Poetic language : theory and practice from the Renaissance to the present

217 Pages·2012·0.797 MB·English

by  Jones, Tom

Tom Jones
Poetic
Language

Theory and Practice from
the Renaissance to the Present
Poetic Language
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Poetic Language
Theory and Practice from the Renaissance to the Present
Tom Jones
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© Tom Jones, 2012
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in 10.5/12.5 Adobe Goudy
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 5617 2 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 5616 5 (paperback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 5618 9 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 0 7486 5620 2 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7486 5619 6 (Amazon ebook)
The right of Tom Jones
to be identifi ed as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
How to use this book viii
1. Introduction 1
2. Figure: Walter Ralegh 19
3. Selection: William Cowper 31
4. Measure: William Wordsworth 43
5. Equivalence: Gerard Manley Hopkins 56
6. Spirit: Wallace Stevens 70
7. Spirit: Frank O’Hara 86
8. Measure: Robert Creeley 103
9. Deviance: W. S. Graham 116
10. Figure: Tom Raworth 132
11. Selection: Denise Riley 148
12. Equivalence: Thomas A. Clark 161
13. Epilogue: Deviance: Robert Creeley 175
Further Reading 183
Notes on Poets 189
Glossary 195
Index 200
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Acknowledgements
The following friends and colleagues have supported the writing of this book
by inviting me to give talks, reading draft chapters or otherwise commenting
on its shape and structure, and in numerous other ways: Natalie Adamson,
Gavin Alexander, Laura Berchielli, Andrea Brady, Peter Brennan, Tom and
Laurie Clark, David Evans, Matt ffytche, David Herd, Gavin Hopps, Mike
Hurley, Lorna Hutson, Laurent Jaffro, Simon Jarvis, Chris Jones, Michael
Kindellan, James Loxley, Christian Maurer, Tim Morris, Andy Murphy,
Chris Murray, Marko Pajevic, Tony Paraskeva, Don Paterson, Mario Petrucci,
Malcolm Philips, Robin Purves, Tom Raworth, Rosella Riccobono, Jennifer
Richards, Andrew Roberts, Michael Snow, Jane Stabler, Keston Sutherland,
Richard Terry, Aliki Varvogli, Matt Welton, and Jonathan Wild. Sam
Ladkin has shown immense and wholly characteristic generosity to me, intel-
lectually and socially, throughout the period in which I was working on the
book: I am proud to have such a friend and colleague.
I would like to thank the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland
for funding that supported research in the British Library. A draft was com-
pleted whilst I was working as a postdoctoral fellow at PHIER (Philosophies
et rationalités), the research centre (EA3297) of the Philosophy department
of Université Clermont Ferrand II (Blaise Pascal): many thanks to everyone
at the centre for their friendship and support.
I would like to thank the following publishers and individuals for permis-
sion to reproduce poems. Lines from The Path to the Sea used by permission
of Thomas A. Clark. ‘She Went to Stay’ and ‘Song (the grit)’, from The
Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–75, by Robert Creeley, copyright
1982 by the Regents of the University of California, published by the
University of California Press, used by permission of the University of
California Press and Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd. ‘The Secret Name’, from
W.S. Graham, New Collected Poems, used by permission of Michael Snow.
‘Mayakovsky’ from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, used by permission
of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. ‘Gaslight’ from Tom Raworth, Collected Poems, copy-
right 2003, Carcanet Press Ltd. ‘Misremembered Lyric’ from Denise Riley,
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acknowledgements vii
Mop Mop Georgette, copyright 1993 by Denise Riley. ‘The Idea of Order at
Key West’ from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens,
copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens and renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens,
used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
and Faber and Faber Ltd.
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How to Use this Book
The book comprises an introduction, eleven chapters and an epilogue. The
chapters and the epilogue all address the works of signifi cant poets in the
context of contemporary or near contemporary writing on the theory of
poetic language. The order of discussion is chronological (by fi rst publication
of the focal poem). The poems are selected on the basis of their intrinsic
interest, and also because one (or more) of their features exemplifi es the
issue addressed by the theoretical writers alongside whom the poems are read.
The chapters and the epilogue have been organised into two thematic series,
slightly overlapping around the middle of the twentieth century: fi gure,
selection, measure, equivalence, spirit, deviance.
The book may be approached in a variety of different ways. Those whose
interest is in the poetic theory and practice of a particular period, or of a
particular poet, should be able to approach any of the chapters in isolation.
Those readers most interested in a particular theme, such as fi gure, should
be able to read the two chapters on that theme next to one another. Those
with an interest in poetic theory and its linguistic and philosophical contexts
might want to start with the Introduction. Throughout the book I have tried
to point the reader to other chapters, and parts of chapters, in which further
or related discussion is to be found.
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CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
The argument of this book is that poems encourage their readers to expe-
rience language as a dual-aspect phenomenon, as something known and
understood in two different ways simultaneously. Poems make the language
in which they are made appear contingent, and necessary, at once: they
make their writers and readers feel a justness or truth in the poem’s language,
at the same time as making those writers and readers question just how that
part of the poem’s language (a rhyme, an image, the weight on a syllable, and
so on) could produce the reactions it produces. The language in poems seems
marked, both attention-seeking and attention-rewarding, but also to raise
questions rather than answer them. When refl ecting on what a poem or part
of a poem means, and how it acquires that meaning, people often engage in
mental or verbal thick description, enriching a semantic paraphrase of the
passage with thoughts about tone, emphasis or inter-relations with other
features of other phrases that appear to participate in its meaning. So, for
example, when the word ‘difference’ is given three syllables by being placed
in a certain position in a metrical scheme, it acquires emphatic qualities it
might not always have (see ‘Measure: William Wordsworth’). The means
of assessing these tones, emphases and connections are comparable to the
techniques people have for working out what someone means by saying
something in a particular context with a particular emphasis (‘Was there
irony there, or reluctance?’ ‘Is my interlocutor just saying what she thinks
I want to hear?’). The explanations of poetic or other utterances arrived
at in this way may be extensive, but they are also necessarily incomplete:
the fullness of the context in which something is said, and what it means
in that context, can never be stated, remaining always a matter of partial
interpretation.
A further set of questions is raised by the markedness of poetic language.
In poems, how what is said achieves what it seems to achieve is troubled by
contingency as well as incompleteness: there is always something implausible
about the manner in which features identifi ed as having a poetic meaning
have that meaning, particularly the aspects of language distant from standard
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