I volunteered at the university’s poetry festival yesterday (which is chaired by my Harlem Renaissance professor), and listened in on one of the speakers, who was not reading his own poetry, but lecturing about poetry. Which I find more interesting. He had some interesting things to say about poetry vs. prose and the way that we read differently when something is in lines (i.e., we expect unlined prose to follow narrative logic, while we expect lined poetry to follow the logic of sound). He used several examples, including one from King Lear<\/i>–a set of lines which in the first quarto is prose, but is lineated in the folio edition. Another example was a prose poem by contemporary poet John Ashbery, which starts in lines, but then ends with an un-lineated section. Yet the logic remains poetic rather than narrative, as you’d expect prose to be. Pretty interesting. (I think you could even extend this into the filmic arena, actually…perhaps in the way some films suppress narrative logic in favor of formal logic.)<\/p>\n
Anyway, one of his examples was from James Joyce’s Ulysses<\/i>–the “Sirens” section, which is lined. I haven’t read Ulysses<\/i>, but the speaker pointed out that this poetic part, which seems semantically meaningless, is mirrored by the prose of the next section. This section is the pure sound without the narrative explanation. I can’t decide whether this makes me scared to death to read Ulysses<\/i>, or really eager to do so. Here’s the poetic section in question:<\/p>\n \nBronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing. I like verbal experimentation, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to get past the sounds and connect it with any meaning whatsoever, the way real Joyce people do. I had enough trouble keeping track of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man<\/i>, which is nowhere near as experimental as this. But if I want to focus in any way on literary modernism….gotta have Joyce. Like I said, reading this passage both attracts and repells me. Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to do…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I volunteered at the university’s poetry festival yesterday (which is chaired by my Harlem Renaissance professor), and listened in on one of the speakers, who was not reading his own poetry, but lecturing about poetry. Which I find more interesting. He had some interesting things to say about poetry vs. prose and the way that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[413,79,468],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":109,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/eeeeee\/","url_meta":{"origin":285,"position":0},"title":"Eeeeee!","author":"Jandy","date":"September 21, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"So I had this poetry explication that I wrote last week, about which I was a bit concerned. Firstly, because I don't like poetry too much, and it's always difficult to write about something you don't like that much (although at least I understood the poem I was writing about,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":249,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/wow-i-do-like-poetry\/","url_meta":{"origin":285,"position":1},"title":"Wow, I DO Like Poetry!","author":"Jandy","date":"March 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"My European Romanticism professor had an interesting anecdote today. This is not an unusual occurrence--he has many, many wonderful anecdotes. There should be a book of just his anecdotes. This isn't even one of his more intriguing anecdotes, actually. But we were talking about how German Romantics theorize about poetry\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":106,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/september-recap\/","url_meta":{"origin":285,"position":2},"title":"September Recap","author":"Jandy","date":"October 22, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Just to say, school really gets in the way of movie-watching. So expect pretty pathetic review recaps for the next couple of years, apparently. Even the films I did watch, I seem to have been highly distracted while watching them, so I hesitated to even mention them, but I did\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36922,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/the-roundup\/","url_meta":{"origin":285,"position":3},"title":"The Roundup: The Return!","author":"Jandy","date":"February 8, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Links from Elsewhere My favorite reads from around the web. If you used to read my link roundups a few years ago, you'll note my reading material has changed somewhat! A shift from focus on film to more about books and teaching and education will likely be evident, as well\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Roundup"","block_context":{"text":"The Roundup","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/linkage\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Screen-Shot-2023-02-08-at-5.13.51-PM.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Screen-Shot-2023-02-08-at-5.13.51-PM.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Screen-Shot-2023-02-08-at-5.13.51-PM.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Screen-Shot-2023-02-08-at-5.13.51-PM.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":99,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/donne-donne-donne\/","url_meta":{"origin":285,"position":4},"title":"Donne Donne Donne","author":"Jandy","date":"September 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I hate poetry. Okay, hate is a strong word. I strongly dislike poetry. I'm trying to read John Donne for class tomorrow, and it doesn't make sense, and I'm so frustrated. I actually just went on the school website to see if I could drop the class. But I know\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":199,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/william-cowper\/","url_meta":{"origin":285,"position":5},"title":"William Cowper","author":"Jandy","date":"January 28, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I feel like writing something, for whatever reason, so I guess I'll write about William Cowper, since I'm giving a presentation on him tomorrow. Of course, the time I spend writing about him here would probably be better spent working on my handout and stuff, but hey. I've got like\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nImperthnthn thnthnthn.
\nChips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips.
\nHorrid! And gold flushed more.
\nA husky fifenote blew.
\nBlew. Blue bloom is on the.
\nGoldpinnacled hair.
\nA jumping rose on satiny breast of satin, rose of Castile.
\nTrilling, trilling: Idolores.
\nPeep! Who’s in the….peepofgold?
\nTink cried to bronze in pity.
\nAnd a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call.
\nDecoy. Soft word. But look: the bright stars fade. Notes chirruping answer.
\nO rose! Castile. The moon is breaking.
\nJingle jingle jaunted jingling.
\nCoin rang. Clock clacked.
\nAvowal. Sonnez<\/i>. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. Smack. La cloche!<\/i> Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, goodbye!
\nJingle. Bloo.
\nBloomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! The tympanum.
\nA sail! A veil awave upon the waves.
\nLost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n