The Middle Voice and the Internet: Negotiating Insights from
Poetry to Foster Cross-cultural Fluency
by Tom Gage
#1. This paper reports on my course entitled gignomai,
offered in the English department at Humboldt State
University and in another program of the University. My goal
in teaching this class is to emphasize how attending to
sound heightens the sense and meaning of poetry, an
emphasis embodied in its title, gignomai. #2. My
methodology demonstrates how a poem becomes the
student and the student, the poem, in order to bring new
meaning to the phrase “knowing by heart.” I will take you
through gignomai. #3. Then, I will discuss the Internet and
Cross-cultural Fluency (“CCF”): how the Internet and email
extend and harmonize meaning making as cross-cultural
fluency. Finally, If there is time, I will discuss the semester
syllabus. These increments relate to aesthetic theories of
Ricoeur, Moffett, and Rosenblatt.
#4.Rumi Transacting with poetry should be gignomai, a
“becoming,” “of being realized,” or “manifested as magicked
forth.” Gignomai is a Greek verb “to know” but its aspect
signifies the Middle Voice. In addition to active or passive in
English, Attic Greek includes the middle voice. In English “I
hit the ball” is an example of active voice; “The ball was hit
by me” is passive. To approximate Greek Middle Voice: “I
became the ball,” the agent and predicate are
consubstantial. In his sonnet “On Reading Shakespeare’s
King Lear,” Keats approximates the Middle Voice with his
verb choice “to burn”:
Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute.
Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute
Betwixt damnation and impassioned clay
Must I burn through . . .
Keats’ speaker had been reading a musty, old romance and
he turns to Shakespeare’s lines for engaging in dialogical
discourse (Bakhtin, 1981). Poetry must “Happen”; it must
“become;” it must “be.” Think “pregnant.” Most English words
with “gn” or “g” plus vowel and “n” trace back to the title of
this course, not back to the active form “gnosis, which
means “to know” as for the test.
#6. Party Understanding a poem is like join a party late. It
takes a while for you, as a lately arrived interloper, to get the
hang of the conversations. Poems should be heard rather
than read, and multiple experiencing of heard poems
approaches “gignomai,” or language being realized as it
happens.
Poems are ΑΠΟΡΙΑs, eliciting initial ambiguity. I’d like
to experiment with the audience by reciting a poem. As in
class, I don’t name the poet nor cite the poem’s title. Even
after recitations begin, I do not mention either, though often
students recognize title or poet but are refrained from
sharing. By deleting a title, students will often come up with
the title in epiphany.
Try it yourself. Recite or read aloud in class Keats’ “Ode to
Autumn”. Without the title, students attune to the temporal
progression of the three stanzas. Seven or ten recitations
will lead the listeners to understand how “the maturing sun
(‘s),” congress results in the earth’s “seasons of mists and
mellow fruitfulness,” how in each stanza morning, noon, and
evening are metonyms of maturation, and how images of
brisk sweetness, soporific languor, and ennui over fading
jubilation signal advent of evening and fall.
Consider these short poems:
Hug Me, Mother of Noise
Find me a hiding place.
I am afraid of my voice;
I do not like my face.
by Anne Stevenson
Or
He clasps the crag with crooked bands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
by Tennyson
Methodology of Lesson. During a lesson of gignomai, I
stress sound by reciting an unidentified poem many times. I
deliver the poem to attune gignomai, that is, for the poem
and listener to become one. The repeated hearings of
recitations deepen understandings for the next stage,
engaged collaboration. After class at home or at the library,
they study the poem and draft new insights or refutations of
the earlier theses from class discussion.
Thanks to the Internet, my students can also discourse
with cross-cultural audiences abroad. Students from Prague
in the Czech Republic; from Bali, Indonesia; from Istanbul,
Turkey, participate in some cases for a small honorarium or
the benefit of exchanging thoughts with California students.
And often interlopers join in like Syracuse’s alum the poet
Dan Masterson.
In light of this overview, I’ll elaborate further the stages of
gignomai that bring new meaning to “knowing by heart.”
1. Although in a typical class period, I can share three to
five poems, what I describe below addresses a single
work. For example, I recite several times an unassigned
work by Reed, Keats, Miles, Roethke, or Thomas.
2. Next, they view the text projected on a screen.
3. Then in groups engage collaboratively in meaning
making.
4. At class end, I identify the one poem that is the subject
of the session. After they leave class, each student at
home or in the library downloads and for the first time
prints out a copy of the poem to consolidate retrounderstandings.
5. While still at home or at library terminals, or perhaps
sometime the next day, they draft their thoughts about
the poem, their gignomai, the marriage of heard and
discoursed meanings.
6. Finally, at a designated time and date, I upload for them
what the Christian, Muslim, and Hindu from abroad
made of this poem. #7 & 8 This progression
approximates what Paul Ricoeur calls distanciation;
their process is a formulation of gignomai, a kind of
knowing resulting from comparisons and, perhaps,
broadens culture-bound insights among the global
community.
Rosenblatt suggested variation of delivery that
demonstrates gignomai (1996). In this case the instructor
begins by simultaneously projecting lines upon the screen
while reading them, each sentence as many as six times. A
progression of nine or more sentences brings forth an image
not unlike a photograph emerging from chemical bath.
Students are encouraged to treat the emerging sentences of
the poem as a Rorschach test that results in a cacophony of
psychological associations from students in the class.
Sharing in class Josephine Miles’ poem “Family” elicits
remarkable tangents, approximations, wit, and predictions of
where the poem is going #s9-23. Since Chomsky, linguistics
know that sentences progress with a loss of word options
after each choice of diction. Students who have encountered
this variation of gignomai realize how subtle the crafting or
art of poetry.
Aesthetic Theories and the Internet Genres. Ricoeur’s
theory resonates with theories of James Moffett. Readers
familiar with Moffett’s work will detect in the above the
staged progressions of what he called Orders of Knowledge
(Moffett, 1968). #24 & 25 The first order of knowledge is
hearing the recitation of a single poem (listening is “What is
Happening” or, in literature, it is the genre of drama). The
second order occurs in retrospect, after class discussion that
answers the question What Happened? –that is, over the
duration from beginning, middle, and end what took place in
class as they arrived at something like a consensus (Think of
the narrative, or especially, the genre of the fable: narrative
leading to generalization). Moffett’s third Order of Knowledge
occurs later, perhaps at home, when each generalizes from
the localized particular about the poem to answer the
question What Happens? in this and in poetry generally and
in literature, it is the genre of the essay. Finally, after
perusing their foreign colleagues’ explications of the poem,
they discourse at greater distancing generalizations about
how cultural contexts shape meaning that address What
may or may not Happen when reading poetry. Wedding both
modes of rhetoric and genres of belle lettre evidences how
Moffett’s work advanced a unified field theory of language
arts, a fusion of rhetoric and literary study, of process and
product.
Internet. #25 Moffett’s unified field theory of rhetorical
writing modes and reading genres of literature curiously
anticipates emerging genres of Internet discourse. To review
the above, consider how hearing poetry recited is What is
Happening; it is witnessing, like drama on stage where
dialogue unfolds action. Twittering on smart phones, the
synchronous discourse of chatting or SKYPing over
computer approximate the genre of drama in predominantly
present progressive tense. Again, consider how discussing
what people said and reflecting upon prior meanings in class
embodies What Happened; it is a story in past tense
recapitulating beginning, middle, and end; it is analogous to
the literary genre of the narrative and occurs in Internet
genres of email and some blogs. Again, harmonizing a host
of meanings, both homegrown and foreign about what a
poem means is generalizing about What Happens as a rule
in life, a discourse mode analogous in literature to the essay
genre and found on the Internet in wikis. The organizing
principles of these discourses progress from chronology,
both synchronous and nonsynchronous, that governs What
is Happening and What Happened while listening,
witnessing performed drama, Tweeting synchronous
discourse and also in nonsynchronous chronology when
reading stories and reporting on blogs. The organizing
principle of the essay, the implicative mode of What
Happens and What May or May Not Happen oscillates
between psychology and tautology encountered while
composing an essay assignment, reading Montaigne, and
perusing a wiki or blog editorial. #25
Among the classes of gignomai that I have taught over the
years, I have recruited students from around the world, some
I’ve met during travels and others are students of mine
teaching abroad who have asked their students to participate.
And I have had Internet surfers join in with unexpected
benefits. Some years, Dan Masterson, whose inventory of
poetry and papers are housed here at his alma mater,
Syracuse University, surfed onto my blog that led to his
emailing me that he thought gignomai a unique course in
poetry. He asked to be a fly-on-the-wall and soon became a
contributing poet to the class and co-instructor of those
students writing poetry. Though he and I have never met, we
have become great friends in our working together to
advance poetry. Masterson is the founding editor of the
online Enskyment Poetry Anthology.
Cross-cultural Fluency (CCF). To explore further into CCF
see my essay “A Steady Digital Dialogue: Youth Building
Peace in a Dark Time” delivered at the Peace-building
through Education Conference, Sponsored by Fountain,
Yale University, New York Institute of Technical, and Baruch
College, SUNY, held in New York City, N. Y. September 24,
2012.
#26 Stevens. To capture gignomai in silent reading, we
return to Wallace Stevens’ “Readers.”
Semester Sequence. #s 27, 28, & 29 The semester
syllabus includes arrangement of poems in three categories:
“aporia” or riddles, “personae,” and “phusis.”
1. Aporia: The poem is introduced as a riddle, for aporia
denotes a blockage through a passage, and gignomai
signifies breaking through to epiphany.
2. Personae signifies masking, a façade, but too
personality, as embodied in both meanings of the
word’s Latin translation, “character.” This category of
poems is more about who is speaking than what the
speaker is describing.
3. Physics is English for the Greek word phusis, the early
meaning of Nature. In transcendentalism, Nature masks
ultimate meaning. As poems convey objects in Nature,
the reader/listener grapples with language that
accentuates in formed meanings what can be taken to
heart.
Aporias:
The Candel by Abul ala al Maarre
r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g by e. e. cummings
It is a Spiral Way Howard Nemerov
Poems to Solve by May Swenson
Pity this Busy Monster by e. e. Cummings
Judging Distances by Henry Reed
Naming of Parts by Henry Reed
Sea Elephant by William Carlos Williams
Reason by Josephine Miles
The Builders by Sara Henderson Hay
Base Runner by Robert Francis
Easy Poem by James Galvin
TV by Anne Stevenson
Sprinters by Lee Murchison
It Bids Pretty Fair by Robert Frost
Personae:
Lament by Dylan Thomas
The Dinner by Elva McAllaster
Karma by E. A. Robinson
Richard Cory by E. A. Robinson
How Annandale Went Out by E. A. Robinson
Nest to of course, God by e. e. cummings
Late Rising Jacque Prevert
ygUDuh by e. e. cummings
oil tel da wold by e. e. cummings
Fist Fight by Dan Masterson (based on George Bellows’
painting “Stag at Sharkey’s”)
nobody looses all the time e. e. cummings
Oedipus Rex by Josephine Miles
My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke
Le Repas Frugal by Dan Masterson
Phusis:
Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas
Cuttings by Theodore Roethke
Cuttings later by Theodore Roethke
In a Dark Time by Theodore Roethke
Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens
Birches by Robert Frost
The Waking by Theodore Roethke
The Force that through by Dylan Thomas
Travelling through Dark by William Stafford
Do Not Go Gentel by Dylan Thomas
Design by Robert Frost
Hunchback in the Park by Dylan Thomas
Hearing poems by Miles or e. e. Cummings engages mind in
finding traction that leads to comprehension. What is being
voiced and who is speaking grounds ratiocination for
reflecting on how a teller shades impressions.
Conclusion. The student writer’s stages of sensing,
remembering, and thinking benefit from a pedagogy
for engaging students when experiencing, discussing,
writing, and reading literature. From classroom, to
home downloading poems and writing up
understandings, and then receiving culturally different
meanings, students harmonized and attuned for a
summative essay on transacting with texts. The
sequence entails how by scaffolding methods,
students engaged with aporias of sound, then exhibit
grace in the face of ambiguity by resisting palliatives
of certitude and cliché, then collaboratively express
what becomes palimpsests upon which they
consolidate their understandings in writing for
comparing with those of the Other.
Additional Notes
I have drawn from Edmund J. Farrell a series of questions
teacher could ask students about both the speakers of the
poems, the subjects of the poems, and the poets.
Given the poem, what is the geographical area in which the
work is set?
What was then the life span of men? Of women? The
mortality rate of infants? The average family size?
What were the major trades and occupations in the periods?
How were persons trained or educated for these
positions? How long did individuals work each week, and
what were they paid? What occupations were open to
women?
What were the major diseases? What were the causes and
their effects? How were diseases treated? How was
sanitation dealt with?
How did individuals obtain, preserve, and prepare food?
What was the typical diet of a wealthy person? A poor
person? A person of average means?
What was the dress of individuals of different walks of life?
How ws clothing made and maintained?
What were the common means of transportation? How
efficient were they? If individuals traveled, where did they
typically go and for what purposes?
How did persons geographically distant communicate with
each other? At what speed? How was “news”
communicated? With what efficiency?
How were women of different social strata treated?
Children?
What did individuals from various backgrounds do for
recreation?
Who was educated? How? For how long? What was the
literacy rate for the period?
What was considered to be “crime,” and what was allocated
“punishment”?
What were the religious beliefs and practices of the
populace?
With Farrell’s incisive probing and Moffett’s distancing,
students will become keen readers. I hope that teachers and
their students will enjoy the method of gignoma for reading
poems and perhaps use it to increase their anthology of
remembered poems. While enduring thirty-seven treatments
of radiation recently, I passed the time recalling and reciting
silently my trove. Montale said that poetry is a ladder to God.
I have always thought so.
Some Poems
Syria
The ancients said that poetry
is a ladder to God. Reading mine, you may
not think so. But I knew it the day
you helped me find my voice again--a day dissolved
in a flock of clouds and goats stampeding from the bank
to browse, slobbering, on marchgrass and thorn, and the
lean faces
of sun and moon fused into one,
the motor had gone dead, and an arrow
of blood on a stone pointed
the way to Aleppo.
William Arrowsmith translated from Montale.
At al-Afreen
Tom Gage
Tabla and tambour pulse,
Voices unisono whining,
As two youths dance.
Facing each other, serpentine,
Arms, wrists, and hands feign seduction,
While around them, we lounged, leaning
Against Arab women and men, all
Smiling and clapping, all undulating
To the swaying beat. The flesh eating
Sun heightens my fever; its rays
Scorching through entwined branches of
Tamarind trees meeting fumes of
Ascending cumin and kebab.
Around the pomegranate grove,
Poplars picketed calligraphy,
Kufic spearing a chalk blue sky.
Our maze of rugs and pillows bordered
The dancers, while between
Us and the grove filed Caryatids,
Curtly balancing crates of pomegranates;
With cool classic gaze, these Kurdish wives
Stop to stare with rueful approval
Or resigned acceptance, differences
Of tongues and times: Alexander’s wake.
1983 in Syria
Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhail. (1981). The Dialogic imagination. Austin,
TX: U of Texas Pr.
Bruns, Christy. (2011). Why literature? The Value of literary
reading and what it means for teaching. New York, NY:
Continuum International Publishing Group.
Gage, Tom. (September 24, 2012). A Steady Digital
Dialogue: Youth Building Peace in a Dark Time. Peacebuilding through Education Conference. New York City, N. Y.
Sponsored by Fountain, Yale University, New York Institute
of Technical, and Baruch College, SUNY.
Galvin, James. (1997). Resurrection update: Collected
poems, 1975-1997. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Pr.
Moffett, James. (1968). Teaching the universe of discourse.
Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
Ricoeur, Paul. (1991). From Text to action: Essays in
hermeneutics. Tr. Kathleen Blamey & John B. Thompson.
Evanston, IL: Northwestern U Pr.
Rosenblatt, Louise. (1983). Literature as exploration. 4th ed.
New York, NY: MLA.
Rosenblatt, Louise. (1964). The Poem as event. College
English. 26(2) pp. 123-128.