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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.

Like several others, I'm not a big fan of counting meter. In fact, it usually destroys my enjoyment of a poem if I concentrate on it too much, as in, what kind of meter it is, is it regular, does it vary within the poem, etc. It seems to dissect the whole too much. Sort of like deconstruction - don't do it without a heavy pair of rubber gloves. I do, however, like the rhythms in poetry, much as I like the rhythms in music. I also enjoy listening to people speak in normal conversation. We all have individual rhythms to how we talk. Occasionally, these rhythms are iambic pentameter-esque. (I've been doing a lot of eavesdropping lately.) So I began to see Easthope's point that it naturally mimics human speech, and that this could have a lot to do with its variations, that it is not a fixed and rigid structure within a poem. But that doesn't really account for the four-stress line that had been so popular before. So I wondered if our speech now sounding more like iambic pentameter wasn't a result of some ideological sneakiness to "smooth out" the classes and the way people speak so we all tuck into our "class roles" a little more readily. We are all taught iambic pentameter and Shakespeare and how to "speak correctly" the entire way through school, have we become ingrained? Or am I just feeling a little too rebelliously conspiracy theory at the moment?

I was interested in Easthope's ideas about poetry being a discourse brought about through society and history, and that we all in one way or another participate in this. I have a slightly New Historical bent to my theorist side, in that I think the circumstances surrounding the poem and it's creation/creator have an impact on how we "reconstruct" the poem when we read it now, and how we understand and interpret it. While there probably isn't any real "authoritative" reading of any poem, as I'm coming to believe over the past several weeks, I think we do need to take into account what it is a representation (time wise, class wise, etc.) of, even if we choose to throw out those meanings and re-interpret the poem in light of our current readings and constructions of it.

My reading of Easthrope, in conjunction with other readings from the past have allowed me to formula the following equation in reference to poetry and the ability and potential to extract meaning from a poem. Nearly any poem which has been examined has the potential to of containing three facets of meaning. The first facet is represented as Pz. P shall be designated as the meaning placed within the poem. The z is the variable which is determined by time, performance, and internalization within the poem which may alter P.

The second facet is best demonstrated in the equation (1) G((D-F)E) = R. R represents the number of meanings extrapolated by the audience of the poem. D is representative of the number of meanings which have resulted due to the number of times the poem is read. G is equal to the number of people who have encountered the poem. F is representative of the meanings which the audience came to as a result of applied literary theory. E is representative of the various versions of the poem which exists. Therefore, we come to R by taking the number of meanings extracted during the reading (or listening) of the poem subtracted by those meanings which may have been discovered by the use of literary theory multiplied by the different versions of the poem and multiplied by the number of people who encounter the poem.

The third facet is represented by the equation ((A) (B+Y) X) C = N

Although I know that all languages have their natural rhythms and flow, I am struggling with the ideas put forth in Easthope's chapter four about the naturally occuring pentameter in English. On one hand, I wonder, why does a pentameter (usually iambic) satisfy the English psyche so? I wonder if it is the influence of Chaucer that paved the way for this particular meter. Then with the examples Easthope gives (p. 55) one can see the stress is falling naturally on the second syllable, so then the mystery for me clears a bit.

But when the argument is made that the Iambic pentameter was "invented," I question it. I like to consider poetry as a natural thing (perhaps some of this course's earlier readings have made that much of an impression upon me) that the idea of inventing a way to communicate poetry seems foreign to me. Or maybe it's just experience saying that the art must flow though the artists and not be controlled by the artist. Maybe I'm just saying what Derrida claimed when he said that the poet can never be more than an "effect" on discourse (Easthope 30).

When I started reading Easthope's chapter 4, I didn’t think I was going to like it at all. I think I’ve already stated how I hate the mathematical elements of meter. I hate counting syllables and giving poems a metrical label. I hate meter in general. I did, however, find Easthope’s chapter 4 very interesting.

Easthope helped to show me that meter is far more complicated than just counting syllables. I never really made the connection between a poem’s meter and how one reads it or, especially, how one pronounces words. I also found it very interesting how Easthope combines iambic pentameter with historical, cultural, and even political background. The idea that one might reject a certain meter as a form of rejecting a political tradition or class structure is very intriguing (53). I think it shows how important literature, and especially poetry, can be. I think poetry is often dismissed by many and viewed as lacking any “practical” value, especially in our modern day society. Easthope seems to really favor the notion that poetry can be a form of revolution. In addition, not only can the poetic words or message invoke a form of rebellion, but the meter can as well.

I also appreciated how Easthope brings meter, speaker, and voice together, the concept of iambic pentameter as a “historical invention” (54), and his infusion of linguistic discussions. Perhaps I sound think twice about my aversion to meter…

One of the things about Easthope's book that I have liked so far has been his reminder to his readers that poetry of any kind is created from an historical moment. In saying that he is also making the case that poetry is material, and is ideological. I find these observations/reminders to be a really good thing because I think that sometimes in English Departments there is a tendencey to not treat poetry in the same vein as the novel. What I mean by this is that I think for some English professors poetry is still mysterious and therefore one cannot interrogate it like one can interrogate a novel. Easthope's book of course tries to correct this by suggesting that there is nothing natural about poetry it is a constructed thing.

I also appreciate Easthope's book because it does a great job of bringing various theoretical schools into play from the Russian Formalists to Derrida and everything in between. I like this for the same reason that I mentioned above that in bringing all of those schools into play, Easthope is making a case that we must not think of poetry as something that is natural and that exists outside of history.

The final thing that I want to discuss is his discussion about how even free verse when viewed critically exhibits a use of iambic pentameter. I guess this surprised me somewhat because I have not be viewing free verse as critically as I should be, as I generally have just accepted that it was indeed a major break in form from "traditional" Anglo-American poetry.

I thought the pentameter chapter from Easthope was damned interesting. His discussion of counterpoint helped me understand something that always confused me about pentameter, namely, why it never seems as regular in practice as simply studying the form of the meter would have you believe. I think the interaction between meter and the regular pronunciation of words in normal (non-poetic) diction is often downplayed in our study of poetry, which usually considers meter only as an abstract. I also think he makes a good point, drawing on Althusser and, though he doesn’t acknowledge it directly, The Eighteenth Brumaire (of Napoleon Bonaparte) by Karl Marx (all that stuff about dressing the national tongue “in the clothes of antiquity” in order to consolidate and solidify authority in the hands of the bourgeois—p. 64), about how pentameter has historically been defined as “natural” when it is in fact anything but. We’ve all heard the human heartbeat argument before; and I do agree with his argument that declaring a form of speech that restrains emotional outburst as “natural,” does (or did, anyway) serve to construct its readers as passive subjects.

What, precisely, we do with all this remains another question entirely. If we all started writing accentual poetry, the chant which emphasizes community over the individual, would we all become revolutionaries and build some sort of socialist utopia? Er, not so sure, but I think that is where Easthope is going with this. Again, though he doesn’t mention it specifically, I hear echoes of The Eighteenth Brumaire here. For those of you who haven’t read it (and you should, it’s damned interesting and can shed some light on the source of much of our current political administration’s power, here in America that is, but I digress), I quote here (in translation of course):

The social revolution of the nineteenth century can only create its poetry from the future, not from the past. It cannot begin its own work until it has sloughed off all its superstitious regard for the past. Earlier revolutions have needed world-historical reminiscences to deaden their awareness of their own content. In order to arrive at its own content the revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead. Previously the phrase transcended the content, here the content transcends the phrase

I see Easthope as defending much of this doctrine, which, F.Y.I. is the only thing Marx ever wrote explicitly concerning literature, in the chapter. He demonstrates how pentameter originally associated itself (wrongly, in his opinion) with classical poetry, (as Napoleon dressed his troops in Roman costume, according to Marx) in order to affirm its legitimacy and “naturalness.” His defense of accentual poetry also seems to coincide with Marx’s delightfully vague description of the poetry he would like to see in the future. That is, it does not fix line length or dictate where accents must fall, but only demands a given number of accents, but not syllables, in a line. Thus, “in accentual metre (sic) the stress of the intonation and the abstract pattern coincide and reinforce each other” (73). Pentameter constrains speech and thereby the most emphatic expression of content, accentual meter reinforces it, and thereby lets the content guide the poetry.

Again, what do we do with all this is another question, but I found Easthope’s take on all this to be quite interesting- especially in light of the echoes of Marx I hear in it. In short, that particular passage from Marx has historically taken on quite an array of meanings and many a book has been burnt because of it. Chairman Mao, for example, took it to mean that the only sorts of books worth reading (i.e. the only one’s people should be allowed to read) were one’s whose content upheld the triumph and solidarity of the proletariat. In short, I’m glad to read something intelligent done with it, for a change.

Here are some further notes -- in which I try to broadly sketch the stakes and just a few key terms that might help us with a global understanding of the book. Hope it's helpful!

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1. To consider poetry as a form of “discourse” requires at least the suspending of our belief in several conventional truisms:

1.1. poetry is an expression of universals, not of varied (and motivated) time-bound practices;
1.2. literature, with poetry at the head of the line, rises above and functions independently of the language and politics (ideology)
1.3. the ideal of poetry is achieving a voice: identification or union between poet and reader;

2. The discourse perspective allows for investigation of how poetic conventions are historically grounded.

2.1. It sees the elements of poetry as functioning like other language structures in the constitution of a discourse;
2.2. the importance of this extends because discourse is the enabling ground of subjectivity (loosely defined as how I come to know myself, have meaning and agency, act as a self within a social context).

3. Easthope’s theoretical framework and analysis of ballad meter (4-stress accentual), pentameter, and modernist poems draws from Saussurean linguistics in continually inquiring whether the signifier is foregrounded or supressed in favor of the signified.

3.1. This reflects his notions that poetry is distinguished by the prominence of the signifier (ex. rhyme is an effect of the material signifier, not of meaning); and that so-called “transparent meaning” is actually achieved at the cost of suppressing this.
3.2. Recognizing the production of meaning is seen as a preferred alternative to the false “naturalizing” of myth (p. 64, cf. Roland Barthes)
3.3. Poetry involves two process of meaning production, composition and reception.

4. Double processes: When we encounter a text, it has been composed (past tense); and then it needs to be read--present tense context

4.1. The enunciated subject exists within the poem or story; the subject of the enunciation (reading, performing) is you or I the readers; i.e. an “I” within the poem and the person (me) who now speaks it (or reads it to himself).

5. Easthope focues on whether this double process is acknowledged or hidden--whether the subject is presented as relative (contingent, mutable) or absolute

5.1. he equates the hiding of the process, the subsumption of enunication and ennounced, with the suppressing of the process by which the subject is constituted (cf. Althusser, ideology, interpellation: notions that we don’t define individual selves but that we respond to invitations to take up positions vis a vis a social order, an acceptance that we may mistake as natural or inevitable or freely chosen)
5.2. Revealing this ideology at work through analysis AND/OR reading poems which disclose it has liberatory potential.

I'd like to focus mostly on chapter 4 in this response because I found the explanation of iambic pentameter very interesting. Like Lucas I have a very limited knowledge of poetry; however, I do feel that I have a background in linguistics. All in all I find Easthope pretty easy to read, even if I sometimes can't fully follow the author's own preferences.

I am not sure whether or not Easthope likes the idea of iambic pentameter or not...? He thoroughly explains the background of iambic pentameter and how it is actually "culturally explicit and institutionalized" (59), and that it is not exactly 'natural'. This was also with a discussion of transformational grammar and how it was used by the formalists to determine acceptable vs unacceptable lines of pentameter. However, because of the discussion that followed I was not sure of Easthope's own opinion of iambic pentameter. Any thoughts?

I was confused about the idea of counterpoint, which was first mentioned, I believe, on p. 60. I get what the term means, but was unable to fully follow the examples given. All in all I understood the reading to explain that iambic pentameter was perceived by the upper class to be more correct (e.g., promoting RP). And, that because of this (among other reasons), it has been seen as the correct form of meter in poetry. I question though, whether this is still the case? Perhaps those who have a fuller understanding of trends in poetry can help me out.

I thought that the idea that the meter of words discerned whether a work was considered poetry was interesting. Also that the type of meter used in the work would classify it as good (poetry of the cannon) or bad/common (vulgar, or poetry of the lower classes) also struck me as something that holds true. I think that in contemporary society that the poetry of the masses can be found most often in the form of song. Often written in 4/4 time with 4 stresses in a meter or line. While the poetry of the cannon is composed of more complex meters, often as the text points out, iambic pentameter. In thinking about it this way I agree with the text that meter, even if not the most effective way to holistically describe poetry is certainly used to judge it and is most definitely a social construct.

I also had never thought of iambic pentameter having variation within the meter of the line. I had always thought of it as a concrete construct allowing little room for deviation. However, the examples found in the reading made me understand that the overall effect, far more than just the stressed syllables, created the effect of iambic pentameter even if all the lines didn't follow the pattern if read individually.

Reading Easthope made me realize that there is so much as work in poetry. I had never considered all the different elements like. I do not have a strong background in literature, especially poetry, so I was completely unaware of many of the aspects of poetry that he addressed. While I found some of the theoretical language to be hard to muddle through, I felt that he brought up several interesting issues in his writing. I think that even though I did not grasp everything, I was introduced to some interesting information concerning poetry.

I was interested in how the Romantic defined rhetoric as bad poetry, which Easthope talks about in chapter 7. I’m not sure I agree with the Romantic assumption. I think that rhetoric can use poetic techniques that make it a form of good poetry. Political speeches, slogans, etc. can make use of rhetoric combined with rhythm, alliteration, and assonance in a way that makes it like a poem.

Exploring this chapter of the book Poetry as Discourse, I have to say I kind of find it little complicated as it deals with the pentameter patterns which I am not very familiar with. However, I know that these patterns are commonly used with sonnets in poetry, and I can find some kind of similarity to the sonnet’s pentameter patterns in Arabic poems, especially the shapes of the syllables as they are the exact same long and short syllables in Arabic pentameter. One difference is that in Arabic poetry, those pentameter patterns are called ‘seas’, and there are several ‘seas’ in Arabic poetry.

I liked the idea of subjectivity in discourse and how pentameter plays an important role in controlling the intonation along the lines of the sonnet, e.g. slowing down the pace of the pentameter makes the stresses more felt. It is also interesting how the stress can only be on the second syllable, or otherwise it might sound weird. Consider, for example, the word tom/mor/row.

But can pentameter really discriminate what is ‘properly’ poetic from what is not? Or poetry from verse? I can find more sense in the second question but I cannot say I understand how pentameter can ‘sort’ the "properly" poetic from the "improperly" poetic. However, I liked the way Easthope explained the meanings of this pentameter hegemony especially in how pentameter can help reading silently and still know where to pause. It is not an easy one but I will try to read more about this subject on the hope of better understand it.

For my response I will deal mostly with Easthope’s chapter 6. I’m not sure I understand him completely, but I will try to respond the best I can. I found his discussion of iconicity to be intriguing. Easthope mentions several ways in which readers can recognize iconicity such as looking at a word’s phonetic properties, intonation, etc. Iconicity seems like a slippery word to me in the sense that it appears to be subjective. For example, I am not sure I understand his explanation of why he considers the iconicity of Sonnet 73 lies in the way the words resemble the speaking of an individual voice. Who is to say that the speaker presents a coherent representation that is vivid and substantial? It may be the case that some readers do not feel that the poem achieves such a representation and therefore lack iconicity. There is probably more to his argument that I am not getting.

Easthope’s talk of music and the use of natural sounds made me think of our discussion of Langston Hughes’ poem “The Weary Blues.” The suffering of the blues singer is expressed through not only the words of the poem but the sound of those words as well. Sound imitates the subject matter and emotions of the speaker. For example, when I read the poem out loud I can hear the sadness of the blues. The poem contains the long “o” sounds and makes use of onomatopoeia. I think that this is a great poetic technique that many poets have abandoned. Music and sound are an important aspect to poetry and if used properly can greatly enhance poetry.

Easthope, if nothing else continues to instruct me on the means of poetry, though I must admit I was not happy to be dealing with meter again, but hey, it is poetry and though I find myself immersed in free verse, I realize that poetry does have meter and all poetry has form.

I enjoyed Easthope’s explanation of intonation, especially when he notes: Intonation marks the spoken difference between a poetic inquiry about the evening menu and a recommendation of cannibalism (57). I found this somewhat amusing but at the same time it made great sense because it is all in how you say it, or to put it more logically, it is all in where you put the stresses. Easthope defines intonation as relative degrees of stress in an utterance as it would occur outside a metrical context, which basically means spoken conversation (58). I suppose spoken conversation at times could be metrical but more often than not, I don’t think that it does.

I will probably come back to intonation at a later point but I wanted to bring up another area of interest to me. Easthope notes that pentameter is a ‘pattern perceived’ and that it is culturally explicit and institutionalized (59). I took this to mean that the pattern is perceived by the reader or in this case speaker, and that it is not exactly fixed because it varies from culture to culture and it becomes institutionalized within that culture. For example, the pentameter is different in Italian poetic culture that it is in English, or in Chinese, which Easthope himself point out.

The fact that pentameter is changed depending on how the poem is read or spoken due to the voice, whether it is abstract or it is intonation (64). It reminded me of an early point that Easthope made in part one of our readings, which commented that the meaning of the poem changes with each reading. This also coincides with Easthope’s explanation that pentameter is a mechanism by which the poem aims to deny its production as a poem (67). If the pentameter changes with each reading or speaking of a poem, and the meaning changes with each reading, than it would seem that the fact that it is a poem would be hidden. I know that we only had to read to chapter four but I went ahead and read five and this very description of the pentameter is seen in the ballad. I actually found five a little more interesting than four but I won’t go into specific details about this chapter since it wasn’t required for this week, other than to say what interested me the most was the fact that it provided an example of medieval poetry, “Three Ravens.” The gist of it is that the poem is read more like a story than a poem, which again is dependent on the reading or speaking of the poem.

This idea of “proper speech” has reared its head again (69). I found this an interesting notion in light of our readings from last week, specifically Lowell. Based on this reading, I think I was able to understand her point about the way that poetry is read, well, the good and bad ways that poetry is read.

I was particularly interested in the idea of the speaker in association with the pentameter. Easthope notes, iambic pentameter would disclaim the voice speaking the poem in favor of the voice represented in the poem, speaking what it says (74). In other words, the poem would be speaking for itself; the reader’s voice would not be heard. This then allows for the reader to identify with a singular voice, the voice of the poem. I hate to refer again to chapter five but Easthope notes that this is exactly what the ballad does; it lets the poem speak for itself using events and dialogue without going into generalizations and explanations (85). I can’t tell you poems that I have read where instead of telling the story, they explain it to you. Let the story speak first, and then explain if it is required which is the same as saying let the poem speak for itself.

One last comment, final comment, is that I liked Easthope including Eliot’s description of what free verse is, “Eliot wrote in 1942: ‘only a bad poet would welcome free verse as liberation from fort. It was a revolt against dead form, and a preparation for new form.” (76) Free verse is in and of itself, its own form and as Eliot noted a good poet would recognize this fact.

With Chapter 4, I liked the chess analogy (58, top) that Easthope uses with syllable stress being “relativized by the context” and was impressed that he went on to prove it (in my mind) by the “stated price” example where the metre context changes the stress (prominence); reading aloud helped me here, although I can only pick up the difference every other time I read it; it is strange to feel “subject” change in stress by what precedes it.

Again, when entering into ideological connections I am apprehensive, except with the argument that pentameter “requires full pronunciation” (69, top) and perpetuates proper speech and “class dialect”, which is really a great point and connection.

I enjoyed this chapter because it was both a history and linguistic lesson. I was unaware that poetry could raise so many micro-linguistic issues (stress vs. accent, certain metres as more natural to a language). By Easthope focusing on just the web of issues within iambic pentameter, poetry is shown to be very insightful at the linguistic level (i.e., not just at an aesthetic one).

My reaction to the Easthope reading corresponds with my reaction to most “post”-al theories; it’s not so much that I disagree with most of it, it’s that I don’t necessarily want to agree with it. It is unsettling, and it raises a number of questions for someone training for a career as an English educator (especially one with ambitions towards actually teaching something, rather than proctoring weekly book club meetings). Easthope situates his definition of poetry within a broadly Marxist framework in that a poem is, for him, a material product. What, however, does the critic produce? Is deconstruction really a road we want to go down (as Easthope presumably indicates we should in his statement “the whole enterprise of Part Two is to read the poetic discourse against the way it presents itself to be read?” (47). Deconstruction followed to its logical end is anarchy. Granted, as Easthope observes in his reading of Althusser and Lacan, our constructions of ourselves are misrecognitions, as discourse constructs us as subjects who view ourselves as autonomous individuals, but we still need these constructions, we can do nothing without them. Again, what should we “do” with this understanding.

This isn’t to say I didn’t like the reading, in fact, I think it’s the most interesting thing we’ve been assigned thus far. Louis Althusser, who Easthope seems to like, is actually my favorite literary theorist. I also appreciated the fact that, for a guy arguing against the very idea of perfect lucidity in writing, Easthope is always clear about exactly where he is coming from. He thereby avoids the other problem I often have with “post”-al theory, namely, that it is poorly written. Theories arise from debates with one another, granted, but they also arise from internal debate. Whose Marxism/structuralism/new historicism etc. becomes an important question which must be addressed. There is nothing inherently wrong with blending ideas from different theories, but doing so without noting precisely how you perceive those ideas, in addition to whose ideas they were in the first place (grounding your argument) is incredibly frustrating for the reader, or for me at least.

I also found the juxtaposition of the Easthope and Lowell readings interesting, in that I think Lowell addresses an element of poetry Easthope largely ignores. Where, in the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes model Easthope supports, does the musical rhythm of a poem reside, or does it inhabit its own axis. Easthope seems to associate it with the phonetic level of speech, and it would seem to inhabit the vocal (signifier/enunciation) side of his model, but otherwise, I don’t think he does much to address the question. Perhaps his discussion of iambic pentameter in chapter four will illuminate things.

The argument that the sound of poetry is equally, if not more, important than the interpretation of the words is not new to me; however, something in Lowell's essay for the reading tonight triggered in my brain for the first time an embarrasing revelation. While I never believed that the sound quality of poetry was non-existant, I never completely understood why people made such a big fuss over it; I always thought that hearing a reading of a poem, or reading it aloud myself, was a "treat" so to speak--far more than I ever thought it was essential.

I consider myself a critic more than a creative writer or simply someone who thinks "books are fun--YAY!" and sought to make a career of it; therefore, for me anyway, digging into the meanings of poems is the most rewarding experience. The chemical reactions inside of my brain as I read Lowell's essay left me feeling at least a little ashamed of myself for having such an indifferent attitude towards how a poem sounds rather than only how it reads... one of the most interesting aspects of literature, in my opinion, is how much "stuff" can be packed into the shortest literary works that extends beyond the field of literature; I'm amazed how the literary world can bring together virtually anything--math, history, science, emotion, feeling...everything! Literature is the only field that can teach so much to an individual that pertains to the greater things in life (philosophy, empathy, religion, morality, etc.). Extracting all of the lessons behind works is fun and enlightening for me... it's rewarding as well... but despite all of it, it's lacking because I have failed to appreciate something very important--the sound of it.

I can't help but agree with Lowell when she says that musical notes on a page cannot be read by anyone, but must be interpretted by highly qualified musicians in order to be appreciated by the average Joe or Jane. I neglected to appreciate the talent of those who can take silent strings of symbols and create magnificent musical masterpieces. I must admit I have a new attitude towards the reading of poetry; I can't quite explain why this one essay out of several that I've read in the past has made me look at poetry with not only my eyes, but my ears. I think critics are often consumed with the desire to solve the problem of interpretation that the more we are educated in doing so--and doing so well--the more we fail to remember what attracted us to literature in the first place: the joy of "experiencing" it--not only visually or intellectually, but auditorily.

Reading Notes
Poetry As Discourse, Anthony Easthope
Part I
Sherwood 9/28/2006

Ch. 1 – Discourse as Language

• Conventional criticism relies on intention or personality as the foundation for meaning;
• Structuralist system of langue/parole describes how a sign works; it also functions at a higher level, as discourse
• Consequence of taking a linguistic/structuralist view is that language becomes a material sign system, not a transparent medium for communication (10-11)
• Poetry can be distinguished from prose in terms of its emphasis on the signifier; (repetition, condensation, lineation); (16) but poetry, prose, et al are (or would it be better to say “participate in” ) discourses

“All discourse, including a poetic discourse, occurs only in specific local and national forms … always historical … determined … not just materially but at the same time ideologically” (17)

“To theorize poetry as a discourse entails that attention will not be focused on individual texts or even several texts grouped as the work of a single author…. The more closely analysis is directed at the signifier (rather than the signified) and at the level of discourse (rather than the single text), the more likely it is to produce a systematic understanding” (18)

Ch. 2 – Discourse as Ideology

• Discourse is a SOCIAL (emphasis) fact; and it is a social FACT (emphasis). (19)
• The term discourse reframes Eliot’s idea of the “self-consistency of a poetic discourse;” it is not ideal, not a tradition that can exist simply and always; it is a product of (or would it be better to say? “is intimately entwined with”) ideology.
• At the level of discourse (words, into sentences, in social contexts etc.), language is most clearly “material, historical, and relative” (19)
• The poetry of certain period is both “an expression of…” the larger discourse of the time, and a semi-autonomous “internally coherent expression”. There’s a seeming pardox that’s crucial for A.E. (20);
• Poetry has “relative independence” in Althusser’s framing (21); it’s not simply determined by material world, nor is it completely cut off from it.

Why is discourse ideological?

• Discourse entails the idea that language continues to produce meaning through the reader; that it partially produces readers themselves! (24) even historical texts, which are now reproduced by (and within) contemporary readers (25)

See esp. pp. 24-29 for a fundamental discussion of SUBJECTIVITY. This is Lacanian/Althusserian territory – a major 20th century idea that’s not easy to digest if this is your first encounter. If it is new to you, looking in the Hopkins Encyclopedia of Literary and Critical Theory could be helpful. An approachable, undergraduate textbook called “The Theory Toolbox” also gives a very good introduction.

• Ideology can be seen as the tool by which we can be led to mistake an illution for the real; specifically, Althusser has it that it works to ALLOW the subject to misperceive herself as a Free AGENT. (28)

“How does the social mask come to be lived as though it were a face? … [by being] produced as a subject in language and discourse …” (28) What A.E. terms bourgoise discourse aims to produce an image of a transcendental subject, a role that denies producedness. At alternative possibility is that discourse offers/enables one to inhabit a relative position, one in which there is some awareness … “aware[ness] that the ego is determined by forces beyond itself on which it is dependent” (29)

Ch 3 – Discourse as Subjectivity

• reviews: problems of equating poem and poet; poet and personality; cf. laundry list problem (30)
• conventional (read even New Critical) criticism uses “irony or ambiguity” to “reduce the heterogeneity of texts into a version of the author’s (complex) self” ; “it tries to solve a problem it shouldn’t” (31)
• The Subject isn’t the origin but an effect of language; “it is language which speaks”;
• Language needs a subject, without which it is an empty system; marks can only become “signs” if there’s the presumption of an “addressee” (31)
• Despite needing the “subject,” language is not a transparent tool for communication of ideas; it is still material – a sound system!
• Discussion of Freud, infantile pleasure in language and its repression; the emphasis gets to the pre-communicative core of languages – an aspect that remains in all language use, is particularly exploited by poetry and literary discourses (33-4)

Key Terms: Enunciation, Enounced,

• Enounced: the narrated event
• Enunciation: the speech event
• Subject of the Enounced: participant in the narrated event
• Subject of the Enunciation: speaking subject, the producer of meaning,

The writer takes the role of the subject of enunciation (the one, in the METAPHOR, who is speaking). But the special term is necessary because we aren’t talking about a traditional speaker in/of the poem. When I read the poem, I become it’s new SUBJECT of ENUNCIATION. There will still be a subject within the poem, the one signified by the “I’ who may be IN the poem …. but the terms allow us to perceive these as two different roles. They often SEEM to overlap or are MADE TO SEEM SO, which is a crucial point for Easthope.

In loose terms, we need Easthope to remind us that Enunciation is taking place, since poems sometimes seem to have simply been enunciated, all by themselves. Sometimes the markers of the subject are clear – the “I” and “you” . We may even intuit a tension when the enunciated “you” is one we don’t feel comfortable identifying with.

Two more terms: histoire and discourse

• These two French terms risk confusion, as the second one sounds the same as “discourse”; the essential point is that there is a custom of imaging language use can be divided between: language without a speaker (i.e. journalism, objective description, science, history) and language with a speaker (when some “I” is clearly speaking to some “you”). For Easthope this is a false distinction! He doesn’t abandon the terms, because sometimes language does SEEM TO ACT (or want to pretend) to be without a speaker, object, purely enounced. But one key plank of Easthope’s projects is to persuade us this is an error, that we’re only dealing with an ABSENCE of obvious MARKERS of enunciation. Furthermore, this ABSENCE is more like a suppression, a deception.

Consequences of the doubleness; or, the disjunction between the Subject of Enounced and Subject of the Enunciation:

• discourse can deny disjunction, which he argues is characterstic of poetic discourse in English for 500 years! (46), producing a misrepresentation (which is ideological)
• the reader’s role in discourse production (i.e. the way we assume the role of subject of the enunciation) can be suppressed, producing alientation.
• Or it can foster an opening via which the reader may exploit the space, gap, tenuousness of seeming stability (47).

(With regard to the last point: My sense is that Easthope finds this interesting because one could thus gain a window into the production of his/her own subjectivity within the culture etc. If our subjectivity is always being produced, reproduced via discourse, then the poem becomes a site to see it and be produced (or resist being produced in a certain way.)

I found both Easthope and Lowell’s readings very interesting. Both of them provided some context (mainly historical) to their articles that helped me to identify with them and understand them more clearly. In Easthope’s piece, the first thing that stuck out to me was the very first line: “In modern society we are surrounded by poetry more than we realize” (3). One of the things that I commented on in my blog for last week was the first line of Levin’s article: “Poetry matters little to the modern world” (193). Both authors make a comment about poetry in the modern world for their opening lines, though they seem to have different approaches.

For me, one thing that made Easthope’s argument so interesting was that it was very well situated. He takes the time to really present his argument with cultural and historical references. I think his argument is a sound one. He appreciates and gives his readers a view of poetry from all of its angles. I also liked the sections regarding linguistics. I have studied linguistics very, very little, so it was interesting to get some information from that field.

I like Lowell’s article. It was thought provoking and gave me some new ideas regarding poetry and spoken art (or poetry as spoken art). Her comments about modern poetry were especially interesting. While I’ve definitely considered the audible qualities of modern poetry, I don’t believe I’ve ever thought of modern poetry mainly in those terms, though it makes sense the way she presents it.

One thought for this posting regarding "Poetry as Discourse": having a bachelor's degree in linguistics made this reading quite enjoyable for me, even though I don't necessarily agree with all that is being said. I have a much better connection with this reading that with some in the past due to my background in linguistics and TESOL.

Now on to what I want to discuss: "Poetry as a Spoken Art". I agree with Lowell that poetry needs to be spoken. I also agree that most people don't speak poetry...because that is not how they were introduced to it, myself included. I seldom speak poetry aloud. And often, when I hear it read aloud, I think to myself, "that's not how I would do it". Is that why I'd rather read it than hear it? Or is this a product of my schooling or my learning styles?

In addition, I found interesting and thought provoking her comment that we really have a harder time imagining what we hear that what we read. Is this really true? This had me thinking about the books on tape that I listen to when I'm on a long trip: do I imagine less effectively when listening as when reading? Or is this perhaps another issue of poetry versus prose?

I loved Lowell's discussion of the 'bad traditions' of poetry, and that the first and seemingly most important is the mispronouncing of words. Shame on the read-alouders, is what I got out of her comments regarding the bad traditions. Overall I enjoyed Lowell's essay, even though she seemed at times to be a bit totalitarian with her statements.