I’ll state on the outset that the poem is a free verse poem. As such, it has no metrical pattern. That does not mean, however, that it is without structure. It most certainly has a structure and the close reader will notice it right away.

Furthermore, the poem has a set rhythm. It would be a mistake to say that the reader can place stresses wherever she likes. That isn’t true. Try reading the poem and placing stresses on odd syllables and see what happens. The fact that the poem is free verse does not preclude that metrical sequences are out of the question. The difference between free verse and metered verse is simply that free verse has no set pattern.

Now, I’ll introduce the poem, titled “When I Come Home”:

When I come home, don’t set the table.
Don’t put on your red sash,
or don suede slippers.
Don’t uncurl your curls.
Smiles will fade in time,
don’t paint one on for me.
We’ll hone our day by vis’ting URLs,
typing in mem’ries ne’er were. Pers-
picating pains – brack – sackcloth and ash.
I will hold you if I am able.
Don’t wait up, when I come home.

The Avant Structure Of Free Verse

The structure of this poem is decidedly and assuredly avant-garde, though not completely. There is a formalist element here as well. I think it may properly be best categorized at that which Ron Silliman refers to as “post avant.” The late Reginald Shepherd might have called it a lyric postmodernism, though I don’t like that term. Cole Swensen would likely refer to it as a “hybrid” poem, a term I like even less.

I don’t think it matters what you call it as long as you recognize its innovations, which, in the proper frame of mind, are not really innovations but elements brought forward from the past. The innovation is in the marrying up of elements that typically are not seen side by side.

“Avant” is a term that simply means out in front, or the front line. Borrowed from the French “avant-garde” meaning the advanced guard, the English army used it from the 15th through the 18th centuries to describe its front line soldiers in combat. Common English usage has replaced “vanguard” for the same concept.

The 20th century gave birth to an artistic movement, in literature and the other arts, that was based on this concept. The movers were experimental and considered themselves on the vanguard of new modes of expression. The poets of the movement were entrenched in free verse, not metered verse, after the likes of Whitman and the French symbolists.

The disciples of this movement still consider themselves the harbingers of something new despite the fact that experimental literature has not really caught on with the general public, alive though it has been for 100 years. While the ranks of those practicing in the same vein as early experimenters has grown, the preferred expressions – in literature and the arts – is ingrained in the traditions of the past. Let’s not divorce ourselves from reality.

Still, that’s not to say that experimentation does not have its place. Free verse, in a certain sense, is experimental. For a large part of history, metered verse was the dominant form in poetry, though some poets who wrote in meter could properly be called avant during their times, if such a phrase were applied to the literary arts at all.

It’s interesting to note the parallel histories of blank verse and free verse. The former can be traced back to at least the fourth century, though in English its most renown early practitioner was Christopher Marlowe. After Marlowe, who borrowed from the Earl of Surrey, other English dramatists made wide use of it, including Shakespeare, Milton, Cowper, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. But Marlowe was certainly on the vanguard of the blank verse movement in English literature.

It is commonly thought that Walt Whitman was the earliest practitioner of free verse in English poetry. That, however, is not true. Henry Tompkins Kirby-Smith details the history of free verse in his book The Origins of Free Verse, tracing the form back to Abraham Cowley in the 17th century, which was about the time that both blank verse and iambic pentameter began to take on popular expressions.

The Pindaric odes of the 17th century, patterned after the odes of the Greek poet Pindar, fell into the non-structured form we call free verse, though they were much less loosely structured than much of the free verse of the 20th century, a fact their critics often pointed out. Still, later author’s of Pindaric odes were much more structured while still maintaining a close connection to the free verse style. Cowley, however, was the avant of his day.

Free verse has always been an avant form. It is, despite its growth into a tradition of its own, by nature a vanguard instrument for it relies upon a rebellion of the senses. It always has, always will be.

The Structure Of ‘When I Come Home’

So let us now look at my poem, “When I Come Home”, a rhymed free verse poem.

Did I say rhyme? Yes, take a look at the last words of each line and see if you see a pattern – there is one. Not a metrical pattern, but a rhymed pattern. It flows as such:

a
b
c
d
e
e
d
c
b
a
X

The rhyme scheme is a very important part of the structure of this poem. In the interest of full disclosure, I didn’t plan it. I happened upon it. As I wrote the sixth line it occurred to me that I had a half-rhyme, an end rhyme where the final two letters of each line were the same. Though the words don’t sound like rhyme – it is indeed a near rhyme – the visual rhyme appealed to me. I decided to see how I could play with that.

In each of these end rhyme cases you’ll notice that the rhyme, if anything, is visual even when not aural. I was able, in the last half of the poem, to take the original word for the corresponding rhyming line and drop the first letters of the rhyming word to create the second rhyme in the sequence. In some manner, this has been a device used by poets of all forms throughout history, but it’s a technique that is very popular among free verse practitioners of the late 20th century. I like it.

Couple the end rhyme sequence with the repeating internal rhyme sequence of the letters “on” within certain words like “don’t”, “don”, “one”, and “hone” and the poem creates its own rhythm. I consider this a hallmark of my style. This is not the first poem I’ve been known to write this way.

You’ll also find evidence of consonance and other rhyme sequences. For instance, “come” and “home”; “suede” and “slippers”; “uncurl” and “curls” – a slight variation with a negative-positive twist; “curls” and “smiles”; “vis’ting”, “typing” and “in” with “perspicating”; “ne’re” and “were”; and “brack” and “sackcloth”. Then there’s the assonance of “perspicating” with “pains”. Word play is something I find irresistible.

It is also noteworthy that there is only one word in the entire poem with more than two syllables. This is not an accident. “Perspicating” is not even a real word. It’s a variant of the word “perspicacious”, an adjective which I have adopted into a verb form for effect. Other words, like “vis’ting” and “mem’ries” would ordinarily be three syllable words, but I am forcing you to read them as two syllable words. This is a classic device borrowed from 17th century metered verse. It’s called elision. I want you to read those words as two syllables, not three, because it fits the musical cadence that is just right for this poem.

To me, the music of a line is very important. In metered verse, rhythm is intrinsic to the metrical pattern established by the form or the poet’s preference in metrical patterns. The only tools a free verse poet has to establish rhythm are word choices, punctuation, and line breaks – enjambment. Proper use of those elements require a careful ear for a free verse poet and in many ways it is easier to write metered verse. If a poet has no ear for music he can always count syllables.

Even in metered verse, the natural rhythms of language will win out unless a poet is clear about where stresses should be placed by using proper elements like elision, caesuras, synaloepha, punctuation and, yes, even word choices. It’s important to understand where a stress falls in natural language. Rarely are words like “of’, “and”, and “but” stressed in common speech. Why should they be stressed in a poem?

It’s not really proper to perform scansion on a free verse poem, but if you were to scan “When I Come Home” I think you’d find a pretty consistent rhythm to it. Not a metered pattern, but a consistent rhythm.

Try saying that first line out loud. There should be a natural flow. Imagine the first clause – “when I come home” – being spoken to a wife who is waiting the return of her husband after a hard day’s work or a mistress awaiting the return of a soldier from war. How would it be spoken in plain speech? I hear it this way:

When I come home

I hear it this way because natural language, it is said, is iambic. Not always, but often in common speech, if you could listen to yourself, you’ll find that your sentences follow a certain rhythmic structure. It’s really natural that this happens. Whether it is inherent to language, or inherent to the English language, or conditioned by social custom is a matter I’ll leave to the linguists and anthropologists. I have observed, however, that it is mostly true. Perhaps you have too.

That first line sounds like iambic tetrameter to my ears, with an extra half foot at the end of the line. If it were written as prose, it would sound the same. Though, truthfully, that third foot could – and perhaps should – be read as trochaic, making this line an imperfect iambic sequence. Even in metered verse, that happens.

This poem is not written as prose for a reason. That’s because it isn’t prose; it’s verse. And verse is poetry that emphasizes specific cadences and language sequences that are often not found in prose. An example of that would be the following three lines:

We’ll hone our day by vis’ting URLs,
typing in mem’ries ne’er were. Pers-
picating pains – brack – sackcloth and ash.

These lines would make no sense in prose. Take out the line breaks and you have a convoluted mess. Without context, poetic lines can be meaningless. The form provides the context. Let’s examine the lines:

The elision is key to understanding the rhythm of these lines. Remember, no accidents.

When analyzing rhythm, and this is true whether you are analyzing a metered poem or free verse, you should first look at the words and sequences that will give you the greatest difficulty. Often, they can provide clues on how the rest of the line should be read. There are only two ways to read “vis’ting”. You can put the stress on the first syllable – vis‘ting – or on the second syllable – vis’ting. Of course, it doesn’t take long to figure out that second option just sounds silly. In normal speech, the stress always falls on the first syllable. Again, it should be so in a poem unless there is a real reason otherwise.

Read the line aloud. It falls into a natural iambic rhythm and if you count the syllables you’ll find it has four feet. Cool, a perfect match with the first line. That wouldn’t have worked out that way had I not included the elision to force you to read it that way.

The next line is a real doozy. Not just one difficulty, but several. First, “mem’ries” is elided, as is the word which follows, and “Pers-”, the first syllable of a made up word ends the line being the first word after a period. Note that perspicacious – the root from which “perspicating” is derived – normally is broken into syllables thus: per ^ spi ^ ca ^ cious – with the first syllable ending after the ‘r’ rather than the ’s’. But I didn’t break up “perspicating” that way because it would have violated the rules I set forth in the rhyme scheme and the hard ’s’ sound of “pers” makes the line more musically palatable.

Note the rhythm of the line. Count the syllables. Eight. Do you think this might be a line that follows the iambic tetrameter rhythm sequence? Let’s see.

typing / in mem / ‘ries ne’er / were. Pers- //

Close, but no cigar.

Actually, the answer is yes. With the exception of that first foot, all the others are iambic. “Typing” is a word that would naturally be trochaic. You wouldn’t pronounce it typing. That would sound silly. So we’ll leave it as it is.

“Memories”, however, would naturally be stressed on the first syllable, even without the elision. As would “never”. And “perspicacious” too. All would be stressed on the first syllable. So we’ll leave them as they are.

But the elision is the key to getting the rhythm right on this line. “Memories” – a three-syllable word – becomes “mem’ries” – a two-syllable word. “Never” – a two-syllable word – becomes “ne’er”, a one-syllable word. So the natural rhythms of the language take over and when read with the elision of the two words back-to-back, the line becomes an acceptable iambic tetrameter, fitting in with lines one and seven.

But take a look at the next line.

pica / ting pains / – brack – / sackcloth / and ash.

This is a difficult line for scansion and the perfect evidence for why it isn’t necessary, or customary, in free verse. But if one were to scan it, I think the bold syllables offer the best opportunities for stresses.

Remember, start with the difficulties. The word “brack” right in the middle of the sentence, broken by front and rear dashes, caesuras, means this word is most definitely stressed. It’s got a hard sound and I’m sure most readers couldn’t say it in this context without stressing it.

The second syllable of the line – “ca” – is the third syllable of the word “perspicating” and, again, in natural speech would be stressed. For “sackcloth”, the natural stress falls on the first syllable. The line naturally reads with the stresses on the syllables where I have placed them. No accident.

So am I saying this poem is iambic tetrameter? No, not all. If you examine other lines in the poem they don’t conform to that pattern at all.

Don’t put on your red sash, = 6 syllables
or don suede slippers. = 5 syllables
Don’t uncurl your curls. = 5 syllables
Smiles will fade in time, = 5 syllables
don’t paint one on for me. = 6 syllables

Wait. Is that another pattern? Right in the middle of the poem? Yes, it’s a small pattern but not a metrical one. None of the lines read the same. The first line, the second line of the poem, could be counted as two feet. The others consist of three. But which words would you naturally stress?

Don’t put / on your / red sash,
or don / suede slip / pers.
Don’t un / curl your / curls.
Smiles will / fade in / time,
don’t paint / one on / for me.

Whenever in doubt, read a poem as you would speak in natural conversation. You’ll often hear the rhythm that the poet intended.

What’s the point? Free verse has no prosody. Scanning it is pointless, right? Well, it isn’t customary. I’ll give you that. But if it helps understand the rhythm of the poem then it’s an exercise worth undertaking. In this case, it simply proves that there is no metrical pattern, but we knew that. Didn’t we? Still, did you notice the two-line trochaic sequence?

But What’s The Poem MEAN?

I’m going to pretend for a minute that I didn’t write this poem, that I only found it in some obscure poetry journal and don’t know who the author is. I’ll talk a little bit about what the poem might mean based on the plain language of the poem. And I’ll try not to reveal any secrets. I’m just going to analyze it based on the words and the structure.

I agree with Archibald MacLeish: A poem doesn’t need to mean anything. It should just be what it is. But we humans like things to be pat so we tend to look for meanings.

Let’s start with the basics. The narrator is “I”, but not just any “I”. It’s a very specific “I” who is speaking to a very specific “you”, though “you” is never mentioned in the poem. It’s implied by lines like “(You) Don’t put on your red sash.” We know the person in the poem is talking to someone. And that someone is very familiar to the speaker.

I imagine a man returning from somewhere and speaking to his wife or significant other in a letter or a phone call, maybe an instant chat session. Maybe I’m sexist, but that’s what I imagine. It could be a woman talking to her house husband. Or it could be someone talking to his mother. Or the maid. But I’d say that judging by the language of the poem, it’s someone who is more familiar than a maid.

The speaker tells his listener, “Don’t put on your red sash or don suede slippers.” Why red sash? Why suede slippers?

The color red is generally associated with romance or love, sex and passion. And a sash is simply a type of garment worn around the waist, or it can be worn over the shoulder as a symbol of rank. To me, it signifies someone who is important. A red sash likely means the person being spoken to has a very special and significant place in the speaker’s world. It tells me that the person being spoken to is probably a familiar other – a lover, spouse, or maybe a parental figure.

But “suede slippers” says something different. It moves the relationship between speaker and subject a little closer. I’d say it rules out the parental figure and almost clinches the deal on the lover. Slippers are comfortable and worn in a familiar setting, a home. Suede is smooth and soft. The lines says we are very familiar and comfortable with each other. Nevertheless, don’t make yourself comfortable for me – don’t set the table and put on something special just because I’m coming home.

“Don’t uncurl your curls.”

Now we’re getting personal. We’ve moved from outside of the individual to actually talking about body parts. And this is what makes me think it’s a man talking to a woman. He doesn’t want her taking down her hair, or uncurling her curls.

The next two lines say a lot. People smile when they are happy. But people can often fake a smile and when they do it can often be noticed. Is the speaker saying to this familiar person, “don’t pretend to be happy to see me?” This is the implication.

But the next lines are somewhat difficult to interpret. There’s a mystery here. What is meant by “vis’ting URLs?” It’s an obvious reference to playing around on the Internet, but what are those URLs they will visit? We aren’t told, but we know they are important to the speaker. But “typing in mem’ries ne’er were” takes the poem to a new level. Are they going to be Googling their memories? The ones that didn’t happen? Are those memories positive or negative? I think the next line is a clue.

“Perspicating pains” – Perspicacious means discerning, or exercising keen mental judgment. This is what the speaker intends to do with “pains”. To seek a better understanding of their troubles.

“Brack” is very significant. It sounds like “break” and in this poem actually looks like one. Enclosed within two breaks – dashes – that give the word a harder sound than it otherwise would and draw attention to it like a bad bruise. Brack actually means a crack or flaw in something. It is a clear indication of a fissure in this relationship. Did the couple have an argument? Is the speaker still holding a grudge?

“Sackcloth and ash” is a specific reference that can only mean one thing. In ancient Israel, the Jews used to cover themselves with sackcloth and ashes to show penitence for their sins. It was a sign of humility, a way to mourn for the disappointment they have caused their God. The speaker here seems to imply a similar sentiment. Is he returning home to atone for some sin against his lover, the most important person in his life?

We’re not sure. There’s a mystery, but these are clues. Then he says “I will hold you if I am able.” If I am able. Does that mean physically able or emotionally able? I’m banking on the latter. But that final line – “Don’t wait up, when I come home.” – says the speaker is not concerned with being greeted. Perhaps he is not sure when he will come home and doesn’t want her waiting for him. Or maybe he doesn’t want her worrying over his absence. Or maybe …

We’re not sure of all the details. The poet has not given us everything he could. But he’s given us everything we need. The poem hinges on an emotional mystery. Two people have a riff between them, but what caused it? That’s not important. Otherwise, the poet would have mentioned it. What is important is that the speaker in the poem wants to humble himself and fix the break. The question is, can he?

Can The Same Thing Be Accomplished With Prose?

It’s pretty straightforward, really. Those eleven lines. Couldn’t they just be written as prose and achieve the same effect?

Some poets today have reasoned that their poems could just as well be written as prose since all they’re really doing is writing in prose-like sentences. But I think this is a deficiency in thinking.

It’s true that much of the free verse written today looks a lot like prose with line breaks. If you took out the line breaks then you’d simply have a short prosaic piece and it makes you wonder why these poets don’t just write prose. Some of them do and call their poems “prose poems.” Today’s best literary journals are full of poems that look like “lineated prose.” Is that all they are, and nothing more?

I don’t think so. That’s makes the nature of free verse an ontological permanent, which I’m not willing to accept.

“When I Come Home” would fail as prose. It wouldn’t retain the structure that it has now if it were prose. The end rhymes would hardly be noticeable; at best, they would be irrelevant. The rhythm of the poem wouldn’t change if it were prose, but rhythm is not all that free verse has to offer. The visual elements that make the poem a free verse poem, if exploited properly, would cause the poem to fall flat if it were written any other way. Here’s a look at the same lines written as prose:

When I come home, don’t set the table. Don’t put on your red sash, or don suede slippers. Don’t uncurl your curls. Smiles will fade in time, don’t paint one on for me. We’ll hone our day by vis’ting URLs, typing in mem’ries ne’er were. Perspicating pains – brack – sackcloth and ash. I will hold you if I am able. Don’t wait up, when I come home.

As prose, these lines are awkward and squeamish. We’ll deal with the obvious first.

Why the elision? If written as prose, there’d be no need to elide “visiting”, “memories”, or “ne’er”. There’s no rhythmic reason to do so. Furthermore, the sentence these three elided words reside in is missing the word “that” between “mem’ries” and “ne’er”. The correct prosaic way to render these lines would be “We’ll hone our day by visiting URLs, typing in memories that never were.” And there would probably be a better word for “hone” because the internal rhyme scheme is not a necessity and adds nothing to the prosaic nature of the lines.

The next sentence (”Perspicating pains – brack – sackcloth and ash.”) is a fragment. It looks completely out of place and the variation of “perspicacious” is an unnecessary liberty that draw undue attention to itself.

None of the elements that make “When I Come Home” interesting as poetry do the same for it as prose. Even the ominous – brack – looks out of place. It’s a device that, in prose, looks ridiculous but when used to break a poetic line is very effective. I’ve seen other poets do the same thing in similar ways in their free verse poems and it’s an effect, albeit a visual one (though there is a rhythmic component to it), that cannot be accomplished with the same precision in prose.

The New Face Of Free Verse

Ever since Dr. Frederick Turner, a New Formalist, challenged me to study meter while attending the University of Texas at Dallas in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I’ve considered that the line between free verse and metered verse is not really all that great. But contemporary poets seem to be trying to make that line greater and greater. I think they’re moving the wrong way.

Despite Reginald Shepherd’s and Cole Swensen’s studies in this area, even post avant poetics is grounded in avant-garde abnormalities. Even when the poets include elements of formal verse, they do so in such a way that the avant nature of their verse is more evident than the formal. I think this is detrimental to both traditions.

In my view, free verse and metered verse should be joined at the hip. I look forward to reading more free verse that incorporates metered sequences in the midst of freer lines. Not just as two-line sequences as I’ve done in “When I Come Home” but in longer sequences as well.

Is there a precedence for this in poetry? Not really. I don’t know of anyone who has written verse that way on a consistent basis, but there is one poem I can think of right away that does incorporate metrical sequences within an otherwise free verse mode. Examine these lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”:

IN Xan / adu / did Ku/ bla Khan	
    A state / ly plea / sure-dome / decree:
  Where Alph, / the sa / cred ri / ver, ran
  Through ca / verns mea / sureless / to man
    Down to / a sun / less sea.
  So twice / five miles / of fer / tile ground
  With walls / and tow/ ers were / girdled / round:
And there / were gar/ dens bright / with sin/ uous / rills
Where blos/ som'd ma/ ny an in/ cense-bear/ ing tree;
And here / were for/ ests an/ cient as / the hills,
Enfold / ing sun / ny spots / of green/ ery.

I’ve always thought it was interesting that Coleridge wrote this with a clear metrical pattern in the first four lines and then moves off into a wild abandon afterwards. He was criticized for this in his day, but I quite like his style.

“Kubla Khan” is usually considered a free verse poem, and it is, but there is a clear iambic tetrameter sequence in the first four lines of the poem. Coleridge breaks that in the fifth line with a three-foot line. It’s a great line because as you read “down to a sunless sea”, the meter drops down a beat, a very appropriate rhythmic alteration.

Coleridge picks up the iambic tetrameter rhythm again in the sixth line, but breaks it again in the next with an added syllable. Personally, I think he could have done without “were” and held to the iambic tetrameter rhythm. The word is awkward in that line and adds nothing to the poem contextually. But he wrote what he wrote and that’s that. It has an extra syllable.

But then he quickly moves to a five-foot line in the very next sequence. The first line of the sequence has an extra syllable. That’s OK; I forgive him that. It works for that line. Still, Coleridge maintains his iambic pattern except for one foot buried in line 9.

These sequences all have rhythm. The rhythm is set by a meter, albeit a changing one. I don’t know if Coleridge was aware that he was doing this. He said he was not claiming the poem had any special literary merits so I’m inclined to believe that was aware of it. He just didn’t care. He probably thought that he’d be criticized for it because poets didn’t mix their meter. That would have been an unforgivable sacrilege for his time. Nevertheless, he did it.

Take a look at the next sequence:

But O, / that deep / roman/ tic chas/m which / slanted
Down the / green hill / athwart / a ce / darn co/ ver!
A sav / age place! / as ho/ ly and / enchant / ed
As e’er / beneath / a wan/ ing moon / was haunt / ed
By wo / man wail/ ing for / her de/ mon-lo / ver!

Don’t worry. I’m not going to scan this entire poem. I’ll spare you that. But take note that this metric sequence is dominated by 5-1/2 foot lines carrying an iambic rhythm with a few variant feet here and there. The sequence doesn’t match the previous sequence at all. But it does establish its own pattern. With the exception of the first line, a 6-foot line, the other lines in this sequence all bear a striking resemblance in structure, rhyme, and rhythm. Even that first line conforms to the pattern of the sequence despite its extra syllable. However, it does not conform to the pattern of the sequence before it, or the one before that.

So we can see metrical sequences within the free verse form of “Kubla Khan”. Did Coleridge plan that? Probably not. But he should have. Had he established that as his poetic for this poem he might have been able to tighten a few lines and perfect it. I’m suggesting that free verse poets of the future follow Coleridge’s example and add metrical sequences to their free verse lines. It will establish a new poetic, but it’s not like that’s never been done before. Has it?

Oh, those The New Yorker covers.

Recordings of Robert Creeley.

I’ve never heard anyone say Ayn Rand was the reason they decided to become a poet.

Harold Bloom’s “Song of Myself”.

Bill Hayward’s Bob Dylan.

Tea with Dante.

Since I could never get a real read from Silliman on just what these terms meant, I am thankful that I finally found a resource that has shed some light on the subject. Reginald Shepherd wrote a blog post in February of this year titled “Defining ‘Post-Avant-Garde’ Poetry”.

Shepherd had originally published his piece on the Poetry Foundation’s blog, Harriet, where he is a regular contributor. I’ve noted some of his insights regarding the definition and character of the Post-Avant “school” of poetics and would like to offer my own thoughts.

His first bit of meaty insight comes in this rather long sentence that at least makes an effort to define post-avant poetics in some sense (he gets better):

“Post-avant” (as in, “post-avant-garde”—insider groups love shorthand) poets can be described as writers who, at their best, have imbibed the lessons of the modernists and their successors in what might be called the experimental or avant-garde stream of American poets, including the Objectivists (especially Oppen and Zukofsky), what have been called the New American Poetries, particularly the Projectivist/Black Mountain School and the New York School(s), from Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan to John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara, and the Language poets (including such poets and polemicists as Charles Bernstein and Ron Silliman), without feeling the need (as so many other poetic formations have) to pledge allegiance to a particular group identity (the poetry world is full of fence-building and turf wars) or a particular mode of proceeding artistically.

The bold parts of this sentence are the essence of what he’s getting at (minus the parenthetical clauses). I see three things here to highlight and draw attention to:

• They’ve imbibed the lessons of the Modernists and successors
• In the experimental or avant-garde stream of American poetics
• Without pledging allegiance to a particular group or mode of artistic expression (my term: aesthetic)

Without getting into too much detail about the Modernists (I think you all know how I feel), I’d like to just point you to a link that covers, in broad brush strokes, how they ruined American poetry. Keep in mind, however, that the Modernists did have much to teach us and it wasn’t all bad, but it certainly wasn’t all good either.

Regarding the stream of American poetics classified as avant-garde, it’s rather broad. I’ve said before that I don’t like the avant-garde poets, but that’s a rather broad generalization that isn’t quite true. I do like some of them. But I tend not to like the purists. Particularly, I am averse to Gertrude Stein and her disciples as well as the Imagists and others like them. But it’s hard not to feel the influence of the avant-garde poets in contemporary poetics. It’s everywhere. With the exception of a few traditionalists and New Formalists, they’ve really have some influence on us all.

That last bullet point is the essence, I think, of what is meant by the post-avant movement – at least, as Shepherd defines it. Post avant poets do not feel the need to become a part of a group or subscribe to a particular poetic philosophy. They are much more interested in simply writing poetry using poetic devices that work for what they are trying to do.

So Who Is A Post Avant Poet?
I’ve taken the liberty to read through Shepherd’s post regarding this topic several times before writing about it. I wanted to be sure to take in as much as I could before embarrassing myself. But he goes on to add some more characteristics to this definition of post-avant poetry that prove to be useful:

• They don’t form a “movement”, but a set of tendencies (in other words, it isn’t an organized effort; post-avants just migrate toward nowhere in particular)
• Quote: such writing “intentionally blurs the distinction between ‘difficulty’ and ‘accessibility,’ preferring instead to address a continuum of utterance.” (I found it particularly helpful here that Shepherd also included several journals and publishers that publish the type of poetry he is discussing)
• Books, or projects, are important apart from individual poems
• There is a lot of writing about poetry, but not much in the way of a manifesto
• Post-avants like to explore abstraction as a mode and theme
• Post-avants also eschew the predominant autobiographical or pseudo-autobiographical anecdote
• There is a questioning of the self and personal experience without discarding the self as an ideological illusion
• There is an avoidance or complication of narrative
• Post-avants will incorporate disjunction without enthroning it
• Quote: They are interested in exploring, interrogating, and sometimes exploding language, identity, and society, without giving up on the pleasures, challenges, and resources of the traditional lyric.
• Quote: Their work combines the lyric’s creative impulse with the critical project of Language poetry, engaging the dialectic of what critic Charles Altieri calls lyricism and lucidity and what, earlier, W.H. Auden called enchantment and disenchantment without settling on one side or the other.

I found these characteristics rather interesting and helpful and found myself going through the list to see if they apply to me. As a summary of the above, Shepherd had this to say:

In Stephen Burt’s words, they are “trying to figure out how to incorporate both lyric and non- (if not anti-) lyric impulses, and trying…to put modernist fragmentation together with Romantic expectations about voice and form,” and without any preconceptions about what forms such a potential synthesis might take. Theirs is a magpie-like eclecticism, that draws from whatever materials, traditions and techniques are of interest and of use, however seemingly incompatible, however ideologically opposed historically. They don’t try to destroy the past for the sake of the future, or trumpet teleological notions of artistic “progress” or “advance,” though they are fascinated with the processes of poetic construction.

That about sums it up to me. It looks and sounds a lot like what I’ve been discussing with regard to Millennial Poetics. While there may not be a direct 1-to-1 correlation, there is, I think, enough of a common sense of judgment that we could safely say Reginald Shepherd’s Post-Avant Poetics and my Millennial Poetics are close to the same. His post-avant poetics is certainly much more defined and detailed and based on outside observation of other poets writing in a particular mode while my Millennial Poetics is simply based on my own personal philosophy and the way that I like to write. The defining characteristic for me is his statement:

Theirs is a magpie-like eclecticism, that draws from whatever materials, traditions and techniques are of interest and of use, however seemingly incompatible, however ideologically opposed historically.

This can be summed up in my own philosophy in this pillar: There is no prejudice with regard to forms, schools, techniques, or devices. While there may be some differences between my own philosophy and Shepherd’s correlatives, I suspect that if you study all the poets on his list that there will be some differences between them such that not any one of them represent every characteristic on his list. But similarities exist for the sake of comparison not necessarily for the sake of definition. As he points out, poets from historic schools are not necessarily grouped together because they share the same style or voice or even mode of expression; sometimes it is because they share the same political or social attitudes. To be sure, William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley (both Romantics) are about as different as night and day. One was a religious mystic and the other was an atheist, but they shared a common aesthetic attitude with regard to language even if their styles are completely different.

According to Shepherd, “This cross-fertilization has been happening in American poetry for a long time ….” Yes, and I think Ron Silliman knows that as well. I wonder if his discussions of post-avant poetics is based on his understanding that Language Poetry (his own school) is at the end of the road of the avant-garde dynamic. Is that where the post-avant idea came from?

I think it’s healthy that younger poets (I don’t think this applies to me) do not care about divisions among themselves. To me, and I think to many others, a solid poem based on any aesthetic is better than a mediocre poem based on none and a good poet with mixed aesthetic preferences is a darn sight better than a half-good poet devoted to just one mode of expression.

Poetics is not so much an art or a science as it is a philosophy. And like any good philosophy, it’s got to be grounded in the philosophies of the past. It has to say something about where it came from without throwing rocks at the glass, but it needs to also point a way to the future without being divorced from the present. In my view, Shepherd’s view of post-avant poetics does that. It’s much more defined than Silliman’s vague references and that allows me to get my mind around it. Otherwise, if I don’t look down I might trip over a poet who has fallen in a post-avant garde gutter and can’t get up.

My first blog post was published on September 10, 2007. Since then I’ve only missed a few days, but I’ve made up for those losses by posting multiple posts on other days. My second post, made on September 12, 2007 is still, to this day, the fourth most popular blog post I’ve written and still gets a respectable amount of traffic from time to time.

By way of trivia, my three most popular blog posts are:

• Poetics: The 7 Essential Elements Of Poetry
• How To Market Your Poetry Online
• Ushering In Black History Month With Poetry By Langston Hughes

The common element in all of these blog posts is that they in some way discuss poetics in the rawest sense. That’s good. It happens to be a passion of mine and something I enjoy writing about. Judging by the popularity of these posts, and some comments I’ve received over the months, that seems to be what my readers are interested in. Therefore, the new tag line fits.

The two most commented on posts during the past nine months have been:

• How Pretentious Can Poetry Be?
• Are You A Member Of The School Of Quietude?

Again, both address issues and problems of poetics in some way. Special thanks to Ron Silliman who has been an inspiration and his influence in the blogosphere has been a big help. His periodic links to this blog result in traffic spikes that increase my overall visitor count and lead to great discussions as is evidenced by the post on the school of quietude. Ron’s link to that post on June 23, 2008 resulted in the second highest traffic day since I started this blog.

I’d Like To Thank The Academy
I’d also like to thank my regular readers and commentators for keeping things active. You all have kept me going and inspire me to keep going. As of this writing my monthly visitor count hovers around 3,000, where it has been for a few months now.

I love comments. I like to read the comments posted by my readers and am privileged in being the first to read them. To facilitate more comments and to reward those brave souls who make their way to the World Class Poetry Blog, I’ve made two changes that I believe will foster more community here at the WCP blog. Those two additions are:

• The installation of the CommentLuv plugin
• The implementation of do-follow links

These are important developments. The CommentLuv plugin adds a link to commentators’ last blog post. If you write a blog and you post here on my blog then a link to your last blog post will appear directly after your comments. That’s a huge benefit to you and I hope you get additional traffic to your blog as a result of it.

The do-follow attribute on the links is good for search ranking reasons. WordPress automatically makes all links no-follow, which tells search engine robots not to crawl those links and give credit to webmasters for those inbound links. Readers who are aware of SEO tactics will know that inbound links count as points with the search engines. I’ve decided to reward my commentators with those points. For a deeper treatment of that subject you can read my comment policy, which I encourage everyone to read anyway.

There may be more changes forthcoming, but I hope you’ll take the time to read through some of my archives and leave a comment or two. Make some friends and join the discussion.

There are still things that bother me about them, but I am beginning to understand his method. Turner’s aesthetic, and his war experience, are unique. When I read the simple portrayals of violence he lived through and witnessed I sense that there is as much poetry in what is left out as what is put in. He does tell, in some interesting ways, but does also show in some rather powerful ways what it was like to be a soldier in Iraq in 2003 as things began to fall apart. What amazes me about his poetry is the level of control he has over his emotions as he brings to light the disaster that is Bush’s legacy. But these aren’t political poems. These are war poems in the real sense of the word.

I will be reviewing Here, Bullet more fully in a few days. For now, I’d like to offer this observation: Turner’s poetry is an attempt to show a surreal experience through the crafting of a realist aesthetic, the basis of his uniqueness. Typically, it is the other way around. Poets who deal with the surreal more often attempt to get to heart of the real through an aesthetic of surrealism. I’m not going to say which is better. There are challenges, disappointments, and triumphs with both methods. But I will be reading Here, Bullet one more time before I have anything more to say on it.

I don’t know that I’d say that every poem is better as a hearing experience than as a reading experience, but I do believe that most poems can be better experienced through both a visual reading and by hearing the poet read it in his or her own voice. I prefer to hear a poet read first then experience the reading of a poem afterward, but it can be just as effective the other way around.

That said, the 7th appeal is auditory. A poem that appeals to its audience in an auditory way is relying upon the sounds of words more than their visual appeal. The poem must be heard to be enjoyed. This type of poem could rely upon musical accompaniment, background noise and effects, or simply be a poem that is read without any kind of accompaniment. But whichever type of poem it may be, it is intended to be experienced as an auditory art primarily.

So What About The Spiritual?
The question could be framed this way, “How does the spiritual fit in with the 7 Appeals of Poetic Voice?” It’s a very good question and thanks to Jim for bringing it up.

Before I move on to answer that question I’d like to review the 7 appeals. Here they are again:

1. Emotive
2. Intellectual
3. Grammatical
4. Orthographic
5. Visual
6. Auditory
7. Anthropological

That is the order that I prefer them in. So how does spirituality fit into all of that?

It’s really simple. Spiritual concerns are important to a large part of humanity. One could be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, Wiccan, New Age, Occultic, Pagan, or any variety of these ranging from liberal to mystical or orthodox, or one could fall into one of many thousands of other minor religious categories. The persuasion is unimportant. With regard to poetry, whatever your religious beliefs, they are sure to appear somewhere in your poetry. And they could show up as any of the above appeals or through any combination of them.

An emotive appeal would be when John Donne penned “Batter my heart, three-person’d God.” That’s a pretty powerful statement. And there is no logic to it. It’s just a statement of permission based on an emotion that the poet is trying to convey or have his audience feel. It is based, presumably, upon a feeling that he himself has and is trying to communicate through the poem. By contrast, T.S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” is a passionate appeal to the intellect. Consider the following lines:

                                     And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.

The poem is too long to reprint here in full, but I think you’ll get the gist. Eliot is making intellectual appeals with his repeated use of “because” throughout much of the poem. The theme is spiritual, but the appeal itself is intellectual.

Gerard Manley Hopkins can be understood on so many levels. I suppose that is why I am so drawn to his poetry. Even if I didn’t share the same faith I’d look on Hopkins for inspiration. His poetry is rich in so many ways and he makes use of all the appeals quite effectively in any poem he wrote. “The Windhover” is a good poem to use as an example for almost all of the appeals. Here it is in full:

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

The form is a sonnet, but you can see by the rhyme and the rhythm, Hopkins’ own creation which he called “sprung rhythm”, that he makes appeals on the grammatical, auditory, and visual levels very easily with this poem. The use of alliteration and the hyphens illustrate grammatical and orthographic appeals, respectively. The accented words “sheer” and “plod,” which would normally not appear as accented in normal linguistic usage, give forth an unusual grammatical appeal as well. You can’t read this poem without wondering at the language and imagery he uses matched with the rhythm – how the words just fly off the tongue!

While “The Windhover” makes visual and auditory appeals, it also makes an anthropological appeal by showing the power of God’s beauty as seen from the passive observation of man. The relationship between Christ and his salvific beauty and the man that he saves is the core of the poem and everything else – the language, the imagery, the rhythm, the mix-match of appeals – flows forth from that relationship.

While poets often make spiritual appeals in their poems, those appeals are more often related to theme. The voice of the poem, however, is separate from theme. The voice involves style and tone, language elements, rhythm, word usage, punctuation, and a host of other philological concerns that appeal to the reader’s senses. These concerns are the essence of the Appeals of Poetic Voice.

Bradley Lastname does make me laugh at times. And it’s not all just puns. But one thing that I find really irksome in poets is laziness. There is no excuse for it. Kurt Vonnegut said writers should spend the time of a stranger in such a way that he doesn’t feel the time is wasted. That’s good advice even if the amount of time your reader will spend is a few seconds.

While I found a few bad poems in Bradley Lastname’s Bela Tarr Has Feathered His Nest, the most bothersome thing to me was (and I didn’t mention this in my book review) a poem that followed the same pattern, and even in places were word for word, as a previous poem. Granted, there was likely a point. Lastname often does unconventional things in his poems for no apparent reason – like write seemingly realistic recipes as poems with oddball titles (and I really like his titles). But what I don’t like is to read two poems that look and sound just alike. The following two excerpts will give you an idea of what I mean:

The Museum In A Tree

You are about to be a recipient of information they hide in things called books. The information concerns the museum in a tube.

Those are the first two lines of the poem, and I’ve got to be honest and say that I enjoyed the poem upon first reading. The idea of a museum being open just one minute a day – from 4:20 p.m. to 4:21 p.m. – was quirky and the poem was a fun little twist as poems go. But he ruined it for me when later in the book I read “The Postmortem Audio Library”, which starts like this:

You are about to be the recipient of information that is hidden in things called books. The information pertains to the postmortem audio library.

The poem follows the exact same template as the first poem about the museum in a tube, which I liked better than the audio library poem. The length, stanza breaks, prose style, and verbiage throughout the poem was almost identical except for the references to the audio library and its contents. The library is even open from 4:20 to 4:21 every day, just like the museum in a tube. I hated it. To me, it was an act of laziness. Instead of writing a completely different poem, the poet decided to just copy and paste his new creation onto a different page and change a few words to make it a different poem. Was there a reason for that beyond the mere act of laziness? Is it a metaphor itself for the slothfulness and easy-come-easy-go nature of our McDonald’s drive-thru mentality? Perhaps. I found it annoying nonetheless.

Is Billy bowing out?

Relief from the pain of war.

John Updike on American Art.

Poetry for the joy of God.

Out of the mouths of babes.

$4 per gallon gasoline and a poem on a train.

Debauchery rules.

On the state of writing careers.

A rich bitch a la carte.

Should writers be marketers?

Diane Lockward recommends these Letters to the World.

It pays to be the world’s worst poet.

On writing German haiku.

Jilly Dybka publishes Trouble and Honey.

Poetry publishing basics for beginners.

A scrap of paper wins the contest.

Defending criticism.

Should poets write poems about poems?

There I found four sonnets from his collection Unholy Sonnets.

Perfect, I thought. I’ll use one of those.

I’ve never bought a Mark Jarman book so I didn’t know what to expect. I’d never read any of his sonnets. It was a new experience for me. Quite frankly, I’m not impressed and I’ll tell you why.

A sonnet should rhyme. Enjambment is fine; each line need not end with a complete thought. I’m OK with near-rhyme even and rhyme that doesn’t look like rhyme or that forces the reader to move over the words from one line to the next so quickly that the rhyme isn’t noticeable until you stop to examine the poem word for word. All of that is fine. It’s what poetry is made of. But a sonnet, after all, is a sonnet. It is defined by two things: rhyme and meter. Leave one out and you no longer have a sonnet. Well, wouldn’t you know it: This New Formalist, a school of poetics that believes the old forms are still valid, writes a doggone sonnet that doesn’t rhyme. I don’t like it.

No. 1 wasn’t the first one I read. It wasn’t the last either. I read all four sonnets, and I’ll likely never read another poem from Mark Jarman. I won’t be buying Epistles. But it isn’t because of that one poem I didn’t like. I’m not fond of any of his sonnets.

“Unholy Sonnet No. 4″ rhymes. And I almost like it. My favorite lines are the first two – especially the first one – of the second stanza:

Not Dante’s rings, not the Zen zero’s mouth,
Out of which comes and into which light goes,

The allusion to Dante and alliteration with Zen zero’s mouth was impressive, but not elegiac, as one would expect of a religious poem. No. 4 isn’t his best of the four that I did read.

I found “Unholy Sonnet No. 13″ rather intriguing, but I’m ambivalent. I was put off at first by the repetition of the word drunk. Simply put, I found it unnecessary. Then he referenced Americans. I nearly puked. It seems out of place.

Nevertheless, No. 13 nearly succeeds. I do not like the repetition. I do like the near rhyme of some of the end words: bread, breed; stars, stirs. I do not like another/forever. I like the time and wine, and even the off-rhyme of moon. But the repetition of end words in place of rhyme is unnerving to me. It seems like a cop out.

Then there’s the juxtaposition of the divine with the mundane. I actually appreciate Mark Jarman’s attempt to employ this device. It’s one that I’m rather fond of in my own poetry and hope that I succeed at to some degree. The use of the word “Umbrian” in the first line sets me up for an expectation of something extraordinary, but I am let down by “two young Americans”. Why so parochial? It took me out of the poem despite some beautiful imagery in the pink cloud and marble smile. As I said, it almost succeeds.

I think the best of the four poems that I read was No. 1. It’s the one that I think is best crafted and it’s surprising because I wasn’t sure that I liked it when I first read it. I’m still not sure, but I do appreciate the craftiness of the poem. It was the first one I read. Reprinted below, analysis follows:

Dear God, Our Heavenly Father, Gracious Lord,
Mother Love and Maker, Light Divine,
Atomic Fingertip, Cosmic Design,
First Letter of the Alphabet, Last Word,
Mutual Satisfaction, Cash Award,
Auditor Who Approves Our Bottom Line,
Examiner Who Says That We Are Fine,
Oasis That All Sands Are Running Toward.

I can say almost anything about you,
O Big Idea, and with each epithet,
Create new reasons to believe or doubt you,
Black Hole, White Hole, Presidential Jet.
But what’s the anything I must leave out? You
Solve nothing but the problems that I set.

I like this poem best of all because it carries a simple idea from beginning to end. It starts out and finishes with that idea and is easy to follow. No. 1 reads like a prayer. It should. For that is essentially what it is. You know right away that the speaker is talking to God. He uses words that one would expect a person praying to God to use: “Dear God”, “Heavenly Father”, “Gracious Lord”. That’s a wonderful first line. It sets me up for the rest of the poem perfectly.

“Unholy Sonnet No. 1″ reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins in so many ways. The meter is a little bit uncommon. Unlike many sonnets, the iambic pentameter isn’t a sing-song twittering of musical simplicity. Each expression of divinity is capitalized – very reverent. Each is set apart as a clause, broken up by commas. Appropriate. And as you get further into the poem, the speaker begins to use names for God that are very uncommon and almost irreverent except that you know they are expressions of contemporary sanctity.

• Atomic Fingertip
• First Letter Of The Alphabet (Alpha – I like this one)
• Cash Award
• Auditor Who Approves Our Bottom Line
• Examiner Who Says That We Are Fine
• Oasis That All Sands Are Running Toward

Like traditional sonnets, the first stanza sets up the situation that the second stanza answers. It is sometimes defined as problem/solution, or question/answer. In this case, I think the proper characterization should be dilemma/cure.

The problem can be stated thus: What do we call God? Answer: Anything; it doesn’t really matter. What really matters is that He is there and we can call on Him. Cool.

The second stanza moves. I love how it starts:

I can say almost anything about you,
O Big Idea, and with each epithet,
Create new reasons to believe or doubt you,

The word “epithet” is perfect, and unexpected, because until now all we have heard from the speaker is words used to describe God in rather uncanny ways. They are really offensive. If I were God, I’d be offended. “Mutual Satisfaction”? I think not. But the names are not totally offensive. They just are not wholly reverent, and that’s the problem. It’s what makes the poem so believable.

The rhyme scheme of No. 1 stays true to the form. Thanks Mark! But there is something about that fourth line in the second stanza that bugs me. Why “Presidential Jet”? Of all the names for God, that is perhaps the most obtrusive. Still, he follows that rather awkward line up with “But what’s the anything I must leave out?” and I know it’s the perfect follow up line. It’s a good question, for one thing, but it also points to the dilemma: Who is God? Why is He there? And that last line is the zinger, the whopper, the big squeeze. No matter what you call Him, he’s the Divine Problem Solver, The Eternal Cure For All Things, The Answer To The Questions I Didn’t Know I Should Have Asked.

I love the feminine rhyme in that second stanza – about/you, doubt/you, out? You. It shows Mark Jarman’s playfulness and attentiveness to language. But it also makes me wonder why we don’t see more of that. If he can do that in one poem, why can’t he do that in the others? I’m not prepared to say versatility for that would imply skill, and I don’t see that. What I see is sloppiness, a criticism he has lobbied against others. It’s odd, but that’s probably what he seeks most to avoid for I know that his poetic philosophy is defined by attentiveness to language, to words, and to craft. To some degree, he has it. So why aren’t I impressed?