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WHAT MAKES A GOOD POEM?
There are so many theories of aesthetics, so many toolkits for
criticism, that a pick and mix approach is unavoidable.
And I can best illustrate critical judgment by example. I am forced at the outset to mention standards.
I count mine to be, for this task, as rigorous as any.
I rule out only such radically anarchic approaches as might hold
our best poems to be rubbish. There
are iconoclasts in every field and although I don’t discount them
I’ve no space here to argue with them.
I use the following as a touchstone.
G. M. Hopkins’ To R. B.
The
fine delight that fathers thought; the strong
Spur,
live and lancing like the blowpipe flame,
Breathes
once and, quenchèd faster than it came,
Leaves
yet the mind a mother of immortal song.
Nine
months she then, nay years, nine years she long
Within
her wears, bears, cares and combs the same:
The
widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim
Now
known and hand at work now never wrong.
Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;
I
want the one rapture of an inspiration.
O
then if in my lagging lines you miss
The
roll, the rise, the carol, the creation,
My
winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss
Now,
yields you, with some sighs, our explanation.
The paradox here of course is
that, in apologising to his friend Robert Bridges for his lack of
inspiration, Hopkins produces one of the most inspired poems in the
language. Look at the way
he sustains the sonnet form, not a line of it ‘lagging’, to use his
own word, not a part that does not sustain the music and the force of
its central metaphor. The
muse’s engendering of a poem in the mind and the mind’s gestation of
it are compared to human engendering and the bearing of a child.
I don’t intend to do an exhaustive analysis, trying to say
everything possible about texture and rhythm, themes and images.
If a reader does not instantly see the allusions to ejaculation
and pregnancy, he or she had better read more and return later:
the strong
Spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame,
Breathes
once and, quenchèd faster than it came, . . .
There
is daring in the alliteration throughout, and in the rhetorical figures,
one of them comparing the invasion of the muse to a blowpipe flame, and
the sowing of the poetic seed to an orgasm that is ‘quenchèd faster
than it came’, the Jesuit priest born in 1844 not flinching from the
verb ‘come’.
The splendid line, ‘the roll, the rise, the carol, the
creation’, has been much commended, and this statement of mine
indicates that I do, to some extent, back the notion that works of art
gain their status over time from a consensus among expert and lay
readers alike, though I’m always aware of the pernicious pressures of
fashion, and of social, even political, pressures (witness how our 18th
century revered the rules of Horace; think of the intolerance the Nazi
and Stalin régimes). This
line, ‘the roll, the rise . . .’, begins the last triplet and among
other acts helps tie up the themes, via the rhyming of ‘inspiration’
and ‘creation’, which are central ideas.
Once I look at the rhymes I notice how elegant and economical
they are, the octet relying throughout on -ong and -ame
rhymes, the sestet interlacing -ation and -iss sounds.
Hopkins was audacious with words and ‘combs’ in line 6 needs
some explaining. From the ordinary meaning of raking hair one could get
‘straightens’ and hence ‘set in order’; from ‘comb’ meaning
‘honeycomb’ one might surmise ‘store’; from ‘comb’ meaning
‘coomb’ (Old English ‘vessel’, later ‘brewing vat’) could be
added the sense of containing and fermenting.
It would be typical of Hopkins to imply all these.
As for ‘cares’ in the same line lacking the ‘for’ that it
needs if it is to mean ‘tend’, one can find justification in Middle
English where ‘for’ was not imperative; Hopkins often leaves out
obvious link-words anyway. At
the time he wrote, there was an erudite ruggedness about his poetry
which defied convention and which, along with his ascetic diffidence,
restrained him from publishing. It’s
easy to see greatness in his work today, after so many developments have
made him look almost normal, though still profoundly original. Finding greatness in a contemporary is often harder than
finding mere adequacy.
This is all too brief a reflection but I’m now ready to say
what I think makes a great poem.
1. It must be confident in message and
attitude.
2. It must have an original voice.
3. Its phrasing must excite.
Think of two idioms blended to produce a strange new one. There need not be strangeness everywhere, but certainly
somewhere.
4. Its tune should satisfy those who understand
its rules. Genius invents
its own rules but they are inevitably judged differently.
Tastes vary.
5. Its texture, the relational weave of
sound (different from the dynamic pulse and cadence of the tune),
should rise above blandness and safety.
6. Its argument and ideas should follow a logic:
this may be a consistency of rhetoric and opinion, or a logic of
verifiable statements about the world, or both, either fused or
alternating.
7. Even in the lyric there is plot.
Plot tension should release by the end of the poem to
leave no ‘What is this about?’ questions.
Rhetorical compression may linger: not all allusiveness need be
clear by the end, though study should clarify the main references.
I personally do not like the obscurity of dense allusion and
private codes even when the language around these has a quite striking
dash and suggestiveness. But
I defend obscurity and fragmentation for the reason they were admitted
into modern practice in the first place.
I could promote a ‘hard’ poem from ‘I don’t know’ to
‘very good’ if after study I’d got the hang of it and liked the
reasons for its style.
8. A poem is a pattern of words.
Words refer to life. The
word-pattern of a poem therefore also alludes to life, it cannot do
otherwise. Even should the
pattern float in a dream world, in every difference from life there is a
remembrance of awakeness. There
may be distortions of meaning but that doesn’t matter.
A poem is an arrangement of words for the pleasure and
enlightenment of those who understand how it works.
Pleasure integrates the self, enlightenment dissolves it.
The first leads to the second: a boundary is defined then
dispelled. A poetic pattern
is not, nor can it be, merely art for art’s sake; much less can it be
a utilitarian text from a book of information.
In the pattern one is looking for expertise in structure, which
is the arrangement of parts.
9. Greatness can exist if there is excellence in only
a few of these areas. Great
art dares to be flawed.
I should now taste my own medicine and apply these precepts to
Hopkins’ poem. He is
confident in the paradox of exhibiting unusual inspiration whilst
bemoaning the absence of it. His
defiance of convention in language is bold, too.
Hopkins was a late Victorian and a near contemporary of Hardy and
Swinburne, but not even these defiers of convention would have used the
phallus allusions of the opening, the packed internal rhyming and rugged
alliteration, the obscurity of ‘combs’ and grammatical omission of
‘for’ in:
Nine months she then, nay years, nine years she long
Within her wears, bears, cares and combs the same:
A distinctive voice is immediately evident.
There is an exulting in life through language, with no self-pity
even in this conventional lament, which is almost a polite apology.
This determined wrenching of a conventional subject in a
conventional form is nonetheless graceful.
He puts the emphasis—on the nature of inspiration—in the
octet, the first eight lines. This is the way the muse impregnates, with the ‘fine
delight’ which Hopkins disingenuously (though thence the charm) says
he does not have. The voice
of a piece is hard to define. Usually
there in a characteristic style which carries a characteristic attitude
to life and with that a tone of voice.
Hopkins has a religious fervour
towards nature and its Creator, a serious desire to find in words an
‘instress’ or a knotting up of the intrinsic, the thisness of
things, the ‘inscape’.
Exciting language doesn’t have to be doing somersaults; it can
be quiet and sweet. In
Hopkins, however, the language is always busy.
Take out a few phrases:
.
. . delight that fathers thought . . .
.
. . lancing like the blowpipe flame . . .
.
. . quenchèd faster than it came . . .
.
. . the mind a mother of immortal song.
Sweet fire the sire of muse . . .
I
want the one rapture of an inspiration.
My
winter world . . .
.
. . yields you, with some sighs, our explanation.
Having
the verb ‘father’ take ‘thought’ as object; introducing a
laboratory blowpipe at all; alluding to ejaculation; comparing a
gestating poem to a human embryo; likening mental impregnation to sexual
rapture; coming up with ‘My winter world’ as a description of mental
sterility: what more originality of language could one ask for?
And there’s more . . . .
The rhythm is not so extraordinary as in Hopkins’ most
audacious pieces but it uses many of the techniques he developed when
experimenting with what he called ‘sprung’ rhythm.
This used (1) an idiosyncratic way of counting stresses, allowing
three or even more ‘slack’ syllables hang onto a stress instead of
the usual one or two; and (2) a fondness for putting two or more heavy
syllables together, as in
stróng / Spúr
Bréathes ónce
Léaves yét
Níne mónths
náy yéars
níne yéars
wéars, béars, cáres
áim / Nów knówn
wórk nów név-(er)
Swéet fíre
óne ráp-(ture)
blíss / Nów yíelds
sóme síghs.
He is not afraid of slipping
two extra slack (unstressed) syllables into a normally five-iambus line:
Leaves yet | the mind | a moth- | er of
im-mor- | tal song.
There
are other ways of scanning this but I’ve used the one he would have
favoured himself. Learning
chiefly from each other, poets make up their own rules of scansion. Hopkins went back to Anglo-Saxon metrics and invented a
method of counting stresses that was eccentric: another mark of his
style. What his rhythm, or
‘tune’ as I’ve called it, does to help make this a fine poem is to
advance the sense and, along with the texture, create an uplifting music
that I’d want to listen to even if the sense were less interesting.
Although not lush like Keats, Hopkins and Keats are to me among
the most remarkable poets for texture: they both have an extraordinary
instinct for finding the sounds they want for coaxing along their music.
See how the vowel-sounds dip and rise, close and open, in:
(Leaves yet the) mind
a mother of immortal song.
Look
at the alliteration in every line, often double as in:
I
wánt the óne ráp-ture of an
ín-spi-rátion
and
of course in:
The róll,
the ríse, the cá-rol, the cre-á-tion.
The
‘cre-á-tion’ disobeys the rules—only accented syllables are
supposed to alliterate, but what the hell, you can break your own rules,
and I seem to remember that there is precedence in Anglo-Saxon anyway.
This is but a brief note on texture; there are some, myself
included, who think the weave of sound among the most affecting and
effective ingredients, level with sense itself.
But the sense is decisive. Drivel
and platitude are non-starters: however clever the music, banality
embarrasses. That said, a poet does not have to be saying anything of
shattering originality: he or she might bitch about being jilted, about
failing to expand the pupils and other parts of a beloved, saying stuff
heard a thousand times before, yet still turn out a great poem.
Hopkins is not the first to lament the absence of the muse; the
condition is not unusual and having a man apologising for it in verse
does not add much to our sense of the horror of the human condition. Poetic statements do not have to surprise, though it helps if
they do. It’s not silly
for a poet to worry about writer’s block, but he’d better say it in
a way we wouldn’t have thought of ourselves.
And, as I’ve said above, he’d better be emotionally
logical—even factually logical if the facts are slippery.
For instance, I have to think twice when I come to the lines:
The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim
Now known and hand at
work now never wrong.
The mind has been impregnated
with the seed of a poem which might take nine months, even nine years,
to develop. But pregnancies
do not make widows. The
logic here tells us that after the planting of the seed the muse
retires. The rest is sweat
and tears. ‘The widow of
an insight lost’ must mean that the muse, the fathering spirit, was
momentarily like a husband, but it didn’t stay around to help develop
the seed, that first idea or feeling for a poem.
The muse is the insight, and the insight leaves behind the seed.
I find this logically awkward; it would be better if the seed
were the insight, but this is not what Hopkins has implied.
The muse, the insight, leaves after the seed is sown.
The womb of the mind must then nurture the seed even when the
rapture of inspiration and the flash of insight are over.
The poet nevertheless knows what to do, that is to labour with
‘aim / Now known and hand at work now never wrong’.
I therefore find the last two lines of the octet the least
satisfactory: I can force the logic to work somehow but I’m not happy
about it. Behind the
insight-muse that leaves a seed is the implanting father / fire / sire:
to the Catholic priest this can only mean God.
And that ties in with ‘immortal song’, ‘the carol, the
creation’: poems are sacred devisings, they emanate from the divine.
I find the logic of this acceptable but I am even more impressed
by the logic that keeps lacing together the images surrounding pregnancy
and creation, the logic which leads to the brief sadness at the end
concerning the mental barrenness of this poet’s ‘winter world’.
Of plot tension and rhetorical compression (the
counterbalancing elements of construction) I’ve written elsewhere.
Here the tension of ‘what is going on’ is for me
satisfactorily dissipated by the end when I understand that he has tried
desperately to convey how physical is the feeling of being touched by
the divine spark. It’s
like a one-night (or one-second) stand with God; it’s like being
fucked in the brain and dumped. Then
how forlorn is the barren feeling of not having been about a work of
words for a long time!
As for rhetorical compression, it is my belief that the better
the poem the longer its language lingers in the mind, sustaining and
famishing. For instance,
I’ve read this poem many times—indeed I know it by heart—but
I’ve only now in writing this essay seen how to Hopkins a poem might
be written long after the first intimation.
His Christian God the Father comes to him as a thunderbolt, with
a road-to-Damascus insight, impregnating and then leaving him to nurture
the seed with laborious patience. It will take me forever to work this idea out in terms of my
own beliefs about the mind and the world.
I may never succeed yet I can’t see myself ever tiring of this
poem.
As for ‘pattern of words’, ‘structure’, ‘form’, what
has to be said that I haven’t touched on?
Only this: I can return to this poem for the pleasure of being
reminded of how compactly the words fit the sonnet form and the
rhyme-scheme. I like how
the verb ‘fathers’ in the opening of the octet is picked up by
‘sire’ at the start of the sestet.
I like how fire is invoked across that span.
I like the way a fertile mind’s confidence in caring for a
poetic seed contrasts with the sad and lagging feeling of uninspired
emptiness. I like the way
that emptiness would dearly love the honeycomb of the mind to buzz with
life. I like ‘The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation’.
I’ve not sought to deconstruct this poem psychologically,
sociologically or politically, bringing out its foolish assumption that
poetry has value, showing how after all it’s a product of an age and
place, full of self-contradictions.
That is, I’ve not used tools that are terribly academic and
up-to-date. But I think I’ve sufficiently shown why I think this poem
is fine and what, by implication, other poems that aspire to greatness
must be like, though in other ways.
As for poems that are merely good: luckily the world is full of
them. ‘Merely good’ is
not a put-down. I set into
this category a vast amount of poetry by modern poets and by the lesser
gifted of the past, even poems in good but not arresting translations.
I find them pleasing for many of the above reasons, though I
don’t return to them as an imperative for mental and spiritual food.
When it comes to poems that are bad, by the strictures above
they’re embarrassing. They
may give their writers joy but they show a limited knowledge of what can
be done with words and have nothing of interest to talk about.
If they show daring, it’s far too often in just giving us
lashings of scurrility.
Alan
Marshfield
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