Alive and Poetic

Jonathan Mayhew is

"increasingly interested in language as it actually already exists rather than language as it is dressed up for various "poetic" uses. That is, I like poems that make use of the ways in which language is already alive and poetic, rather than those that view ordinary language as insufficient and attempt to remedy this situation."

Josh Corey believes that

"in addition to being whatever else it is, poetry, by being composed of language, resembles and tends to draw into itself recognizable chunks of other sorts of discourse: argument, philosophy, begging letters, what have you. This creates a confusion that you could lament, or that you could accept as intrinsic to the form and therefore just as you play with rhyme, alliteration, imagery, etc."

Language "as it actually already exists" is, of course, partially comprised of "recognizable chunks" of various discourses. Poetry (I would expand this to self-consciously "literary" language in general) will inevitably draw the already-existing elements of linguistic practice into itself, and, as Jonathan points out, often enough the most "poetic" uses of language come from an imaginative shuffling of these elements rather than a straining after the kind of ornamental effect some readers associate with poetry.

I am interested in these comments because too often, in my opinion, readers interpret writing that incorporates the kinds of discourse Josh Corey mentions as somehow signalling an intention to make arguments or engage in debates about "philosophy" very broadly construed. Since literature occurs in a less "pure" medium than painting or sculpture or music, it is finally impossible to entirely avoid leading fiction and poetry into such debates (or at least into debates about whether they are indeed participating in debates), but as Josh says, for readers and critics to rush in after them and assume that "signs" operate in literary language exactly as they do in ordinary discourse is to ignore the fact that poets ultimately see them as something to "play with as a material for poetry." (Often enough, in order to deliberately confound our "ordinary" understanding of language as communication.)

There's something about the element of "play" in literature that makes certain kinds of readers and critics impatient. (Especially American readers. If we must have "literature," let's have it straight, please. Just tell me what you mean.) If they can't simply dismiss it, they'll wrangle it into shape as a vehicle for this or that rhetorical gesture, either one that can be approved or one that merits only our disregard. (I'm thinking of the kind of fiction review to be found in such publications as The New Republic and the New York Review of Books, as well as all the endless complaining about "postmodern" excess.) Neither are these critics likely to appreciate "the ways in which language is already alive and poetic," since this would call into question their own reduction of language into acts of critical drudgery and trivial blather. Of course, most such critics (and most book reviews and other "literary" publications) generally ignore poetry anyway, which only seems to confirm we don't really like our art to be too arty.

Comments

[Jonathan Mayhew]

Thanks for picking that up. I go on to say there that I also like extremely poetic artificial languages--those that are at the other extreme from simply using language as it is found.

[J. D. Daniels]

Green means, of course, “composed of.” Language comprises recognizable chunks; it is composed of them. Nothing is ever “comprised of.” Are readers meant to consider this solecism as “play” or “imaginative reshuffling”?

Attn: JDD. Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye, etc.? Isn’t this the foul-tempered pedantry (or the “pur[ity]” that Green very rightly decries) of a nervous reader happy to have ostensibly scrambled into the middle class and now watching, like a police dog, to be sure all others obey the Procrustean rules that have sheared the cornpone dialect of my ancestors off at the wrists and ankles?

In a word, yes. But could it also be the recognition of a larger linguistic-historical context in which certain words have more or less fixed meanings? (The expected catastrophic example here is: War is peace.) Proper deployment of “comprise” and “compose”—or of irregular verb conjugation, or of other shibboleths—is a sign of the deep language acculturation in favor of which Green seems to be arguing. The proof of the pudding is in its reading.

#

Ben Marcus, in a recent issue of Harper’s, argues for “the dialect of a new tribe of people. Although this language might at first seem alien, immersion in its ways can show us unprecedented worlds of feeling and thought. ... unique ... original ... new syntax ... lyrically complex grammar ... an intense desire for new language ... the possibility of syntax as a way to structure sense and feeling, packing experience into language, leveraging grammar as a medium for the making of art.”

“Grammar as a medium,” “syntax as a way to structure”—these are just gaudy, self-congratulatory euphemisms for what language is and does anyhow. This is familiar Clement Greenberg-iana: an art’s monocled (or is it blinkered?) obsession with its own traditions and materials. (To say nothing of whitey’s naked and powerless desire for “the dialect of a new tribe.”) It’s true: I don’t really like my art to be too arty. I like my art to be art.

Chesterton: “Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else ... it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame ... The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits ... Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end ... The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the thing he is doing. The painter is glad that the canvas is flat.”

Marcus: “We are expected to lay our needle into the well-worn groove and out will magically come the refined literary product.”

Not “needles” and “grooves”? Do we now have a single collective record player? Further: after all of his sci-fi spinal cords and his fetishized gusseting, Marcus thinks a simple phonograph is “magical”? This kind of “freedom” is just another word for “horseshit.” This is a familiar trope: tradition as shackle. But you will find it difficult to play your record collection without first placing the needle in the groove: groove the in needle the placing without collection record your play to difficult it find will you but.

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