Yesterday, Keston Sutherland wrote: "In ours of all "periods" -enjambment- seems to have become a dominant locus of irony, and of political irony especially -- would anyone agree?"
Yes, I'd broadly agree that enjambment has become a key formal strategy of our "period," employed as a means of both tonal and semantic disturbance. In a related way, rhyme has lost its end-line finality and joined other aspects of musical play to form a freer resource within the line itself, even as the single authentic voice has been confounded. We can readily find examples of tonal and semantic surprise through enjambment in earlier periods, but the line - its length, and the _purpose_ of its length - has become very much centre stage in formal terms, its turnings, its edge. I like very much Keston's "Lines turn in poetry, back to an initial edge or a new edge made initially local." It's that edge, where collision and delayed collision occur, which turns meaning anew. We are accustomed now to the collision of variant discourses and idioms as much within the line as across it.
As to predecessors in this centre-staging of enjambment, isn't Black Mountain (and Creeley in particular), the prime example? Interestingly, none of the 'modern masters' - with the exception of playful Zukofsky - consistently explored enjambment to the same extent. Whitman through Pound gives us a line which is litanic, a comprehensible semantic unit, and Williams's sense of measure largely eschews enjambment. On the other hand, Creeley's 'voice' finds support in the hesitant broken line. All of which throws the spotlight on syntax.
Prynne's _Kitchen Poems_ and _The White Stones_ take a great deal formally (at least) from Olson's example. Rather fancifully, no doubt, I like to think of those poems as coming out of Olson's 'kitchen'. Less fancifully, Prynne's 'FRI 13' from _The White Stones_ was written whilst Prynne was staying at Olson's home in Fort Square, Gloucester. Here it is in full:
no one thing
to say, leaving
nothing but
all that smell of
the sea
(private
& the gulls, squawking
in the knowledge
of time, of nothing
at all, here
on the rim.
Viz, the shelf out
as a pillar to fortune
the shoals a
quick draw
or longer, which is
a width to be gauged
by the most
specific &
hopeful
eye
Reference: Butterick's _Guide_ (p.708). Prynne's poem was included originally in a letter of 1965 to Olson. Butterick adds: "He [Prynne] concludes his letter by referring to the view from Olson's window." Rim, edge, verge, but I'm not so sure about irony.
