STRUCTURE
IN POETRY
This
short investigation is in no way connected with Saussure-derived
structuralism and such terminology as parole, sign, signifier and
signified.
I have
been looking at how ‘structure’ is used in architectural engineering
and have read of two types of forces which are common in physical
members, namely tension and compression.
Pulling
produces tension, pushing compresses.
It’s
interesting to learn, or recall from one’s schooldays, that a plank
that is sat on is on its top side in compression towards its centre and
on its bottom side in tension towards its outside edges.
Can
this terminology of stress be extended from the science of materials to
the art of poetry? I
propose that two similar ‘forces’ (among other effects) are at work
in poetry. Both seem to be forces of surprise and to require eventual
relief, resolution, dissipation. The
surprise-stresses in poems which I call tension and compression are
contrasted in this table.
stress description
resolution
tension
plot
suspense
by
temporally
clarifying plot
compression
figures
by atemporally
(metaphors etc) solving semantics
A
plot suspense
occurs whenever puzzlement arises as to what exactly something (or some
person) is doing; why they are doing it; how they are or will be doing
it; where they are and where they are going.
That is, the who-what-why-when-where-how questions need answers.
These are known of course as wh-questions, ‘how’ being an
honorary member of the team.
Plot
tension is released within or by the end of the plot itself; hypothetically it does not leave questions unanswered by the time one reaches the end
of a work. I say ‘hypothetically’ (or ‘ideally’) because there are numerous times when one is left
after a first reading still puzzled about plot-elements, wondering what
the heck has gone on. Such
uncertainties can be deliberate or the result of uncaring or uncareful
writing. Also, plot
tensions do not normally, I am initially supposing, add the sort of
buzz or superposition of states, to use a metaphor from physics, that
one gets from the unanswered questions of figurative compression.
In
a poem like the one examined below, it is an intentional strategy of
William Carlos Williams to use simple language and generally to
provide instant answers to wh-questions.
See the poem below.
THE
DISPUTANTS
1 THE
DISPUTANTS
Upon the table in their bowl
2 Upon
the table
/
in their bowl
/
in violent disarray
3 in
violent disarray
of yellow sprays, green spikes
4 of yellow sprays, green spikes
of leaves, red pointed petals
5 of leaves, red pointed petals
and curled heads of blue
6 and curled heads of blue
and white among the litter
7 and white / among
the litter
of the forks and crumbs and plates
8 of the forks
and crumbs and plates /
the flowers remained composed.
9 the flowers remained composed. /
Coolly their colloquy continues
10 Coolly their
colloquy continues
above the coffee and loud talk
11 above the coffee and loud
talk
grown frail as vaudeville.
12 grown frail as vaudeville.
[OR
grown . . .]
William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams
Paraphrase.
The flowers on a dinner table remain composed while the
conversation of the dinner-party guests grows loud and shrill.
First,
the elements of tension (all the wh-questions): how are their stresses
dissipated by the plot-line?
1
What is on the table, in their bowl?—The flowers.
2
Of what is the ‘litter’ composed?—Forks and crumbs and
plates.
3
What’s going on at the table?—A meal, probably a dinner
party.
4
What are these flowers doing?—They remain composed.
That opens a semantic stress, too—but at least it resolves the
plot-stress as to what the flowers are up to.
The answer to this concludes the main body (the
‘complication’) of the plot.
5
Who is disputing?—The people &/OR the flowers.
6
Who or what has ‘grown frail?’—the talk &/OR
the flowers! I
waver between the two. Both
interpretations lead to semantic stresses.
Next,
the elements of compression (rhetorical figures; semantic complexity);
and why is their dissipation ‘atemporal’?
1
violent disarray This sums up two aspects of the flowers and leaves: their
colours are all different (yellow, green, red, blue, white), and they
have different shapes (sprays, spikes, points, curly heads), and one may
imagine they are haphazardly arranged, too.
2
the flowers remain composed
Despite their physical disorder, and in contrast to the noisy
conversation at the table, the flowers are calm, serene, unruffled.
These are human, or at least animal, predications.
Nevertheless, ‘composed’ is no strained figure.
The serenity of flowers is a common idea; here the composure is
in contrast to the ‘loud talk’ at table.
3
coolly their colloquy continues / above the coffee
More ‘pathetic fallacy’, reinforced with quick-fire
alliteration (five /k/ sounds—including the /kw/ in
‘colloquy’—within fourteen syllables)
‘Colloquy’ is a sudden highfalutin word in such folksy
company, though not at all puzzling.
The flowers seem to ‘agree’ coolly, even though they might be
all over the place in colour and arrangement.
4
loud talk / grown frail This
is where the compression of rhetoric gives rise to puzzlement which is
only partially dissipated on reflection.
I call this partial dissipation ‘atemporal’ in that it
lingers when the plot and the plot queries are over.
It is this quality of compression which gives not just symbolism
its after-echoes, the ability to satisfy and famish at once, but much
else in rhetoric. For the
flowers or the talk to have ‘grown frail’—since grammar and
syntax permit either reading—is to suggest a tired fag-end of an
evening of eating, drinking and arguing.
But nothing prepares us for:
5
frail as vaudeville For
either the table chatter to have become as knockabout as music-hall
banter, or for the flowers (colloquy doesn’t rule out dispute)
to be groggy as clowns, is brilliant ambiguity.
Much is implied, nothing settled.
The disputants could be the flowers or the people or both.
This could be the end of a very drunken party, everyone and
everything at the table in ‘violent disarray’.
Thus
the compression of ‘violent disarray’ becomes the more suggestive
when one gets to ‘frail as vaudeville’.
W.
C.
Williams
doesn’t say whether the disputants are the diners or the flowers.
Literally they can only be people.
But people are not inscribed.
The emphatic presence of the flowers makes it almost imperative
that they be, metaphorically, the disputants.
The disarray of the flowers is carried over to the
quarrelsomeness of the people at the table, and sent back again.
This sort of transfer cannot be done by grammar or syntax or the
normal semantics negotiated by these.
But it can be accomplished by a tunnelling between compressions,
all the more telling for the simple language and easy imagery.
It’s
easy to see how these functions apply to poems which need teasing out,
but can there not be great poems where they are not major? To find out, I took a well-known Emily Dickinson poem:
My life closed twice before its close –
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me
So
huge so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven
And all we need of hell.
Emily Dickinson
Her
pieces are untitled, and it’s presumptuous to mess around with the
punctuation. I’ve
selected the following plot-questions (tensions).
1
Whose life ‘closed twice’?—The poet’s.
2
To whom does it ‘yet remain to see’?—The poet.
3
What things ‘twice befell’?—Two partings (deaths?).
4
To whom do the last two lines apply?—Everyone.
Many
of my questions (like ‘In what sense has her life “closed twice”?’)
are rhetoric-questions.
So
on to the rhetoric-questions (compressions).
1
What events ‘twice befell’?—The departures or deaths of
loved ones.
2
How were the past partings ‘so hopeless to conceive’?—One
had no hope of reunion.
3
How was Immortality involved in the events ‘so huge, so
hopeless to conceive’? And
how could Immortality be involved in a third, similar event?—I’ve
cursorily read ‘Immortality’
as Fate, ‘The power or agency which, according to popular
belief, predetermines all events from eternity’. Dickinson believes our lives touched, even controlled, by an
Unseen; and the fact that she speaks of Immortality and not God makes me
guess she isn’t anyone’s orthodox believer.
‘It yet remains to see / If Immortality unveil / A third event
to me / So huge . . .’.
The future will unveil her own death, so why ask?
I say: She wonders if her own death will sting her
with hopelessness. This
is stronger than ‘Will another friend leave me?’
But it’s the aphorism at the end that matters.
4
What do we ‘know’ of Heaven in the experience of parting?—It
* disunites us.
5
How is ‘need’ used in the last line?—With bitterness,
complaint: we don’t need, none of us wants, pain.
So
one can go on. Heaven
and Hell have their theological meanings, which one suspects are
understood in a personal, non-doctrinal way, and although Hell also
carries resoundingly its popular meaning of ‘agony’, the same
isn’t true of Heaven: it doesn’t mean ‘bliss’.
I
can’t think of any poem, however superficially simple, which
couldn’t profitably be discussed with respect to tension and
compression. Put another
way, a group of lines in which there’s no tension of story and no
compression in the telling of it is not likely to be a poem.
It might be a good paragraph in its place, in a car manual, for
example. You might then offer a few lines from a novel that are tense
and compressed (in my sense) and self-contained, too. I’d say either you’ve discovered a poem indeed, or the
lines are not poetry for want of some other element.
For I’m not saying that tension and compression are the only
structures in verse. There
are topics like narratology, since I’ve implied even lyrics have
stories, and what is called ‘language poetry’: for later examination
perhaps.
Alan
Marshfield
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