The Restorative Nature of Poetry

In my last post, I discussed Williams’ suggestion in The Embodiment of Knowledge that “Nature’s final command is: Do not waste.” Upon reading this chapter, entitled “Waste and Use,” I began to realize that part of Williams’ aim might have been to focus on the restorative nature of poetry. Not only can a well-written poem bring restoration to one’s soul—either through reading it or writing it—but it can also bring restoration to the items or concepts that become the subject of the poem.

For Williams, there is no doubt that writing poetry was an escape and a place of restoration after a long day of practicing medicine. He describes in much of his prose such restoration. For Williams, writing was a way to release all the conversations, sights, and other musings that were rolling around in his head after a long day treating patients. He speaks of the need for this ritual cleansing before he could go to bed. In another entry in The Embodiment of Knowledge, Williams talks about a writer who “writes, attempting to strike straight to the core of his inner self, by words…which have been used time without end by other men for the same purpose, words worn smooth, greasy with the thumbing and fingering of others. For him they must be fresh too, fresh as anything he knows—as fresh as morning light, repeated every day the year around” (105). Here, as in the final chapter, readers see the idea of not allowing anything to waste—even something for which there doesn’t appear to be further use.

Let’s turn to a piece of his poetry to see how this works.

In “The Loving Dexterity,” readers are able to see Williams restore beauty to something “broken,” yet still capable of being enjoyed if and when action is taken to perform restoration. The word “dexterity” in the title alone can take on multiple meanings. In one way, the dexterity can refer to the woman’s action in the poem:

Primary importance is placed on “The flower / fallen.” Readers are introduced in the first line to something broken, fallen. As she looks at it “where it lay/ a pink petal / intact,” readers also see it and are able to realize through Williams’ diction that the beauty of the flower—perfectly pink, the blossom intact—still has the capability of being appreciated. The next line is one important word: “deftly.” This word implies dexterity, but also a skillful cleverness that allows her to see past a broken, fallen flower. She “deftly/placed it/ on its stem/again.” Here, the word “again” insinuates that she has successfully restored the beauty of the flower by repositioning it where it once was. In some ways, she has performed surgery—a skill requiring finite dexterity—on the broken flower.

In another way, Williams performs with dexterity as a poet—making this title work on a second level. As a doctor, Williams must have had some appreciation for the skills of surgery. At its core, the practice of medicine is all about the restorative. It is this same dexterity of thinking and of working with “words worn smooth, greasy with the thumbing and fingering of others” that allows Williams to succeed as a poet. Even the structure of the poem seems to scatter fragments of complete ideas around, until at the end, the flower is restored into a single phrase in a single stanza—“on/its stem/again.” The organization of stanzas wherein the last line of one stanza actually belongs to the complete thought of the next stanza—as in “she saw it / where/it lay”—forces readers to perform their own surgery of sorts (as I did in the above picture) to determine which parts (separated stanzas) actually belong together. In this way, readers are able to feel the restorative power of the woman’s action.

In all, the lesson to learn from Williams is that poetry has the capability to restore the reader, the subject, and words themselves.

Wow this is fun. Wow. This is fun. Wow This is. Fun. wow this is. fun. fun. fun. fun.

In his final chapter in The Embodiment of Knowledge, Williams opens by telling readers that “Nature’s final command is: Do not waste.” If ever I have personally seen this demonstrated, it was when I went to the Jaap Blonk exhibit at MOCA a few weeks ago. In case you are unfamiliar with Jaap Blonk, he is a “sound artist.” When Professor Lunberry first told us this, I imagined some sort of DJ spinning electronic music at a rave. What I found in Blonk was much different. I was mesmerized at the ways in which Blonk uses syllables and sounds that are familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. He recycled a phrase in so many various tones and inflections that the familiar sounded unfamiliar, and his stringing together of non-sensical syllables—when repeated in particular patterns—became suddenly familiar.

For example, his “As I Was Saying” recycles variations of the phrase, “What I says to him, I says, What I says to him I says, well, what I says to him…” and so forth until the words—which are so familiar—are recycled into phrases that actually have no meaning. This can be quite disconcerting, if not downright infuriating. (My dog sits staring at the chaos of noise that surrounds the background as I type this out, listening to this particular Blonk clip again). What I find interesting about this particular piece is its similarity to what Williams does with his second stanza in “To a Poor Old Woman”:

They taste good to her

They taste good

to her. They taste

good to her

Shifting the way readers see and/or hear a particular phrase—through sheer repetition and repositioning of the words—calls to readers and listeners in a way that begs for attention. It truly creates newness from a phrase that might otherwise be stale or completely overlooked. In doing this, it is sure that no words go to waste.

Another of the most memorable Blonk acts at MOCA was the “cheek synthesizer.” He began by explaining that we all have one, but we may have forgotten how to use it in adulthood. What is this synthesizer? It’s the use of your hands, cheeks, and forced breaths to produce sounds mimicking flatulence. So, basically, Blonk transforms into that fat kid in your elementary class who sat in the back, palms to mouth—hand under armpit—making pooting sounds. (Who’d have thought I’d say “poot” in a scholarly work? Thanks, Blonk). How does this man get paid to do this, right? It’s actually, when you think of it, fairly incredible. He has taken a simple knowledge of sound and bodily influence that we all know from childhood and not let it go to waste—just as Williams suggests: “Life is to confine our energy and for us to expand our view” (186). Who says this view can’t expand back into something so simplistic from childhood? Does expansion always necessarily indicate forward motion? Must our expanded view take on the weight of the world?

I think Williams would say no. Look at this poem from Spring and All:

So much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

It is interesting how this poem opens. A red wheelbarrow? “So much depends upon” that? Perhaps this poem is illustrating Williams’ point that it is so crucial for us to be able to expand our view—even if this view simply includes things we might have otherwise overlooked. After all, isn’t that what expanding our view is all about: finding the overlooked, the unseen?

In the end, I think Jaap Blonk’s work showed ingenuity in recreating sounds I already knew into art with which I was completely unfamiliar. In doing this, he certainly expanded my own views.

To hear Blonk, please click on the titles of his works--which will link you directly to his website.

A Close Reading - Part 2

Conversation is undoubtedly paramount to a physician’s daily existence. William Carlos Williams conversed with patients daily; it is no wonder, then, that a reader of his poetry might notice frequent references to the conversations Williams both engaged in and often overheard. The series of poems entitled “Detail” reference conversations or, at minimum, take on a conversational tone. Curiously, each of the poems entitled “Detail” are shortened—almost as if a lens has zoomed in to one or two details of the whole conversation, which tends to take the snippet of conversation out of the context so that the poem (as machine) actually works to scramble the details. Since Williams insists that there are “no ideas but in things,” readers must combat the temptation to assign ideas to a lack of things—namely, the missing details. Instead, readers are ultimately given just enough detail to be able to “sit back, relax, and let thing spray in your face.”

In the first of four poems entitled “Detail,” Williams’ use of a shortened ellipsis creates a focus on the first two lines: “Her milk don’t seem to../She’s always hungry but..” (14). The shortened ellipsis does double duty here: one, it mimics an interruption in conversation—almost akin to an extended pause; and two, it causes readers to wonder who the pronouns “her” and “she” may reference. The subsequent lines, “She seems to gain all right,/ I don’t know” continue to cause readers to wonder who “she” is and what problem is causing the speaker to discuss her. Williams provides just enough detail concerning milk, hunger, and the italicized word “gain” to make readers want to put together a storyline to explain what we perceive as the missing details.

Another example of a “Detail” poem is on page 17. In the opening lines of this poem, the speaker states, “I had a misfortune in September.” An opening line like this invites readers to wonder the cause of the misfortune, but readers are never privy to the exact misfortune. In the third line of the poem, the speaker adds “I been keepin’ away from that for years.” This line further obscures the details of the aforementioned misfortune by using the word “that.” The final lines of the poem offer a possible cause of the misfortune: “I’m too/ old to have a child. Why I’m fifty!” Here, readers are given just enough detail to wonder whether the speaker’s misfortune is an unexpected pregnancy. Ultimately, the prior details of the poem offer no confirmation whether this is the case; the obscurity of the language provides just enough detail to make readers want more.

The final two poems entitled “Detail” mirror similar conversations. The long “YEEEEAAAAASSSSS!” in line four of the poem on page 19 provides enough detail for readers to understand that the “gentle mother” is frustrated; the detail that is missing is the true source of her frustration; it seems to go deeper than the question “Hey! Can I have some more/ milk?” In the final “Detail” poem on pages 20-21, readers see an interlocutor who casually tells his doctor, “I bin lookin’ for you/ I owe you two bucks.” The next line in the following stanza, “How you doin’?” creates confusion and obscurity. It is unclear whether this is a response from the doctor or merely another statement from the original speaker. The lack of details—like quotation marks demarcating the dialogue—creates obscurity.

Ultimately, what is consistent in each of the poems entitled “Detail” is the obscurity that is created by providing a close look at only part of the details of a conversation. When this happens, readers are left with the option of trying to assign meaning and fill in the details OR of simply letting the poem “spray [them] in the face.” It seems Williams’ purpose might be to provide readers with an exercise in letting the stark details he gives simply exist as poetry, while allowing the unheard, unspoken details to remain unsaid. There is no doubt that in titling each of these poems “Detail,” Williams is sure to point out the existence—or lack—of detail.

A Close Reading - Part 1

In his 1944 essay “Introduction to The Wedge,” William Carlos Williams explains how “When a man makes a poem, makes it, mind you, he takes words as he finds them interrelated about him and composes them—without distortion which would mar their exact significances—into an intense expression of his perceptions and ardors that they may constitute a revelation in the speech that he uses. It isn’t what he says that counts as a work of art, it’s what he makes, with such intensity of perception that it lives with an intrinsic movement of its own to verify its authenticity.” The last part of this quote—that the poem “lives with an intrinsic movement of its own”—stood out to me as an important tool in analyzing Williams’ two versions of “Young Woman at a Window.” It is not necessarily just the words themselves that construct meaning; rather, it is the movement of the poems that changes the meaning from the first version to the second. In contrasting the two versions of “Young Woman at a Window,” I found that the grammatical placement and grouping of the stanzas affects the forward motion of the poem, thus impacting my overall perception of the young woman.

In the first version, my perception of the young woman is that the child she is holding is the cause of her tear-stricken cheek. The first three stanzas move in a way that allows a pause between stanzas: “while she sits there” stands on its own, and I didn’t anticipate an addition; the stanza could end there. It goes on, however, to add “with tears on her cheek”—again I stop there, feeling satisfied. Then, Williams adds “her check on her hand.” These first three stanzas, though they add information, could stand independent from one another. The second three stanzas shift the focus to “this little child who robs her.” The child, because of the structure of the poem, is literally separate from the mother. The words of the poem describe the detachment: the child “knows nothing of his theft / but rubs his nose.” However, the structure and movement of the lines—the fact that the description of the child is a separate grouping of stanzas entirely—is what truly adds an authentic feeling of detachment for the reader.

In contrast, the movement of the second “Young Woman at a Window” left me with an entirely different reading of both mother and child. The flow of the stanzas is very smooth, and it becomes unclear whether the child is the source of her tears; in this poem, the mother and child are connected rather than detached. The first two stanzas end with a preposition—which causes readers to move forward in search of the next noun. The woman, in this rendition, “sits with tears on”…on what? “Her check.” Then the poem moves forward in the same stanza, pairing “Her cheek” with “Her check on”…again, on what? “Her hand.” The middle stanza in this poem marries “her hand” and “the child”. Literally, the woman is connected with the child through the structure of the poem. The final stanzas continue to intermingle the woman and child, since “the child” is “in her lap/his nose/ pressed to the glass.”

In the second version, the woman is crying the same tears as the first. This is proof that it “isn’t what he says that counts as a work of art”; it is not the words themselves that make the meaning. It is, instead, the structure that makes the poem have authenticity and meaning—just as Williams claims in his essay. By contrasting the two versions of “Young Woman at a Window,” it is easy to see Williams’ concept of the poem as a machine. It is the motion of the machine—the placement of the parts (or words) in the machine (or poem)—that produces a completely different product (or meaning).


Works Cited:

Williams, William Carlos. "Young Woman at a Window." The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams Volume 1 1909-1939. Ed. A. Walton Litz and Ed. Christopher MacGowan. New York: New Directions Books, 1986. 373. Print.

No Minute like the Last

Tonight was a night of great validation. I love when this happens; it’s my favorite part of learning:

I was sitting, reading chapter four of Marjorie Perloff’s The Dance of the Intellect: Studies in the Poetry of the Pound Tradition. Chapter four is entitled “’To give a design’: Williams and the visualization of poetry,” and this chapter confirmed a line of reasoning I had already pursued on Monday for my “Close Reading” assignment. The only thing that I’ll be damned about is that I didn’t read this assigned chapter earlier in the week, BEFORE completing my Close Reading.

Perloff’s primary argument is that Williams’ poetry, though it may appear to follow a pattern of free verse, is anything but; instead, Perloff maintains that Williams organized his poetry according to “the look, of course” (89). She goes on to explain how Williams’ poetry follows “a visual shape [that] also directs our attention to particular words and the relationships between them” (89). HEY…that’s basically what I argued in the Close Reading I wrote on Monday. I bask for a moment in my erudition…but not long enough to get conceited. Well, maybe a little.

“Damn, I’m smart. My mom is right,” I think to myself as I nod along with Perloff’s various examples of how her assertion matches with Williams’ poetry—even with Williams’ various reflections on his own methods. Though she doesn’t discuss the poem I analyzed for my Close Reading, everything she analyzes helps prove that what I noticed was not pure happenstance. I is smart. I done picked up on what Williams’ was layin’ down. But woe is me that I didn’t use a little bit ‘o Perloff’s argument to back up my assertions in the close reading. I move on from the self-praise-turned-self-bashing long enough to realize that there really is no minute like the last minute, and at least I can make a “blogging” and “work-booking” moment out of my procrastination.

I would like to begin by SHOWING the visual flow I noticed in my scribblings and notes during my reading this past weekend, since the visual appeal is at the forefront of Perfloff’s argument:

"Young Woman at a Window" - Version 1:

"Young Woman at a Window" - Version 2:

Notice how both poems basically look the same on paper, at first glance. NOW, try to find the separation. There is a definite VISUAL separation between the first three and last three stanzas of the first version of “Young Woman at a Window”. Ultimately, the visual organization helps supplement the meaning. In the second version of “Young Woman at a Window,” the poem literally moves forward on the page, as each line MUST feed into the next. This creates the little flowing arrows I drew. My thought here is that this visual makes the “young woman” appear completely different than in the first version.

If you would like to read more about the particulars of this argument, I'd be happy to send the link.

Otherwise, I will end by trying a little Williamsian (is that a word? it is now) structure:

When it comes to

Learning, there is no

Minute like the last

Minute.

Thick with Blossoms

Last week, I posted about my theory that Williams seems to have a “thing” for the Venus figure. I won’t assert anything particular to Venus on today’s blog, but I will be pointing out the general sensuality of Williams’ diction. During class, someone pointed out a poem that had stuck out to me earlier in the course of my reading. I’m so glad we had time in class to discuss the poem, for my peers were able to round out my thoughts on a few matters. Plus, it always feels good to hear people’s interpretations—especially when their thoughts seem to mirror what I thought and felt during my reading/study time.

Perhaps it is because I already had Venus on the brain, but when I read Williams’ “Tree” I immediately picked up on the very sensual diction:

The tree is stiff, the branch

is arching, arching, arching

to the ground. Already its tip

reaches the hats of the passersby

children leap at it, hang on it—

bite on it. It is rotten, it

will be thick with blossoms in

the spring. Then it will break off

of its own weight or from the pulls

of the blossom seekers who will

ravish it. Freed of this disgrace

the tree will remain, stiffly upright

I was reluctant to read beyond the exact meaning Williams expresses, but I did wonder if the tree perhaps was a phallic symbol. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to hear another student in my class pose the question of whether anyone else had picked up on the same idea. Ultimately, during the course of my notes, I deduced that the poem was perhaps sensual in itself, but that the sensuality of the poem was more to express the overall eroticism of nature that Williams describes in so much of his poetry. I have somewhat abandoned my original suspicion that the tree may represent a phallus.

Looking at the diction, however, it seems logical to posit that the verbs “arching” and “ravish” seem quite sensual. Additionally, it seems quite romantic to think of a tree being “thick with blossoms”—which reminds me of the fertility of nature, of nature’s ability to keep producing these thick blossoms that weigh the tree’s branch down.

The part that becomes problematic for my interpretation is Williams’ juxtaposition of the word “rotten” followed by “thick with blossoms”. This seems counterintuitive. My notes scrawled in red ask questions of this line like, “Can a rotten branch still produce these thick blossoms that sound so beautiful? Can beauty still come from rot? Why would Williams choose to juxtapose these lines? Why is the tree ‘freed of this disgrace’…is the thick, blossoming branch a disgrace? Why would he call it this?”

Some of the answers I thought of circle back to mankind’s general demand on nature. It is the “pulls of blossom seekers who will ravish it” that is offered as one reason for the branch’s demise. Earlier in the poem, the “children leap at it, hang on it—bite on it.” This seems to indicate that the branch, with its “arching, arching, arching to the ground” is a sort of go between—it is what connects the humans in the poem to the stoic tree that still stands at the end of the poem.

It seems plausible that Williams may be commenting on the human response to nature—we do often enjoy it to the point of abuse. As a nature lover, Williams may have been simply pointing out that which we so often overlook—the ability of nature to sustain itself, despite humankind’s constant demands and damages. Overall, it seems like the language celebrates the beauty, sustainability, and sensuality of nature.

Flirting with Venus

During the course of my reading last week, I came across several lines of Williams’ poetry that repeatedly seemed to celebrate the fullness and curves of a woman’s shape. Initially, I giggled to read the lines in Woman Walking, where Williams describes a:

powerful woman,

coming with swinging haunches,

breasts straight forward,

supple shoulders, full arms

This evocative description instantly drew me in; I quite literally giggled at the “swinging haunches.” I imagined myself being able to imitate this line flawlessly. Even the sound of this phrase, particularly of the word “haunches” sounds juicy. “Haunches” encompasses the whole region of thighs and buttocks. I don’t necessarily think of a thin woman and think of her butt and thighs as “haunches.” But thinking of, OH, say, ME…now, THERE you have haunches. I kept reading and thinking of the breasts, supple shoulders, full arms. I must’ve read the description three times, suddenly proud of my own “powerful” figure. The last time I felt such pride was in my eleventh grade Humanities class, when our teacher showed us Boticelli’s “Birth of Venus.” Williams’ poem whirled me back to that moment of initial pride in a curvaceous body. I remember, for the first time ever, I didn’t feel 140 pounds (20 pounds larger than any other cheerleader on my team); I felt powerful.

Pleased, I digested the poem more and more, noticing that the anticipation builds from the initial line in the stanza, wherein the narrator says “—what a blessing it is/to see you in the street again” (66). Clearly, the narrator finds pleasure in seeing this woman; indeed, he considers it a “blessing”. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “blessing” as “an invocation of divine favor” (“blessing”). I found this to be the most pleasant discovery. Could it be that I was remembering the images of Venus from my earlier education for a reason? COULD this woman, this figure, perhaps represent some sort of everyday Venus? Given that the narrator later describes “fresh eggs…[she] brings so regularly”, it doesn't seem much of a stretch that the eggs could be tied to fertility, one of the areas over which Venus presides.

As I finished my assigned readings last week, I noted a few more similar sensual descriptions that made me think of a Venus figure:

First, in Portrait of a Lady, a woman is praised because “[her] thighs are appletrees/whose blossoms touch the sky” (129). Again, a bit later, in The Cold Night, there is reference to “round and perfect thighs” (154).

Upon finding these instances, I did a bit of background research (ahem, Wikipedia) and remembered that Venus was not only the goddess of love and fertility, but she was also strongly linked with April and Springtime—all subjects about which Williams writes.

I furthered my scholarly research, this time through the MLA database. OH, EUREEKA…there is nothing to describe the moment of giddiness when I found “Williams” and “Venus” rendered a few search results. I still have further research to do—which will more than likely end up in a more formalized argument supporting my little ‘ole findings I am rambling on about here. For now, I am going to safely send my humble assertion into blogland: Williams sure does seem to be flirting with Venus.