Annie: I'll restrict myself to your analysis of my poem. It's hard to 
imagine a more thorough misreading. For a start, note that many of your 
examples aren't iambic (do you really stress the last syllable in 
"horrible?"). But no matter if they were.

There's reassurance because "the horrible things are only stories?" I qwas 
referring to things like the holocaust, the horrors inflicted on the 
Palestinians, the Biafran war--not stories as in fairytales. It's about the 
exile's sense of helplessness. "Civilization and its discontents" is an 
expression of bitter irony--how poorly the phrase expresses the lived horror.

The section beginning "Places named for the words first heard there" 
(trochee, dactyl, spondee, trochee) posits a kind of linguistic chaos and 
is manifestly about the impossibility of communicating. Here's the complete 
sentence from the last section that you cut in half and draw comfort from: 
"Translating desire,/ I reach for 'cudgel,' that mound/ you love me to 
touch, the left one, and its mate,/ 'compassion.' "  At best an expression 
of ambivalence, as is the use of the word "conquest" in the last line.

You allow a strange theory to guide your reading; if anything your way of 
applying it to the poem knocks the theory into a cocked hat.

Reductiveness is a vice we allow to adolescents because they have a hard 
time accepting the complexity that they'll have to live with. We're 
supposed to outgrow it. Do you view all writing through the same lense?

By the way, "yes, that's a good way to put it!" is hardly an answer to my 
ironic question (a pattern here--difficulty perceiving irony). I'm not 
referring to gestural language, but actual physical gestures--body language.

You might want to read Olson on phonemes.

Mark


At 10:16 AM 8/26/2005, you wrote:


>Interesting questions, Mark, and I will do my best with them (by the way, 
>I apologize to the list for sending repeating posts, often edited in 
>between!--I keep getting messages saying my posts have been rejected 
>because of Rich Text, so I try to improve them and resend, and then it 
>sometimes seems the first ones have gotten through anyway).
>>If we're not working on the phonemic level what are we doing?
>
>Unless you are writing like Tristan Tzara or something (i just published a 
>young poet doing something very Tzara-like in the metrical edition of 
>Salt, published on the Verse website), then probably in terms of how the 
>phonemes work, repeating themselves from word to word, so that the phoneme 
>"r" conveys the same thing no matter where it appears, poetry & prose are 
>working alike, yes?
>>
>>That the fact of linebreak repeating doesn't mean that there's a 
>>repeating linebreak. Lines break in different ways and after different 
>>numbers of words. Prose tends to be divided into sentences that tend to 
>>end in periods. Repetition precisely in the way linebreaks repeat, and 
>>hard to build much on.
>That's my point. The linebreaks are an aesthetic structuring device which 
>is imposed in a sculptural way on the grammar of the language. They can be 
>built on, developed, counterpointing the grammatical requirements, in a 
>way that the periods that end sentences can't.
>That's how I see them akin to rhyme & meter. On the other hand when 
>Hejinian starts building predictable patterns out of numbers of sentences 
>in My Life, then sentences become more of a "formal" device, a level of 
>architecture building its own structures with its own criteria different 
>from those criteria that give meaning to the prose characteristics of the 
>language.
>
>>"A prose sentence might be characterized or decorated by repetition, but 
>>not conspicuously structured by it..." is an interplay of iambs and 
>>trochees, and the last clause is iambic pentameter. Notice the repeating 
>>r sounds in the first clause; they become the driving force of 
>>"characterized or decorated by repetition." The three words with the 
>>strongest stress repeat the p sound, and the first and last, "prose" and 
>>"conspicuously" at once rhyme and pun on "pros and cons."
>
>Yes,  these are repeating elements, but they merely decorate the 
>prose--they don't structure it.  By structure, I mean something 
>predictable and architectural, like the number of a flower's petals as 
>opposed to their exact shape or color.  A poem may be loaded with 
>alliteration in a decorative way, but the alliteration only becomes a 
>structural element when it actually shapes the poem, as in Anglo-Saxon 
>alliterative verse...
>>
>>>I totally agree with what you say about syllabic meter, btw.
>>>
>>>  I notice these two lines in one of your own poems--
>>>
>>>She spoke the gestures
>>>of her native land
>>>
>>>Judging from the content of these lines, it seems like all that training 
>>>in iambic pentameter gave you a sense of it as some kind of "home."
>>
>>If you look at the entire poem you'll find other iambic lines and phrases 
>>but a great many that aren't. You could object similarly to my little 
>>mischief with a fragment of your prose. What's the point?
>
>The point is one I developed at length in a book called The Ghost of Meter 
>published in 1994--it's a kind of semiotics of meter--looks at the pattern 
>of meanings and connotations of metrical lines in nonmetrical 
>poems.  These connotations change from poet to poet (i.p. means different 
>things for Whitman, Dickinson, Lorde).  Not all such metrical fragments 
>are meaningful of course--in some poets they seem to carry very little 
>meaning, but in other poets they seem loaded with meaning. I called this 
>kind of meaning  "the metrical code." Having read numerous contemporary 
>poets with the metrical code in mind, i am sensitive that there are 
>contemporary poets who never write "in meter" for whom meter seems to 
>convey meaningful associations.  The motif of "home" for i.p. fragments is 
>a fairly common one, though for many poets there is a lot of ambivalence 
>in the tone of these i.p. fragments.
>Yours are less ambivalent than many;  cf two of your other i.p.'s from 
>that poem:  "horrible stories from the homeland, and" (keeps the motif of 
>home, and notice the horrible things are only stories), "civilization and 
>its discontents," (lightens the ambivalence with humor).   The same 
>pattern of relief from expected pain is evident in another of your i.p.'s, 
>"one would have thought it painful, but the stance."   Perhaps the reason 
>for this lack of fear, and the sense of home, becomes clearer in "Places 
>named for the words first heard there. So..."  (and, interestingly, the 
>line I first quoted, "she spoke the gestures/of her native land," is the 
>only visually split i.p. you have here, and its interplay between the 
>spoken rhythm of the two lines together and the visual gesture of the 
>linebreak enacts its meaning so precisely that it seems to me to 
>strengthen the fertility of the idea of the "nativity" of i.p.)
>
>I would further say that the beautiful ending of the poem resolves the 
>metrical ambivalence towards i.p. by opening its heart to the trochaic 
>rhythm as well as the iambic  (with an i.p. line followed by the word 
>"compassion," and ending in a trochaic line (I think the first trochaic 
>line in the poem):
>
>you love me to touch, the left one and its mate,
>compassion.
>
>Every word a sort of conquest.
>
>
>This is a hasty example of what I would call a "metrical code 
>reading."  Your poem lends itself very well to this kind of reading, seems 
>to me; not all free-verse poems that include lines of i.p. would have each 
>line fit so meaningfully/powerfully into a constellation of images and 
>also embody a meaningful change and development (in this case the 
>embracing of the trochaic underbelly of the iambic) within the course of 
>the poem.  This poem remains engaged on a visceral level with meter, as 
>part of its poetics, even though it isn't "written in it."
>
>>Or do you mean that an interest in the language of gesture, a concern of 
>>mine, is somehow involved with metrics?
>
>yes, that's a good way to put it!
>>
>>The poem, by the way, is available at 
>>http://www.wildhoneypress.com/featured/weiss/translated.htm, for anyone 
>>who's interested in judging for her/himself how much the eight quoted 
>>words represent it.
>>
>>
>>
>>>I have just been reading Mark Van Doren's book on Dryden--had never read 
>>>Dryden before. I'm impressed with your having read him so deeply. What 
>>>drew you to Dryden?  I see an odd kinship with your current work.
>>
>>
>>What drew me to Dryden was that of all English-language poetry the 
>>Augustan was most foreign to me--I couldn't understand why anyone would 
>>want to write that way or read the result. Finding a way in was as much 
>>anthropology as literary study.
>
>Ah, that's exactly my own motivation for reading him/about him now! ...
>
>>
>>If you mean that I'm often ironic, I think that has more to do with being 
>>Jewish and a New Yorker and politically in despair than with my reading 
>>of great dead poets. I was most interested in Dryden's rhymed tragedies, 
>>with which I have little in common. But I'd be interested to see what you 
>>identify as a kinship.
>
>Yes, the irony, and (related to the irony) a kind of tone that is 
>extremely rich with imagery/emotion but reined in thoroughly by thought.
>>
>>As well as the recognized classics like Absalon, Dryden's Chaucer 
>>translations are truly wonderful. And the epilogue to Tyrannic Love, or 
>>The Royal Martyr should be fun for almost anyone. Nell Gwynn, already a 
>>royal mistress, played the ingenue. As her dead body is being carried off 
>>at final curtain she comes to life as herself and oders the bearers to 
>>stop so that she can deliver a speech.
>
>Wow!  This i love.
>
>>My Dryden is packed, so the interested will have to find it for 
>>themselves. And his prose is flawless--the first great writer of modern 
>>discursive prose.
>>
>>Mark
>>
>AF