WEBVTT

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All right.

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So pattern then in the strict,
four syllable 2-foot line.

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That's a formal choice.

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But variation to the pattern
also in how the stresses

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are distributed.

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But here's what makes the stanza
really perfect in my mind,

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not that formal arrangement
brilliant, though, it is.

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All that pattern embedded
in the syntax, in the meter,

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in the rhyme, is
finally overturned.

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It is undermined.

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It is subverted by an
enormous asymmetry.

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The tightly-unified stanza
itself is incomplete,

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open-ended, unbalanced.

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It does not make sense.

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It does not make sense.

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Cut grass lies frail.

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Brief is the breath.

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Mown stalks exhale.

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Long long the death.

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Long long the death, what?

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You see?

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The mind is still going,
where's the predicate?

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Where's the predicate?

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Where's the verb?

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It doesn't make any sense.

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So here, you have this
closed arrangement

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that's highly patterned
and the syntax

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is pulling it out
into the ether.

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The syntax is going
somewhere else.

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And I is said this is enormous
asymmetry, asymmetrical.

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A restricted clause
makes its noun specific.

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It restricts its meaning.

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Not every chair, but
the chair that blank.

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The death in line 4
is a particular death.

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It is the death
that cut grass dies.

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But we have to go across that
white space of this stanza

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divide to fetch up that
limiting modification.

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This move is a syntactical match
to what immediately preceded

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it-- the first
sentence, which also

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ended on a restrictive clause.

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But whereas that first
restrictive clause

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was only four syllables--
mown stalks exhale.

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Which breath is it?

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It's the breath that
mown stalks exhale.

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This one-- this
restricted clause

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will span two stanzas and 44
syllables straight all the way

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to the end of the poem.

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Nothing in the
symmetrical, patterned,

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bounced, compressed
three lines that

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open the poem has prepared us
for this second sentence, which

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is going to blow the meter
right out of the water.

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The linguistic principle at
work is a common one in English.

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It's what the linguists
call "right branching."

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And if that interests
you, there's

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a very good account of
it in the Steven Pinker

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book that's available.

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The Language Instinct.

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Right branching.

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That image of a
gravity-defying tree

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where no branches over
there, but just like all

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branching out over
here, is borne out

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in Larkin's highly
asymmetrical second sentence.

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Its precariousness
becomes even more apparent

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if you think of right
branching syntax

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as a mobile hanging
from the ceiling.

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The fundament--
subject and predicate--

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that's the bar from which
is hung a modifier, a word

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or a phrase.

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And from that
modifier, another one.

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And from that one, another one.

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And from that one, another one.

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And from that one, another one.

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And we could go
on, and on, and on.

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That's called-- that's what
the linguist called "right

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branching."-- right
branching syntax.

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Larkin's is an especially
precarious mobile,

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because it hangs not from
the fundament, which has

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after all a missing predicate.

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He just left that out.

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But one rung down from that
restrictive or subordinate

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clause, and it combines
right branching

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with more of the parallelism
that opened the poem.

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The death that it does
in the white hours.

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Which white hours?

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The hours of young leaf
June with chestnut flowers,

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with hedges snow-like
strewn, with white lilac

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bowed, with [INAUDIBLE]
of Queen Anne's lace,

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and with that high builded
cloud moving at summer's pace.

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All those withs, those ats,
those are prepositions.

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So as soon as they go in
there, that's parallelism.

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These parallel
pieces of syntax--

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you don't have any trouble
knowing what they mean.

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Do you?

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It seems to me that this
is a very accessible poem,

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and the way it gets there
is because your brain is

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processing that going 'fine'.

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With this thing.

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And with this thing.

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And with this thing.

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And with this thing.

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And with this thing.

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The point here that I want
to make is that all of that

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describes this
secondary business.

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It's all part of something
that is subordinate.

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Is not robbing the sense.

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Still with me?

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Larkin is terribly sly here
with so many prepositions

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tethered to the different
spots in the restricted clause.

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And some of them placed
at the head of the line

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and some of them missing.

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And each of their
phrase is punctuated

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literally or in pause.

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And the last of
them dangling, not

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from the subordinate predicate,
but from a participle

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from moving.

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It is easy to misperceive
the reference.

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The five withs belong
not to the noun

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June, even though the return
to dimeter for two lines

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would have us think
so, of young late June

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with chestnut flowers.

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Rather, these parallel
phrases are adverbs

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attached to the verb
chestnut flowers,

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hedges, lilac, Queen
Anne's lace and cloud,

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are all also dying right
alongside the mown stalks.

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He doesn't leave out
those withs to confuse us.

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We are not confused.

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Again, parallelism in the
syntax and in the lines

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implies what has been left out.

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You don't have to say,
with, with with, with, with,

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with the beginning of every
line in the last stanza.

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We supply it.

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We know it's there.

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Elision also, dropping
some of those prepositions,

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has allowed him to correct the
potential boredom of a list.

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Lists are always boring.

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This is a way to vary
it just a little bit.

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It also gives him a stanza three
some similarities, some pattern

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back to stanza one.

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Putting an adjective and a noun
at the beginning of the line,

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you remember cut
grass and mown stalks?

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Now, we've got white
lilac, lost lanes.

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So it ties that stands
up back to the first one.

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It gives us a return back
to the metrical pattern

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that he started with
white, lilac, bowed.

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And another initial
spondee, lost lanes,

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that it sort of rhymed or
connected back to the earlier

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long, long.

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These echoes all
restore pattern.

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I'll keep the palm glued to
the page, but not enough.

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Not even with the rhyme
scheme to overtake

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the galloping syntax.

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Syntax stays in charge
of what musicologists,

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like Robert Jourdain called
"large-scale phrasing"

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conscripting the line to
parse the chunks for us.

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And the stanza to organize them.

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Hurtling toward the final
elaboration of the cloud, which

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is the briefest item in
the list, which is to say,

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the shortest lived.

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This arrangement,
this architecture

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is the essential drama of
the poem's composition,

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as well as the source of
the dynamic shift in tone

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from the clipped
disinterest of the opening

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to the final notes of ennui.

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Syntax orchestrates that
movement down through the palm.

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Larkin knows this.

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He is willing to
loosen the meter.

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He is willing to move
away from two beat lines

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into three beat lines.

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But he consistently
reinforces the syntax

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by keeping the lines
working in concert with it.

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They never enjamb across it .

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They always, they pause where
the syntax normally pauses.

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Sometimes with a comma,
sometimes there's

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no comma there.

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But this is the place where
we would pause if we were

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reading this as a sentence.

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So the lines then are what
I like to call "consonant."

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They're consonant
with the syntax

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helping us parse the
sentence as it opens out

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or rather opens up.

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The camera that had focused down
at the beginning of the poem

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onto the grass at our
feet now points upward.

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Accusingly, it seems
to me at the sky.

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Syntax and this
poem is in charge.

00:08:33.130 --> 00:08:37.809 align:middle line:84%
What it demonstrates is the
necessary dynamic relationship

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between syntax and
line that comprises

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the prosody of almost all
memorable poetry in English,

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whether in fixed forms
traditional forms, rhymes,

00:08:49.190 --> 00:08:51.880 align:middle line:84%
forms, forms, needed
forms, or what

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we like to call free verse.

00:08:53.740 --> 00:08:58.300 align:middle line:84%
The relationship between
the sentence and the lines.

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Still with me?

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