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Unit
poetry
This is an animated
example of a 'unit poem:' written as if by typewriter
and then destroyed by an explosion. It takes a short time to load.
Unit form is a very
rigorous and demanding form in concrete poetry. It uses a completely new organizing
principle which allows the poem to be shaped exactly. The 'units' are letters,
punctuation marks and spaces. By exercising complete control over the number
of units in each line, the poem can be shaped exactly . The
poem 'Collision' has an augmented half and a diminished
half. In the augmented half, the lines increase by 3 units from line
to line. So, there are 45 units (letters+punctuation marks+spaces) in the
first line, 48 units in the second and 51 in the third. In the diminished
half, the lines decrease by 3 units from line to line.
Unit poetry needs
a font which, like the typewriter, doesn't use proportional spacing - spacing
where the characters have variable width. The font used in 'Collision' is
a monospaced font, Courier New. The poems in this form were composed on graph
paper, initially.
This is the poem in static form, which allows the shape
and construction of the poem to be appreciated more easily:
Unit poetry gives the maximum contrast
between text and the white space which surrounds the text. The white space
between words is the absolute minimum. As a result, the impact of the text
is increased. Other forms of concrete poetry usually give shape to the poem
by increasing the space between words - in other words, by allowing more white
space into the text. This may decrease the impact of the text.
Aerial bombardment is, of course, an
overwhelmingly important issue. See, for further information - and insights:
Ian Patterson, 'Guernica and total war.'
Reviewed by Christopher Silvester on the page:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/04/15/bopat14.xml
W G Sebald, 'On the natural history
of destruction.'
This in another poem in unit form, Level
Crossing :
The poem is about a
car which is hit by a train and converted into a block of scrap metal. The
poem is a block itself, and symmetrical. Each line is exactly 43 units long.
I'm conscious that this poem, in Keats's phrase, doesn't make "all disagreeables
evaporate." A poet's work as a whole should have this effect. It need
not be so in every single poem. A single poem can show untransformed horror,
can express an unrelievedly bleak vision. Besides, the repulsive content
of the poem is not all. It's in tension with the serene and harmonious shape
of the poem.
I'm aware of Cesar Vallejo's words in Poem
XXVI of 'Trilce: '
Refuse to place your footsteps .
but in my 'symmetrical'
poems' I'm doing something unexpected and, I think, well worth doing: using
serene, symmetrical shapes in tension with disharmonious content. Mathematicians
and scientists take an interest in symmetry. I think poets can take some interest
in symmetry too, as an instance of pattern. There's the maximum of tension
between the harmonious shape and the bleak and discordant content.
This is an aspect of what I call tensile art . In general,
in the face of opposites, poetry which is distinctively modern will not reject
one of them but will tend to affirm both, often precariously, with great tension.
The poets of the past who seem most modern to us have done exactly this: Catullus,
for example, with his 'Odi et amo,' 'I hate and love.'
'Collision' in its
animated form could be considered as a contribution to 'Kinetic Art,' art
involving movement, which had its genesis in the Futurist Manifestos of 1909,
1910 and 1912. "In Kinetic Art the composition is not given all at once."
(C. Barrett, 'Kinetic Art' in 'Concepts of Modern Art,' edited by Nikos Stangos.)
The repeated construction and destruction in these animated works are intended
to illustrate Nietzsche's idea of 'the eternal recurrence,' the idea that
all events, the worst and most terrible as well as the best, are repeated
endlessly. "The idea of eternal recurrence, the highest formula
of affirmation that can possibly be attained" (Nietzsche, Ecce Homo,
'Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1) is stated in other places in Nietzsche's writings,
for example, 'Beyond Good and Evil,' Section 56 and various sections of 'Thus
Spoke Zarathustra' itself. I don't accept the idea of the eternal recurrence
for one moment - who could? - but the idea is interesting, as the most radical
of all affirmations.
The next unit poem is even more exacting
in its form than the previous poem s.
It's a poem in centred rhyme, the first
line rhyming with the last, the second line rhyming with the penultimate,
and so on. The first line has exactly the same number of units - characters,
punctuation marks and spaces- as the last (15) the second, which is longer,
has exactly the same number of units as the next to the last (21) and so on.
The lines are linked by sound, linked by length and linked by completion -
the later line completes the earlier. The symmetrical poem expands and then
contracts - the lines are augmented and diminished.
The poem is fictional :
it doesn't refer to any experiences of my own. If a prose writer uses 'I'
it's recognized that the reference may be fictional or non-fictional and no
insincerity is intended if the reference is fictional. It has come to be assumed
that if 'I' is used in poetry, the writer is referring to his or her own experiences,
thoughts, feelings.
The poem is 'nested,'
there are brackets within brackets within brackets, so it will give an impression
of dislocation when it's spoken. (For a discussion of parentheses in poetry
see 'But I digress: the exploitation of parentheses in English printed verse'
by John Lennard, 1991.) On the other hand, the poem on the page will give
an impression of harmonious, rational procedure. Here, the poem on the page
and the spoken poem are very different in kind.
So, the poem on the
page and the spoken poem are linked but are also contrasted. Elements which
are linked will contrast with elements which are unlinked. Two elements which
are linked may also, as in this case, contrast with each other.
The fact that life can contain such extreme
contrasts, that the harsh and the repulsive are contrasted with overwhelming
happiness, I express in another poem in free verse, one which is not in concrete
form:
Y our life,
of chance and finalities, can have the smiling assurance of Nature accompanies wars and killings,
ts own hidden or hyper-dramatic killings, with snow settling, winds blowing, he sun rising or setting with such simplicity
on such carnage .Be happy, be contented, be unsatisfied, be
many. Feel the ecstasy of the hunter, he terror of the hunted, he anger of the one who acts to stop
the killing, ut of course, so rarely can.
My view is far removed
from Nietzsche's. I regard Nietzsche as almost a low-tension thinker.
Tension is used as a technical term in Linkage Theory (please
see the General Glossary.) A low-tension thinker can't keep opposed ideas
in consciousness simultaneously, but has to emphasize one whilst denying others.
There's a low-tension view which cannot come to terms with the shocking aspects
of reality but instead distorts reality by, for example, sentimentalizing
it. Nietzsche was anything but a sentimentalist yet he could do justice to
the wonder of life. He could keep the two ideas in consciousness at once,
the harshness of reality and its wonder. However, he refused to acknowledge
one more strand which can't be wished away without distorting reality, or
so I claim: active humanitarianism, the urge to reduce suffering, to improve
the world, an attempt which will often be frustrated ("...the anger of
the one who acts to stop the killing,/but of course, so rarely can")
but which is not always frustrated, an attempt which is difficult and sometimes
impossible but absolutely essential. This is a high-tension view.
Axis
poetry
Please click
here for an example of axis poetry. There's
a vertical axis and the poem is divided, approximately, into two halves. The
poem is read 'along' the line, preferably by two readers (the rhymes of the
two halves are 'along,' horizontal) but the grammatical sense is vertical,
'down' each of the two columns. The diction of each half is straightforward,
but the reading breaks up the poem, making the diction less straightforward.
There are changes in syntax and punctuation which increase the contrast between
the two halves of the poem, for example, 'still' in the half-line 'still and
distant' is different, grammatically, from the 'still' in the half-line next
to it, 'still, distant.' Although the diction is unexceptional - 'milky' applied
to light and to ice, for example - I'd claim that the plain and simple wording
is transformed by putting the words and phrases in the two halves of the poem
in close proximity .
There's a linkage between graphic design
and axis poetry, since the technique affects the appearance of the poem on
the page. As in the case of other formal innovations, form should not be considered
in isolation from content. Intense emotion, the force of the content, can
almost compel the adoption of a form, such as the sonnet. Later, I use poetry
by Shakespeare to illustrate the argument.
The layout of things far removed from poetry
underlies the axis form. Consider a simple set of mathematical equations and
the way in which the equations are laid out on the page, or a set of linkage
statements in the notation I've devised and the way in which these linkage
statements are laid out on the page, the linkage brackets <> in a vertical
line. The contents and linkage brackets are left blank in this illustrative
example.
a = c - b
Lines of poetry can be laid out on the page
in a similar way. Each line has a linkage of some sort in the centre, a left
side of the line and a right side of the line. The linkages in the centre,
laid out in an imaginary vertical line, are the axis of the
poem. The poem is divided into approximately two halves, left and right. (Centred
rhyme - see the page concerned with 'linkage by sound can also be considered
as a form of axis poetry, although in this case there is a horizontal axis
and the two halves of the poem are upper and lower.) Although the meaning
of axis here is completely clear and straightforward, it's worth including
here a dictionary definition of axis: 'a real or imaginary line ... about
which an object, form, composition, or geometrical construction is symmetrical.'
(In centred rhyme, there is an axis too, but the axis is horizontal, not vertical.)
Since axis poetry gives shape to the poem on the page, it's most conveniently
classified as a form of concrete poetry.
What linkages may there be along the vertical
axis? There are various possibilities. These are only a few:
A space generally shows
the position of the vertical axis. The organizing principle which
links the left side of the line and the right side of the line and which is,
as it were, placed in the space, may be no more than a pause ,
the space being the visual counterpart of the pause. This is a diversification
of the caesura. The caesura is generally applied in an informal way, the space
in centred poetry is applied in a systematic way, and is presented in a systematic
way on the page. The result is a series of split lines. James Dickey employed
split lines in his poetry, sometimes with one space in the line, sometimes
with more than one, presenting the spaces unsystematically, without a vertical
axis. An excerpt from James Dickey's 'The Firebombing:'
Slants is woven with wire thread Another organizing principle is faulting .
The linkage is with the geological process called faulting in which layers
of rock, subjected to pressure, fracture and move along a fault plane. In
faulted poetry, the vertical axis is the fault plane, the lines of poetry
are the strata- and the emotional force of the poet is the physical pressure
applied to the material. Faulting has been employed - not so much under
a different name but not under any name - by various poets. I see it as important
because it opens up the interior of the poem - see the entry under 'zoning'
in the Glossary of Literary Linkage Terms.
Another is equality , the
linkage being with the equals sign in equations like the ones above. There
can't, of course, be strict equality. Mathematically, equality may indicate
that the expressions on either side of the sign have the same reference. This
can be implemented in lines of poetry, the left side of the line having the
same reference as the right side of the line.
The space may simply indicate a boundary ,
as in the example of an axis poem reachable by a text link from the page on
Composite poetry. This poem, 'Derwentwater: Summer and Winter,' is for two
voices and the space shows the boundary between the two voices, voice 1 on
the left and voice 2 on the right.
Other organizing principles are conjunction
and disjunction . Disjunction - disconnection or separation
- is suited to many different contents: opposing views, sharply contrasted
views, but also a dialogue between different minds, of the kind found in Yeats'
'A Dialogue of Self and Soul,' or Yeats' 'Ego Dominus Tuus,' although the
form generally demands more succinct statements than in either of these. Like
the other organizing principles, disjunction can lead to poetry which transcends
the organizing principle, to a poetry which is not at all abstract. If there
should be any doubt about this, consider this very clear and, in fact, systematic
example of disjunction, even if the disjunction isn't shown along a vertical
axis, from Shakespeare:
CRABBED Age and Youth
Setting out a few lines as centred poetry,
along an axis:
Youth is full of pleasance Age is full of care
Youth like summer morn Age like winter weather
Youth like summer brave Age like winter bare
Transept poetry In transept poetry (the name is a provisional
one) there's a very pronounced contrast between the vertical axis of the poem
and the horizontal axis, or axes. Short, or very short, lines make up the
vertical axis and longer, or much longer, lines make up the horizontal axis.
The linkage is with the transepts of a church - the wings of a cruciform church
at right angles to the nave. Suppose you are in a church with a very long,
narrow nave and at the end of the nave, furthest from the transepts. Walking
along the nave gives a feeling of spatial constriction but, when the transepts
are reached, the feeling of spatial opening. The feeling is well expressed
by Nikolaus Pevsner, in his entry for the interior of Ely Cathedral in 'The
Buildings of England: Cambridgeshire.' The reference is to the Octagon, which
is 'a delight from beginning to end for anyone who feels for space as strongly
as for construction. For the basic emotion created by the Octagon as one approaches
it along the nave is one of spaciousness, a relief, a deep breath after the
oppressive narrowness of the Norman work'
Now consider a poem in the shape of
an inverted cross, a long, narrow vertical axis made up of very short lines,
and, close to the base of the poem, a couple of much longer lines, the horizontal
axis, and then the continuation of the vertical axis. Even though the poem
will necessarily be small in extent, contrasts in the 'architectural space'
of the poem will have an impact, particularly if the style and, perhaps, subject
matter of the vertical and horizontal axes also show marked contrasts: a much
looser and more relaxed style - perhaps prose - in the horizontal axis. There
will be a feeling of space expanding, an opening out, as the reader 'travels'
from the vertical to the horizontal axis. Transept poetry, then, can provide
new spatial experiences in poetry, spatial surprises, new vistas.
Obviously, there are other possible
placings for the horizontal axis, the longer line or lines. It may be placed
at the base of the poem, so that the poem ends with the long horizontal axis
and the vertical axis is not resumed. It may, on the other hand, be placed
at the top of the poem, so that the shape of the poem is a 'T.' There may
be two (or more) horizontal axes: ± If a less dramatic contrast is
required, the horizontal axes may be shortened, so that there is less contrast
between horizontal and vertical axis: ‡
The poetry I've written in this form
is particularly bleak - t's not included here - but bleak subject matter isn't
an inevitable requirement in transept poetry.
Colour
effects
I've written concrete poetry in forms other than unit
and axis poem. I give just one example here, 'Winter Night.' Please
click here to see this poem. The winter night is suggested
by the use of Aerial black type. The poem is discussed in the page on Linkage
by Meaning.
In
conclusion
Concrete poetry - or
pictorial poetry - is the epitome of the poem on the page. The poet shapes
the poetic material in a literal sense and is a designer as well as a writer.
This is a branch of poetry which should be revalued. Here, contemporary poetry
is closest to contemporary visual art. I would speak of establishing a linkage
between a poem and visual art. Pictorial poetry need not be representational.
It's a way of ordering words in space so as to make a significant boundary
or a significant texture on the page or a larger surface, such as the wall
of an art gallery.
