Poetic Meaning

8/22/2019 Poetic Meaning

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01/08/2013 22:48arduity: poetic meaning

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J H Prynne

Geoffrey Hill

Paul Celan

John Ashbery

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Keston Sutherland

John Matthias

Ezra Pound

Simon Jarvis

David Jones

Geraldine Kim

Wallace Stevens

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The Meaning of difficult poetry: an

introduction.The meaning of any particular poem is a complex issue. 'Meaning' can be thought of in a

number of different ways-

The poet's intention in writing the poem.

Poems that have several 'levels' of meaning.

Meanings that the poet did not consciously intend but nevertheless can be identified by

means of 'close' reading and a detailed knowedge of the poet's bigoraphy and work.

Meanings that readers arrive at because of the way that they respond to the poem with

little reference to the poet's intentions.

Meanings that are deliberately ambiguous or secret.

A meaning that comes from one strand amongst many in a poem.

In Western culture we all have a desire to get to grips with what things mean, with what the

artist intended in laying this object before us and this may be a mistake. Reading a poem or a

novel is an intensely subjective experience, we each bring our life experiences and thoughts

with us when we read and place particular emphasis on those parts that have 'meaning' for us.

This can of course lead us to overead, to glean meanings that were never part of the poet's

original intention.

I've quoted this passage from Ashbery's 'The Skaters' elsewhere but it does address the poetic

meaning problem in some detail:

It is time now for a general understanding of

The meaning of all this. The meaning of Helga, importance of the setting etc.

A description of the blues. Labels on bottlesAnd all kinds of discarded objects that ought to be described.

But can one ever be sure of which ones?

Isn't this a death-trap, wanting to put too much in

So the floor sags, as under the weight of a piano, or a piano-legged girl

And the whole house of cards comes dinning down around one's ears!

But this is an important aspect of the question

Which I am not ready to discuss, am not at all ready to,

This leaving-out business. On it hinges the very importance of what's novel

Or autocratic, or dense or silly. It is as well to call attention

To it by exaggeration, perhaps. But calling attention

Isn't the same thing as explaining, and as I said I am not ready

To line phrases with the costly stuff of explanation, and shall not,

Will not do so for the moment. Except to say that the carnivorous

Way of these lines is to devour their own nature, leaving

Nothing but a bitter impression of absence, which as we know involves presence, but

still

Nevertheless these are fundamental absences, struggling to get up and be off

themselves

This, thus, is a portion of the subject of this poem

Which is in the form of falling snow

That is, the individual flakes are not essential to the importance of the whole's

becoming so much of a truism

That their importance is again called in question, to be denied further out, and again

and again like this

Hence, neither the importance of the individual flake,

Nor the importance of the whole impression of the storm, if it has any, is what it is,

But the rhythm of a series of repeated jumps, from abstract into positive and back toa slightly less diluted abstract.

Mild effects are the result.
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I cannot think any more of going out into all that, will stay here

With my quiet schmerzen. Besides the storm is almost over

Having frozen the face of the bust into a strange style with the lips

And the teeth the most distinctive part of the whole business

It is this madness to explain...

What is the matter with plain old-fashioned cause-and-effect?

Leaving one alone with romantic impressions of the trees, the sky?

Who, actually, is going to be fooled one instant by these phony explanations

Think them important? So back we go to the old, imprecise feelings, the

Common knowledge, the importance of duly suffering and the occasional glimpses

Of some balmy felicity. The world of Schubert's lieder. I am fascinated

Though by the urge to get out of it all, by going

Further in and correcting the whole mismanaged mess. But am afraid I'll

Be of no help to you. Good-bye.

This wry and clever response to the readerly quest for meaning or intention should be kept in

mind as it deflates the self-importance and pomposity of such a venture. Some have argued

that all of Ashbery's work can be read as an investigation and exploration of poetic meaning

but I think the above emphases on absence(s) and the jumps 'from abstract into positive' have

characterised most of his output since the above poem was published in 1966.

Reading this for the first time certainly enabled me to be more relaxed about my reading and

consequent understanding of poetry and, together with the Prynne quote below, has changed

the way in which I try to make sense of what is before me. The first read through now asks'does this work' rather than 'what does this mean', I concede that I have my own entirely

subjective view of whether a poem works or not but this does at least give me a usually more

productive means of entry.

Dealing with poetic meaning.The first question to be asked is: does meaning matter? it is perfectly possible to get a lot

from a poem and still remain baffled as to the poet's intention in writing it. It is also possible

to take your own meaning from a poem regardless of those intentions.This is not to say that

all poems are 'open' texts whereby anything can be taken to mean anything at all but rather

that we should try to be less concerned, as readers, with performing a forensic analysis in

order to come up with some kind of 'definitive meaning.

The other aspect to bear in mind is that poets rarely start a poem with an exact idea of what

they want to say, they may have an idea of subject matter but what they say about that

subject matter only emerges during composition.

Difficult poets are usually difficult because the meaning of the work is complex and operates

on several levels. Charles Olson's 'The Maximus Poems' may be read as a work about place but

can also be viewed as a meditation on the nature of history and the function of the archive as

well as a poetic expression of the philosophical works of Alfred North Whitehead and the

emphasis put on each of these strands will depend on the readers' interest.

Ambiguous images and phrases are always problematic for those searching for meaning. Paul

Celan's 'templeclamps' poem from the 'Atemwende' collection can be taken to mean the

forceps used in the delivery room or the electrodes placed on the temples in ECT treatment for

those with severe depression. We know that Celan underwent such treatment and I know from

personal experience that ECT is deeply unpleasant and can have nasty side-effects but I'm also

prepared to accept that Celan may have intended to refer to birthing forceps.

This is Pierre Joris' translation of the poem in full:TEMPLECLAMPS

eyed by your jugalbone.

Its silverglare there

where they gripped:

you and the rest of your sleep-

soon

will be your birthday.

I think this underlines that poems may be radically ambiguous, that the second line can refer

to the action of forceps and to the placement of electrodes, that the silverglare can refer to

light that the baby sees as it is born and the glare created by the electric shocks inside the

brain as they pass from one temple to the other, that the rest of your sleep can refer to the

time that a baby spends in the womb and to the sedation used whlst ECT is administered, and

that birthday can refer to the day of one's birth and to the day when (as a result of ECT) the

depression lifts and the patient is once again able to live a reasonable life.

This doesn't preclude other meanings or intentions- 'temple' and 'silverglare' could point us

towards religion for example but it does underline the need to be able to tolerate multiple


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themes and meanings.

In reading difficult verse, Keston Sutherland has written of the need to pay attention to

difficult verse and to undertake the 'work of interpretation'. Whilst this would seem

reasonable, I think it is important that readers do not allow interpretation to detract from the

enjoyment of reading the poem. There are those poets that do require a degree of work

(Prynne, Celan, Hill) but this work should be pleasurable and readers should not be deterred if

the 'meaning' remains hidden from them.

Interpretation consists of several tasks, the most important of which is to work out what is

being said. This isn't always easy and readers may find it useful to (for the want of a better

term) improvise, to run a particular phrase or allusion around their heads in different ways

until a solution that makes some kind of 'sense' is arrived at and then to compare this with

other parts of the poem to see if there is any kind of congruence or 'fit'. The other part of

interpretive work involves looking up words and references that the reader is not familiar with.

An attentive reading of 'TEMPLECLAMPS' will reveal that:

there are two sentences;

the first sentence introduces the clamps and;

indicates where they are placed;

the second sentence describes what the clamps do and;

the trace or mark that they leave behind and;

makes a prediction;

someone is being addressed;

it is (as ever with Celan) not clear who this 'you' might be;

It is up to the individual to decide how far to pursue references and when to stop. My own

recent reading of David Jones' 'The Anathemata' has forced me to acknowledge huge gaps in

my knowledge base (Welsh language and culture, Malory, the history of London, the Catholic

liturgy etc.) and some of these I have begun to pursue in order to get more from the poem.

Difficult poets are fond of using collage and montage as means of expression and it is

important to be able to recognise these devices when working out poetic intention and

meaning.

Difficult poets on the Meaning Problem.

J H Prynne (the most difficult poet currently writing in English) has said recently-

The discourses of modernism in Western poetics make steeper descents into sub-

intelligibility; and in my own case I am rather frequently accused of having more or

less altogether taken leave of discernible sense. In fact I believe this accusation tobe more or less true, and not to me alarmingly so, because what for so long has

seemed the arduous royal road into the domain of poetry ("what does it mean?")

seems less and less an unavoidably necessary precondition for successful reading.

Paul Celan in the 1958 Bremen Address said-

A poem, as a manifestion of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a

message in a bottle, sent out in the - not always greatly hopeful - belief that

somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in

this sense too are underway: they are making towards something.

Both poets seem to be implying the same thing. Prynne is suggesting that the quest for

meaning shouldn't get in the way of experiencing the poem whilst Celan hopes that his poems

will 'reach' some readers but recognises that this won't always be the case and in any case

poems make a journey through the world.

Conclusion.

The search for meaning in poetry is important, we do need to try and work out what is being

said and why. It is also important to accept that meaning is only one aspect of poetry and

should not be given absolute priority.

The other thing to recognise is that meanings change over time, that our view of the meaning

of'Paradise Lost' is radically different from what it was in the 17th century.

It is infinitely rewarding to pay attention to difficult verse provided that we understand that a

sense of meaning won't always be attained.

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Anyone who wants to write about his or her experience with this kind of material should contact John Armstrong -

[email protected].

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Poetic Meaning