WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.060 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.060 --> 00:00:05.250 align:middle line:84% This is the passage of nobody knows 00:00:05.250 --> 00:00:06.810 align:middle line:90% is nothing, if not plaintive. 00:00:06.810 --> 00:00:07.710 align:middle line:90% It's very plain. 00:00:07.710 --> 00:00:08.700 align:middle line:90% It's very direct. 00:00:08.700 --> 00:00:12.417 align:middle line:84% It's not complex, but that does not mean that it's simple. 00:00:12.417 --> 00:00:14.250 align:middle line:84% Now here's another moment I want to look at. 00:00:14.250 --> 00:00:17.350 align:middle line:84% The strange elegance of that chant line passage in lines 00:00:17.350 --> 00:00:19.900 align:middle line:90% 11, 12, and 13 about loneliness. 00:00:19.900 --> 00:00:22.110 align:middle line:84% This is kind of a remarkable moment in this poem too. 00:00:22.110 --> 00:00:26.310 align:middle line:84% "And lonely, head hanging from the balcony of her body, 00:00:26.310 --> 00:00:27.240 align:middle line:90% lonely. 00:00:27.240 --> 00:00:29.880 align:middle line:84% Darkest passage from the hairless vagina. 00:00:29.880 --> 00:00:33.910 align:middle line:90% Lonely, but brave, but lonely." 00:00:33.910 --> 00:00:36.180 align:middle line:84% Now that is really an interesting moment in the poem. 00:00:36.180 --> 00:00:38.400 align:middle line:84% If the poem is really kind of plain in what 00:00:38.400 --> 00:00:40.650 align:middle line:84% it's talking about and in much of its speech, 00:00:40.650 --> 00:00:44.910 align:middle line:84% isn't that sort of amazingly inventive, and strange, 00:00:44.910 --> 00:00:45.650 align:middle line:90% and elegant? 00:00:45.650 --> 00:00:48.870 align:middle line:84% It doesn't resemble any other language in the poem. 00:00:48.870 --> 00:00:51.030 align:middle line:84% These elaborate compound adjectives, 00:00:51.030 --> 00:00:54.150 align:middle line:84% they sort of stop the drama of the poem, 00:00:54.150 --> 00:00:56.700 align:middle line:84% and they create this kind of ritualistic interlude 00:00:56.700 --> 00:00:59.070 align:middle line:90% with remarkable tonal effect. 00:00:59.070 --> 00:01:00.840 align:middle line:84% I think that these are kind of-- they're 00:01:00.840 --> 00:01:04.620 align:middle line:84% like invented phrases fabricated by the writer of the poem, 00:01:04.620 --> 00:01:07.260 align:middle line:84% but they have a kind of mythological kind 00:01:07.260 --> 00:01:11.043 align:middle line:84% of archetypal, like, this is a Norse way of describing winter. 00:01:11.043 --> 00:01:12.210 align:middle line:90% What kind of winter is this? 00:01:12.210 --> 00:01:16.650 align:middle line:84% It's the darkest passage from the hairless vagina. 00:01:16.650 --> 00:01:18.340 align:middle line:84% You know what I'm talking about, Olaf. 00:01:18.340 --> 00:01:21.120 align:middle line:90% 00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:23.340 align:middle line:84% They import into the narrative a kind 00:01:23.340 --> 00:01:26.220 align:middle line:84% of ceremonial speech, which, again, 00:01:26.220 --> 00:01:29.760 align:middle line:84% transcends the immediate drama of son and mother locked 00:01:29.760 --> 00:01:30.840 align:middle line:90% in struggle. 00:01:30.840 --> 00:01:34.050 align:middle line:84% Though invented, these phrases invoke archaic formulas 00:01:34.050 --> 00:01:35.850 align:middle line:90% of lament and praise. 00:01:35.850 --> 00:01:36.870 align:middle line:90% How does it work? 00:01:36.870 --> 00:01:39.240 align:middle line:84% In part, those complex adjectives, 00:01:39.240 --> 00:01:42.270 align:middle line:84% a compound adjective, in other words, a multiple adjective 00:01:42.270 --> 00:01:45.930 align:middle line:84% created by hyphens, is so elaborate that the number 00:01:45.930 --> 00:01:49.740 align:middle line:84% of words that it employs and the time it takes to read 00:01:49.740 --> 00:01:54.060 align:middle line:84% implies the freedom of rhetoric and poetry from time. 00:01:54.060 --> 00:01:56.550 align:middle line:84% It seems to come from outside the frame of narrative time 00:01:56.550 --> 00:01:58.260 align:middle line:90% that most of the poem is in. 00:01:58.260 --> 00:02:00.870 align:middle line:84% The tone shift elevates us to a perspective 00:02:00.870 --> 00:02:03.900 align:middle line:84% from which we see the scenario of suffering and dying 00:02:03.900 --> 00:02:06.750 align:middle line:84% not as personal, but as universal perennial human 00:02:06.750 --> 00:02:09.479 align:middle line:84% passage to which we will all be subject. 00:02:09.479 --> 00:02:11.460 align:middle line:84% And I want to point out that this isn't just 00:02:11.460 --> 00:02:14.940 align:middle line:84% a grammatical invention of a hyphenated compound adjective. 00:02:14.940 --> 00:02:17.220 align:middle line:84% These are also metaphors, and the metaphors 00:02:17.220 --> 00:02:19.530 align:middle line:90% are carrying information too. 00:02:19.530 --> 00:02:22.320 align:middle line:84% Head hanging from the balcony of her body, lonely. 00:02:22.320 --> 00:02:23.580 align:middle line:90% That's a metaphor. 00:02:23.580 --> 00:02:26.910 align:middle line:84% And the suffering body is turned into a building 00:02:26.910 --> 00:02:30.120 align:middle line:84% in that metaphor with the balcony from which the head is 00:02:30.120 --> 00:02:32.070 align:middle line:90% looking down at the building. 00:02:32.070 --> 00:02:33.570 align:middle line:90% The building is ornate. 00:02:33.570 --> 00:02:36.090 align:middle line:84% The suggestive scene is sort of like an Elizabethan tragedy, 00:02:36.090 --> 00:02:38.010 align:middle line:84% like Romeo and Juliet, a stage play 00:02:38.010 --> 00:02:40.770 align:middle line:84% in which the head addresses the body, which, in a way, 00:02:40.770 --> 00:02:44.320 align:middle line:84% is a weird kind of metaphor and image for rhetoric itself. 00:02:44.320 --> 00:02:46.763 align:middle line:84% The second one, darkest passage from the hairless vagina, 00:02:46.763 --> 00:02:48.930 align:middle line:84% well, I mean, I don't know how he came up with that. 00:02:48.930 --> 00:02:50.430 align:middle line:90% It's so wonderful. 00:02:50.430 --> 00:02:52.680 align:middle line:84% The sun implicitly sees and laments, 00:02:52.680 --> 00:02:55.110 align:middle line:84% because who came out of that vagina? 00:02:55.110 --> 00:02:57.570 align:middle line:84% His own vast separation from the body of the mother. 00:02:57.570 --> 00:02:59.280 align:middle line:84% And the isolation of being spilled 00:02:59.280 --> 00:03:02.280 align:middle line:84% into the world, and his naked childlike mother's 00:03:02.280 --> 00:03:03.990 align:middle line:84% imminent exit from life to death. 00:03:03.990 --> 00:03:06.360 align:middle line:84% So the mother is both a child, and the speaker 00:03:06.360 --> 00:03:09.810 align:middle line:84% is also the child, and they're both about to be-- 00:03:09.810 --> 00:03:11.970 align:middle line:84% they've both been expelled and sprawled out 00:03:11.970 --> 00:03:13.390 align:middle line:90% of the hairless vagina. 00:03:13.390 --> 00:03:15.000 align:middle line:84% Here, pity and praise seem to apply 00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:16.440 align:middle line:90% to both the son and the mother. 00:03:16.440 --> 00:03:18.150 align:middle line:84% The invented dignity of these phrases 00:03:18.150 --> 00:03:19.650 align:middle line:90% suggests that these ordeals-- 00:03:19.650 --> 00:03:22.050 align:middle line:84% dying, sorrow, separation-- are inevitable, 00:03:22.050 --> 00:03:25.350 align:middle line:84% and there's something of the eternal or even beauty. 00:03:25.350 --> 00:03:28.777 align:middle line:84% So you can feel prayer and litany here. 00:03:28.777 --> 00:03:30.360 align:middle line:84% Now, finally, I just want to point out 00:03:30.360 --> 00:03:34.380 align:middle line:84% that this kind of amazing kind of tonal management, 00:03:34.380 --> 00:03:38.280 align:middle line:84% and complexity, and dialectic going on inside a poem, 00:03:38.280 --> 00:03:41.190 align:middle line:84% what it does, for one thing, is it makes you understand 00:03:41.190 --> 00:03:43.110 align:middle line:90% that really surprising ending. 00:03:43.110 --> 00:03:46.650 align:middle line:84% "The world is evil, Mother, and I am too." 00:03:46.650 --> 00:03:50.670 align:middle line:84% Really surprising, and yet you completely understand it. 00:03:50.670 --> 00:03:53.970 align:middle line:84% Because the tonal information that you've 00:03:53.970 --> 00:03:56.250 align:middle line:84% gotten about the situation and about 00:03:56.250 --> 00:03:59.940 align:middle line:84% the relationship of the speaker to the mother 00:03:59.940 --> 00:04:02.670 align:middle line:90% is completely understandable. 00:04:02.670 --> 00:04:06.390 align:middle line:84% And so when that end arrives, even though it's surprising, 00:04:06.390 --> 00:04:10.140 align:middle line:84% it's dramatically, utterly comprehensible and powerful. 00:04:10.140 --> 00:04:10.830 align:middle line:90% Once again. 00:04:10.830 --> 00:04:12.450 align:middle line:84% I just want to point out, there's 00:04:12.450 --> 00:04:17.880 align:middle line:84% an enormously complex dynamic of attachment and detachment going 00:04:17.880 --> 00:04:18.570 align:middle line:90% on here. 00:04:18.570 --> 00:04:22.140 align:middle line:84% Those rhetorical moments are enormously detached. 00:04:22.140 --> 00:04:26.460 align:middle line:84% These different moments are shooting down laser rays, 00:04:26.460 --> 00:04:30.210 align:middle line:84% anchoring with a great kind of variety. 00:04:30.210 --> 00:04:33.600 align:middle line:84% If a poem does not have enough detachment, 00:04:33.600 --> 00:04:37.110 align:middle line:84% it can't have tonal complexity, and, in a way, 00:04:37.110 --> 00:04:38.940 align:middle line:84% it can't be adequate to the world. 00:04:38.940 --> 00:04:43.560 align:middle line:84% But if it has, it'll be co-dependent to the world 00:04:43.560 --> 00:04:45.060 align:middle line:84% in the way that a lot of narratives 00:04:45.060 --> 00:04:46.350 align:middle line:90% are co-dependent in the world. 00:04:46.350 --> 00:04:47.880 align:middle line:84% They don't have enough imagination. 00:04:47.880 --> 00:04:51.870 align:middle line:84% There's not enough space between the telling and the tale. 00:04:51.870 --> 00:04:54.690 align:middle line:84% But when there's a lot of detachment and a lot of angles 00:04:54.690 --> 00:04:57.270 align:middle line:84% here, you can see that there's a lot of distance 00:04:57.270 --> 00:04:59.100 align:middle line:84% between the telling and the tale. 00:04:59.100 --> 00:05:00.570 align:middle line:90% We know that the tale. 00:05:00.570 --> 00:05:06.450 align:middle line:84% The telling tells us what the teller knows, and tells us 00:05:06.450 --> 00:05:11.130 align:middle line:84% how the speaker is careful, how the teller is attached, 00:05:11.130 --> 00:05:12.450 align:middle line:90% and how the teller is detached. 00:05:12.450 --> 00:05:15.300 align:middle line:90% 00:05:15.300 --> 00:05:18.390 align:middle line:84% And basically, that is the good news. 00:05:18.390 --> 00:05:20.940 align:middle line:84% These other poems in the handout-- 00:05:20.940 --> 00:05:23.490 align:middle line:84% I'm going to finish by reading a Milosz poem, 00:05:23.490 --> 00:05:27.307 align:middle line:84% just because he's a great poet who died recently, 00:05:27.307 --> 00:05:29.640 align:middle line:84% and because, a poem that was in The New Yorker about two 00:05:29.640 --> 00:05:35.730 align:middle line:84% or three weeks ago is a fabulous kind of embodiment of just 00:05:35.730 --> 00:05:39.070 align:middle line:90% a masterful kind of knowing. 00:05:39.070 --> 00:05:40.980 align:middle line:84% And remember, Milosz wrote the book 00:05:40.980 --> 00:05:45.150 align:middle line:84% called The Witness of Poetry, and talks endlessly 00:05:45.150 --> 00:05:47.100 align:middle line:90% about the pursuit of reality. 00:05:47.100 --> 00:05:48.540 align:middle line:90% You may never get there. 00:05:48.540 --> 00:05:50.940 align:middle line:90% You may never attain reality. 00:05:50.940 --> 00:05:52.860 align:middle line:84% You may never actually make a poem 00:05:52.860 --> 00:05:54.840 align:middle line:84% that's adequate to our experience of it 00:05:54.840 --> 00:05:56.280 align:middle line:90% or adequate to the world. 00:05:56.280 --> 00:06:00.840 align:middle line:84% But it's absolutely necessary to continue pursuing that. 00:06:00.840 --> 00:06:04.380 align:middle line:90% 00:06:04.380 --> 00:06:08.520 align:middle line:84% And as American poets, we also have to learn how to grasp, 00:06:08.520 --> 00:06:11.130 align:middle line:84% in a complex and dialectical way, 00:06:11.130 --> 00:06:16.230 align:middle line:84% the position of being American poets in the American empire. 00:06:16.230 --> 00:06:20.588 align:middle line:84% We sometimes seem to be like a terrible, terrible force 00:06:20.588 --> 00:06:21.630 align:middle line:90% unleashed upon the world. 00:06:21.630 --> 00:06:24.570 align:middle line:90% 00:06:24.570 --> 00:06:26.880 align:middle line:84% Unless we get really sophisticated and really 00:06:26.880 --> 00:06:29.550 align:middle line:84% inventive, we can not actually render 00:06:29.550 --> 00:06:34.200 align:middle line:84% that in a way that isn't morally simplistic and infantile. 00:06:34.200 --> 00:06:37.230 align:middle line:84% We can't, as American poets, simply accuse. 00:06:37.230 --> 00:06:40.110 align:middle line:84% We have to negotiate it in a complex way. 00:06:40.110 --> 00:06:44.580 align:middle line:84% And when we can negotiate in a complex way, in some sense, 00:06:44.580 --> 00:06:47.640 align:middle line:84% maybe some of the power and authority-- 00:06:47.640 --> 00:06:50.580 align:middle line:84% maybe some power and authority will-- 00:06:50.580 --> 00:06:52.950 align:middle line:84% social power and authority-- will be returned to poetry. 00:06:52.950 --> 00:06:56.030 align:middle line:84% But that's just me being a Pollyanna.