From Bedford:Although reading poetry usually makes more demands than does the kind of reading used to skim a magazine or newspaper, the appreciation of poetry comes naturally enough to anyone who enjoys playing with words. Play is an important element of poetry. Consider, for example, how the following words appeal to the children who gleefully chant them in playgrounds:
I scream, you scream
we all scream
For ice cream.These lines are an exuberant evocation of the joy of ice cream. Indeed, chanting the words turns out to be as pleasurable as eating ice cream. In poetry, the expression of the idea is as important as the idea expressed. But is "I scream . . ." poetry? Some poets and literary critics would say that it certainly is one kind of poem because the children who chant it experience some of the pleasures of poetry in its measured beat and repeated sounds. However, other poets and critics would define poetry more narrowly and insist, for a variety of reasons, that this isn't true poetry but merely doggerel, a term used for lines whose subject matter is trite and whose rhythm and sounds are monotonously heavy-handed.
Although probably no one would argue that "I scream . . ." is a great poem, it does contain some poetic elements that appeal, at the very least, to children. Does that make it poetry? The answer depends on one's definition, but poetry has a way of breaking loose from definitions. Because there are nearly as many definitions of poetry as there are poets, Edwin Arlington Robinson's succinct observations are useful: "poetry has two outstanding characteristics. One is that it is undefinable. The other is that it is eventually unmistakable."
This comment places more emphasis on how a poem affects a reader than on how a poem is defined. By characterizing poetry as "undefinable," Robinson acknowledges that it can include many different purposes, subjects, emotions, styles, and forms. What effect does the following poem have on you?
WILLIAM HATHAWAY (B. I944)
Oh, Oh (I982)
My girl and I amble a country lane,
moo cows chomping daisies, our own
sweet saliva green with grass stems.
Look, look," she says at the crossing,
the choo-choo's light is on." And sure
enough, right smack dab in the middle
of maple dappled summer sunlight
is the lit headlight--so funny.
An arm waves to US from the black window.
We wave gaily to the arm. "When I hear
trains at night I dream of being president,"
I say dreamily. "And me first lady," she
says loyally. So when the last boxcars,
named after wonderful, faraway places,
and the caboose chuckle by we look
eagerly to the road ahead. And there,
poised and growling, are fifty Hell's Angels.
Hathaway's poem serves as a convenient reminder that poetry can be full of surprises. Even on a first reading there is no mistaking the emotional reversal created by the last few words of this poem. With the exception of the final line, the poem's language conjures up an idyllic picture of a young couple taking a pleasant walk down a country lane. Contented as "moo cows," they taste the sweetness of the grass, hear peaceful country sounds, and are dazzled by "dappled summer sunlight." Their future together seems to be all optimism as they anticipate "wonderful, faraway places" and the "road ahead." Full of confidence, this couple, like the reader, is unprepared for the shock to come. When we see those "fifty Hell's Angels," we are confronted with something like a bucket of cold water in the face.But even though our expectations are abruptly and powerfully reversed, we are finally invited to view the entire episode from a safe distance--the distance provided by the delightful humor in this poem. After all, how seriously can we take a poem that is titled "Oh, Oh"? The poet has his way with us, but we are brought in on the joke too. The terror takes on comic proportions as the innocent couple is confronted by no fewer than fifty Hell's Angels. This is the kind of raucous overkill that informs a short animated film produced some years ago titled Bambi Meets Godzilla: you might not have seen it, but you know how it ends. The poem's good humor comes through when we realize how pathetically inadequate the response of "Oh, Oh" is to the circumstances.
Consider James Wright's poem in this context. Does Wright's poem still allow the reader poetic distance? What does tone have to do with poetic distance?
Wright's poem is definitely not doggerel? Why? What is essential in determining the difference between the doggerel and the poetry precious enough not to be wasted?
Click here for an excellent essay on James Wright's poetry by George S. Lensing.
"The poems of Wright, on the surface, seem simple and accessible. Yet they also seem distinctively "poetic." Students might be asked to discuss how and why the poems are both simple and poetic.""A typical theme explored in Wright's poetry is rural America versus the modern urban America of the middle class with its wealth, political power, and control over the oppressed. This theme was particularly relevant in the America of the 1960s and 1970s when Wright wrote. America was involved in the Vietnam War, and Wright sees that involvement as a kind of national illness."
"Both a theme and a technique is Wright's movement inward and within the self, often through a rural or small-town setting. Images in particular lead him inwardly toward moments of sudden self-revelation: ("Flayed without hope, / I held the man for nothing in my arms" in "Saint Judas," or "I am lost in the beautiful white ruins / Of America" in "Having Lost My Sons," or "I have wasted my life" in "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota."
1. In reading this description of the nuances of poetry, think about the way cows, dogs, humans, deer and monsters are used almost in a mythic way within the Bedford commentary. The choices they editors make and the term doggerel itself imply that shared cultural notions exist about all these animals that do not require exact explanation. Even the poem "Oh Oh" contains the juxtaposition of the agrarian tranquility to the potentially savage side of wildness. What are the thematic implications ( illustrated in part by the use of animals) in this whole section of Bedford commentary on "The Pleasure of Words"?"Does not society turn man," wrote Balzac, "according to the settings in which he deploys his activity, into as many different men as there are varieties in zoology? The differences between a soldier, a workman, an administrator, a lawyer, an idler, a scholar, a statesman, a merchant, a sailor, a poet, a pauper and a priest, are just as great--although more difficult to grasp--as those between a wolf, a lion, a donkey, a raven, a shark, a sea-cow, a sheep, etc. There always have been, and there always will be, Social species as there are Zoological species." Balzac implies, of course, that animal symbols are not simply biological but also a convenient metaphor for rendering human social patterns accessible.
We will study--or consider in poetry and art--animal "terms and images" as representations of social membership as part of the vocabulary of the human mind.