WEBVTT

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OK.

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Have you [INAUDIBLE].

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Let me see if I can just get
it down to some correlation

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here at the end.

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According to Jourdain phrasing
imparts a kind of narrative

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to music.

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It is the mechanism by which
a composition can play out

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a grand drama.

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And phrasing is
the rhythmic system

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that builds large
scale musical objects

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and thereby induces large
scale musical perceptions.

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Its arrangement is
an enactment of form.

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Syntactical rhythm, too,
like musical phrasing,

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lacks the repetitive
evenly paced accentuations

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of measured rhythm
and is built up

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by a succession of
irregular sonic shapes that

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combine in various ways like
the parts of a painting.

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Sometimes hanging in
exquisite balance,

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sometimes joining forces to
gyrate, or plunge, or swirl.

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That seems to me the right
description not only of

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snake, which gyrates and
swirls more than the other two

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examples.

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But in fact of all three poems.

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Lawrence simply relies less on
regularity, on measured beats,

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on a detectable grid.

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Using syntax instead to
manage both the small scale

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and the large scale rhythm.

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That he does so is
largely I think,

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a matter of temperament,
as is one's willingness

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to throw a palm open
to radical asymmetry

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and leave it there
as Larkin does,

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versus one's need to
complete the circle

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and come back where the poem
started as Justice does.

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In light of these
large differences,

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the current spat
between neoformalists

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and the writers of
open verse seems to me

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entirely beside the point.

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Of course, Apollo and Dionysus
are well-matched opponents.

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And the stakes as
with most religions

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have been very high as we
recall from Apollo's flaying

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of Marsyas and the Bacchantes
beheading of Orpheus.

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Different centuries,
different aesthetics

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have worshipped one more
fervently than the other.

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Putting a premium on
pattern over variation,

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or energy over order, or
currently fragmentation

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and dis-junction over
unity and coherence.

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And these preferences
are usually

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coincidence to beliefs--

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coincident to beliefs about the
inherent nature of the world.

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But despite those
preferences and beliefs,

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poets it seems to me, still
need to petition both deities,

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both Apollo, and Dionysus.

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That is true that during
the 20th century, coincident

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with greater tolerance for
dissonance in all the arts,

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poets sought more
room in their poems

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for asymmetry and variation,
which is more easily provided

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by open verse, but this
now seems less a revolution

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than an evolution of
aesthetic intention.

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Meanwhile, most of us write
poems rather than prose

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because we have very
high formal appetites.

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The use of the line in a
poem affords us very visible

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and sometimes
audible opportunities

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for making pattern.

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And we adore pattern,
preferring it.

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It's momentary stay
against confusion

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to the order threatening
energy of asymmetry.

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However, after a century
of open verse match stream,

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it seems to me simply
not enough for us

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to focus on the use
of the line alone,

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or to fall unthinking into one
of the dominant conventions

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of our time.

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On the one hand, a
sincere accessible poem

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made of predictable simple
declarative sentences

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all about the same length,
all in normal order,

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predictably chunked
by end stopped

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and end paused
lineation predictably

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arrayed over three or
four visually equivalent

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short lines.

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Or on the other hand,
a difficult smart poem

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of passive predication
or no predication at all.

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Sentence fragments, jazzed
by violent, idiosyncratic,

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or opportunistic enjambment
that have nothing

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to do with overall structure.

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Both kinds of poem,
it seems to me,

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disregard to their great
loss, the inherent nature

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of the language we write in.

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The source of its muscle,
and sinew, and music.

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Its clarity, and its
resonance, and its power.

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OK, that's the end [INAUDIBLE].

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[APPLAUSE]