TextSpace

On Julia Kristeva’s “the Ethics of Linguistics”

I am always amazed by the fact that language seems to be the only means we have in order to support the optimistic claim that “no one is an island.” However, the very means we rely upon creates problems, such as representation and interpretation, from which language scholarships derive.

I just want to continue what we discussed in class about the “teachablility” and “accessibility” of poetry. Are “reader-friendly” poems which address universal themes always good for students who are capable of independent thinking?

Reading Adrienne Rich’s “Blood, Bread, and Poetry: The Location of the Poet” subverts my previous, naïve understanding about poetry and literature. For this essay challenges and confronts ideologies that have been celebrated among romanists and idealists, such as “art for art’s sake,” “universality” and “transcendence.” I was so trapped in the notion that poetry was composed of themes that elevate the mind, and of rhythm and sound that pleases ears. Rich gives me an urgent wake-up call that poetry has its significant in cultural, political and social dimension; at least, a good poet would not fail to articulate what grounds her/his works and to build a “dialogue between art and politics” (507). Also, she is suggesting that the existence of poetry serves not only for sensory pleasure, but also for social justice: “a poet-one who was apparently certified-could actually write about political themes, could weave the names of into a poem” (507). In other words, a good poet takes a role of political and social activists. Writers, such as Wollstonecraft, challenge the male-dominance social order in the 18th century. I sense that Rich echoes what Forrest-Thomson articulates—poetry’s forces of “subversion” and “reinvention.”

I pay attention to Mcgann’s illustration of how Morris’s poems integrate the “poem” and its “performative medium.” When I was reading a passage about Morris’s intention that “no distinction should be permitted between the concept of the poem and the concept of the text,” I was thinking that it was very difficult. For readers have to experience rhetorical articulations in the text (dictions, rhythm, sound, for instance) in order to filter meanings into the poem that constructs the concept of the poem. In Forrest-Thompson’s words, a poet should know how to “control the meanings and feelings generated by the words” the poet uses (PT 458). Reading William Morris’s poems for the first time, I sense that the poet makes much efforts in inviting readers to the world he invents and in supplementing the phenomenology of reading that directs, controls, or evokes readers’ feelings in the process of reading. As McGann highlights in his analyses in Morris’s “Gold Wings,” the arrangements of Morris’s poems tend to start from the remote world (“ancient castle”) and then gradually _slips into_ the intimate mental state that connects readers to the poem (lovers’ “emblematic condition”). Ummm… I find that this is quite common in poetry and in literature so that I don’t know why McGann feels so much enthusiastic toward Morris’s poem in this respect.......

Well, Jarrell’s essay does outline romantic characteristics of modern poetry in terms of its form and content, and in relation to poets and their society. However, I resist Jarrell’s “generalization” of modernist and romantic poetry, though I don’t think that he attacks either modern or romantic poetry (which he worries his readers’ distaste). Such a brief overview of modern poetry seems to contradict the very characteristic of modern poetry Jarrell raises in this essay, namely, “difference.” For instance, Jarrell draws the link of “solitary individuality” between modern and romantic poetry, and poets’ tendency of turning toward “anything collective” (274). I think Jarrell is right in the respect that modernist poets “dislike” their society; however, they are not “unconcern” with their society. Otherwise, their fragmented language would not resemble so much to the chaotic social order in modern time.

I don’t have much criticism of Jarrell’s ideas, just unsatisfied with his “methodology.” For me, it is far more valid to illustrate how poetry reflects or responds to the contemporary social, economic, political, global situation, than to argue why modernist poetry is an “extension,” not a “revolution” of romantic poetry. I think that it is easily recognized that the “spirit” of the time distinguishes romantic poetry from modernist poetry. Accumulated from the liberating energy of French revolution, the former celebrates poetry’ unifying power between the past and the present. Contrastingly, the latter is burdened with the unredeemable past, and characterized as nostalgia and mourning of the chaotic post-war situation. From these, what unites romantic and modernist poetry is the mirroring between life and art (poetry).

So far we have experienced the performability of sound poetry. I recognize sound devises of poetry prevail in our daily languages. The sentences we utter may by chance rhyme or fit into the sound pattern of iambic pentameter. However, what makes poetry poetry? I don’t think that poetry can distinguish itself simply because most of the language used in poetry is socially constructed. I would not understand English poetry a bit, if I had not learned English. Haven’t acquainted myself with cultural scenes in America sometimes interferes my understanding of American poetry. These might be what Forrest-Thomson refers to “non-verbal context”: “a world of emotions, objects, and state of affairs” or “the external contexts of references in which it [a poem] found itself momentarily merged” (457-58). I think it is very difficult to engage our readings of poetry in “context” of these kinds. For readers (not even authors themselves, I suppose), how is it possible to stand in the river of the past twice and regain the momentary emotional intensity when the text was first created? But I don’t think that she advocates to objectify history or to find an “authentic” context for poetry reading. For one thing, she has this challenge in mind by criticizing Marxism as “the self-justifying ideological structures which produce a social class’s ‘objective reality’” (463). For another, her essay (even though it entitles “continuity in language”) might be not so much about the “continuity” but the “discontinuity” in poetic language.

“The knowledge of both the poet and the reader of poetry is a kind of mastery, an ability to see how a use of language filters external contexts into the poem and subjects them to new distancing and articulation” (459). What distinguishes poetic language from ordinary language might be the “actions” indicated in this passage. The verb, “filter,” addresses the process of selecting meanings from references or contexts. The phrase, “new distancing and articulation, suggests a goal of poetry is neither seeking for a conventional way of expression (“articulation”), nor treating socially constructed “reality” as a given without any transcendence or “meditation” (462). I favor this view that poetic discourse must contain forces of “subversion” and “reinvention” (463) but through the same "channel" as ordinary language.

In Antony Easthope’s Poetry as Discourse, Romantic poetry introduces a new discourse that unites the internal (the narrator’s mental state) and the external (landscapes), subject of the enunciation (language) and subject of the enounced (poet’s “presence” and “experience” in nature). In other words, Romantic poetry generally invites readers to participate in the processes of meaning-making as the “subject of the enounced” (132), and to identify with poets’ saturation in nature.

Deriving from experience or “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” Romantic poetry seems to be a reader-friendly literary genre because readers don’t feel excluded from complex “pun” or, as often seen in poetry in the Renaissance. Language is merely the “material process of enunciation” (124) and readers transform themselves into “the subject of the enounced” in replace of the poet’s role. However, I argue that reading Romantic poetry is risky if readers’ indulgence in poems is not “momentarily.” To be more precise, Romantic poetry is “seducing” because it demonstrates a mirroring formula that unites the internal and the external, man and nature. But how about the disjunctions between linguistic articulation and the experience? In the mergence of subjectivity with objectivity, there are fundamental disjunctions (or in Lacan's term, "misrecognition")that escape from linguistic articulation.

Antony Easthope in this book suggests his readers to treat and understand poetry “as a form of discourse." While defining language and discourse, he suggests his idea of discourse. According to him, “[l]inguistics, the science which takes language as its object, can show how an utterance takes its place in the system of language at levels up to and including the sentence. It cannot show how and why one sentence connects with another into a cohesive whole: this is a matter of discourse.”(p.8) Then he goes on to elucidate his point by alluding to the 18th century concept of syntax, sentence and a group of well-knit sentences-discourse. He also cites a Shakespearean sonnet to show how four sentences in this sonnet form cohesion which in turn transforms them into discourse.After a lengthy and eloborate explaination, he finally gives his definition of "discourse". "Discourse, then, is a term which specifies the way that sentences form a consecutive order, take part in a whole which is homogeneous as well as heterogeneous. And just as sentences join together in discourse to make up an individual text, so texts themselves join others in a larger discourse." With this definition in mind, I try to follow him through the labarynth of different critical theories of Saussure, Lakan,Marx, Jacobson, and Freud,but by the end of Chapter 4, I found myself dazed and confused. When I recollected what I have read in tranquility and pensive mood, I find myself tilting towards Mr Easthope’s idea, “..however much a poem claims to be the property of a speaker represented in it, the poem finally belongs to the reader producing it in a reading.” After these chapters, I have a feeling that I have almost come to the verge of post modernism. We have left behind the conventional conceptions of poetry cherished by both American and British critics.Now my idea of poetry is, to a great extent, in unison with Easthope’s idea of poetry as discourse“which is cohesive and determined simultaneously in three respects: materially, ideologically, subjectively.”

On Amy Lowell’s Poetry as a Spoken Art

Lowell asserts that poetry suffers the most, among arts, from printing. Indeed, with the emerging of printing, ears becomes less trained than eyes. Lowell intends to “restore the audible quality to poetry” by reading poems out loud to feel their “beat” (rhythm schemes) as way to cultivate our ears or “auditory imagination” (74). Lowell’s defend for poetry as a spoken art is understandable because sound effects (“onomatopoeia”) control the making of meanings in some poems. For example, how do we make sense of the poem and its regularity we read last week (alteration), if it was not being read?

However, I am NOT convinced by Lowell’s arguments especially about reading poetry in a proper manner (neither too plainly nor too dramatically): “when a rhythm is to be merely indicated, and when it is to be actively stressed?” (73) Surprisingly, her answer is “experience.” In other words, readers need to familiarize themselves with a poet’ intent, recurring themes in his/her poems and “knowledge of an author’s methods” (73). Lowell might think that readers cannot “read” poetry properly unless they know what it means. How is this workable? Doesn’t the “reading” of poetry (out loud) introduce the meaning in the first place?! Or is what Lowell means a recursive process of poetry reading? Also, how do we sound an “image” without the interference of visual image?

Hi there,

In the following are the updated questions Kamal and I raised for our presentation on Robert Duncan's poem, "poetry, a natural thing." Please spare a minute to read through. However, we might not cover them all in our discussion for the time constraince. Comments are welcomed! For visual images and references to this poem, please visit Wiki at http://sherwoodweb.org/wiki/index.php/Poetry%2C_as_Natural_Thing

Questions:

1. Robert Duncan’s poem is about poetry. Can you see some differences in his conception of poetry and that of Brooks?

Here are some definitions of poetry from the different periods of 20th century. According to the famous poetry critic Helen Vendler,“In the code language of criticism when a poem is said to be about poetry the word "poetry" is ften used to mean: how people construct an intelligibility out of the randomness they experience; how people choose what they love; how people integrate loss and gain; how they distort experience by wish and dream; how they perceive and consolidate flashes of harmony; how they (to end a list otherwise endless) achieve what Keats called a "Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity." Charles Olson in his seminal essay, Projective Verse, which has become almost de facto manifesto for the Black Mountain Poets (Robert Duncan is one of them.) calls for a poetry of "open field" composition to replace traditional closed poetic forms with an improvised form that should reflect exactly the content of the poem. This form was to be based on the line, and each line was to be a unit of breath and of utterance. The content was to consist of "one perception immediately and directly (leading) to a further perception". Poetry, according to, Archibald MacLeish“A poem should not mean/ But be.”

2. “…a call we heard and answer/ in the lateness of the world/ primordial bellowings/ from which the youngest world might spring,”Do you think this is the reviveration of T.S. Elliot’s “Tradition and Individual talent”?

3. Do you find the elements of Romantic poetry in Duncan’s poem?(particularly that of Wordsworth.)

4. In comparison to the rhetorical articulation in the first half, the second half of the poem is mainly constructed by two “natural” images—salmon and moose. How does the second half echo“poetic actions,” described in the first half, such as “leaping” and “bellowings”?

5. "a little heavy, a little contrived." Accordingly, this line is drawn from John Crowe Ransom's rejection letter to Robert Duncan(Mark Andrew Johnson's Robert Duncan 70). New Critics, such as Random and Brooks, often demonstrate a close reading, looking for "irony," "paradox" and "ambiguity" in poems. How does Duncan response to the demands of New Critics in this poem? In other words, why does this poem end with a rather simple line--"all moose"?

6. In our last class we learned Brook’s resistance against paraphrasing poetry and the guest professor’s dramatic demonstration of reading “conflicts” and “turning points” in poems. Influenced by Robert Browning’s literary technique of “dramatic monologue,” Duncan’s poetry is not merely a "flat" text, but involved tensions, conflicts and interactions. Could you specify these aspects on the second half the poem?

Dear all,

Here are questions about intertextuality. Please feel free to comment.

1.How do you understand the “synonymous” relationship between textuality and intertextuality? (Princeton 142) In other words, how does intertextuality come into the play of textuality or vise versa? Let's have an in-class exercise!

2.Could you tie the discussion of “intertextuality” to “onomatopoeia” and “iconicity” in poetry?

3.(We might not go though this unless we have time)
The main feature of “Intertextuality” is the infiniteness of interpretation and the loss of self-sufficiency and authority in texts (141). Do you view such trend as a crisis of authorized meanings or as a positive interaction across disciplines?

Dear all,

I am posting discussion questions on behalf of Kamal. Please spare some time and think about these issues.

C. Brooks' Well Wrought Urn is a study of poetry from Formalist point of view. The issues that he raises or discusses may not clique the mind of 21st century readers. However, one can not completely ignore or overlook them. Some of the issues and problems are still relevant even now.

Here are some points and questions that I would like to put forth for discussion.
1. Brooks says, "The language of poetry is the language of paradox.”Do you agree with him?

2. As Brooks remarks,“apparently the truth which the poet utters be approached only in terms of paradox”, but we can not comprehend poetry because we have a wrong notion of paradox for“Our prejudices force us to regard paradox as intellectual rather than emotional, clever rather than profound, rational rather than divinely irrational.”To prove his point, Brooks discusses at length Donne’s“Cannonization”,Wordsworth’s Immortality Ode and Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn. What is your opinion?

Hi there,

For my presentation on T. S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” I am posting a brief overview and related questions in the below. Given the fact that each presentation is limited to 15 minutes and this is an experiment on the “forms” of presentation, please feel free to respond, helping me to narrow down the questions, or even suggesting other critical perspectives that might better facilitate and stimulate our class discussion next time.

1. In this essay we cannot take “tradition” too literarily, as Eliot points out “tradition is a matter of much wider significance” (99). Eliot redefines tradition: it involves “the historical sense,” a “perception” of the presence of the past, and a “simultaneous order” of the past and the present (99). To be more precise, Eliot states that “This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional” (99). Do you think Eliot’s definition a bit paradoxical and confusing? Or how do you clarify it?

2. Eloit’s “impersonal theory of poetry” could be briefly defined as the following: “The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality” (100). Eliot emphasizes an effacement of emotion and passion, and a sense of depersonalization and a fusion with the past. Do you think that Eliot’s view of selflessness and “objective correlation” would limit poets’ spontaneity and creativity?

3. Why does Eliot think that the Romanist motto—“emotion recollected in tranquility”—is an inexact formula (102)? Why does he value “concentration” in any form of poetic creation?

4. Eliot not only disciplines poets’ individual talent in the consciousness of history, but also criticizes readers’ intuitive understanding of literary works (98). Could you respond to this aspect from the perspectives of a reader, poet, critic, teacher and student?

Poetry, for me, embodies an unique discourse that aims to “evoke” or enable—1) links between form, sound, image, rhythm and meaning (what Jakobson terms “poetic function”), 2) multiple interpretations/ entries into the aesthetic texture of poetry (what Epson calls “ambiguity”), and 3) most importantly, dynamics of intellectual interaction (not just “private obsession” AP 4-5). Thus, I define poetry neither as its separated and rhythmic lines nor as the poetic tradition it draws, but its discourse (“build a language within a language” AP 20).

However, my assumptions give me a hard time when it comes to interpret poetry. I resist the idea of finding an “authoritative” interpretation for poetry. If poetic language is composed to evoke a subjective, spontaneous, spiritual connection, how is it possible that we have a consensus on a poem without contradicting to these elements? Is anyone troubled by this paradox as well?

But, I self-contradict myself—poetry does have its authoritative meaning, simply because its authors (even though anonymous) are out there, suggesting meanings to some degree.