Odd and Invented Forms

What Is Poetry?

Definitions

 

What is poetry?  It's a difficult question — so difficult, in fact, that a truism has been invented by poets and others who, for one reason or another, wish to avoid the necessity of giving an answer: "Poetry is that literary art which is indefinable."  But anything can be defined — the problem is not with the definition, it's with getting a group to accept a particular definition, to agree to a convention, a social contract as to the meaning of something.

Every word in any language is a convention.  The people who speak the language have agreed that a particular word will mean this and not that.  If the definition of poetry as something that is "indefinable" does not satisfy us, we must turn to our expert, the lexicographer who, unfortunately, in this case is equally unsatisfactory: "Poetry," says the Oxford Universal Dictionary, is "the art or work of a poet."  The dictionary defines the word in terms of its practitioner, and when we look up the word poet, we discover the other end of the tautology: "one who composes poetry; a writer of verse."

We have gone in a circle, and we stand almost where we started.  Almost, but not quite, for we have now "a writer of verse" besides our circular definition.  But if we pursue the dictionary further, we discover a secondary definition of poet: "A writer in verse (or sometimes in elevated prose) distinguished by imaginative power, insight, and faculty of expression."

This is important for us to remember: much poetry is not written in verse at all, but in prose — Solomon's "The Song of Songs," for instance, "The Psalms" of David, or the most ancient "Epic of Gilgamesh."  Even in English there are prose poems: the sixteenth century "novel" Euphues by John Lyly is really a poem, not a work of fiction; the mystic books of the eighteenth century poet William Blake were prose poems, as was Edgar Allan Poe's nineteenth century "Eureka!"  Not to mention the work of Walt Whitman.  It will not do, then, simply to define the poet as "a writer in verse."

What do we have now?  We have this: That a poet is one who writes verse (which anyone might do) and sometimes prose, though an "elevated" prose.  That word elevated is going to be important eventually, when we disentangle these snarled threads of definition.  But right now it is vague and frustrating, as is this entire attempt to pin down a reasonable definition of poetry.

Perhaps we ought to begin clean.  Maybe we can take a clue, though, from the definition of a poet as one who writes poetry.  And it may help if we shift our attention to other kinds of writers for a moment: What is a novelist, for instance?  A novelist is one who writes novels.  What is a novel?  A novel is a long fictional narrative.  All right, then, what is a novelist? — a writer of long fictional narratives.  No trouble at all there; I think most of us will subscribe to that convention.

What is the novelist's job (and the short story writer's for that matter)?  To tell a fictive story — to tell a story.  The fictionist, then, focuses on narration, and he or she uses language for that purpose, as a vehicle for storytelling.  To tell a story the fiction writer needs four basic elements: character, plot, atmosphere, and theme, and a number of language techniques as well.

What does the dramatist do?  He or she writes drama.  What is drama?  Drama, says the dictionary, is "a composition in prose or verse, adapted to be acted on the stage, in which a story is related by means of dialogue and action [emphases added]...." What is the difference between the dramatist and the fictionist?  The answer is, there is none except that the dramatist is more severely limited in the range of language techniques at his or her disposal. There is not even a difference in mode — that is, prose or verse — because some novels have been written in verse; in fact, the first novels were called epics, and those written in Europe were written in verse.  The dramatist must, like the fictionist, use the basic ingredients of the narrative: character, plot, atmosphere, and theme; however, he or she can ordinarily use only the narrative language technique of dialogue.  Unlike the fictionist, the dramatist may supplement this narrative technique with theatrical techniques, such as representation (scenes, costumes, and physical actions).  The dramatist still uses language as a vehicle for his or her story.

What does the essayist write?  The question is rhetorical by now.  All right, then, what is an essay?  In its modern sense, (again according to the dictionary), an essay is "A book or writing which treats of some particular subject; now always one containing a methodical discussion or exposition of the principles of a subject."  Why does one write an essay? — to conduct an argument or to prove a point regarding a subject.  The essayist's focus, then, is upon the subject he or she is examining, and the techniques used are generally those of rhetoric rather than of narration.  The basic elements of the essay are 1) the subject being examined; 2) the thesis, or statement of the point to be made concerning the subject; 3) the argument, or the logical proofs and data required to back the thesis statement; and, 4) the conclusion reached, which is usually identical with the thesis.

A summary of literary focuses may be in order at this point: The fiction writer uses language to carry a narrative; the dramatist does likewise; the essayist uses language to carry an argument or a discussion.  We are left with the poet — what is the poet's focus?  What's left?

There is nothing left but the language itself.  The poet focuses his or her attention upon the language itself.  He or she may use all of the techniques of the fictionist, the dramatist, the essayist; at the poet's disposal are exactly the same things that all other writers have, but the difference is in focus:  The poet regards language as a material, just as the graphic artist regards pigments and ink, or as the sculptor regards stone, or as the dancer regards the body as movement and as the composer manipulates sound.  To the poet, language is a substance to be molded and shaped.  All else is secondary, because the poet realizes that how something is said often has more to do with what is said than anything else:  Something said well is something well-said, but something said superbly is a poem.

It is time to return to that vague word "elevated" that we found in our original attempt to define "poet."  How does Oxford define elevated? — "Raised up; at a high level.  Also...exalted in character; lofty, sublime...elated...slightly intoxicated."  That last definition, Oxford says, is intended to be used in a jocular sense, but it is perhaps most to the point, for a good definition of a poet might be, "A writer who is intoxicated with language."

Some people will think that too jocular a definition, perhaps, though many poets would be quite happy to leave it at that.  On the other hand, very few poets would be satisfied with the definition, "A writer of verse."  Why?  Because verse is merely one language technique, not all of them, and the poet refuses to be limited in any way.  He or she refuses to be satisfied with knowing only a few things about language; the poet insists upon knowing everything that can be known about the medium in which he or she works. These things may be learned in one of two ways: consciously and programmatically, or experientially. If one learns by doing rather than by studying, one may never know a single definition of any of the techniques one uses, but merely because one doesn't know what one is doing doesn't mean that one isn't doing it.  Learning definitions and understanding techniques consciously won't hurt anyone; on the contrary, making conscious a knowledge of the techniques at one's disposal will open up new reaches and vistas of possibility to the developing writer, for if the poet takes as his or her province the entire realm of language, one ought not to allow oneself to be cut off from any aspect of language unless it has been tried and found unsuitable for one’s purposes.

To write only in verse is limiting and, to reiterate an earlier point, anybody can write in verse — advertising copywriters writing jingles, the lady next door who does sonnets for the garden club, the rap rocker or hip-hopper at the microphone, the cowboy "poet" entertaining chaps under the big sky.  The word "poet," Robert Frost said, is a "praise-word."  The poet elevates the language.  He or she does everything any other writer does, but concentrates upon using those things more completely, wringing everything out of every word: denotation, connotation, sound, association, stress, imagery, and so on and on.

The poet handles and forms the language as a potter handles and shapes clay, molding language into an art object.  That is to say, poetry ought not to be defined narrowly, in terms of a particular mode such as prose or verse; or in terms of a function, such as singing or prophesying, but rather in terms of intensity of concentration on mode, on language of whatever species, prose or verse.

Any writer in either mode whose main focus is upon the resources of the language itself is a poet.  He or she may write rhymed quatrains or prose poems; narrate a story; in fact, be called a novelist by some people — one thinks of James Joyce who wrote a modern "novel" in prose but followed the epic form and even titled it after a character in an epic: Ulysses.  James Joyce was much more the poet in his novels than in his Pomes Penyeach, which are very rigid, old-fashioned lyrics in metered forms.  Not that there is anything wrong with meters and forms — merely that Joyce didn't use them with anything like the genius he displayed in his prose.

The poet may write plays in verse, as Shakespeare did, winning the honorific title "The Bard of Avon" — we don't call him "The Playwright of Avon."  Or the poet may write in "elevated" prose, like the playwright John Millington Synge.  But as long as the narrative is secondary to language, to how one does what one does — and, one might add, provided that one's work is qualitatively successful — he or she is a poet, not something else.  On the other hand, someone may write a narrative in verse — one thinks of a person like Robert Service who wrote humorous verse narratives such as "The Cremation of Sam McGee."  Service's interest is in the narrative and in the humor, not particularly in the language — he was a fictionist, a story-teller in verse, not a poet, for his concern is not the molding and elevation of language (and, thereby, the molding and elevation of observation, of thought, of a thousand things that can be done only in language).

One can, of course, always get into a debate about whether or not a particular piece is a poem, about whether a particular writer is a poet or a novelist.  Opinion will always play a large part in the evaluation of literature.  The object here isn't to pigeonhole people or genres — merely to clear up some general vagueness and ambiguity in a definition of the genre of poetry. 

My remarks to this point may help to explain why poetry, for many people, is so "difficult" to experience.  In our reading we are used to focusing upon narrative or explanations of how to make or do things, or upon arguments, not upon the language itself, not upon language as substance.  We, as readers, are adept at following techniques such as plot and exposition, but not so adept at responding to language as it operates simultaneously on several levels.  Every true poem is a complex (but not necessarily complicated) organism comprised of several interdependent patterns.

The Book of Literary Terms: The Genres of Fiction, Drama, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism and Scholarship , www.UPNE.com, ISBN 0874519551, quality paperback, $24.95, 224 pages. A Choice  “Outstanding academic title” for 2000. A companion volume to The Book of Dialogue and The Book of Forms.   

 

A Formal Argument

On November 24, 2009, I happened to run across on the Web an essay, “Lewis Turco & The Workshop System — A Test” by Curtis Favile having to do with my book First Poems, published by Golden Quill Press of Francestown, New Hampshire, in 1960:

 
 

http://compassrosebooks.blogspot.com/2009/11/in-my-sojourns-around-country-hunting.html?showComment=1259075772286#c3910310355261537332

I was amused in particular by a comment at the end of the essay written by one of Favile’s readers who said, "Turco was a big name even into the 70s. It's amazing how precipitously he's fallen since. There's been total silence for at least 20 years."

I entered my own comment on Favile’s blog: “If readers would like an update on my career, they may go to Wikipedia, or http://www.lewisturco.net ; if they are interested in experimental work, try http://lewisturco.typepad.com/odd_and_invented_forms/ and, for a free new downloadable e-chapbook of my work, take a look at http://www.ahadadabooks.com/content/view/190/43/; as for ‘Ode for the Beat Generation’ its actual title is "Time Goes Down in Mirrors" (as in infinite regress); I used that title back in 1960 just to get some topical attention for the poem. Its most recent incarnation is at http://www.trellismagazine.com/files/Reinventing_the_Wheel.pdf.

Mr. Turco [Favile replied]:

There is always the possibility that someone will actually read the entries about him on the internet, as you have done here. (
I didn't know your later career well enough to discuss it with any authority. I merely used your first book to make a point about the workshop system. I attended it between 1969 and 1972, and Justice was one of my teachers. This was actually only a decade later than you had been there. I think a lot of changes had occurred in that brief span, yet some fundamental structures of approach and procedure didn't. I think they're endemic to the workshop system. 

In any case, I hope none of what I said did any permanent damage to your ego.

Curtis Faville

Turco. My ego is just fine, Curtis. I got a kick out of your saying that I seemed able to write the standard quarterlies poetry when you mentioned that I'd also published in The San Francisco Review. I also published in some of the other Beat magazines. I actually started publishing before I got to college, in the Navy aboard the USS Hornet, on its round-the-world cruise in 1953-55 (I graduated from high school in 1952). When I finally got to UConn I published in Hearse: A Vehicle to Convey the Dead, with a poem that began, "It cost me three bucks / to castrate my cat. / Man, that's one-fifty per ball!" I found it so ridiculously easy to write Beat shit I got disgusted with myself and went back to writing formal poems that required a bit of skill and intelligence. As you note, things appear not to have changed too much; ignorance is still bliss for some people. 

Favile. I do remember feeling irritated back in my Iowa days — living on a lovely farm outside of town (rural route 4), and receiving my monthly issue of Poetry (Chicago), counting my rejection slips, and ruefully shaking my head over Daryl Hine's prissy choices  issue after issue. What fun.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and ask you directly: You say you found it "so ridiculously easy to write Beat shit" that you "went back to writing formal poems"  because they "required a bit of skill and intelligence."  Isn't that another way of saying that you felt little or no compulsion to write in any particular way, or about any thing in particular — that it was, in the end, little more than exercising your powers-at-large?  What's the difference  between writing a poem like "Ode For The Beat Generation" and doing a quotidian cross-word  puzzle?

Presumably, you moved away from such finger-exercises, and now regard  them as the apprentice work that they now appear to have been.  Your interest was in the multitude of intriguing forms, since you wrote a textbook on the subject.

I tend to think the best writers are compelled to write in certain ways, and the proof of their compulsion is in the power and subtlety of their work. There are some poets whose traditional approaches seem deeply persuasive — I like Hecht, Justice, Merrill,  and Ashbery, for instance — not because they "solved" the formal problems — and certainly not  because they necessarily speak to questions and problems that I share with them — but because  their feelings and obsessions and struggles with formal problems are inextricably braided into the verse itself.  They're wrestling with real demons, not cocked-up ones.

     I can't see that it does any good for you to be disgruntled by my post. 

Turco. I don't know why you think I'm "disgruntled" by what you said on your blog. I greatly enjoyed it. I thought a lot of it was funny.

You ask why I write. The answer is not as simple as you seem to think it is. I don't write for a program as apparently you do. The basic reason I write is because I have always, since I could read, enjoyed literature, and I grew up wanting to provide readers with the same pleasures good writing gave me.

Another reason I write is because I figured I needed something to do to keep me interested in living, I assessed my talents, and discovered that my major talent is the ability to write.

A third reason I write is because I love language, I love words, I love to hear them bounce off each other and make gorgeous music.

A fourth reason I write is because I find people fascinating, and language is the best scalpel the race of Man has to dissect mankind and understand how our minds work, how our emotions drive us to do the stupid things we do.

A fifth reason I write is because I wanted to be able to write any way I felt like writing, on any subject, in any style that was called for by the material I was handling, and I spent my early life teaching myself everything I could about the language and its forms and genres.

Finally, I discovered my second best talent was the ability to teach what I knew about writing to students who wanted to learn how to write themselves, so I wrote books, essays, lectures, etc., etc., and became a very good teacher of writing both in the classroom and in print, which is why The Book of Forms has been around now for forty-one years and has been joined by The Book of Dialogue and The Book of Literary Terms. All of which is simply to say, I write because I am driven to write.

 

Favile. This is interesting.  You seem to feel the need to write as a compulsion to complete fixed schema, parallel to, but separate from, questions of content or  "subject."  That might be one reason why you began to write in the way that you did — i.e., as a series of artificial formal problems which you then "solved" through your wits and ingenuity. What the poems in your first collection suggest is that you didn't confront language directly, but manipulated it as a craftsman, learning, for instance, how to perform certain turns and functions the way any craft apprentice might do (wood worker, blacksmith, etc.).  This is the "appalling, clever" quality Justice is talking about in his Forward [to First Poems].  For me, poetry has never been about mere cleverness, especially when it is offered up in the spirit of giddiness or arch condescension.

Why would I think the "answer" is "not as simple" as I think?  —  that  seems like an illogical deduction, since I didn't ask a question.  You say you "don't write for a program as apparently [I] do." Again, I don't know what this means.  Do you mean a "program" as in an academic program, or a program as in a set of guidelines?  Actually, I'd describe the poems you wrote in your first book as being very much about "writing for a program" — as in writing poems which have a predetermined structure, either from historical examples, or "made- up" forms.  (The best practitioner of "made-up" forms seems to me to be Marianne Moore, whose big syllabic structures are unique examples of fixed forms neither derived from nature, nor "gotten out of any other man's books" (Pound, on Oppen).  With respect to my own compositional techniques, I have written poems of many kinds, including sonnets, haiku, and villanelles; as well as through chance, vers libre, or other less explicit methods. My post wasn't, however, about my own work, but about an approach to writing that seemed characteristic of certain academically-endorsed or -fostered systems  of instruction during the 1950's.  Your work seemed to fall right in the middle of that tradition, which is why I employed it, as a convenient pretext for my argument.

You seem very organized: You have classified and defined the range  of possible forms, the broad taxonomy of linguistic-poetic application, much in  the manner of an encyclopedist. This kind of knowledge is very useful to anyone desiring to exploit the known possible ways in which people have written in the past.  Your approach suggests you have bought into the investment of a literary tradition that can be codified and taught, much in the manner that any simple craft can be. That would follow from the kind  of poetry you wrote early in your career.  "All right, class, your next assignment is to write a poem in three quatrains, with the following rhyme scheme, on a theme of  your own choosing."

Starting from a premise in which this kind of exercise might be seen  as useful, is exactly the kind of pre-ordination of compositional approach against which I  am arguing. I would suggest that it is a self-perpetuating kind of tradition, designed to promote the brand of poetry you published in your first book, which I find  impersonal and trite.

I think, if you read between the lines — and I knew Justice well enough, I think  — to deduce that he's actually demurring from real praise in his Forward.  Fast- forwarding, or leap- frogging over the intervening 50 years, It's natural enough to resent the implication that the method one chose to write — the reduction of creative writing to the study and perfection of known "forms" — might come under attack, as being suspect, by advocates of different approaches.  Who am I, after all, to accuse you?

But critics do this sort of thing all the time, and one either rolls with it or doesn't. I chose your book to make a point about the history of poetry workshops, and the tradition they have fostered, since the system began in the 1930's. To be selected as the fetish doll and have pins stuck in you is surely no fun, even if one is game (I could have selected others). Obviously, it isn't "fair" to have one's earliest effort(s) held up to unfavorable scrutiny. You provide six reasons that you write, as if in response to having been asked. But I didn't ask that question, though the answers you gave sound exactly how I would expect a writer in your position to defend his choices.

To go beyond this point, we'd have to engage in a mutual unburdening  of individual taste, which is very far afield of my original post.

Thanks for the lob serve, and happy versifying!

 

Turco. You wrote early in our correspondence, “I can't see that it does any good for you to be disgruntled by my post.” I was not disgruntled by your post. The comment I posted on your blog, The Compass Rose, was in response to something that one of your readers, Kirby Olson, posted and that I thought was quite funny:

 

“Turco was a big name even into the 70s. It's amazing how precipitously he's fallen since. There's been total silence for at least 20 years.”

 

You decided I was reacting to something you said. I was not, but you needed an excuse, I guess, to address me personally, and snottily: “

In any case, I hope none of what I said did any permanent damage to your ego.”

If weÕre going to talk about egos, let’s discuss yours. You seem to be proud of your ability to carry on a logical argument, but you can’t even remember the premise of our argument, nor can you recall what you’ve just written despite the fact that you asked, and I quote, “Why would I think the ‘answer’ [that I sent you] is ‘not as simple’ as I think?  —  that  seems like an illogical deduction, since I didn't ask a question.”  Of course you did; here is the question you asked:

 

“I'm going to go out on a limb here, and ask you directly: You say you found it ‘so ridiculously easy to write Beat shit,‘ that you  ‘went back to writing formal poems ‘ because they ‘required a bit of skill and intelligence.‘  Isn't that another way of saying that you felt little or no compulsion to write in any particular way, or about any thing in particular — that it was, in the end, little more than exercising your powers-at-large?  What's the difference between writing a poem like  ‘Ode For The Beat Generation ‘ and doing a quotidian cross-word puzzle?”

 

And you said again, later on,

 

“You provide six reasons that you write, as if in response to having been asked. But I didn't ask that question, though the answers you gave sound exactly how I would expect a writer in your position to defend his choices.”

 

Don’t you think that one ought to remember questions one has asked in the current argument?

And since when does a logician assume the right to assume; that is, to put words into the mouth of the person with whom he is arguing? The rhetorical trick there is called building a straw man. I can play that game, too: Isn’t your remark that, “I tend to think the best writers are compelled to write in certain ways, and the proof of their compulsion is in the power and subtlety of their work” another way of saying that the kind of poet you admire doesn’t need to have much in the way of skill and intelligence?

Further, you say you don’t understand certain things I say in my work and letters, as for instance “Time goes down in mirrors.” Have you never stood between two mirrors and seen your image infinitely regress, as though not only into the past, but into the future as well, behind and ahead? And, “You say you ‘don't write for a program as apparently [I] do.’ Again, I don't know what this means.  Do you mean a ‘program’ as in an academic program, or a program as in a set of guidelines?  Actually, I'd describe the poems you wrote in your first book as being very much about ‘writing for a program’ — as in writing poems which have a predetermined structure, either from historical examples, or ‘made- up’ forms.”

No, the program I’m talking about is the one you stated right there, “Thou shalt not write poems in predetermined structures,” which pretty well takes care of most of English language literature, doesn’t it? Am I to assume (following your lead) that “literature” begins where there is no “predetermined structure”? The problem, of course, is that anybody who writes (or speaks) in any language in the world must struggle with structure, including you. Here’s a bit from the introduction to my The Book of Literary Terms:

 

Every element of language is a form of some kind. The letters of the alphabet are forms, conventions upon which the members of a culture have agreed in order to communicate; so are words, phrases, clauses, and sentences, whether spoken or written.

 

The poet takes these forms further, into the regions of typography, sound, imagery, and ideation. Thus, seen from my point of view, your “argument” is not merely illogical, because all writers must struggle with the forms of language all of which have been “made up” in one way, and at one time, or another, but it is also specious.

And that business about Donald Justice and how I perhaps ought to read between the lines of his introduction to my First Poems to see how he is damning my work “with faint praise,” because, “if you read between the lines — and I knew Justice well enough, I think  — to deduce that he's actually demurring from real praise in his Forward.” How long did you know Justice? I knew him as a lifelong friend from more than a decade before you met him as your teacher at Iowa until the day he died.

Here is the reason you can jump to your conclusion about Don’s diffidence when faced with my First Poems: when he wrote the Introduction he was familiar with the poems I had written in the Workshop, and he understood that none of my new poems were included in it. I had written all the work of First Poems in the Navy after high school, and as an undergraduate at UConn; the collection had been submitted to a publisher and accepted well before June of 1960 when it appeared, so Don wrote an introduction to a collection of non-Iowa Workshop poems.

Don knew I had available poems he liked better, and he knew I was no longer writing traditional lyrics — I hadn’t written a single one that academic year; I was writing the syllabic poems I had begun experimenting with at Yaddo that previous summer of 1959. But he had nothing against the forms I had been using as I taught myself versewriting, because he encouraged me to write what eventually became The Book of Forms.

Don also knew that the reason I was publishing the book was because my wife was expecting a baby, and I needed a job. No doubt this is all just too pragmatic for you, Curtis, but it all worked out as I hoped it would. I was employed as a teaching writer for thirty-six subsequent years, largely on my record as a publishing writer with (to begin with) a published book of poems. I needed to do it that way because I had no intention of working on a Ph.D.

But I do want you to understand, despite your arrogance and the programmatic blinkers you wear, that I have nothing against what you wrote in your blog. It’s nothing I haven’t heard a thousand times before — I attach an interview I did for WBAI back in 1962 [posted on my other blog, Poetics and Ruminationa]. I have no doubt you’ll recognize the arguments.

P. S. Thanks for pissing me off with that smug little remark you made, “Thanks for the lob serve, and happy versifying!”