WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.570 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.570 --> 00:00:03.990 align:middle line:84% Let's talk a little bit about the other aspects 00:00:03.990 --> 00:00:07.260 align:middle line:90% of the long poem. 00:00:07.260 --> 00:00:12.750 align:middle line:84% What is the shape of the long poem, 00:00:12.750 --> 00:00:14.370 align:middle line:90% or the span of the long poem. 00:00:14.370 --> 00:00:18.180 align:middle line:84% Usually it's a big subject, a large span. 00:00:18.180 --> 00:00:22.020 align:middle line:84% There are poems of time, history, mythology. 00:00:22.020 --> 00:00:23.640 align:middle line:90% These are the traditional ones. 00:00:23.640 --> 00:00:27.180 align:middle line:84% Epic poems, The Iliad, Gilgamesh, the Rāmāyana. 00:00:27.180 --> 00:00:33.450 align:middle line:84% Either they tell a history or a group of mythological tales. 00:00:33.450 --> 00:00:39.960 align:middle line:84% There are poems of geography and adventure and ideals. 00:00:39.960 --> 00:00:41.010 align:middle line:90% Poems about place. 00:00:41.010 --> 00:00:44.280 align:middle line:84% Ideals can be short poems about place, 00:00:44.280 --> 00:00:46.560 align:middle line:90% but some, they are kind of long. 00:00:46.560 --> 00:00:51.630 align:middle line:84% There's a great, great poem [? Kālidāsa ?] in India. 00:00:51.630 --> 00:00:54.540 align:middle line:90% 00:00:54.540 --> 00:00:57.330 align:middle line:84% It's a poem dedicated to a cloud. 00:00:57.330 --> 00:01:03.150 align:middle line:84% And in it, the poet is talking to a cloud 00:01:03.150 --> 00:01:08.520 align:middle line:90% as it is crossing all of India. 00:01:08.520 --> 00:01:12.450 align:middle line:84% Tagore, the great poet of India, goes back and rewrites it. 00:01:12.450 --> 00:01:15.150 align:middle line:84% And he said, oh, but you, great poet, you missed this, 00:01:15.150 --> 00:01:18.030 align:middle line:90% and you missed that, and you-- 00:01:18.030 --> 00:01:21.730 align:middle line:84% And again, you are rewriting the old poem, 00:01:21.730 --> 00:01:23.310 align:middle line:90% rewriting a new version. 00:01:23.310 --> 00:01:28.630 align:middle line:84% There's a bit of nudging of the older version of the poem. 00:01:28.630 --> 00:01:30.240 align:middle line:90% Kālidāsa or Kalibasa? 00:01:30.240 --> 00:01:30.810 align:middle line:90% I'm sorry. 00:01:30.810 --> 00:01:33.180 align:middle line:84% It's in my dissertation, but I'm forgetting. 00:01:33.180 --> 00:01:33.930 align:middle line:90% It's been a while. 00:01:33.930 --> 00:01:36.060 align:middle line:90% But there are so many. 00:01:36.060 --> 00:01:38.070 align:middle line:84% We think of ideals as short poems, 00:01:38.070 --> 00:01:39.480 align:middle line:90% but there are longer poems. 00:01:39.480 --> 00:01:43.440 align:middle line:84% There's Georgics, which are poems 00:01:43.440 --> 00:01:46.860 align:middle line:84% about farming and agriculture, but they're also 00:01:46.860 --> 00:01:47.700 align:middle line:90% poems about place. 00:01:47.700 --> 00:01:52.590 align:middle line:84% The Odyssey is a great poem of travel and adventure. 00:01:52.590 --> 00:01:54.240 align:middle line:90% It is a [INAUDIBLE] 00:01:54.240 --> 00:01:57.900 align:middle line:84% And Neruda wrote the great "Canto general," 00:01:57.900 --> 00:02:01.260 align:middle line:84% or "General Canto" or "Broad Canto," the great song. 00:02:01.260 --> 00:02:03.360 align:middle line:90% And it is about Latin America. 00:02:03.360 --> 00:02:06.450 align:middle line:84% It is a series-- and he thinks of it as a long poem, 00:02:06.450 --> 00:02:08.220 align:middle line:90% even though it is made of parts. 00:02:08.220 --> 00:02:11.670 align:middle line:84% And then we have the political and spiritual long poems. 00:02:11.670 --> 00:02:17.040 align:middle line:84% "The Divine Comedy," "Paradise Lost," of course. 00:02:17.040 --> 00:02:20.370 align:middle line:84% And to some extent, "The Faerie Queene" 00:02:20.370 --> 00:02:24.610 align:middle line:84% is a highly adventurous, fantastic narrative. 00:02:24.610 --> 00:02:27.720 align:middle line:84% But also there's one creature that 00:02:27.720 --> 00:02:29.577 align:middle line:90% spits books, that vomits books. 00:02:29.577 --> 00:02:31.410 align:middle line:84% I love that it's part of the [INAUDIBLE] one 00:02:31.410 --> 00:02:34.380 align:middle line:84% of the greatest mythological creatures. 00:02:34.380 --> 00:02:38.580 align:middle line:84% I [? love it. ?] But also, Spenser had a notion of it 00:02:38.580 --> 00:02:40.770 align:middle line:84% during Elizabethan time, where he 00:02:40.770 --> 00:02:43.380 align:middle line:84% thought that this would be a great educational tool 00:02:43.380 --> 00:02:44.490 align:middle line:90% for the morality. 00:02:44.490 --> 00:02:48.870 align:middle line:84% He felt like the morals of the nation needed to be corrected 00:02:48.870 --> 00:02:50.820 align:middle line:90% by a fantastic journey. 00:02:50.820 --> 00:02:54.040 align:middle line:90% These are the types of shapes. 00:02:54.040 --> 00:02:56.550 align:middle line:84% "A large scope, the extensive reality 00:02:56.550 --> 00:03:00.000 align:middle line:84% of life"-- which is a quote from [? Lukash, ?] but also applies 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:01.030 align:middle line:90% here-- 00:03:01.030 --> 00:03:04.890 align:middle line:84% "which requires, often, multiple points of view or various 00:03:04.890 --> 00:03:06.570 align:middle line:90% experiences in times. 00:03:06.570 --> 00:03:10.590 align:middle line:84% Which is what may distinguish it from the lyric." 00:03:10.590 --> 00:03:14.020 align:middle line:84% The lyric, we get one poem, one point of view. 00:03:14.020 --> 00:03:15.990 align:middle line:90% It's smaller. 00:03:15.990 --> 00:03:20.790 align:middle line:84% But eventually, in the longer poem, 00:03:20.790 --> 00:03:25.290 align:middle line:84% sustaining that single point of view is very difficult. 00:03:25.290 --> 00:03:28.860 align:middle line:84% Or the narrative has to incorporate other experiences 00:03:28.860 --> 00:03:29.940 align:middle line:90% and lives. 00:03:29.940 --> 00:03:34.020 align:middle line:84% In "Paradise Lost," you have a single point of view. 00:03:34.020 --> 00:03:38.820 align:middle line:84% But you think of the great speeches by Satan, 00:03:38.820 --> 00:03:41.970 align:middle line:84% which are fantastic, which actually open up. 00:03:41.970 --> 00:03:46.410 align:middle line:84% And some people say Lucifer is the hero of Paradise. 00:03:46.410 --> 00:03:49.320 align:middle line:90% This is much more interesting. 00:03:49.320 --> 00:03:52.170 align:middle line:84% That other point of view is opened up. 00:03:52.170 --> 00:03:54.690 align:middle line:84% It is not necessarily one path through time, 00:03:54.690 --> 00:03:57.030 align:middle line:84% or a continuous geography, but it 00:03:57.030 --> 00:04:00.750 align:middle line:84% is made up of bridges between eras and locations, 00:04:00.750 --> 00:04:03.060 align:middle line:84% or personal experiences and meditations, 00:04:03.060 --> 00:04:06.240 align:middle line:84% to give that sense of movement and change 00:04:06.240 --> 00:04:09.940 align:middle line:84% in a large, temporal, spatial, social, and spiritual, 00:04:09.940 --> 00:04:12.870 align:middle line:90% psychological territory. 00:04:12.870 --> 00:04:16.800 align:middle line:84% Some of the impetus of the long poem, something in the culture 00:04:16.800 --> 00:04:22.410 align:middle line:84% is observed, and needs to be corrected. 00:04:22.410 --> 00:04:27.930 align:middle line:84% It seems that there is something big 00:04:27.930 --> 00:04:30.150 align:middle line:84% that one notices about one's surroundings. 00:04:30.150 --> 00:04:35.490 align:middle line:84% Ultimately, the long poem is a social project. 00:04:35.490 --> 00:04:39.420 align:middle line:90% It's not merely individual. 00:04:39.420 --> 00:04:44.208 align:middle line:84% I'm going to talk about Wordsworth's "Prelude." 00:04:44.208 --> 00:04:45.750 align:middle line:84% Wordsworth's "Prelude" is the history 00:04:45.750 --> 00:04:48.820 align:middle line:90% of the growth of my own mind. 00:04:48.820 --> 00:04:49.990 align:middle line:90% What's social about that? 00:04:49.990 --> 00:04:52.810 align:middle line:90% Well, of course it is social. 00:04:52.810 --> 00:04:53.860 align:middle line:90% The impetus is social. 00:04:53.860 --> 00:04:56.440 align:middle line:90% Here's what he said. 00:04:56.440 --> 00:05:01.060 align:middle line:84% "To show the divine sufficiency of the human mind 00:05:01.060 --> 00:05:03.260 align:middle line:90% in its communion with nature." 00:05:03.260 --> 00:05:04.875 align:middle line:90% That's what he said. 00:05:04.875 --> 00:05:06.250 align:middle line:84% [? Let's ?] [? say ?] [INAUDIBLE] 00:05:06.250 --> 00:05:09.080 align:middle line:84% Of course, the divine sufficiency of his mind, 00:05:09.080 --> 00:05:09.580 align:middle line:90% of course-- 00:05:09.580 --> 00:05:12.730 align:middle line:84% [LAUGHING] --of Wordsworth's mind, 00:05:12.730 --> 00:05:14.560 align:middle line:84% in its communion with human nature, 00:05:14.560 --> 00:05:16.750 align:middle line:84% it's a great principle of romanticism. 00:05:16.750 --> 00:05:22.540 align:middle line:84% But it is also the advent of secularism, 00:05:22.540 --> 00:05:26.440 align:middle line:84% that the human mind, by itself, can 00:05:26.440 --> 00:05:30.010 align:middle line:84% commune with nature and the world, and that suffices us. 00:05:30.010 --> 00:05:32.380 align:middle line:90% That should suffice us. 00:05:32.380 --> 00:05:34.540 align:middle line:84% His friend Coleridge-- they were good friends, 00:05:34.540 --> 00:05:43.270 align:middle line:84% but then Wordsworth basically told Coleridge to let him be. 00:05:43.270 --> 00:05:46.300 align:middle line:84% Coleridge wrote him, and they worked together on the Lyrical 00:05:46.300 --> 00:05:47.920 align:middle line:84% Ballads, if you've known this book, 00:05:47.920 --> 00:05:52.180 align:middle line:84% where you find some of Wordsworth's greatest poems, 00:05:52.180 --> 00:05:54.130 align:middle line:90% and also Coleridge's. 00:05:54.130 --> 00:05:58.270 align:middle line:84% I think the "Ancient Mariner" is in it. 00:05:58.270 --> 00:06:02.200 align:middle line:84% It's a book of both of them, and great introductory essays. 00:06:02.200 --> 00:06:04.390 align:middle line:90% A fantastic project. 00:06:04.390 --> 00:06:05.440 align:middle line:90% They're working together. 00:06:05.440 --> 00:06:08.635 align:middle line:84% Coleridge wrote in 1799 to Wordsworth, 00:06:08.635 --> 00:06:12.760 align:middle line:84% "I am anxiously eager to have you steadily employed 00:06:12.760 --> 00:06:13.990 align:middle line:90% on The Recluse." 00:06:13.990 --> 00:06:16.330 align:middle line:84% "The Prelude," which is-- actually, 00:06:16.330 --> 00:06:19.450 align:middle line:84% there's an Arabic book called Al Muqaddimah, which 00:06:19.450 --> 00:06:25.180 align:middle line:84% means the prelude, meaning the poet, Ibn Khaldun, 00:06:25.180 --> 00:06:28.930 align:middle line:84% back in the 12th or 13th century, wrote an introduction, 00:06:28.930 --> 00:06:31.420 align:middle line:84% but then the introduction became the book. 00:06:31.420 --> 00:06:33.520 align:middle line:90% Same thing with "The Prelude." 00:06:33.520 --> 00:06:36.340 align:middle line:84% "The Prelude" was going to be the introduction 00:06:36.340 --> 00:06:39.880 align:middle line:84% to The Recluse, and then it became the book. 00:06:39.880 --> 00:06:46.870 align:middle line:84% And Wordsworth was a great poet from the late 18th century 00:06:46.870 --> 00:06:49.960 align:middle line:90% till he died around 1850. 00:06:49.960 --> 00:06:52.530 align:middle line:90% He was known as a great poet. 00:06:52.530 --> 00:06:56.630 align:middle line:90% And "The Prelude" was not known. 00:06:56.630 --> 00:07:00.590 align:middle line:84% After he died, people realized that, no, "The Prelude" 00:07:00.590 --> 00:07:02.570 align:middle line:90% is his greatest book. 00:07:02.570 --> 00:07:07.923 align:middle line:84% He died being a great poet, but he wasn't alive to receive-- 00:07:07.923 --> 00:07:08.840 align:middle line:90% he never published it. 00:07:08.840 --> 00:07:09.800 align:middle line:90% His wife published it. 00:07:09.800 --> 00:07:11.780 align:middle line:84% And I don't quite remember-- she is the one who 00:07:11.780 --> 00:07:14.000 align:middle line:90% named it "The Prelude." 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:15.530 align:middle line:84% "The Prelude" was the introduction 00:07:15.530 --> 00:07:18.080 align:middle line:84% to this great book, which is called The Recluse, 00:07:18.080 --> 00:07:21.380 align:middle line:84% and here's what Coleridge tells us about this. 00:07:21.380 --> 00:07:25.865 align:middle line:84% Ibn Khaldun also wanted to write a history of Africa, and so on, 00:07:25.865 --> 00:07:27.740 align:middle line:84% but then he felt like he needed to understand 00:07:27.740 --> 00:07:29.210 align:middle line:90% the social dynamics. 00:07:29.210 --> 00:07:32.310 align:middle line:84% So he wrote The Muqaddimah, the introduction, 00:07:32.310 --> 00:07:37.040 align:middle line:84% which ended up being really the first work of sociology. 00:07:37.040 --> 00:07:39.620 align:middle line:84% Ibn Khaldun is Tunisian, but he worked in-- 00:07:39.620 --> 00:07:40.730 align:middle line:90% and that's lucky. 00:07:40.730 --> 00:07:46.460 align:middle line:84% This is why people in the summer in these regions 00:07:46.460 --> 00:07:49.050 align:middle line:84% are not that productive in the summer seasons. 00:07:49.050 --> 00:07:51.860 align:middle line:84% This is why some people might like tyrannical regimes, 00:07:51.860 --> 00:07:53.480 align:middle line:90% and they prefer them to others. 00:07:53.480 --> 00:07:55.340 align:middle line:90% Sort of a real-- 00:07:55.340 --> 00:07:58.440 align:middle line:84% and he was also engaged not only politics, 00:07:58.440 --> 00:08:00.650 align:middle line:90% but also work habits of people. 00:08:00.650 --> 00:08:05.720 align:middle line:84% The dynamics of work, economy, and politics. 00:08:05.720 --> 00:08:06.980 align:middle line:90% But he never wrote-- 00:08:06.980 --> 00:08:09.320 align:middle line:84% I don't think he ever wrote the history that he wanted 00:08:09.320 --> 00:08:10.820 align:middle line:90% to write in the introduction. 00:08:10.820 --> 00:08:13.880 align:middle line:84% The theory became more important. 00:08:13.880 --> 00:08:15.650 align:middle line:84% After a long delay, this is what Coleridge 00:08:15.650 --> 00:08:17.600 align:middle line:90% wrote Wordsworth in 1799. 00:08:17.600 --> 00:08:20.660 align:middle line:84% "I'm anxiously eager to have you steadily employed 00:08:20.660 --> 00:08:21.830 align:middle line:90% on The Recluse. 00:08:21.830 --> 00:08:26.000 align:middle line:84% I wish you would write a poem in blank verse addressed to those 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:29.090 align:middle line:84% who, in the consequence of the complete failure 00:08:29.090 --> 00:08:31.670 align:middle line:84% of the French Revolution, have thrown up 00:08:31.670 --> 00:08:34.159 align:middle line:84% all hopes of amelioration of mankind, 00:08:34.159 --> 00:08:38.090 align:middle line:84% and are sinking into an almost epicurean selfishness, 00:08:38.090 --> 00:08:40.940 align:middle line:84% disguising the same under the soft titles 00:08:40.940 --> 00:08:43.549 align:middle line:84% of domestic attachment and contempt 00:08:43.549 --> 00:08:47.540 align:middle line:90% for visionary philosophies. 00:08:47.540 --> 00:08:49.730 align:middle line:84% It would do great good, and might 00:08:49.730 --> 00:08:52.970 align:middle line:90% form a part of The Recluse." 00:08:52.970 --> 00:08:56.240 align:middle line:84% They had an agreement that there is something wrong in society. 00:08:56.240 --> 00:08:58.430 align:middle line:90% The French Revolution-- 00:08:58.430 --> 00:09:00.050 align:middle line:90% I don't know if 1799-- 00:09:00.050 --> 00:09:01.310 align:middle line:90% I failed to check-- 00:09:01.310 --> 00:09:03.770 align:middle line:84% if by then, Napoleon had taken over. 00:09:03.770 --> 00:09:06.050 align:middle line:84% But I think certainly Robespierre 00:09:06.050 --> 00:09:11.030 align:middle line:84% had gotten into the scene, and chopped tons of heads. 00:09:11.030 --> 00:09:13.170 align:middle line:84% The French Revolution has gone bad. 00:09:13.170 --> 00:09:18.170 align:middle line:84% It's almost like the way the Arab Spring is happening now. 00:09:18.170 --> 00:09:20.180 align:middle line:84% Because the French Revolution had failed, 00:09:20.180 --> 00:09:22.310 align:middle line:84% many British intellectuals say, oh, 00:09:22.310 --> 00:09:24.890 align:middle line:84% forget this Arab Spring, this French thing, 00:09:24.890 --> 00:09:25.880 align:middle line:90% forget this revolution. 00:09:25.880 --> 00:09:31.130 align:middle line:84% Let's just be-- it's almost like the counter-revolutionary 00:09:31.130 --> 00:09:34.410 align:middle line:84% spirit that's dominating many Arab countries now. 00:09:34.410 --> 00:09:37.250 align:middle line:84% Revolution, it's too violent, too many changes. 00:09:37.250 --> 00:09:40.040 align:middle line:84% The radicals come in, they chop lots of heads. 00:09:40.040 --> 00:09:43.340 align:middle line:84% Let's go back and live under a tyrannical king, 00:09:43.340 --> 00:09:46.370 align:middle line:90% and let's give him more powers. 00:09:46.370 --> 00:09:49.220 align:middle line:84% Coleridge, of course, said no, let's not accept this. 00:09:49.220 --> 00:09:55.100 align:middle line:84% And they've thrown up all hopes of change of humankind, 00:09:55.100 --> 00:09:57.230 align:middle line:90% and are sinking into the most-- 00:09:57.230 --> 00:10:04.460 align:middle line:84% into selfishness, and disguising their fluffy work with depth 00:10:04.460 --> 00:10:05.857 align:middle line:90% and philosophical rigor. 00:10:05.857 --> 00:10:07.190 align:middle line:90% They say, no, let's not do this. 00:10:07.190 --> 00:10:08.420 align:middle line:90% Really fight this. 00:10:08.420 --> 00:10:12.913 align:middle line:84% And let's-- why don't you write a great poem to fight all 00:10:12.913 --> 00:10:13.580 align:middle line:90% of these things. 00:10:13.580 --> 00:10:16.130 align:middle line:84% Even though it's a poem of the growth of his own mind, 00:10:16.130 --> 00:10:18.560 align:middle line:84% there's a historical context, and there's 00:10:18.560 --> 00:10:21.740 align:middle line:84% a social and philosophical mission 00:10:21.740 --> 00:10:23.960 align:middle line:90% that's underlying all of this. 00:10:23.960 --> 00:10:27.080 align:middle line:90% How is the long poem inspired? 00:10:27.080 --> 00:10:30.560 align:middle line:84% How do the personal and impersonal cultural interact 00:10:30.560 --> 00:10:31.190 align:middle line:90% in it? 00:10:31.190 --> 00:10:35.810 align:middle line:84% It is often stimulated by a personal realization, ambition, 00:10:35.810 --> 00:10:37.610 align:middle line:90% event, a given crisis. 00:10:37.610 --> 00:10:41.150 align:middle line:84% I can attest to two of the great professors 00:10:41.150 --> 00:10:44.420 align:middle line:84% here at the U of A, who've written long poems, 00:10:44.420 --> 00:10:47.000 align:middle line:84% I think with great anxiety, about the future 00:10:47.000 --> 00:10:48.260 align:middle line:90% of their daughter. 00:10:48.260 --> 00:10:48.760 align:middle line:90% Correct? 00:10:48.760 --> 00:10:50.180 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:10:50.180 --> 00:10:52.850 align:middle line:84% Anxiety about your children can make you write poetry. 00:10:52.850 --> 00:10:53.940 align:middle line:90% Long poetry. 00:10:53.940 --> 00:10:55.370 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:10:55.370 --> 00:10:59.240 align:middle line:84% And that's part of Tocqueville, is really 00:10:59.240 --> 00:11:00.380 align:middle line:90% anxiety about the future. 00:11:00.380 --> 00:11:02.840 align:middle line:84% Perhaps a more personal crisis, such as having 00:11:02.840 --> 00:11:06.530 align:middle line:84% a child, or a death, or a loved one, but one that requires one 00:11:06.530 --> 00:11:08.150 align:middle line:90% to look outwardly. 00:11:08.150 --> 00:11:11.180 align:middle line:84% For Wordsworth, he went on to show-- 00:11:11.180 --> 00:11:13.700 align:middle line:90% or see if he personally-- 00:11:13.700 --> 00:11:16.220 align:middle line:84% actually, he wanted to write "The Prelude" 00:11:16.220 --> 00:11:18.772 align:middle line:84% to see if he's fit to write poetry. 00:11:18.772 --> 00:11:20.480 align:middle line:84% I'm going to write a great poem because I 00:11:20.480 --> 00:11:22.970 align:middle line:84% want to know if I'm actually a good poet or not. 00:11:22.970 --> 00:11:24.650 align:middle line:90% He never published it. 00:11:24.650 --> 00:11:27.170 align:middle line:84% But in fact, it's almost like having an exercise 00:11:27.170 --> 00:11:30.050 align:middle line:90% gym to really, really work out. 00:11:30.050 --> 00:11:32.840 align:middle line:84% And then just go out and write a few literary poems. 00:11:32.840 --> 00:11:34.880 align:middle line:84% Nobody would know that he had this great gym 00:11:34.880 --> 00:11:39.380 align:middle line:90% and great coach in his house. 00:11:39.380 --> 00:11:42.363 align:middle line:84% But it is part of the poetic ambition 00:11:42.363 --> 00:11:44.780 align:middle line:84% throughout the [? long poem ?] and to address the subject. 00:11:44.780 --> 00:11:47.630 align:middle line:84% You take up the long poem to challenge yourself, 00:11:47.630 --> 00:11:50.150 align:middle line:84% and to show commitment to the ability to write poetry. 00:11:50.150 --> 00:11:52.070 align:middle line:90% But it is also impersonal. 00:11:52.070 --> 00:11:56.700 align:middle line:84% How did we get to be how we ended up being? 00:11:56.700 --> 00:12:01.080 align:middle line:84% How did I end up being who I am, but also an awareness 00:12:01.080 --> 00:12:02.820 align:middle line:90% of a collective experience. 00:12:02.820 --> 00:12:06.420 align:middle line:84% It's not written out of only personal memory, but also 00:12:06.420 --> 00:12:09.480 align:middle line:84% cultural memory, a term I found in the work 00:12:09.480 --> 00:12:13.630 align:middle line:84% of our friend, Eleanor Wilner, who, by the way, 00:12:13.630 --> 00:12:16.560 align:middle line:84% does not write long poems, as far as I know of her work. 00:12:16.560 --> 00:12:17.910 align:middle line:90% Here's what she said. 00:12:17.910 --> 00:12:19.170 align:middle line:90% "Cultural memory. 00:12:19.170 --> 00:12:22.320 align:middle line:84% I think I first encountered this formulation from the Russian 00:12:22.320 --> 00:12:25.980 align:middle line:84% poet Osip Mandelstam, who is reported as saying, 00:12:25.980 --> 00:12:29.070 align:middle line:84% 'I have no personal memory, only a cultural memory.' 00:12:29.070 --> 00:12:31.410 align:middle line:90% He meant as a poet, I assume. 00:12:31.410 --> 00:12:35.730 align:middle line:84% I remember reading this with an enormous sense of relief, 00:12:35.730 --> 00:12:38.080 align:middle line:84% as this was precisely my own experience. 00:12:38.080 --> 00:12:43.380 align:middle line:84% So much of the past cried out for utterance, especially all 00:12:43.380 --> 00:12:45.630 align:middle line:84% that had been silent or silenced. 00:12:45.630 --> 00:12:49.140 align:middle line:84% In order to validate my experience of poetic vision, 00:12:49.140 --> 00:12:53.430 align:middle line:84% and looking at new visions to understand their sources, 00:12:53.430 --> 00:12:56.400 align:middle line:84% I saw the way in which collective vision always 00:12:56.400 --> 00:13:01.350 align:middle line:84% began with a communal crisis and an individual, who, in essence, 00:13:01.350 --> 00:13:03.690 align:middle line:90% dreamed for the community." 00:13:03.690 --> 00:13:07.470 align:middle line:84% The poet, in my vision of working on the long poem, 00:13:07.470 --> 00:13:10.800 align:middle line:84% is an individual who dreamed for the community. 00:13:10.800 --> 00:13:12.990 align:middle line:84% And that's, in many ways, different. 00:13:12.990 --> 00:13:15.215 align:middle line:84% I think a lyric poet can dream for the community, 00:13:15.215 --> 00:13:16.680 align:middle line:90% as certainly she did. 00:13:16.680 --> 00:13:21.750 align:middle line:84% But I think, in some ways, the long poem is an assumption, 00:13:21.750 --> 00:13:24.330 align:middle line:84% is the poet assuming the role of a person 00:13:24.330 --> 00:13:26.640 align:middle line:84% who is dreaming for the community. 00:13:26.640 --> 00:13:30.660 align:middle line:84% A search for the magnitude of the crisis, and for one's 00:13:30.660 --> 00:13:32.700 align:middle line:90% position in the crisis. 00:13:32.700 --> 00:13:35.010 align:middle line:84% I think this awareness, while it does not necessarily 00:13:35.010 --> 00:13:37.410 align:middle line:84% lead to the creation of long poems, 00:13:37.410 --> 00:13:39.600 align:middle line:84% it is an engine of creation that is 00:13:39.600 --> 00:13:42.150 align:middle line:84% essential to enable the writer to write 00:13:42.150 --> 00:13:45.870 align:middle line:90% a poem of a large scope. 00:13:45.870 --> 00:13:50.430 align:middle line:84% There are two ideas I want to throw in here. 00:13:50.430 --> 00:13:52.950 align:middle line:84% Actually, two books that are useful. 00:13:52.950 --> 00:13:57.060 align:middle line:84% One is Peter Baker, Obdurate Brilliance: 00:13:57.060 --> 00:13:59.467 align:middle line:84% Exteriority and the Modern Long Poem. 00:13:59.467 --> 00:14:01.300 align:middle line:84% And I think it's a good book, even though it 00:14:01.300 --> 00:14:03.960 align:middle line:90% received some bad reviews. 00:14:03.960 --> 00:14:06.540 align:middle line:84% Baker argues the modern and postmodern poet, 00:14:06.540 --> 00:14:10.770 align:middle line:84% he turns outward, toward the experience of others, 00:14:10.770 --> 00:14:14.760 align:middle line:84% and deliberately emphasizes an inner or personal life. 00:14:14.760 --> 00:14:21.000 align:middle line:84% That happens to be more so in the longer poem. 00:14:21.000 --> 00:14:22.860 align:middle line:84% It seems to be that's what the long poem is, 00:14:22.860 --> 00:14:26.520 align:middle line:84% is not to write about oneself, but to assume other self, 00:14:26.520 --> 00:14:28.860 align:middle line:84% to exercise the limits of their selves, 00:14:28.860 --> 00:14:33.930 align:middle line:84% to also discuss the [? network ?] [? selves. ?] 00:14:33.930 --> 00:14:37.200 align:middle line:84% Deliberately turned the notion of the lyric speaker inside 00:14:37.200 --> 00:14:41.370 align:middle line:84% out, in order to establish a new kind of text production based 00:14:41.370 --> 00:14:42.900 align:middle line:90% on exteriority. 00:14:42.900 --> 00:14:46.350 align:middle line:84% Exteriority is a term that he takes from Levinas. 00:14:46.350 --> 00:14:49.590 align:middle line:84% And he adapts-- and it means or implies 00:14:49.590 --> 00:14:54.330 align:middle line:84% an ethical stance that is open to the address of the truly 00:14:54.330 --> 00:14:55.960 align:middle line:90% other. 00:14:55.960 --> 00:14:59.460 align:middle line:84% Exteriority is to position yourself 00:14:59.460 --> 00:15:03.180 align:middle line:84% in a way to take in the other in an attempt 00:15:03.180 --> 00:15:08.970 align:middle line:84% to resist normal speech habits, if you will, 00:15:08.970 --> 00:15:12.990 align:middle line:84% and normal discursive practices, and being 00:15:12.990 --> 00:15:18.810 align:middle line:84% able to undermine some social institutions 00:15:18.810 --> 00:15:26.220 align:middle line:84% and ideological structures that undermine our ability 00:15:26.220 --> 00:15:27.750 align:middle line:90% to connect with others. 00:15:27.750 --> 00:15:32.520 align:middle line:84% Meaning, you really want to bust through whatever the self is, 00:15:32.520 --> 00:15:35.310 align:middle line:84% and the long poem is a place where that happens. 00:15:35.310 --> 00:15:38.040 align:middle line:84% Baker, he breaks down the normal discourse 00:15:38.040 --> 00:15:40.588 align:middle line:84% in the traditional romantic identification of the poet 00:15:40.588 --> 00:15:42.630 align:middle line:84% speaker-- this is what happens in the long poem-- 00:15:42.630 --> 00:15:45.420 align:middle line:84% with the poet author leading awareness 00:15:45.420 --> 00:15:48.730 align:middle line:90% of the otherness of others. 00:15:48.730 --> 00:15:54.480 align:middle line:84% M.L. Rosenthal and Sally Gall discuss the poetic sequence, 00:15:54.480 --> 00:15:55.690 align:middle line:90% not so much the long poem. 00:15:55.690 --> 00:15:57.690 align:middle line:84% And they're saying, well, there's the long poem, 00:15:57.690 --> 00:16:00.090 align:middle line:84% but maybe it's really made up of sequences. 00:16:00.090 --> 00:16:05.070 align:middle line:84% And actually, Edgar Allan Poe, he talks about "Paradise Lost," 00:16:05.070 --> 00:16:06.400 align:middle line:90% it's not a poem. 00:16:06.400 --> 00:16:08.910 align:middle line:84% It's just a lot of really little bits and bits. 00:16:08.910 --> 00:16:11.917 align:middle line:84% Some of it is poetry, a lot of it is fluff. 00:16:11.917 --> 00:16:14.250 align:middle line:84% It should have been better if just the poetry by itself. 00:16:14.250 --> 00:16:16.050 align:middle line:90% This is what Poe thought. 00:16:16.050 --> 00:16:17.853 align:middle line:84% "The poetic sequence, then, has become"-- 00:16:17.853 --> 00:16:19.770 align:middle line:84% this is what they argue, that M.L. Rosenthal-- 00:16:19.770 --> 00:16:22.110 align:middle line:84% "The poetic sequence is the principal genre 00:16:22.110 --> 00:16:25.410 align:middle line:84% of modern poetry, the decisive form toward which 00:16:25.410 --> 00:16:27.180 align:middle line:90% modern poetry has tended." 00:16:27.180 --> 00:16:32.970 align:middle line:84% Meaning that the big changes, if you will, in modern poetry, 00:16:32.970 --> 00:16:35.740 align:middle line:84% did not come through the single poems, 00:16:35.740 --> 00:16:41.640 align:middle line:84% but they came with the longer poems. 00:16:41.640 --> 00:16:43.260 align:middle line:90% Maybe "Waste Land." 00:16:43.260 --> 00:16:44.970 align:middle line:84% "It is the long poem, or, really, 00:16:44.970 --> 00:16:48.360 align:middle line:84% sequence of poems, successions, interruptions, and collage, 00:16:48.360 --> 00:16:53.010 align:middle line:84% that has characterized modern poetry." 00:16:53.010 --> 00:16:56.490 align:middle line:84% But then the question is how long to sustain the intensity, 00:16:56.490 --> 00:16:58.170 align:middle line:90% a poetic intensity. 00:16:58.170 --> 00:17:01.860 align:middle line:84% And do you do it by juxtaposing this to this to this, 00:17:01.860 --> 00:17:07.230 align:middle line:84% or do you create a unity, necessarily, to create links, 00:17:07.230 --> 00:17:10.109 align:middle line:84% or have no links between the pieces. 00:17:10.109 --> 00:17:14.557 align:middle line:84% So not continuous narration, nor necessarily 00:17:14.557 --> 00:17:15.390 align:middle line:90% develop [INAUDIBLE]. 00:17:15.390 --> 00:17:19.710 align:middle line:84% Meaning that a poem is not one story, 00:17:19.710 --> 00:17:24.240 align:middle line:84% nor is it like an essay, time to argue a certain point. 00:17:24.240 --> 00:17:26.550 align:middle line:84% It is-- this is one definition they give-- 00:17:26.550 --> 00:17:31.590 align:middle line:84% a progression of specific qualities and intensities 00:17:31.590 --> 00:17:36.240 align:middle line:84% of emotionally- and sensually-charged awareness. 00:17:36.240 --> 00:17:38.440 align:middle line:90% A lot of multi-syllabic words. 00:17:38.440 --> 00:17:40.410 align:middle line:84% I'm going to say this until you memorize it. 00:17:40.410 --> 00:17:43.440 align:middle line:84% The long poem-- and they're really thinking about, maybe, 00:17:43.440 --> 00:17:47.400 align:middle line:84% "The Waste Land"-- a progression of specific qualities 00:17:47.400 --> 00:17:53.310 align:middle line:84% and intensities of emotionally- and sensually-charged 00:17:53.310 --> 00:17:54.000 align:middle line:90% awareness. 00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:58.170 align:middle line:84% A progression of specific qualities and intensities 00:17:58.170 --> 00:18:02.610 align:middle line:84% of emotionally- and sensually-charged awareness. 00:18:02.610 --> 00:18:04.170 align:middle line:90% Very dense. 00:18:04.170 --> 00:18:09.480 align:middle line:90% 00:18:09.480 --> 00:18:11.220 align:middle line:84% You and I talked about "The Waste Land," 00:18:11.220 --> 00:18:16.020 align:middle line:84% how it was the model for the long poem, 00:18:16.020 --> 00:18:20.530 align:middle line:84% and what the poet-- what poetry can do. 00:18:20.530 --> 00:18:25.170 align:middle line:84% Conrad Aiken describes "The Waste Land" 00:18:25.170 --> 00:18:30.430 align:middle line:84% as, "The poem must be taken as a brilliant kaleidoscopic 00:18:30.430 --> 00:18:35.340 align:middle line:84% confusion, as a series of sharp, discrete, slightly 00:18:35.340 --> 00:18:39.690 align:middle line:84% related perceptions and feelings, dramatically 00:18:39.690 --> 00:18:44.210 align:middle line:84% and lyrically presented, and violently juxtaposed, 00:18:44.210 --> 00:18:48.410 align:middle line:84% for effect of dissonance, so as to give us 00:18:48.410 --> 00:18:52.820 align:middle line:84% an impression of an intensely modern, intensely 00:18:52.820 --> 00:18:58.190 align:middle line:84% literary consciousness, which perceives itself to be not 00:18:58.190 --> 00:19:02.180 align:middle line:84% a unit, but a chance, correlation, 00:19:02.180 --> 00:19:08.300 align:middle line:84% or conglomeration of mutually discolorative fragments." 00:19:08.300 --> 00:19:09.710 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHING] 00:19:09.710 --> 00:19:14.775 align:middle line:84% Essentially, not a unit, but sequences of intense moments. 00:19:14.775 --> 00:19:16.400 align:middle line:84% You don't know what he's talking about. 00:19:16.400 --> 00:19:20.330 align:middle line:84% But you know it because you are watching 00:19:20.330 --> 00:19:23.210 align:middle line:84% a lot of things, video, a lot of stuff, 00:19:23.210 --> 00:19:27.710 align:middle line:84% and it is very intense and fragmented, 00:19:27.710 --> 00:19:30.200 align:middle line:90% and it is a presentation. 00:19:30.200 --> 00:19:34.910 align:middle line:84% You're watching a lot of short, precise, video jumps 00:19:34.910 --> 00:19:36.200 align:middle line:90% from one thing to another. 00:19:36.200 --> 00:19:40.610 align:middle line:84% I used to notice this in music videos when MTV came out, 00:19:40.610 --> 00:19:44.390 align:middle line:84% long before you guys were even born, some of you. 00:19:44.390 --> 00:19:46.010 align:middle line:90% It's very sharp cuts. 00:19:46.010 --> 00:19:47.683 align:middle line:90% Bum-ba-duh-duh-duh. 00:19:47.683 --> 00:19:49.100 align:middle line:84% The music is keeping you together. 00:19:49.100 --> 00:19:50.730 align:middle line:84% You're really listening for the music, 00:19:50.730 --> 00:19:51.772 align:middle line:90% but you're also watching. 00:19:51.772 --> 00:19:55.910 align:middle line:84% But the story emerges, or you fill in the story. 00:19:55.910 --> 00:20:00.500 align:middle line:84% Well, MTV, with music videos, they didn't invent the wheel. 00:20:00.500 --> 00:20:04.250 align:middle line:84% They benefited from this whole modernist practice. 00:20:04.250 --> 00:20:08.060 align:middle line:84% While Eliot was doing this, Sergei Eisenstein 00:20:08.060 --> 00:20:10.700 align:middle line:84% discovered that you don't need to put a camera in front 00:20:10.700 --> 00:20:12.830 align:middle line:90% of a drama and [INAUDIBLE]. 00:20:12.830 --> 00:20:16.670 align:middle line:84% The camera is actually this roll, 00:20:16.670 --> 00:20:22.400 align:middle line:84% and you can cut, and slice, and move the camera close. 00:20:22.400 --> 00:20:25.940 align:middle line:84% And he discovered that the work of cinema 00:20:25.940 --> 00:20:29.900 align:middle line:84% is not the linear continuity of the story, 00:20:29.900 --> 00:20:35.210 align:middle line:84% but it is the intensifying of the emotions in the story. 00:20:35.210 --> 00:20:38.790 align:middle line:84% Even though time and stories do not move, 00:20:38.790 --> 00:20:42.650 align:middle line:84% you can still intensify the experiences 00:20:42.650 --> 00:20:47.120 align:middle line:84% by the intensities of the images you are presented. 00:20:47.120 --> 00:20:50.990 align:middle line:84% All of that stuff was funneled and made much easier 00:20:50.990 --> 00:20:55.940 align:middle line:90% to appreciate. 00:20:55.940 --> 00:20:59.060 align:middle line:90% After Eisenstein, they recycle. 00:20:59.060 --> 00:21:02.300 align:middle line:90% Psycho, the blood on the water. 00:21:02.300 --> 00:21:04.640 align:middle line:84% There's no-- do you see a knife in Psycho? 00:21:04.640 --> 00:21:06.470 align:middle line:84% You don't see the knife going into her, 00:21:06.470 --> 00:21:11.420 align:middle line:84% and there's that [KNIFE STABBING SOUND EFFECTS] 00:21:11.420 --> 00:21:14.030 align:middle line:90% Intensity, there's not-- 00:21:14.030 --> 00:21:16.850 align:middle line:90% you could take that out, and-- 00:21:16.850 --> 00:21:19.520 align:middle line:84% there's the readiness for the story. 00:21:19.520 --> 00:21:20.580 align:middle line:90% It is within the context. 00:21:20.580 --> 00:21:23.270 align:middle line:84% But if you take that sequence out by itself, 00:21:23.270 --> 00:21:28.490 align:middle line:84% it's an intensity that is reliant, not so much 00:21:28.490 --> 00:21:31.350 align:middle line:84% on what had come before, what it comes after, 00:21:31.350 --> 00:21:34.910 align:middle line:84% but of the intense emotions that are presented by each image, 00:21:34.910 --> 00:21:39.740 align:middle line:84% and by the way the images collide into each other. 00:21:39.740 --> 00:21:42.170 align:middle line:84% As soon as one is settled in, another one pushes out, 00:21:42.170 --> 00:21:45.170 align:middle line:84% almost claims a different kind of emotion. 00:21:45.170 --> 00:21:50.870 align:middle line:84% It's these sharp turns of emotion that-- 00:21:50.870 --> 00:21:55.090 align:middle line:84% If you think of these water slides, where you go up. 00:21:55.090 --> 00:22:00.560 align:middle line:84% But imagine one that's really awful, that's really scary. 00:22:00.560 --> 00:22:02.500 align:middle line:84% Imagine it's from a really high mountain, 00:22:02.500 --> 00:22:04.340 align:middle line:84% and it's going to spin you, and so on. 00:22:04.340 --> 00:22:08.210 align:middle line:84% So in a sense, it's that vertigo, 00:22:08.210 --> 00:22:11.690 align:middle line:84% to use another Hitchcockian term, where 00:22:11.690 --> 00:22:16.670 align:middle line:84% it is in many intense emotions, but the story 00:22:16.670 --> 00:22:20.420 align:middle line:84% is not necessarily the part that's 00:22:20.420 --> 00:22:21.830 align:middle line:90% causing you that emotion. 00:22:21.830 --> 00:22:23.705 align:middle line:84% It's this presentation of images. 00:22:23.705 --> 00:22:27.020 align:middle line:90% 00:22:27.020 --> 00:22:27.950 align:middle line:90% What else? 00:22:27.950 --> 00:22:28.940 align:middle line:90% We leave Conrad Aiken. 00:22:28.940 --> 00:22:30.560 align:middle line:90% He's really multi-syllabic. 00:22:30.560 --> 00:22:42.560 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] And finally, this is what Rosenfeld and Gall say. 00:22:42.560 --> 00:22:46.940 align:middle line:84% "Any lyrically-informed work of some length and substance 00:22:46.940 --> 00:22:53.510 align:middle line:84% is, fundamentally, a chaos of intimate notations and scenes, 00:22:53.510 --> 00:22:58.520 align:middle line:84% brought together in a tangle of small effects." 00:22:58.520 --> 00:23:03.570 align:middle line:84% It's a chaos of scenes, but each one of them has a, maybe, 00:23:03.570 --> 00:23:06.110 align:middle line:90% diverse effect. 00:23:06.110 --> 00:23:13.430 align:middle line:84% It's a multiplicity of intense divergent emotions. 00:23:13.430 --> 00:23:20.540 align:middle line:84% "At the same time, however, it is magnetized into structure 00:23:20.540 --> 00:23:24.050 align:middle line:84% by its points of highest intensity, 00:23:24.050 --> 00:23:28.460 align:middle line:84% and by its ordering in time, the literal succession 00:23:28.460 --> 00:23:29.420 align:middle line:90% of its tonalities." 00:23:29.420 --> 00:23:33.320 align:middle line:84% Meaning, there's a lot of manipulation going on. 00:23:33.320 --> 00:23:37.070 align:middle line:84% That things are ordered in such a way as to create lulls, 00:23:37.070 --> 00:23:40.160 align:middle line:84% as to present things that you will 00:23:40.160 --> 00:23:43.160 align:middle line:84% feel that you are in a different place, or moving from one thing 00:23:43.160 --> 00:23:44.280 align:middle line:90% to another. 00:23:44.280 --> 00:23:47.460 align:middle line:84% The movement is not a continuous movement 00:23:47.460 --> 00:23:49.360 align:middle line:90% along a certain narrative. 00:23:49.360 --> 00:23:53.670 align:middle line:84% It is a sense of displacement, but also 00:23:53.670 --> 00:23:55.990 align:middle line:90% awareness that you have moved. 00:23:55.990 --> 00:23:57.990 align:middle line:84% Suddenly you find yourself in a different place. 00:23:57.990 --> 00:23:59.850 align:middle line:84% You are not in a different chapter, 00:23:59.850 --> 00:24:03.510 align:middle line:84% but you're clearly in a different mode 00:24:03.510 --> 00:24:05.280 align:middle line:90% of thinking and feeling. 00:24:05.280 --> 00:24:11.100 align:middle line:84% And your emotional memory becomes the story. 00:24:11.100 --> 00:24:13.980 align:middle line:84% I was feeling this and addressing these thoughts when 00:24:13.980 --> 00:24:16.380 align:middle line:90% I was here, and now I've moved. 00:24:16.380 --> 00:24:24.210 align:middle line:84% And your ability to negotiate these gaps and these jumps 00:24:24.210 --> 00:24:28.080 align:middle line:90% is your work, it becomes-- 00:24:28.080 --> 00:24:31.260 align:middle line:84% The reading of the text becomes the history of your own change 00:24:31.260 --> 00:24:33.450 align:middle line:90% and changing emotions. 00:24:33.450 --> 00:24:36.540 align:middle line:84% It is you as, if you will, the reader, 00:24:36.540 --> 00:24:39.360 align:middle line:84% and the perceiver, that are creating. 00:24:39.360 --> 00:24:42.210 align:middle line:84% It's the history of your responses to these changes, 00:24:42.210 --> 00:24:46.440 align:middle line:84% rather than necessarily what you're being told and offered. 00:24:46.440 --> 00:24:47.880 align:middle line:90% It's not put in your mouth. 00:24:47.880 --> 00:24:50.090 align:middle line:90% You pick it up. 00:24:50.090 --> 00:24:52.000 align:middle line:90%