For me, the delicious paradox is that the immeasurable
takes place in measures in poetry, or in music,
or is released by them.
It's the paradoxical conjunction of those two
that makes the delight.
And of course, the challenge is every bit
as exacting to translators as to other literary designers.
When you consider Su Tung-p'o's suspense of swing there,
why is it placed last of all in the poem?
Why does something so apparently incidental
take on the powers of that terminal position?
Can it bear the weight?
Actually the positions themselves
of last words in lines, last lines in stanzas,
and last stanzas in poems, that position
itself confers enormous power on the word that occupies it.
If the words you place in the echo chamber of white space
are weak, they resonate the louder.
They'll be all the more conspicuously weak.
If strong or suggestive, they resonate them more powerfully.
Now that swing in the Su Tung-p'o poem,
the motionless in the image, in the English language is full
of latent action.
I felt really lucky, as a translator, that that was true.
That the verb and the noun are the same word.
So, in some ways, in the word is that latent motion.
And the poise, the equipoise of those chords by which it hangs,
is the poise of the bicameral mind from which everything
hangs in the balance, or by which everything
is hung in the balance, if you see
the artist working that way.
Equipoise is a kind of evidence of equanimity.
One feels an equanimity in Su Tung-p'o that's to be
cherished.
And you know that equipoise comes from a word
meaning weighted on two sides.
So, balance is of course written into that, and weight, gravity.
That swing, for me, is the incarnation
of all these effects.
They're ineffable, really, in a way, in the poem.
But one feels their heft.
One feels the shapeliness of mind.
Most people separate out those two terms,
think of body as shapely and mind as shapeless.
For me, the whole joy of poetic engagement
is the shapeliness of mind and the sensuality of thinking.
The chords of that swing also are not
unrelated to the chords with an age
of vocal material, human vocal material, that
drifts from an upstairs room.
And that too bears some motion and emotion.
Because it's the other place where
we imagine the human being to dwell in the poem,
those two places.
The swing-- though there's a gardener behind the garden,
it's not until the swing is placed there
that the human figure is so palpably invited in.
The swing is made precisely for that form.
And it's in the interests of that human figure--
in the interests of its sheer joy
that the swing invites engagement, motion
for its own sake, by the way.
What do you go to a swing for?
Not out of ambition, not to get somewhere,
you move to stay in place.
You move to feel the forces.
It's almost an intellectual pleasure.
But it's written in bodily motion.
It's without destination in the way
that all other kinds of motions seem slave to.
And there's something wonderful about that,
for me, too in this poem.
It tells a lot about the arts at work,
of not only gardeners, and swing makers,
and music makers in upstairs rooms, but poem makers.
Because of all these effects, and because of the way
a poem sits on the page, one senses that the bounds--
a poem binds itself.
It willingly binds itself the way
a swing does in order to take advantage
of that feeling of escape.
And you have the sense with these bounds,
just visually on the page, that the bounds are
on the verge of boundlessness.
The ends are on the verge of endlessness.
Because that space abuts and presses in around the poem.
And it's no accident that it's there.
And it is an advertency, not an inadvertency, as in prose,
where the right margin is determined by the printer,
or by accident.
The breakings off of language are the loudest thing
a lineated poem has to say.
So to illustrate a little the forces of a poem's breaks
and ends, and the careful withholding
of certain revelations for those positions,
they're withheld in order to be revealed.
Then, I thought it would be fun to look at a few pieces that
conspicuously deploy these powers and potentialities.
I'm going to look at the Anthony Hecht poem, "Birdwatchers
of America" first.
Keep in mind while I'm reading this one,
and while you're reading it, of course
that the art of composition requires
some psychological savvy.
One is administering one's words not just on a blank slate,
despite all I've said about this space
that presses in, it does indeed.
But one walks into a poem, one comes into a poem,
into the world of a poem, not with an empty head,
an empty sense of language.
Actually, the poem is inscribed against
the noisy, hackneyed field of every reader's habits of mind,
presumptions, expectations, standard patterns of thought
or phrasing that crop up in your mind sometimes
when you read a poem.
And then it has to dissuade you of that notion,
or a good poem will.
Against this field of conceptual and neural knee jerks,
of cliches and common places that we-- even
the most sophisticated reader brings to a poem.
It's a kind of baggage every reader
brings to the poem's journey.
Even the writer brings it to the poem,
and has to chasten himself in the act of writing.
Because language lays itself down ordinarily.
In general, language lays itself down in common places.
It's looking for common places.
It wants to communicate with others
in ways that are flexible enough that narrow down
so neither participant in the conversation
will mistake what the other wanted to get or do.
But a poem isn't destination-oriented
that same way.
It's not the stick the monkey uses to get the banana.
I so much want to add another step to this figure,
but I better not because it'll narrow it.
One isn't sure whether it's the banana, the monkey, the eating,
the taking off of the skin.
It's none of those, or the digestion, who knows.
But there is something in the eating that
has to do with it, for sure, and the discoveries you make
say, of flavor, while eating.
The figure lends itself a little to culinary, or at least
gustatory, delights.
Poetry has to labor to resist, or revise,
all those common places that language itself
brings in your mind to the occasions of language.
So it's a self-resisting activity in many ways.
A canny poet will even prompt some misprisions
and waylayings, will actually cause
you to think a certain thing at the end of the line
in order to revise your thinking at the beginning
of the next line.
In order to exercise the power of the verse, which
its name comes from turns, the turning,
it will change your mind.
It's out to change your mind.
So let me read "Birdwatchers of America" for sheer pleasure
with you.
This one presents itself as an argument.
And it has the earmarks of an argument.
Each stanza, there's a little jockeying
to do between the second and third,
but each stanza presents a different portion
of the argument.
So you'll see the sort of earmark words of argumentation.
"It's all very well to dream--" let me
start where I should start.
"Birdwatchers of America" and there is an epigraph.
So the very first turn-- surprise turn,
and surprise that's built in, to continue what I was referring
to before, is that "Birdwatchers of America",
as a title for a poem, smacks of comedy.
You expect a fairly lightweight poem.
You don't expect a philosophical treatise.
But you immediately-- the epigraph revises that notion.
It darkens the field considerably.
And then there's yet another turn in the course of the poem
by which you are gradually relieved
of that sense of darkness, in order that something
can be sprung on you.
"Birdwatchers of America", and then there's
this epigraph from Baudelaire.
"I suffer now continually from vertigo.
And today, 23rd of January 1862, I received a singular warning.
I felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me."
This is in the middle of a journal
where he's talking about not having enough money,
going to get groceries, trouble with his mother, and then, pow.
You get this little notation on January 23rd.
It's pretty amazing in itself, as a turn within the medium
of the journal named for days.
And here, quite odd to have it come after "Birdwatchers
of America."
How are we to weigh these two emphases, the light
and the dark?
And then we go on into this argumentation
that we think relieves us of having
to decide about the darkness and lightness.
The argumentation is going to make the point case for us.
So we enter into the poem to be convinced by argumentation.
"It's all very well to dream of a dove that saves."
Notice I'll just want to read the structure--
the three-part, tripartite structure,
quickly so that it helps organize your reading since you
haven't had time to look it over.
"It's all very well to dream of a dove that saves.
But in our part of the country, a false dusk lingers for hours.
There are some things of which we seldom talk, for instance."
Now, all of that is hung off of, is dependent from,
"it's all very well to dream of a dove that saves."
"It's all very well to dream of a dove that
saves Picassos or the popes."
Right?
Arts or religions, keep in mind, these
are sort of stand-ins for the larger thinking here.
"It's all very well to dream of a dove that
saves Picassos or the popes, the one that
annually coos in our lady's ear half the world's hopes.
And the other one that shall cunningly
engineer the retirement of all business men to their graves,
and when this is brought about, make us the loving brothers
of every lout.
But in our part of the country, a false dusk lingers for hours.
It steams from the soaked hay, wades in the cloudy woods
engendering other dreams.
Formless and soft beyond the fence
it broods, or rises as a faint and rotten musk
out of a broken stalk.
There are some things of which we seldom talk.
For instance, the woman next door, whom we hear at night,
claims that when she was small she
found a man stone dead near the cedar trees
after the first snowfall.
The air was clear.
He seemed in ultimate peace, except he
had no eyes, rigid and bright upon the forehead,
furred with a light frost, crouched an outrageous bird."
Now you see how judiciously, one might even say maliciously,
he withholds that last word.
And there were indications that things might go dark.
But we had left them behind.
And immediately before this darkest last moment
in the poem, "the air is clear, he seems in ultimate peace",
this is the language of the first stanza, the idealist's
stanza, right?
Dreaming of the dove that saves, it's
the world where things turn out all right.
Nature is a nice walk at the butterfly garden,
that world of protected--
it's the world of optimists, the world of high spirits,
and brighter readings of lives.
But this poem is humming back to the other bird.
And it was doing that from that first line,
"it's all very well to dream of the dove that saves."
But there is this outrageous bird that crouches,
which is necessarily some raven like thing, in all that
that suggests.
And makes the eyes very literal.
Before we had even neglected to truly take to heart that he
had no eyes, because he's lying in a snowscape,
you tell yourself all kinds of things.
His eyes are closed.
There's snow.
He's dead, but he's peaceful.
He's in peace.
Rest in peace.
And it's true that the bird isn't pecking out
a live man's eyes.
So you may still console yourself if you wish.
But few readers fail to find this horrifying.
He's designed it that way to remind you
of the other half of the reading, the dark face
of the moon.
And again it's equipoise, right?
There is that in us, there is that wish in us, especially
in Americans, in Disney Worldiana, that wishes only
to have the light story, that tells itself--
that makes of every story, religious stories, every kind
of story, a happy ending story.
This is the response of the realist, too,
while being an exquisite describer of nature,
appreciator of nature, in the old sense of
appreciate that you actually figure out its values.
Look at that middle stanza, where
all the lyricism of the poem is is in the half lights section.
You notice how exquisite he is at feeling his way around dusk,
false dusk, lingering, not arriving or departing,
steaming from soaked hay, wading in cloudy woods,
engendering other dreams than the dream of the dove
that saves.
He doesn't repeat it so you can pass right over it.
But he's giving you all the markers of the destiny,
of the illustration.
But we don't want to hear it.
One tends to glide over it.
And besides, a story is being told.
And not only that, one's always taken by the hand
through a story.
One doesn't have to do too much thinking.
One will be led.
And not only that, here there's a story within a story.
There's this woman who suddenly-- he moves to--
there's, as I say, this gorgeous writing,
"formless and soft beyond the fence it broods."
He reminds you of the bird, right,
by using a word like brood, which works two ways.
Or "rises as a faint and rotten musk out of a broken stalk."
And then, here's the next turn in the poem.
"There are some things of which we seldom talk."
And then, what I find a quite hilarious line,
"for instance, the woman next door whom we hear at night",
comma.
It's amazing how in English, that tells us volumes.
He doesn't have to go on and explain,
we already know she's nuts.
And there the wind of the wing of madness
comes back, but just as a whiff, just
as "a musk out of a broken stock."
Just a whiff of it comes back, because we
know that locution in English, in American English.
I don't know quite how it is.
But when you read "whom we hear at night",
we know there's a nutcase reading subtext there,
to a certain extent.
I don't want to weigh too heavily on this.
But it's also funny because "we seldom talk--
things of which we seldom talk.
For instance, the woman next door
whom we hear at night", and clearly she's
talking alone over there.
"Claims."
And then she tells a story.
We turn that line break.
And all of our presumptions about her talking alone
over there turn, and she's kind of a neighbor telling a story.
And now we go into the little story she tells.
"Claims that when she was small, she found",
and we go into that story.
And we're not-- you definitely don't think about last things
at that moment.
Because she's small, because she's telling a story,
it's a story within a story.
We feel very insulated.
Stories are the way we insulate ourselves a lot of the time.
And that's the difference between escapist stories
and art.
You can't insulate yourself from great art, or in great art.
It's not about a forgetfulness, except to the extent
that your own will can sink you.
In a way, this one negotiates a forgetfulness.
And so she was small, she found a man stone
dead, but very matter of fact.
And there's cedar trees, and a snowfall, and the air is clear,
and he's in ultimate peace.
We're totally sedated by then.
And even though he had no eyes, we explain it away.
And "rigid and bright" sounds--
rigid's a little uneasy, makes you a little uneasy,
but you're not quite thinking rigor mortis because bright
comes immediately.
"Upon the forehead furred", fur is good, right?
A light for us.
And then he hits you.
I just love that the malicious judiciousness of it.
There's something so designing and so walloping
about that kind of design and withholding.
It's instructive to me, who am a gusher
by nature, which is why I write poems to chase in my worst
nature, to be the better soul, or at least to make
some kind of counterweight to my disposition
to go gushing around the world.