[Jeffrey]

There are two primary vehicles of expression in the modern West: text and audio-visual. In the former, we have prose (narrative, expository, instructional) and poetry. In the latter, we have music, the theatrical arts (plays, stand-up comedy), and the cinematic arts (movies, television shows, broadcast reproductions of the theatrical arts). In our technologically-driven society, we tend to view things as a progress: the telegraph trumped mounted messengers and signal flags; the telephone trumped the telegraph; electronic information matrices trump the telephone. Likewise, this bias appears in our interaction with media of expression: people read prose more so than poetry, and interact with far more music and cinema than they do prose (how often non-broadcast performances are observed is outside of my knowledge, though I suspect less than both prose and poetry). Though the intellectual elite will claim that the prose original is better than its filmed version, the latter still out-sells the former and being adapted to audio-visual media is a mark of success.

Music is mathematical expression. In the modern West, it surrounds us: commercial jingles, radio stations, the blaring of passing stereos, the personal womb of music players, etc. Cinema and televised media are never without their soundtracks. There is something undeniably primal about music: it is found in every culture, even those where syllabaries and formal sciences are absent. Yet music ultimately forces a regularity on us, as do all the audio-visual media. This is part of its pleasure: whether one is raised on Western or Eastern scales, the harmony of structured music is its pleasure. Our ears are second to our eyes in importance, and we are constantly bombarded by a litany of nature's constant chaotic song: thunder rolling, birds chirping, people talking, people screaming, engines popping, jackhammers pounding, wind rustling. Music does not imitate the natural world but imposes a structure on it. It gives us an image of order made from the materials of chaos. Instruments and vocals in tune fit a regular meter and present us a respite from the natural disorder of sound. It can also give a false sense of security, and its ubiquity makes us think the irreality of music is somehow normal, and the horrors of natural disasters or the ache of natural noise is somehow not.

Narrative in all its forms does the same thing. Our lives have a consistent arc: birth, growth, death. Narrative reflects this but give us a structure. The author controls the histories within her narrative. A specific character is presented to us, their inner workings revealed, and their challenges experienced. While music provides a transcendence over natural chaos, narrative provides a transcendence over uncertainty and monotony. Narratives, whether in song lyrics, novels, epic poems, or cinematic tales, truncate the mundane. We do not read twelve volumes of day-to-day tidbits to get to know the protagonist. Few films present a character heading to the restroom three times a day to relieve themselves. Narrative emphasizes our natural assumption that there are events of great importance within an individual's life. This is, of course, myopic in its own way. If one delayed bladder relief by ten minutes, perhaps an important phone would not have been missed. If one ate his meals on the go instead of seated, a business opportunity may have presented itself. Still, we think in terms of inevitable milestones within our culture. Graduation from high school is one. Yes, countless small events could have led to one missing the ceremony, but not the intangible transference of completion. I for one skipped my university graduation ceremony, but I still speak of my graduation from university. First loves, first jobs, graduations, deaths of kindred...these are the inescapable milestones, and narrative reflects this aspect of our lives by focusing on rising action, climax, etc. However, the abandoned child is not always rescued from the oven. The caped wonder is not really there to save us from disaster. The heroic activist or politician is more often marginalized or assassinated, not vindicated. Again, the false structure of narrative can give us unrealistic expectations about the world.

This was the world of poetry for most of human history as well. The ancient verse most readers encounter is that of the epic narratives: the tales of Gilgamesh, Achilles, Odysseus, Rama, Aeneas, Gawain, etc. Though personal poetry expressing love, dismay, patriotism, etc. are readily available from ancient cultures, these too are pictures of moments within a narrative. The Egyptian poets debated immortality with their souls or expressed sickness unto death over the absence of a loved one. These address directly the passage from milestone to milestone, as do the love poems and war laments of the Chinese Book of Songs or the works of Sappho, Catullus, Horace, etc. from the Greco-Roman world.

The great gift of the European and American Modernist poets was to craft a poetry of ultimate transcendence.

Text has an advantage that the audio-visual media do not: text allows us to transcend the order being forced upon us. Of course, one may point out immediately that experiencing a text requires participation in a structured system: language. Even then, one can experience audio-visual media without knowledge of languages. All one requires is basic senses. I may not know Hindi, but I can experience a Bollywood film, hear the cadence of the songs, read the expressions of the actors, watch the colors burst forth. A text can be ignored due to ignorance of the languages. Indeed, a film can be paused, but is meant to be watched at once. The length of many prose and poetic pieces comes with the assumption of dog-eared corners and bookmarks. A student in ancient Athens did not read the Iliad in one setting; nor did a young rabbi-in-training of Christ's Nazareth read all of Isaiah at once. Instead, text waits for us to come to it, whereas film, music, concerts, plays, demand our obedience during their duration.

But if the language is understood, a text can still be held at arm's length. One can read a passage or two and then take a break, or jump ahead to a random segment. The author may describe a "verdant glen glistening with dew," but it is up to the reader to interpret that. A film will simply record an image of such a glen, but a text allows the reader, perhaps even needs the reader, to create the glen based on their personal experiences with past glens, their experiences and perceptions of green, their own times wandering through dew-kissed fields. Audio-visual media present images and sounds as immediate as those that surround us on a daily basis. It is in text that we are allowed to co-create a world, instead of merely experiencing it.

The Modernist poets such as T.S. Eliot and Hart Crane took this a step further. Certainly narratives unfold in many of their poems, but the direction they took that came to fruition in the post-Modernist and post-modernist poets (there is a difference) of the 20th-century Global world like John Ashbury. By eschewing strict meter and cultivating often unsettling or unusual language, the poets of today allow the reader to escape the forced structure of music and narrative itself more so text generally allows.

Reality is chaotic. We create order out of chaos with the exercise of our technology. We consume the fruits of nature to continue our lives, lives that support rich inner lives. Chaos theory has shown great order (and beauty, perhaps) to arise out of chaotic systems. Music and most narrative forms attempt to force structure into a chaotic world rather than draw from the chaos to produce beauty. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it allows a respite from the daily struggles that characterize life in a chaotic world. Yet poetry increasingly allows us to find beauty in what other expressive media attempt to escape.

Take, for instance, "The New Higher" by John Ashbury. Immediately the title suggests itself as possibly non-sensical. Does it mean a new standard for higher? Does it suggest it will give us some new word to replace higher or some new spatial relationship to be prized beyond elevation, as folks often say "Grey is the new black" or "Trashy is the new classy" in regards to fashion? "Higher" as a noun is unusual, yet this is what the title suggests is its use.

The first stanza of this poem shows exactly what I enjoy out of modern poetry, despite my traditionalist bent that admires the strict forms of the Latin poets.


You meant more than life to me. I lived through
you not knowing, not knowing I was living.
I learned that you called for me. I came to where
you were living, up a stair. There was no one there.
No one to appreciate me. The legality of it
upset a chair. Many times to celebrate
we were called together and where
we had been there was nothing there,
nothing that is anywhere. We passed obliquely,
leaving no stare. When the sun was done muttering,
in an optimistic way, it was time to leave that there.

You meant more than life to me. I lived through
you not knowing, not knowing I was living.

There is intentional ambiguity here that marks much of modern poetry. The first sentence is a familiar line, but it leads into the ambiguous deployment of words and punctuation: did the speaker live through the other not knowing that he was living, or simply not knowing while he, the speaker, was unsure of his own state? The text supports either reading, initially.

The line break seems arbitrary, but it creates more ambiguity. Read on its own: "You meant more than life to me. I lived through." Despite the other mattering more than life, life went on -- but this reading is broken by the realization that the first line continues the second and suggests a zombie-like state for the speaker, alive but not aware of it. Or, given another reading, the one person who means more than life to the speaker is unaware of the speaker's existence. Both readings -- a mesmerized, hypnotic walk through hazy life, or unrequited affections -- draw empathy from the average reader.

I learned that you called for me. I came to where
you were living, up a stair. There was no one there.

But the reading that the speaker's existence is unknown is broken: some unnamed third party informs the speaker that he was wanted, but where the other is he finds only absence.

However, what I want to highlight from these lines is the internal rhyming, which may or may not be intentional. It disappears later in the poem. In these two lines, we have "where," "stair," and "there." "Where" and "there" return throughout the poem, with "chair" coming a couple lines after this quotation and "stare" not too long after."

Is it intentional? It's not sustained with any regular meter or even when read aloud, yet it suggests a pattern, as does the consonance of various words involving "w" coming at the end of several lines in the second stanza of the poem: "now," "anew," "window," "where."

Repetition appears throughout this poem: "no one" and "window" are two examples. Yet there is no predictable pattern for where these words will appear. Unlike Near Eastern repetition where one would settle in for entire stanzas repeated with only minor variation, one is surprised to run across phrases or words from previous lines.

The next lines give us:

No one to appreciate me. The legality of it
upset a chair.

"The legality of it upset a chair?" Musing upon this, it suggests that the speaker realizes his pain is no one's fault, yet in frustration he topples a chair. Or perhaps something else entirely is meant. Like the logical puzzle "This sentence is false," modern poets love to create sentences that are coy, referring to dimly-understood subjects or using grammatical oddities. By using such tactics that require interpretation if studied but also allow celebration of the oddity without closure, they offer us something no other media can offer.

There are other lines like this: "We passed obliquely,/leaving no stare. When the sun was done muttering,/in an optimistic way, it was time to leave that there." and "Blithely passing in and out of where, blushing shyly/at the tag on the overcoat near the window where/the outside crept away, I put aside the there and now."

If "the there and now" were put in conventional grammatical rules, it would look as follows:

the outside crept away, I put aside the "there and now."

This is because "there and now" operates as a noun. Yet Ashbury plays with our grammatical expectations, obscuring both subject matter and speakers. For instance:

I laughed and put my hands shyly
across your eyes. Can you see now?
Yes I can see I am only in the where
where the blossoming stream takes off, under your window.
Go presently you said. Go from my window.
I am in love with your window I cannot undermine
it, I said.

"Can you see now" seems to be directed to the other, but it has no quotation marks, nor does the response -- raising the reader to wonder if "Yes I can see..." is really a response, resolving as it does with "under your window," followed by "Go presently you said. Go from my window."

Prose has stricter rules, but trying to insert punctuation forces interpretation. It could be:

I laughed and put my hands shyly
across your eyes. "Can you see now?"
"Yes I can see." I am only in the where
where the blossoming stream takes off, under your window.
"Go" presently you said. "Go from my window."
"I am in love with your window, I cannot undermine
it," I said.

I laughed and put my hands shyly
across your eyes. "Can you see now?"
"Yes I can see I am only in the where
where the blossoming stream takes off, under your window."
"Go" presently you said. "Go from my window."
"I am in love with your window, I cannot undermine
it," I said.

I laughed and put my hands shyly
across your eyes. "Can you see now?
Yes I can see I am only in the where
where the blossoming stream takes off, under your window."
"Go" presently you said. "Go from my window."
"I am in love with your window, I cannot undermine
it," I said.

None of these raises serious problems. All could be intended. Ashbury could want the reader to see the other dissolve into the speaker and vice versa.

All this ambiguity is criticized as irrational or anti-rational, but I think it is quite the opposite. The world is chaotic and requires interpretation, and no one person has the objective perspective required to give a final word. So post-Modernist poetry presents us a microcosm of the world. Patterns suggest themselves but are not necessarily intended. The poem becomes the landscape of the world which man's ingenuity shapes, whether embodied by a hunter-gather digging up tubers or laying traps or an urban man raising a skyscraper. The poem becomes a world where rational patterns suggest themselves and the reader is free to draw forth as they see fit. The poet strengthens what points they wish but leaves room for the reader to interpret, as all works are interpreted.

However, post-Modernist poetry is built to enable the joy of interpretation. Instead of forcing occasionally false structure on a chaotic world, it mirrors the chaotic world and the hope that an individual can, through rational thinking and independent spirit, draw what she needs from the materials at hand.

As for "The New Higher," where did we see "higher?" The window, perhaps?

Modern poetry allows open questions to be raised and left dangling. It does not force a perception of the world upon the reader but allows the reader to exercise their own wits to create as they see fit. Despite critiques from such circles as the Randian Objectivists that such "chaotic art" is anti-progress or anti-civilization, I would argue instead that it celebrates humanity's power to create meaning from a hostile world. What could sing the song of civilization better?

[relient nelson]

Just thought I would say that I found all of that incredibly interesting and engaging. Good stuff. I especially enjoyed the second half when you began to focus on the Ashbury piece. Bravo.

[SoMuch]

Originally Posted by Jeffrey

All this ambiguity is criticized as irrational or anti-rational, but I think it is quite the opposite. The world is chaotic and requires interpretation, and no one person has the objective perspective required to give a final word. So post-Modernist poetry presents us a microcosm of the world. Patterns suggest themselves but are not necessarily intended. The poem becomes the landscape of the world which man's ingenuity shapes, whether embodied by a hunter-gather digging up tubers or laying traps or an urban man raising a skyscraper. The poem becomes a world where rational patterns suggest themselves and the reader is free to draw forth as they see fit. The poet strengthens what points they wish but leaves room for the reader to interpret, as all works are interpreted.

If I never convinced you before, allow me to convince you now that you need to read Empson's "Seven Types Of Ambiguity".