The Iowa Review
Volume 35
Issue 2 Fall
Article 42
2005
Dynamic Design: The Structure of Books of Poems
Natasha Sajé
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Sajé, Natasha. "Dynamic Design: The Structure of Books of Poems." The Iowa Review 35.2 (2005): 149-162. Web.
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NATASHA
SAJ?
Dynamic Design: The Structure of Books of Poems
How
should
matter?
How
a book of poems be organized,
and inwhat ways does it
have poets shaped their books and what are the effects
a collection
not
of poems
is sequential,
shapes? Because
simultaneous
like visual art, and even though many
readers don't
a book's design is a way to
in order, understanding
read the poems
of those
of the book. I like the idea of gesture (Latin,
deepen one's experience
to carry) as a trope for a book's organization:
How does the book
the reader? While many poets do
carry itself, and how does itmove
this intuitively, and readers are highly disparate
in their practices,
I
would
like to try to make these principles
I
explicit. In other words,
can provide a richer, more "writerly" (to
ask how organization
Barthes'
for the reader.
term) experience
Poets have always structured
their books of poems, Neil Fraistat
will
use Roland
points
out
in Poems
in their Place; Ovid, Horace,
Petrarch, Virgil,
were
and
Yeats
Dickinson,
Whitman,
among those
Milton,
known
Pope,
to have paid attention
to what Fraistat terms "contexture":
"the contextuality
provided for each poem by the larger frame within
it is placed, the intertextuality
which
among poems so placed, and
the resultant texture of resonance and meanings"
(3). Robert Frost,
C.R Cavafy,
poets whose
Adelaide
and Wallace
Crapsey,
Stevens
are modern
collections'
revealed new insights about
contextuality
In the case of Sylvia Plath's Ariel, Marjorie Perloff shows
that the book organized by Ted Hughes
death and self
emphasizes
as
while
the book
destruction,
originally organized by Plath reveals
their work.
at Hughes'
at Edgar Lee Masters'
her outrage
adultery. Looking
River
Dream
John Berryman's
Spoon
Anthology,
Songs, and Robert
M.L.
Lowell's Life Studies, among others,
Rosenthal
and Sally Gall
"fulfills
the
need
for encom
argue that the modern
sequence
poetic
passment
of disparate
and often
tonalities
powerfully
opposed
structure"
(11).
lyrical
Roland Barthes' notions
of writerly
and
a "liberated
(3) through
energies"
One might
draw upon
texts
to understand
readerly
how
and
structure
meaning:
complicates
the poet created a text that allows the reader maximum
pos
insists, "the goal of literary work
(of literature as
sibility? Barthes
has
149
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is to make the reader no longer a consumer,
work)
texts allow "entrances,
of the text" (S/Z 4). Writerly
the infinity of languages"
networks,
(S/Z 5). Barthes
terms in The Pleasure of the Text, the text of pleasure
but a producer
the opening of
uses
analogous
and the text of
readers want
Experienced
with bliss.
that
work
equating
bliss.
"contents,
break with
poems to make them work harder,
For Barthes,
the text of pleasure
comes
from
culture
and does not
fills, grants euphoria;
it, is linked to a comfortable practice of reading," but the
imposes a state of loss, the text that
the reader's historical,
cultural, psy
.[and] brings to a crisis his relation with
text of bliss
is "the text that
discomforts,"
that "unsettles
chological
assumptions..
language" (Pleasure 14). If the text of pleasure
text of bliss gestures
like a lover.
is amarriage,
then the
are often taken
and writerly/bliss
readerly/pleasure
as synonyms
for "conventional/classical"
and "experimental/avant
to
note
it
is
latter
but
that
the
category is created by
important
garde"
a
text
not
is
the reader. "The writerly
thing," Barthes points out (S/Z
The
terms
5) but a "perpetual present"; criticism treats texts of pleasure, while
bliss is beyond words. Thus his terms do not signify binary opposi
tions between easy and difficult or mainstream
and avant garde. The
text cannot be found in the bookstore
(S/Z 5), but is rather
writerly
a process of reading, a questioning
Barthes' provoca
of convention.
the ineffability of the reader's production
of
tive ideas emphasize
even onanistic
nature.
the text, and its personal,
I trace my reading of conventions
In the essay that follows,
that
apply to the structure of books of poetry in an attempt to discover
how they carry me over the threshold
(or not) into bliss. I outline
as
in read
itwere, contained
these conventions?writerly
gestures,
be more
the hope that readers will subsequently
erly texts?with
their own bliss in the books
alert to them, more able to construct
to think
of poems on their shelves, or if they are poets themselves,
Since
about these gestures when putting together their next book.
to
of
of
aim
is
the
range
my
convey
my
organization,
principles
treatment of them is necessarily
glancing.
The beginning
of a book tells the reader a great deal about what
into
do poets welcome
readers
will
follow. With what
gestures
can seize the reader's attention,
strategies
Opening
or
a
sense
of
dawn,
mystery
anticipation,
beginning,
enacting
the book as the new thing that it is.
birth, or creation,
signaling
their worlds?
150
For example, Veronica Patterson
begins Swan, What Shores? with a
poem that ends, "Sometimes,
you fall asleep," suggest
unguarded,
is
that
follows
the
what
ing
unguarded
product of a dream world.
a poem
with
"The
Carl Phillips
that
Compass,"
begins Cort?ge
an arrow," pointing
to the following poems.
is lovely
is usually a shorter poem, an appetizer,
the first poem
Although
in
books
exceptions
by Campbell McGrath,
Carolyn Forch?, and
the
Heather McHugh,
and
among others, signal
poet's seriousness
ends,
"what
ambition
main
and imply
course without
that the reader
is hungry
prelude.
introduces
strategy
autobiographical
a
as
the book
narrative
reader, often opening
a
to the
in
time
with
flashback
Beginning
The
Sharon
Olds
does
in "I Go
enough
to begin
a
to the
speaker
of the speaker's
life.
the
as
parents
speaker's
to 1937" (The Gold Cell) signals
in herself as a product of her parents.
Is Espada" (AMayan Astronomer inHell's
Back
interest
her psychoanalytic
Martin Espada's "My Name
he invokes
Kitchen) takes a different
spin on the autobiographical:
an
of his name, embracing
the historical,
wordplay
etymological
ethnic family larger than his two parents. The autobiographical
between
self and subject; that is, the poet is
gesture negotiates
never just a unique person speaking honestly
about her individual
life, but rather, someone
subject to social codes such as class, race,
because
the poet uses language,
and
gender. Moreover,
nationality,
is also subject to these codes, saying "I" is doubly vexed. No
which
self is primary, untouched
to varying degrees.
by culture?and
poets
acknowledge
this
remain deliberately
gestures
autobiographical
oblique?in
"I" can't
the poet says, don't expect this to be a memoir,
a
in
be contained
poem. Sandra Alcosser
begins Except by Nature
a poem of twelve couplets
as a
that functions
with "My Number,"
Some
effect
is "small. A hundred
of an alter ego. The poet's number
"wears
her
water."
The
like a shadow"
and
of
speaker
pounds
they "judge each other." The poem ends, "Together we dance?my
to sig
the term "number"
number and her best dresses." Using
biography
the infinite nature of personality
nify an alter ego plays against
Yet the
which of course can't be summed up with mere numbers.
poet's number?which
the book that follows,
Broido's
"Carrowmore"
can be made
in a dance
begins
concrete
with
The Master
in language?is
also
the reader. Lucie Brock
Letters with
an oblique
151
"Wherever
gesture:
autobiographical
My thick braid, my ornament?//My
cold Iwill be." These poets question
I went
I came with
me
how
I/Remember
belonging
the easy correlation
of iden
and create poetry as alternative
tity and biography,
autobiography,
turn. In other words,
but giving it a writerly
the
using convention
like fingerprints,
still provide
"facts" may not be there, but poems,
a sense of the poet's
identity.
of the autobiographical
is a poem "about" see
gesture
ing. In a sense, a book takes the reader on a tour of what the poet
sees?or
doesn't. Thus, poems about seeing often include disclaim
the problems of subjectivity,
ers, presenting
light, and point of view.
A version
in her first book,
the first poem
McHugh's
"Spectacles,"
notes
how
that
each
of us sees what
is,
seeing
Dangers,
subjective
can be a "bright suggestion
to see. A pair of spectacles
she wants
or a small/wrecked
to the uncorrected/eye,
bicycle." Robert Hass's
Heather
"Heroic
(the first poem of Praise) also combines
point of
a disclaimer.
It begins: "Aman and a woman walk from
the house in the silence of separate fidelities./There
the movies/to
are limits to imagination."
opens Black
Similarly, Charles Wright
Smile"
view with
the
"Apologia Pro Vita Sua," a poem that ends with
a
to
work
be
done..."
of
"more
the
merging
phrase:
autobiographi
a disclaimer,
a statement
or
of the poet's
cal with
insufficiency
of the disclaimer
inability. Harryette Mullen
spoofs the convention
Zodiac with
"All She
the prose poem that opens Sleeping with the Dictionary,
a
no
excuses
me.
not
I'm
for
list
of
Wrote,"
writing:
"Forgive
good
at this. I can't write back. I never read your letter. I can't say I got
I couldn't get back to writing,
I thought
I'd catch
your note-If
with
up on my
came
on with
a fabulous
author
Since Oprah doesn't
read poetry,
is claiming
of poems don't become best-sellers,
Mullen
in
for
her
the
list
functions
like a
fact,
prose
poetry;
territory
plugging
and books
other
reading. Then Oprah
her best-selling
book."
negative of a customary
photographic
opening poem.
Another way to begin a book of poems
is with a prayer, often a
the
that
individual
gesture
emphasizes
speaker as part of a larger
Poets
Shahid
Ali, Jorie Graham, Grace Schulman,
Agha
community.
Tom Sleigh, and Connie Voisine,
among others, begin books with
that the book of poems is a religious experi
this gesture, suggesting
for the poet and hopefully
for the reader. Recalling
the Bible
a
in
and other holy texts, this gesture places the poet
tradition of
ence,
152
or spiritual visionary
or humble
the mystic
supplicant. Of course,
in the
for Kashmir
the poet prays for varies?independence
case of Shahid Ali, for instance, or peace between Arabs and Jews in
to be part of a commu
the case of Schulman. The reader is assumed
what
nity that cares about the poet's plea. Conversely, Heather McHugh's
seventeen page long deathbed vigil, "Not a Prayer," opens The Father
of the Predicaments with a gesture of individual mourning.
to the genre of poetry itself with an ars po?tica
Calling attention
is an opening
gesture which
places the poet among his (usually
male) peers, and sometimes
ironically. For instance, Mark Strand's
in Darker
New
list poem,"The
("If a man
Poetry Handbook"
a poem, he shall have troubles")
creates a "club" for
understands
the male
making
"A
Defense
Gudding's
poets,
reader
an honorary
member,
his book
and Gabriel
the same
opens
to Philip Sidney's
"Defence of Poesie" and Percy
"A Defence
of Poetry." Gudding's
poem takes the form
Shelley's
Smart's "Jubilate
like Christopher
of numbered
prose statements,
was
cat
Smart
Unlike
who
his
about
Agno,"
Jeoffrey.
actually con
title with
of Poetry"
of
a nod
to a madhouse,
Gudding's
speaker feigns madness,
addressing
a reader who has "the mental
of
the
and
capacity
incorpo
Anchovy"
references to bodily grossness. These gestures
rating "discomfiting"
fined
for the fact that poetry
the genre, perhaps compensating
foreground
is not widely
read, and that poets are not well known,
something
to male writers whose
status in the
that would
especially matter
by writing poetry. Another way to invite
to
art
think
and convention
is to begin with a poem
about
the reader
the reader reads "poetry." Robert Hass's
about another art wherein
culture
can be diminished
"The Rain
(Human Wishes) and Seamus Heaney's
"Spring Drawing"
that transpires//
Stick" (The Spirit Level): "Who cares if all the music
Is the all of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?/ You are a rich man
the ear of a raindrop. Listen
entering heaven/Through
are examples. A broader?and
much employed?version
po?tica is the poem about language.
now
again,"
of the ars
"Part," the first poem in Phillis Levin's book, Mercury, combines
It is part personal
several of these gestures.
poem of loss, part
an
As
extended
definition
of
and
disclaimer,
part language poem.
(and a book of
"part" it serves to remind the reader that a poem
poems)
are only pieces
of a poet's
work
and self: "Of something,
153
or
a role,
not/Whole;
separate,
rate
something
to play/While
one
is sepa
parting."
The use of fragments and enjambed
lines underscores
the reader's
a
itwithout
last
inversion?which
and
the
line's
leaves
story,
partial
the reader to supply
period?asks
Take
sever,
from,
as
the missing
last word,
"part":
in
Lord, part me from him,
I cannot
Parallel
What
bear
to ever
to a discussion
is the book's
is a discussion
of openings
of endings.
connect
to the
How
does
the
ending
trajectory?
In the same way that a poem's
beginning?
its interpretation,
the last poem in a book
emphatically.
Teleology
seem inevitable
from
ending holds the key to
its meaning
underscores
is the study of endings, which
ideally should
Does
the beginning.
the book click shut or
hang in the air, dissolve or fly away? Whatever
conclude. The same gestures
last poem must
For instance, Mark Doty begins
for beginnings.
tone
it adopts, the
for
endings as
apply
and ends Source with
an ars po?tica. Some endings
"Some Final Words"
are self-conscious,
for instance Billy
in The Art of Drowning
(an analogue
to his opening
Some books use a period
"Dear Reader").
poem,
a poem about night; others
and close with
of time as container
Collins'
return
to some
the book's
aspect
wholeness.
of the opening
gesture as a way of creating
One of the most unusual
instances of this
Eva Mary, which begins and ends with
the
"The Apple Tree." Of course, after the intervening
domestic
abuse and violence,
the apple tree becomes
is Linda McCarriston's
same
poem,
poems about
a symbol of the fallen world.
In David Baker's Changeable Thunder,
are
the subject of the first and last poems, but the first poem
clouds
is historical while
the last poem personalizes
clouds, almost as if
the reader has earned this intimacy.
The
idea of closure meets
with
some
in postmodern
to fixed meaning.
Barbara
resistance
poetry, which may show an antipathy
is a recognizable
Hernnstein
Smith points out that "anti-closure
at
in
its
it
all
and
furthest
reaches
art,
contemporary
impulse
reflects changing presumptions
the nature of art itself"
concerning
art correlates with modern
via an
(238). Anti-teleological
philosophy
unfinished
that
continuation,
openness,
suggests possibility,
quality
154
an inability to determine
In the postmod
endings, and skepticism.
ern world,
is seen as self delusion and all last words are
"conviction
of irresolution,
lies, the only resolution may be in the affirmation
seen
as
not
and conclusiveness
may be
only less honest but less
Smith 241).
(Hernnstein
to
her
resistance
another way:
closure
puts
Lyn Hejinian
as
moment
vast
and
each
ceive the world
overwhelming;
stable
than inconclusiveness"
an enormous
"I per
stands
pressure of information,
unfixed, and certainly incom
ambiguity, meaning-full,
a vast undifferentiated
mass
saves this from becoming
is one's ability to make distinctions.
Each writ
of date and situation
under
vertical
and horizontal
potent with
plete. What
ten text may act as a distinction,
The
may be a distinction.
undifferentiated
material
of feeling overwhelmed
by
ence
experi
is like
One feels panicky, closed in. The open text is one
claustrophobia.
the vastness of the world and is formally
which both acknowledges
It
is
form
that opens it, in that case" (653).
the
differentiating.
uses
is structural,
Yet because
poetry
language and language
poets can't not end their poems or their books, so the effect of anti
for example by cre
closure is subtle. Online poetry is an exception,
ating an endless loop that doesn't permit the reader to get out, or by
Strickland's
alternative
endings. For instance, Stephanie
providing
vniverse.com
demands more flexible reading than a traditional text.
Some readers, unused to having their choices made so explicit, may
find the poem more difficult or time consuming
than a page-bound
of poems, yet this may well be the future of reading, and it
text, one that
certainly fulfills Roland Barthes' wish for a writerly
the reader produces.
series
poets how they begin the process of order
contemporary
Asking
a surprisingly
uniform group of answers.
their
books
produces
ing
are balance
Some principles
of structure
and contrast;
dynamic
space; a dialogue between
energy; surprise; breathing
space/white
intent and serendipity, or in Annie Finch's words, between
"tension
writes:
Terranova
"For
and inevitability"
Elaine
113).
(Heginbotham
a
me putting a manuscript
is
reductive
somewhat
process,
together
the way Iwrite a poem. I'm always flinging poems aside, once I'm
convinced
that they 'do not get along well with the others.' The cho
sen poems form some sort of association.
I'm looking for something
that fits together organically,
like a poem, just as in a poem I search
for the lines that adhere. I feel a book should have distinct openings
155
and closings.
mornings.
I'd begin with a poem
that heralds
Something
about
the
fresh
theme
starts, beginnings,
of the collection,
I'm setting out to prove. ? remember how we'd pick a
something
I once worked
for,
photo for a front page of the little newspaper
that faced right, looking in to the rest of the paper." Alicia Ostriker
for a
puts a book together when she has more poems than necessary
"The floor gets covered with poems grouped
collection:
book-length
into various
categories,
the order shifts
other;
and change
exchanged with
sequenced,
regrouped,
the sections of the book
and reshifts,
each
form
113).
places" (Heginbotham
a manuscript
for organizing
As Terranova points out, heuristics
to talk
can come from other genres. Poets can use film conventions
jump cuts and use flashbacks,
a character,
like Mary Jo Bang's Louise in
for instance, or develop
move
to
is
from
the specific to general or
Love. Another
strategy
turn from a microscope
to
book
the
the specific?does
the general
or vice versa? Susan Stewart's
The Forest is divided
to a telescope
about movement:
poems
can make
and the
the first using personal and family material,
or
concerns.
I
because
these
Perhaps
broadening
globalizing
at the time, the strategy I used
teaching so much composition
into two parts,
second
was
the
first book, Red Under the Skin, was rhetorical,
grouping
a
to
not
reader:
three
around
apparent
poems
questions
probably
how are we written
upon? what can we do about it? how do we
in my
write
back?
and the move
and endings,
beginnings
questioning
can
ask
how
the
reader
them,
poems are grouped
slides into or
to create gestures.
The way the end of one poem
an
associational
contrasts with
of the next creates
the beginning
Along with
ment between
order. These
time,
comparison,
cession,
Barbarism,
deciduous
out
at
thought of in terms of sequence,
cause and effect, place, con
contrast, example,
inMolly McQuade's
For
and repetition.
example,
transitions
summary,
the poem
can be
the line "in
and Fiery" ends with
the next poem begins, "When a bear comes
is created by place:
The transition
the woods."
"Furtive
caves" while
into
last
the first poem mentions
although
the second poem elides the word
two
poems
creates
One
156
reader's
momentary
and
the
cave.
amusing ways of ordering a book is an abece
the poems are arranged alphabetically
by title, as in
of the most
darius, where
the
caves, it is not about bears,
"cave"; thus the space between
Sharon Bryan's Flying Blind; Edward Kleinschmidt
Mayes' Works
and Days; Barbara Greenberg's
The Spoils of August; Susan Stewart's
Columbarium; and Harryette Mullen's
Sleeping with the Dictionary.
an
as
Other poets use an abecedarius
for a
organizing
principle
section of their book, for instance Barbara Hamby's
The Alphabet of
as
as the Psalms,
is
old
Desire. Although
arrangement
by alphabet
in
its incarnation
poetry is postmodern,
contemporary
emphasizing
to
rather
than
theme
dominate.
randomness
language
by allowing
In other words,
if the poet arranges the poems alphabetically
after
not
content
been
then
the
order
is
dictated
have
all
titled,
by
they
course
one
to
cheat
and
titles
of
could
make the
change
(although
a
Another
of
fit
"ran
scheme).
poems
way
ordering
secondary
(or to throw the poems down a flight
domly" is to use the I Ching
I
and previously
of stairs?) to find mysterious
hidden resonances.
have yet to find someone who admits to doing this, but why not?
as Stanley Fish notes
Because
it is our habit to assume deliberation,
in "Is There a Text in This Class?" the reader of such a random text
In other words, when one is primed to make
see
assume a flawed
and
structure, one will. One might
meaning
Smith
order, but not that there's no order. As Barbara Hernnstein
would
still find order.
"in games we 'play' with chance, in art we control chance"
Yet
chance is to order a book
another way of acknowledging
(262).
by the date individual poems were written. Charles
chronologically,
admits to this method,
saying "I know this is an odd pro
Wright
notes,
"Whatever"
cess, but I have been doing it for years" (Heginbotham,
no
cases
most
in
reader
has
of
that
the
271). Although
way
knowing
an
it
sometimes
is the organizing
suggests
principle,
chronology
as the poet grows and
narrative of self; in other words,
embedded
changes, so do the poems.
Poets sometimes write poems that adhere to particular groupings,
to keep "groups"
thematic or formal, and then must decide whether
of like poems together or mix them up. The poet arranges the furni
ture of her house, deciding whether
the experience needs clarification
or complication. Recognizing
poems grouped by theme and subject
in grocery stores,
is easy because we are used to such groupings,
is that the reader might
for example. The danger
become
bored,
in that group to be "about" family or jazz
every poem
expecting
or food, and that the juxtapositions
do not create energy. Readers
a bed in the kitchen can
a
see
to
in
while
bed
the
bedroom,
expect
157
in
surprise. Poems grouped by theme should differ in other ways,
to the
In addition
form or in tone, and serve the book as a whole.
sometimes
marked
themselves,
numerals,
groupings
by Roman
of section titles?which
the poet can offer another heuristic?that
also must be held up to the same criterion as the rest of the book:
that otherwise
does the section
title highlight
would
something
is that titles can
such pointing
the
reader's
akin to
wordage,
insulting
intelligence,
for already obvious
information. Numbering
endnotes
the
The
be overlooked?
problem
with
be too much
providing
sections
emphasizes
for instance asterisks.
sequence
of an hour
the division
more
than other
a book
Dividing
into quarters,
a symphony
should make
a harmony
into parts; such divisions
more artful, not merely more clear.
A book
that keeps groups of poems
Trespasser; Ireland is the primary subject,
of "crossing"
etymology
and the sins of humanity.
the first,
"Uisce
Beatha"
is composed
"whiskey"),
second, "Gristle," contains
akin to Seamus Heaney's
refers at once
Smith's
book
of markers,
to
is analogous
into movements,
kinds
into sections
the experience
is R.T. Smith's
together
its
but "Trespassing" with
to the poet in a foreign land
is divided into two sections:
(literally, "water of life" but colloquially,
of twenty-six
of daily life. The
poems
a series
of the miraculous,
is
"Gristle"
"Sweeney" poems.
cartilage,
the substance
that remains once the meat falls away, but also, Smith
tells us, St. Gristle, a "shunned monk/
shocked by Druid dolmens"
whose
church consists of "crickets, whin, and owl bones." Smith's
eleven
poems
to group the "Gristle" poems
together was the right one,
these poems are already so varied within
because
themselves
(in
voice and subject) that reading them together magnifies
the pagan
world
them throughout
he would
they create. If he had sprinkled
decision
not have
created the strong effect of ending the entire book with
this group of poems; ending with
the "Gristle" poems makes
the
in the first
reader question
the traditions and conventions
detailed
to say that there is way out, a
the imagination. Moreover,
this smaller group sug
way through
of
the
lack
balance
between
the
"real"
and the "unreal," with
gests
more
the former being given considerably
space, but the latter being
section.
The
"Gristle"
given the "last word."
A book that mixes
in a way
158
that keeps
poems
seem
Tremble, constructed
groups is CD. Wright's
what will come next.
the reader wondering
subsections,
appropriate
thirty-six poems without
six
"Girl
Friend"
for a short book of love poems. Wright
sprinkles
a
to
different
The
dedicated
poems?each
woman?throughout.
first is simply titled "Girl Friend," and it exemplifies Wright's
gift
and plumbing
for making
her syntax surprising,
the possibilities
Tremble features
the reader work in the white
of poetry by making
space. Following
"Girl Friend" with a poem titled, "And It Came to Pass" suggests
the answer
that a community
of voices and relationships
provides
to the nature of "something
"Girl Friend Poem #6":
else out
there."
The book
closes with
I snap my fingers
in a dear yet unfamiliar place
When
You will wake
You
will
scarcely
remember
your
travail
You will be eating green caterpillars over a small fire
An
awesome
Will
This
her
of youthful
congeries
be brushing
men
and women
these very tracks away.
Wright's
gift for inviting the reader
is Debbie,
but also the reader, whom
state of reading into the world.
out of the hypnotic
poem exemplifies
life: the addressee
poet wakes
poem ends
the volume
with
into
the
The
a note of generosity
inti
and lightness,
to the nuance of
attention
and Wright's
and otherworldliness,
sequence makes Tremble a construct
macy
of dynamic energy.
or bibliographic
a list of explanatory
does not append
Wright
a few contemporary
I
notes. Quite
books of poems do, in what
would argue is a "readerly" gesture. T.S. Eliot may have started the
trend, appending notes to The Waste Land that Richard Badenhausen
in the proper
points out "seem to exclude the amateur unschooled
use of such scholarly apparatuses"
Pale Fire spoofed notes by giving
a novel composed
Fournel wrote
contemporary
poets
novel
(76). Vladimir Nabokov's
them a life of their own, Paul
and some
entirely of footnotes,
have
also put pressure
the notes
However,
on the convention,
for
of most
contemporary
example Jenny Boully.
poets seem motivated
by a desire to appear well read or to save the
reader trouble, and/or to dictate the reading of the particular poem.
in Dark Fields of the
For instance, Adrienne
Rich's "Six Narratives,"
a
note
Poems
that
includes
1991-1995,
says the narratives are
Republic,
spoken
in different
voices,
information
that could have been
includ
159
or simply left to
ed in the title, signaled by the poems themselves,
the reader to decide. In the note to "Prayer" inNever, Jorie Graham
"I take my poem to be in conversation
with such notion of
writes,
of how history
the gods?and
transforms
is put forth in
them?as
to enact a realistic description
In attempting
Herbert's
of
poem.
other
what
the
among
metamorphosis,
'Prayer' wonders,
things,
'suitable' distance between
subject and object, gods and humans,
and nature, might
be" (m). This example of a poet giv
a
an uneasiness
start
the
critics
head
that they won't
suggests
ing
text
there
without
either
because
the poem's
is obscure or
her,
get
because the critics are dense. One might
recall again Barthes' quest
humans
for the writerly
of
text, not as a license for obscurity, or justification
own
for
its
A
for
but
the
reader's
bliss.
book of poems
sake,
difficulty
is a space of play, and endnotes
close that space with a fence.
In a world where poems are more often than not read in antholo
on the web and out of their
it's
gies, magazines,
original context,
to be reminded of the ways context can enhance one's
important
is an air kiss,
reading experience.
Reading a poem in an anthology
but reading it within
the structure the poet has provided
for it can
a
be
sexual encounter.
For me Yusef Komunyakaa's
thoroughly
to
text. Indeed, its very
the
Gods
the
Talking Dirty
epitomizes
writerly
project argues that language is a kind of sexual pleasure. The book
contains 132 (the large number creates an orgy!) poems consisting
of
stanzas.
or
common
four four-line
The musical
4/4 signature,
time,
a structural
provides
in tone:
shifts
rapid
evenness
that permits
thematic wildness
and
like a commonplace
to
the
book, Talking Dirty
Gods is crammed with characters, notations,
and
stories, odes, pleas,
rants that together
of human nature
suggest both the coarseness
and the refinement
of the poet's language. Some of the poems are
others use accentual measures.
The book is
rhymed and metered,
not divided into sections; rather, its poems sweep across the reader
like waves, with time to come up for air only between
poems. The
is "Hearsay," and the last is "Heresy": by that one miss
the
his
poet signals the subversive power of his making,
ing letter,
rebellion against religion and the status quo:
first poem
No,
it wasn't
the penis
Pharisees wished
160
abridged
&
season
That
amputated.
Tongues rotted like fat figs
On broken branches. Pelagian wit
Could cost a man his head.
were already banished
From the pulpit, & their songs
Women
Held
only
an after-scent
of myrrh.
Some sculpted lies & dripped gold
Into them. Others saw burning pyres
& said Free Will
couldn't live
In a doll's body, termites in the godhead.
of
the doctrine
dared to challenge
Pelagius
the
tongue challenges
original sin, the poet using his Anglo-Saxon
of
reli
with
the
Phallus.
Faced
of
the
rigid heterodoxy
centrality
some women
subvert from within by
gion, patriarchy, and language,
Just
as the Briton
lies" and "drip[ping] gold into them." Others reject
paradigm entirely. In his last poem, the poet aligns himself with
the Nietzschean
subversion,
female, evoking
parallel between
in
"termites
become
and the feminine?the
poems themselves
"sculpt[ing]
the
the
art
the
of western
society. This
godhead," chewing away at the foundations
are
of
blend
(termites
small) and pride
modesty
poem's dynamic
can
mirrors
book's
the
down
take
houses)
strategy. 132 small
(they
a lot of pleasure for
poems can add up to a lot of destruction?and
the
reader.
carry their
stanza breaks create
Books
prising
Roland
Just as line or
lightly or ploddingly.
sur
in
individual
and
conflict
poems,
energy
a
in collection.
create energy and movement
readers
juxtapositions
states
Barthes
that a text of bliss "granulates,
crackles,
movement
friction.
of
and
verbs
and
caresses, grates, cuts,
comes,"
to
not
in
use
order
be used by it,
but
The poet must
convention,
create a free flow of energy through the book, clearing clutter and
that
the path so much
the space inviting, yet not dictating
making
trust
a
sense
reenter
Poets
who
of discovery.
with
the reader cannot
their readers make
their book's
structure
a partnership,
an invita
tion to find bliss.
161
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Karen.
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of
Copy'
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Richard.
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