Newsgroups: bit.listserv.literary
Date:         Tue, 8 Sep 1992 08:59:51 CST
From:         frank <BAE03@TWNTKU10.BITNET>
Subject:      poetry/fiction 2

sorry, i had to cut that last message short as if feared my computer would eat
it...anyway, i was saying in  fiction (narrative) there is a clearer "real-worl
d" reference than in poetry, supposedly, and a tendency for the syntagmatic/met
onymic/horizontal function of language to predominate ovver the paradigmatic/
metaphoric/vertical function, whatever that means.....Poetic language more near
ly is self-contained, self-referential than fictional "prose"--but the best fic
tion writers apparently combine all these things, are indeed more lyrical/poeti
c than mediocre poets...Why? I think what is abovve all poetic is the freshness
, unexpectedness, STRIKINGness of images/metaphors, the "strangeness" (in that
sense) of connection/juxtaposition of 2 normally totally unrelated things....
(again, the metaphoric function of language, jumping to another levvel of mean
ing on a higher vvertical plane or axis)....I think Shakespeare, Donne and meta
physical poets are good at this (= metaphysical conceit), Romantics sometimes,
French symbolists much better (more radical) at it than Romantics which is why
they influenced many "moderns" like yeats, pound & eliot, also joyce....I lovve
French symbolists & generally modern (early 20th c.) poetry precisely for this
reason (well, & also ironic detachment of speaker, etc...) As for post-modern
or contemporary poetry, i don't know it well, may tend to think it's too self-
parodying (self-consciously "sophisticated" in this sense, like most New Yorker
poetry) & lacking in the radical freshness/strikingness/VIOLENCE of image/meta
phor of the modern poets....(S Plath & followers certainly don't lack this)....
    (3) Anyway, forgetting all this theoretical nonsense (again?), it's clear
that the notion of a poetic line being "stranger" than a line of prose (tho thi
s is the conventional wisdom) is problematical. Someone siad the "strangeness"
started coming into English poetry with the Old & then Middle English verse,
originally to help listeners of the oral epic grasp/remember it (as with Homer
no doubt)...Perhaps so, yes....(epic being poeticized narrative: this view grou
nds poetic language in narrative or discursive language)....But consider this:
Wordsworth wanted poetry to speak "the common language of men" (thought neoclas
sical poetry too artificial, i agree), said we normally speak in iambic pentame
ter ( i think it's true when you stop to notice it, maybe an occasional trochee
 or dactyl)....Then Whitman's "democratic" view of poetry was a further extensi
on of this, and Pound (my favorite as mbm knows) is still more radical. Pound &
Eliot say they want no sentimental fluff or excess (Romantics) in their poetry,
just want to express the "reality" directly as "cold hard images" (i lovve it)
Actually yeats, eliot et al are less ostensibly "poetic" in the old, ornamental
sense: they've a tighter, cleaner vverse but it's great poetry due to freshness
/ORIGINALITY of images/metaphors...there's also this dramatic presentation (iro
nic detachment of speaker, raises another issue).
    Personally i also find Whitman too "prosaic" but there's a lot of energy an
d power of accumulation in those long, unevven lines...he's a cataloguer in the
tradition of Homer: epic poetry, poeticized narrativve (or narratized poetry?).
To really analyze the poetic function of Whitman's lines the metonymic/contigui
ty theory (jacobsen et al) would be useful, i think...the verse is more metonym
ic than metaphoric (tho also much powerful metapohor, no doubt), thus again clo
ser to narrativve or poeticized  narrative?  Also, the quote from Woolf's Mrs.
Dalloway givven (by Milly?) in an earlier post struck me as language functionin
g more metonymically than metaphorically: that is, Woolf is associating differe
nt objects in the "real" world(through the perceptions of one or more conscious
nesses, & also associating those objects with the consciousnesses); I found the
metaphoric function in that passage a bit weak, tho Woolf is of course generall
y excellent with this as well...(has a strange way of combining them)...The pt
is, stream of consciousness technique in proust, joyce & woolf can also be anal
yzed in terms of metonymic (extension,  external association, A suggests B sugg
ests C....) and metaphoric (unexpected identity or jextapostion of ideas/feelin
gs/thoughts, more internal?) functions of language/thought....Joyce and Woolf
havve different ways of using/combining these functions....(is a thought or fee
ling nothing but "language"? well, hopefully not, but it can only be expressed
in/AS language....)
  (4) Someone (the ubiquitous mbm?) said a line of true poetry (as opposed to
prose chopped up artificially into poetic lines) has a kind of inner integrity
or unity as poetry, ie is naturally "poetic"...I suspect so but what does this
mean? A natural unity or harmony of meto/meta functions, of striking and fresh
images/metaphors with the sounds/phonemes and rhythms of the language? Perhaps,
but what about a line of the most excellent fiction? Does it have less "poetry"
 but more of another thing (external reference), or just as much poetry plus th
e other...? (Is poetry NATURALLY poetic and prose naturally prosaic?) (Beats me
)...I love Dickinson's last stnaza of "The brain is wider than the sky" (a mode
rn poet like Hopkins = ahead of their time in the 19th c): "The brain is just
the weight of God/For heft them, pound for pound,/And they will differ, if they
do/As syllable from sound".......pretty intense! Beyond the striking concrete/
abstract juxtapostions, the METAPHYSICAL conceits (like Donne perhaps), I'm str
uck by the way the last line, "As syllable from sound," turns the poem back on
itself, that is, turns the language in its referential/meaning function back on
itself as language with a purely PHONEMIC function...it's a puzzle (poetic lang
uage is), a mystery and also a GAME. (poem = lang game)  (maybe a circle?)
The best poetry fuses meaning (metaphor, metonym, "external" reference) with th
e sound and rhythm of the words, ie the semantic function of language with its
purely phonemic manifestations...it somehow FUSES "content" (meaning) and "form
" (sound + visual appearance on page) in this sense...and more intensely so tha
n fiction can ever do...(i think).....   Modern & (especially) post-modern =
 contemporary poetry: more self-conscious of itself (poem) as nothing but game.
                                             Regards, Frank Stevenson
atdt 6203126
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