poetry, before it can be of any use in interpreting poems.”(57)

I realize that there are many consequences of such a statement that go way beyond what I want to discuss here. However, a major value of Bloom’s thinking for me at the moment is as a way of breaking with the traditional ‘interpretative’ model of the poetry classroom – and, indeed, poetry teaching.

How many times have students produced essays including phrases such as “what the poet is saying ...”, “at a deeper level ...”, “the message X is trying to communicate to us is ...”, “what the poem is really about is ...”. How many times, in a class discussion of a poem, does the teacher adopt the conjuror’s role and produces the rabbit out of the hat – the biographical titbit that ‘unlocks’ the image, the secondary meaning of the word on line 10 which ‘explains’ the whole poem. Mea culpa!

It just so happens that another Blog –

http://brookswinchell.blogspot.com/2008/07/pleasure-of-reading-zukofsky.html

is offering a reading of Zukofsky’s poem. It interests me in that I sense there’s an evident struggle going on to ‘make sense’ of Zukofsky’s poem in ways that I can identify with but would now like to transform. I notice statements such as:

“I did find pleasure in the sight and sound and the obscurely juxtaposed lines of thought, but I was still not convinced that I had cracked Zukofsky.”

“Clearly, the poem has a lyricalness, and a visualness, and interesting juxtaposition, but considering Bengal's idea of Zukofsky exposing the inadequacy of language, the poem reaches a new level of insight and genius.”

“The more literally we take Zukofsky's words, the more inadequate they become for expressing any particular idea but only as much as the reader can formulate. This, I considered to be my first real encounter with Zukofsky.”

The idea of “cracking” a poet – or poem – and the “inadequacy” of language are what most concern me.

The first relates to the idea of poem as puzzle (or deliberate attempt to mystify), the second a sense that a poet uses language that is in some way impoverished, or not up to the ‘normal’ ways of communicating. I’m particularly interested in the last statement – that the more we take LZ’s language literally the more it becomes inadequate to express ideas. I think I’d be right in saying that there is also an implied sense of the poem as printed is in some ways ‘other’ than the ‘real’ poem (or a more coherent statement of ideas).

Ideas. There’s the rub. Increasingly I wonder whether poetry IS about ideas – or, at least, what we generally mean by ‘ideas’: concepts, paraphrasable ‘content’. (Although I accept that academics, exam boards and teachers prefer poetry to be ‘about’ this – that word ‘about’ is revealing).

Which is not to say a poem is not meaningful – as I hope the previous posts have suggested, poetic meaning is ‘other than’ and multiple. I will try to explain in terms of this short Zukofsky poem – and by doing so to try to suggest where I find pleasure in reading Zukofsky.

*

ii.

Zukofsky and quotation

che di lor suona su ne la tua vita,

The version of the poem I am reading is printed in the Johns Hopkins Complete Short Poetry of Louis Zukofsky. I’m interested to see that Brooks Winchell doesn’t include the title in his analysis. For me, that’s already a pleasure missed.

Why? In fact, I realise that such a device – Zukofsky is using Italian for God’s sake! – could be offputting, the kind of smart arse gesture of a poet out to hoodwink the average reader or to put over his superior education and culture.

It doesn’t take too much effort to locate the lines – from Dante’s Inferno Canto 4, line 77. So, yes, there might be a self-congratulatory pleasure in thinking you’ve ‘cracked’ the clue. However, let’s remember Bloom’s statement about poetic meaning and “relations to other texts”. How does this line from Dante ‘speak’ in Zukofsky’s poem?

Returning the lines to their original context they read:

“E quelli a me: “L’onrata nominanza
che di lor suona su ne la tua vita,
grazia acquista nel ciel, che si li avanza”.”

Or, in English:

“And he to me: “The honourable renown
that of them echoes in thy life above
wins grace in heav’n, which their worth doth own.”

I’m no Dante scholar but the circumstances are clear: Dante has descended into Hell, guided by Virgil, and witnesses those who have excelled in art and science but rest in Limbo. Zukofsky seems to be setting up a potential thematics - not just to this poem but the sequence of poems that make up the volume ‘Anew’ – of the merits of worldly fame and (we’d assume specifically for Zukofsky) poetic achievement.

In addition, Zukofsky seems – in a way dear to Bloom’s heart – to be acknowledging the role of poetic influence. Dante guided by Virgil works as a parallel structure to Dante’s words acting as ‘guide’ to Zukofsky’s poem.

Let’s return, though, to the quotation itself. Why, for instance, doesn’t Zukofsky translate it? Why not footnote it at the bottom of the page (in my edition there are no notes – however, I see evidence on websites of Zukofsky offering explanations to certain parts of this poem)? Is this anything more than literary insiderism?

I think it is and returns to the issue of taking Zukofsky’s words ‘literally’ and finding them inadequate to sense. I’d argue very differently. It seems to me that Zukofsky very deliberately retains the quotation in Italian to suggest a ‘power’ that words carry.

Reading, shaping the words in the mouth – Italian words of the 14th Century – on Tuesday 22 July 2008 is to undergo a kind of magical (spiritual?) experience offered by language. Dante’s words “echo” in my ears today. Zukofsky wants that frisson – imagine him transcribing the words onto the page of his manuscript on a particular day in 1935(?).

I stress what seems obvious or just one of ‘those’ literary devices as it relates directly to the issue of inadequacy. Zukofksy understands the powers words hold and how quotations are far from ‘simple’. Directly related to this has to be his earlier ‘Poem beginning “The”’ and the subsequent project ‘A’ (in both cases the citational marks are scrupulously intended). *

Time is embodied in the poem – and why I find descriptions of Zukofsky’s language being “inadequate” misleading. One of my favourite statements by Zukofsky describes the extraordinary ‘time’ of poetry:

“Felt deeply, poems like all things have the possibilities of elements whose isotopes are yet to be found. Light has travelled and so looked forward.

How do we know? We look at the stars and because the light from them has travelled we see them shining tonight as tomorrow.” (‘Poetry’, 4)

Which I always interpret in terms of poems working like stars – we see the light ‘now’ which has travelled and will travel beyond us. Our reading – any reading – is belated and yet necessarily of our moment which is, paradoxically, also to anticipate the poem. (This, again , has direct links with Bloom’s ideas in Kabbalah and Criticism concerning influence and tradition).

The quotation yields still more: Zukofsky in citing Dante’s words significantly ‘misreads’ (by which I don’t mean an error, rather in the Bloom sense of a powerful act of reading).

Go back to the ‘original’ lines and we find the words are spoken by Virgil – not Dante – “E quelli a me:”. Zukofsky is too sophisticated a poet-reader to do this accidentally. The lines now acquire even greater resonance concerning poetic speech: a simultaneous act of appropriation and ventriloquism. Dante speaks through Virgil (the precursor Master poet); Zukofsky takes Dante’s words and cuts the umbilical cord to their original matrix of meaning. This is rich stuff, it seems to me!

And then in writing these lines ‘anew’ (the title for the volume seems absolutely pertinent here) so they begin to speak differently:

che di lor suona su ne la tua vita,
(that of them echoes in thy life above)

How interesting that the line now – shorn of its original context – starts to work less in terms of infernal punishment and worldly achievement versus eternal happiness and more intimately in terms of the poet himself (or the reader) – “thy”, memory, even language itself (the “echoes” of words). Again, this is why Zukofsky’s method of citation is far more than a provocation and – again – why taking Zukofsky literally is to discover extraordinary power and potential in language.

While I am reluctant to bring in any ‘special’ knowledge into the reading (no rabbits out of the hat!) it seems permissible to mention Zukofsky’s own discussion of the poem in terms of dreams:

“When I awoke the exact words of the poem I dreamt were lost, but those I wrote down still seemed to follow on the events of the dream.” (cited in ‘The Poem of a Life’ by Mark Scroggins, 221)

It’s a similar scenario to the famous Coleridge anecdote about the interrupted composition of ‘Kubla Khan’. Remaining with the quotation from Dante just a little longer, it is clear that the words also relate to different states of mind: waking life ‘above’ ground which intermittently receives the words which rise up and “echo” from the buried unconscious? Or – and here kabbalistic reading returns – is poetic language itself echoing a higher ‘music’? This poem – perhaps the volume as a whole – will explore very concrete experiences for any artist of the relation between inspiration and composition. Again, pressing Zukofksy’s language – taking the words literally (and what else is there to do?) – yields such potential power. Not – I would argue – inadequacy.

Furthermore, I hope the ‘meaning’ of the poem has been seen to emerge out of reading Zukofsky’s text poetically. Working with the way his language is working in itself. Not by imposing some pre-determined structure or trying to simplify or paraphrase.

I am not saying the poem is ‘about’ abstract concepts of Time or poetic inspiration, that reading the Divine Comedy holds the ‘clue’, that the poem has significance because it illustrates a theory expounded by Harold Bloom.

I am saying that its language is speaking if we’re prepared to listen. That meaning is ‘embodied’ in the workings of the language. That this is the ‘materialism’ of Zukofsky’s poetry.

ii.

Zukofsky and sound

It seems natural to move next to a consideration of sound in the poem given that the title itself - che di lor suona su ne la tua vita – speaks of echoes.

Again, the intention is to read poetically rather than conceptually. To listen to what the language is doing.

The first verse seems to establish a series of meaningful sound patterns:

I walked out, before
"Break of day"
And saw
Four cabins in the hay.

Zukofsky works an ‘or’ sound through “walked”, “before”, “saw” and “four”, contrasting it with the ‘ay’ sound heard within “break”, “day” and “hay”. I also notice he is working with soft last syllable sounds: “before” , “day”, “saw”, “hay” lack any hard terminal consonant (in fact only “glasses” and “ramp” possess any edge).

In verse two:

Blue sealed glasses
Of preserves - four -
In the window-sash
In the yard on the bay.

I find pleasure in the line “Blue sealed glasses” – something about the long ‘oo’ placed against the ‘bl’ set against the rougher sibillance in “glasses” with its ‘gl’ first syllable. I notice the sibillance in “sealed”, “glasses”, “preserves”, and “sash” (with a delayed echo in verse three: “waters”).

In verse three:

Further:
The waters
At the ramp
Running away.

I hear the “ur” vowel sound at work in “preserves” now take shape due to “further”. The penultimate “running” now brings into focus a series of ‘in’ sounds (“cabins”, “in the ...”, “window”, “in the ...,”).

Listening more delicately, I start to wonder whether LZ is exploring shades of sound between ‘or’, ‘ow’, ‘oo’, ‘ov’ (“walked”, “window”, “blue”, “of”). And as eyes and ears work together, is “of” working in sound reflection with “four” ?

I’ve deliberately refrained from making any interpretative move. No onomatopoeia. No this ‘means’ that.

Why? Because I think Zukofsky’s poem deserves to be read as it sounds. That it is possible to find a relation between the sibillants and a series of ‘things’ which share a glassy, reflective quality. However, this seems a very reductive reading. Might it not be possible to say that sound has its own meaning? In the sense that it sets up recurrences, symmetries and dysymmetries which are ‘logics’ in themselves? That one of the great pleasures of reading (and writing) poetry is discovering how words can be made to work together? Looking in further poems by Zukofsky how he – for example – uses soft consonants against hard and thereby developing an engagement with the poet which goes much deeper than a set of ten abstracted concepts. Who wants the Bluffers’ Guide to Louis Zukofsky anyhow?

I realise that this kind of reading entails its own dangers: poetry becomes pure verbal music. However, right now, it’s a risk worth taking to counter-balance what seems to me – in much school teaching of poetry – an overly intellectualized approach.

I think Zukofsky’s use of sound does go beyond pure musical effect. And that’s what the next section will be about.

iii.

Zukofsky and grammar and syntax

I am deliberately steering away from any ‘content’ based reading: in section one exploring how citation works, in section two how sounds work, in this section how grammatical and syntactical patterns work meaningfully in the poem. I am not trying to read the poem metaphorically, symbolically or allow the ‘referential’ dimension of the language to take effect (e.g. he is describing a scene with four cabins, jam jars, the sea ...).

Zukofsky famously argued for the poet “giving some of his life to the use of the words the and a” and defending the meaning of “the little words” (‘Poetry’, 10). Let’s see how they work in this poem.

First, I am intrigued by Zukofsky’s handling of line and how it relates to the sense units. Why does he turn the first line on “before”? -

I walked out, before
"Break of day"

Why does he invert the normal word order in lines 5 & 6? -

Blue sealed glasses
Of preserves - four –

What about the deliberate parallelism in lines 7 & 8 –

In the window-sash
In the yard on the bay.

Finally, how – grammatically – is “further” (line 9) to be understood: as a logical connective or in a spatial sense?

I am not going to offer any interpretation other than to suggest that is here that the earlier discussion of sound returns. In other words, how Zukofsky’s poem acquires a meaningful form: reading enters into this interaction of sound logics with the grammatical and syntactical logics. The poem – so to speak – comes into being at these points of intersection.

The sounds are not ‘decorative’ of a content. They embody.

The grammatical and syntactical structures are not ‘obscure’ or ‘hiding’ a meaning. They constitute ways of meaning. **

Zukofsky’s language is not ‘inadequate’ to ‘a’ meaning. He could not have expressed it ‘better’ (which is not to say that it is a Great Poem – such value judgments seem perilous to me at present. Let’s just look at what is going on) .

Experience is not anterior to the poem. The poem IS the experience.

That there are – or were – cabins, a window, the sea, is quite possible. However, in the poem, there are the words “cabins”, “window”, “the bay” which possess their dictionary senses, the senses ‘intended’ by the poet, the senses any reader might possess, while at the same time work as compositional elements – rhythmically, acoustically, grammatically, syntactically.

To quote Zukofsky himself:

“The order of all poetry is to approach a state of music wherein the ideas present themselves sensuously and intelligently and are of no predatory intention. ... Poems are acts upon particulars. Only through such an acivity do they become particulars themselves – i.e. poems.” (‘An Objective’, 18)

And that is what this poems demands: an attention to its particulars rather than theoretical generalisation or abstract conceptualizing. And that, perhaps, is another aspect of Zukofsky’s ‘materialism’.

Does any of this make sense?

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* Not wishing to divert attention at this point, I’d suggest via a footnote how this reading of quotations has a relation to the Welsh poet David Jones’ ideas of anathemata.

I simply don’t have time right now to address the other type of quotation used by LZ in line 2 – clearly the foregrounding of citation marks (the act of quoting) is significant when the title omitted them.

** “in dream the simple and familiar words like prepositions, connectives, etc. are not absent, in fact, noticeably present to show logical absurdity, discontinuity, parody of sanity.” Lorine Neidecker. I have no intention of suggesting Zukofsky would have known of this statement by LN but it’s wonderfully suggestive in terms of this particular poems ‘mechanics’.