WEBVTT 00:01.540 --> 00:05.640 Professor Langdon Hammer: Today I'm going to 00:05.640 --> 00:09.910 try to talk a little bit more about Elizabeth Bishop, 00:09.905 --> 00:14.575 and I'm also going to try to give some big perspectives on 00:14.580 --> 00:19.830 the poets we've been reading and also some ways of thinking about 00:19.829 --> 00:22.289 how they fit together. 00:22.290 --> 00:28.000 Let's look at Bishop's poem, "Over 2,000 Illustrations and a 00:27.998 --> 00:33.548 Complete Concordance," the poem placed second in her 00:33.551 --> 00:39.341 second book called A Cold Spring, published in 00:39.344 --> 00:46.034 1955--the latest poems that we'll discuss in this course. 00:46.030 --> 00:52.870 On Wednesday I talked about Bishop's poetics of geography or 00:52.866 --> 01:00.866 travel as a horizontal poetics, as opposed to the ascendant and 01:00.872 --> 01:08.162 sublime impulses in many of the poets that we have been 01:08.157 --> 01:11.257 examining this term. 01:11.260 --> 01:18.200 This poetics is ultimately a poetry of shifting perspectives 01:18.204 --> 01:21.034 and local perceptions. 01:21.030 --> 01:26.290 The question that it immediately poses is, 01:26.288 --> 01:33.468 well: how do we put these perceptions and these points of 01:33.471 --> 01:37.331 view together? The, I think, 01:37.332 --> 01:43.662 exciting but also difficult textures of Bishop's great 01:43.661 --> 01:48.541 landscape poems, "Florida," "Cape Breton," "At 01:48.540 --> 01:52.680 the Fishhouses," "A Cold Spring," and others, 01:52.680 --> 01:58.850 all pose this very clearly to us, this problem. 01:58.849 --> 02:04.669 You might see the grains of sand that the sandpiper searches 02:04.670 --> 02:09.110 through in that little poem "Sandpiper" as, 02:09.110 --> 02:15.340 again, exemplary of this problem in Bishop--that is, 02:15.340 --> 02:19.250 how do we hold onto, organize, 02:19.250 --> 02:26.780 and find coherence in a world of discrete and shifting 02:26.784 --> 02:31.194 phenomena? This is really the master 02:31.186 --> 02:37.436 problem that Bishop addresses very self-consciously in this 02:37.443 --> 02:44.243 poem, "Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance." 02:44.240 --> 02:49.670 Like "The Map," it's a poem that is in part about a 02:49.665 --> 02:53.365 representation. She, by implication, 02:53.366 --> 02:58.656 begins the poem by referring to a book, presumably the one 02:58.656 --> 03:03.206 mentioned in the title, "Over 2,000 Illustrations and a 03:03.205 --> 03:04.785 Complete Concordance." 03:04.790 --> 03:06.190 What kind of book is that? 03:06.189 --> 03:09.599 She doesn't specify, but as the poem unfolds there's 03:09.598 --> 03:13.338 reason to believe it's a Bible, I think--perhaps a family 03:13.341 --> 03:14.951 Bible. She says: 03:14.949 --> 03:16.939 Thus should have been our travels: 03:16.940 --> 03:22.220 serious, engravable. Our travels, 03:22.222 --> 03:27.182 our experience in the world, our experience of geography, 03:27.179 --> 03:31.429 and our experience as geography should have been, 03:31.428 --> 03:33.728 ought to be, serious. 03:33.730 --> 03:35.950 It ought to add up to something. 03:35.949 --> 03:39.869 I ought to be engravable, something that might be bound 03:39.870 --> 03:44.130 in book form. The image of a book with 03:44.129 --> 03:51.389 illustrations in a complete concordance holds up an idea 03:51.392 --> 03:57.452 that word and image, perhaps word and flesh or 03:57.454 --> 04:04.474 representation and experience, might be bound together in a 04:04.472 --> 04:10.372 coherent unity, might be shown to exist in 04:10.368 --> 04:17.088 concordance or in some kind of correspondence. 04:17.089 --> 04:21.199 Against this ideal or this model of things, 04:21.202 --> 04:26.002 where illustration and text are bound together, 04:26.000 --> 04:32.820 Bishop poses her own wayward experience--her travels--which 04:32.822 --> 04:38.862 this poem will list, record, and give us fragments 04:38.863 --> 04:42.493 of. What the poem reveals to us is 04:42.486 --> 04:48.356 a world of discrete fragments, parts that gain meaning, 04:48.360 --> 04:53.560 if at all, through their mere adjacency or through the 04:53.558 --> 04:58.758 perceiver who holds them together--holds them together 04:58.756 --> 05:04.146 through the quality of her attention and the sensibility 05:04.150 --> 05:08.310 behind it, a form of attention for Bishop 05:08.305 --> 05:13.475 that is always pushing towards revelation and seeking meaning 05:13.477 --> 05:18.387 or something beyond surface detail but never quite arrives 05:18.389 --> 05:21.819 there and never, in that sense, 05:21.819 --> 05:27.139 arrives at a place of repose or rest or home. 05:27.139 --> 05:32.539 Let me read the second paragraph which brilliantly 05:32.542 --> 05:38.832 represents the world brought into being by this poetics of 05:38.826 --> 05:42.446 geography. Entering the Narrows at 05:42.452 --> 05:43.172 St. Johns 05:43.170 --> 05:46.490 the touching bleat of goats reached to the ship. 05:46.490 --> 05:50.210 We glimpsed them, reddish, leaping up the cliffs 05:50.209 --> 05:53.499 among the fog-soaked weeds and butter-and-eggs. 05:53.500 --> 05:57.450 And at St. Peter's the wind blew and the 05:57.447 --> 06:01.167 sun shone madly. Rapidly, purposefully, 06:01.173 --> 06:04.033 the Collegians marched in lines, 06:04.029 --> 06:08.069 crisscrossing the great square with black, like ants. 06:08.069 --> 06:12.149 The poem is composed almost of the fragments of a travel diary 06:12.148 --> 06:15.738 or bits of a letter, and if you read Bishop's 06:15.743 --> 06:20.963 letters you will indeed find observations like this on every 06:20.962 --> 06:23.752 page. In Mexico the dead man lay 06:23.750 --> 06:26.560 in a blue arcade; the dead volcanoes 06:26.560 --> 06:28.970 glistened like Easter lilies. 06:28.970 --> 06:32.890 The jukebox went on playing "Ay, Jalisco!" 06:32.889 --> 06:36.709 And at Volubilis there were beautiful poppies 06:36.710 --> 06:44.190 splitting the mosaics; the fat old guide made eyes. 06:44.190 --> 06:48.620 In Dingle Harbor… And we jerk from one place to 06:48.623 --> 06:55.733 another, with each sentence one country, one spot on the map. 06:55.730 --> 06:58.230 In Dingle Harbor a golden length of evening 06:58.230 --> 07:02.640 the rotting hulks held up their dripping plush. 07:02.639 --> 07:05.619 The Englishwoman poured tea, informing us 07:05.620 --> 07:08.440 that the duchess was going to have a baby. 07:08.439 --> 07:12.759 [This is one of Bishop's provocative juxtapositions in 07:12.761 --> 07:15.891 the poem.] And in the brothels of Marrakesh 07:15.889 --> 07:17.649 the little pockmarked prostitutes 07:17.649 --> 07:19.679 balanced their tea-trays on their heads 07:19.680 --> 07:22.480 and did their belly-dances; flung themselves 07:22.480 --> 07:24.760 naked and giggling against our knees, 07:24.760 --> 07:27.560 asking for cigarettes. 07:27.560 --> 07:31.950 It was somewhere near there I saw what frightened me most 07:31.953 --> 07:35.263 of all [implying, of course, that all of these 07:35.263 --> 07:38.513 scenes had frightened her]: A holy grave, 07:38.507 --> 07:42.547 not looking particularly holy, one of a group under a 07:42.553 --> 07:47.153 keyhole-arched stone baldaquin open to every wind from the 07:47.146 --> 07:50.086 pink desert. An open, gritty, 07:50.093 --> 07:53.253 marble trough, carved solid 07:53.250 --> 07:59.630 with exhortation, yellowed as scattered cattle-teeth; 07:59.629 --> 08:02.709 half-filled with dust, not even the dust 08:02.709 --> 08:06.789 of the poor prophet paynim who once lay there. 08:06.790 --> 08:12.420 [Just dust.] In a smart burnoose Khadour 08:12.424 --> 08:18.734 [presumably their guide] looked on amused. 08:18.730 --> 08:26.560 Looking at this series, this way Bishop's life seems to 08:26.555 --> 08:34.375 add up, she continues reflecting on the poem and on its 08:34.381 --> 08:39.501 structure. Everything only connected 08:39.497 --> 08:41.487 by "and" and "and." 08:41.490 --> 08:45.810 Open the book. And we're back to the book now, 08:45.813 --> 08:50.673 that ideal form of representation in which text and 08:50.673 --> 08:53.943 image are bound. (The gilt rubs off the 08:53.936 --> 08:55.716 edges of the pages and pollinates the 08:55.715 --> 08:58.825 fingertips.) Bishop wants us--as in "The 08:58.831 --> 09:03.911 Map," too--she wants the book as something that can be held and 09:03.909 --> 09:08.259 touched. She's a marvelously tactile 09:08.262 --> 09:10.722 poet. Along with the unity of 09:10.719 --> 09:15.199 experience that it promises to give us is a sense of intimacy, 09:15.200 --> 09:16.890 too, with an object. 09:16.889 --> 09:19.809 Open the heavy book [she says to us]. 09:19.810 --> 09:24.870 Why couldn't we have seen this old Nativity while we were 09:24.870 --> 09:28.150 at it? -- the dark ajar, 09:28.154 --> 09:34.084 the rocks breaking with light, an undisturbed, 09:34.083 --> 09:38.393 unbreathing flame, colorless, sparkless, 09:38.389 --> 09:44.179 freely fed on straw, and, lulled within, 09:44.178 --> 09:49.548 a family with pets, -- and looked and looked our 09:49.551 --> 09:51.251 infant sight away. 09:51.250 --> 09:56.940 09:56.940 --> 10:01.500 The Nativity is the scene of the Incarnation, 10:01.498 --> 10:05.848 that moment when the Word is made flesh; 10:05.850 --> 10:11.790 Christmas morning, that moment when the divine 10:11.785 --> 10:19.035 takes human form and so becomes present in the world. 10:19.039 --> 10:22.689 This is specifically here, as Bishop imagines it, 10:22.686 --> 10:24.506 a scene of revelation. 10:24.509 --> 10:29.279 That wonderful phrase, "the dark ajar"--as if the 10:29.278 --> 10:33.648 shadow were a door and you could enter it; 10:33.649 --> 10:42.639 "the rocks breaking with light"--that which is solid 10:42.637 --> 10:48.557 opening. What emerges is a flame, 10:48.559 --> 10:51.679 a sign of spirit. 10:51.679 --> 10:57.579 But notice how in this light, the sacred is secularized. 10:57.580 --> 11:02.870 What Bishop finds there is not the holy family but "a family 11:02.865 --> 11:07.125 with pets." There is nostalgia here, 11:07.130 --> 11:11.910 in this poem, poignant and powerful; 11:11.909 --> 11:17.299 that is, a nostalgia not so much for the holy as for the 11:17.296 --> 11:22.776 family once constituted by their relation to the holy, 11:22.779 --> 11:29.339 the family with pets but also the family that gathered around 11:29.344 --> 11:35.144 the book to look at them – a family gathered through 11:35.143 --> 11:40.143 religious practice, who might then have "looked and 11:40.144 --> 11:42.634 looked our infant sight away." 11:42.629 --> 11:49.139 In that, looking expresses a kind of primal longing for 11:49.139 --> 11:55.649 community and for human connection--a longing expressed 11:55.649 --> 11:59.499 through looking, importantly for Bishop, 11:59.503 --> 12:02.833 which is really what the poet is doing in "The Map," 12:02.830 --> 12:07.930 I think, in the way that she invites us into her act of 12:07.928 --> 12:10.098 looking in that poem. 12:10.100 --> 12:15.870 Here Bishop's nostalgia is sad but also resigned. 12:15.870 --> 12:21.510 This Nativity is a scene that can be remembered and looked at 12:21.508 --> 12:28.008 from afar but not entered into, as the belief system that it 12:28.010 --> 12:35.300 comes out of and refers to can be looked at from afar but not 12:35.296 --> 12:39.456 entered into. Bishop, as several people 12:39.464 --> 12:44.274 remarked in section this week, calls us back in lots of 12:44.268 --> 12:46.668 different ways to Frost. 12:46.669 --> 12:53.469 Frost is perhaps an unusual place to begin a course on 12:53.466 --> 12:58.336 modern poetry because--remember him? 12:58.340 --> 13:04.130 – he really is generally an exception to the metropolitan 13:04.128 --> 13:08.218 scene and inspiration of modern poetry. 13:08.220 --> 13:12.690 Modern poetry is a poetry of the city, of the metropolis, 13:12.685 --> 13:16.355 of the world city, and of the place where the 13:16.362 --> 13:19.012 world's peoples, goods, languages, 13:19.005 --> 13:22.845 traditions and cultures are all "accessible," 13:22.850 --> 13:30.560 to use Marianne Moore's word from her poem "New York." 13:30.559 --> 13:33.089 Pound, Eliot, Crane, Moore, 13:33.089 --> 13:38.339 Hughes, and even Williams and Stevens in their somewhat 13:38.341 --> 13:41.751 different ways, are all poets of the 13:41.746 --> 13:45.926 metropolis. The sense of ambivalence about 13:45.928 --> 13:50.978 modernity in these poets is an ambivalence in many ways about 13:50.984 --> 13:55.874 the city and what it promises and also what it in many ways 13:55.871 --> 13:57.811 threatens us with. 13:57.809 --> 14:02.299 Their sense of experience, their visions of modernity and 14:02.299 --> 14:07.669 of modern forms of community are all located and expressed there. 14:07.669 --> 14:14.229 Frost aggressively defines his work against that context. 14:14.230 --> 14:17.420 In doing this, he links his writing to 14:17.423 --> 14:22.263 nineteenth-century American writing and art and links his 14:22.256 --> 14:28.226 writing to rural culture, which dominates the nineteenth 14:28.229 --> 14:32.769 century. There is an anti-modern strain 14:32.773 --> 14:39.083 in Frost just as there is in Yeats and, more complexly, 14:39.080 --> 14:42.000 in Pound and in Eliot. 14:42.000 --> 14:46.100 What's modern about Frost is what has changed in the rural 14:46.098 --> 14:50.368 cultures that he writes about; that is, the collapse of 14:50.365 --> 14:54.375 farming economies and communities and the decay of 14:54.378 --> 14:56.998 nineteenth-century Protestantism, 14:56.998 --> 15:00.518 the white church on the village green. 15:00.519 --> 15:07.879 You feel that loss in the terrific aloneness of Frost's 15:07.882 --> 15:12.092 people. The great poem "Directive" is 15:12.092 --> 15:14.872 about all of these things. 15:14.870 --> 15:22.410 Frost's poetry struggles to incorporate the secular truths 15:22.409 --> 15:29.019 of modern science and to make poetry, like science, 15:29.023 --> 15:32.863 a disenchanted knowledge. 15:32.860 --> 15:38.280 In this way, Frost has a lot in common with 15:38.282 --> 15:43.062 Auden, and Frost, again like Auden, 15:43.059 --> 15:47.949 is fundamentally concerned with poetry as a form of knowledge, 15:47.947 --> 15:50.027 a way to know the world. 15:50.029 --> 15:54.139 At the same time, poetry preserves for Frost 15:54.137 --> 15:57.477 certain archaic, primitive powers of 15:57.480 --> 16:02.830 enchantment: powers associated with primitive motives and 16:02.829 --> 16:08.269 childhood experience that make it a crucial alternative to 16:08.274 --> 16:12.004 science and scientific knowing. 16:12.000 --> 16:17.310 Think of the magic trick at the end of "Directive" when Frost 16:17.306 --> 16:22.786 takes us to the ruined house of nineteenth-century culture--the 16:22.790 --> 16:27.660 ruined farmhouse of "Home Burial" maybe--and steals from 16:27.655 --> 16:32.245 the abandoned children's playhouse "a broken drinking 16:32.254 --> 16:37.744 goblet like the Grail" and uses it to invite us to drink from a 16:37.738 --> 16:42.778 primal source "too lofty and original to rage," 16:42.779 --> 16:47.659 that spring, and in drinking to "be whole 16:47.664 --> 16:50.844 again beyond confusion." 16:50.840 --> 16:55.200 What are we drinking there then at the end of Frost's poem, 16:55.202 --> 16:59.492 this poem published at the end of the Second World War? 16:59.490 --> 17:05.480 We're drinking a kind of elemental power that seems to 17:05.478 --> 17:10.448 fuse language and longing and imagination. 17:10.450 --> 17:14.590 This is, in Frost, a conscious rewriting, 17:14.588 --> 17:20.488 I think, partially even a send-up as well as a competition 17:20.486 --> 17:26.066 with Eliot in The Waste Land and the Grail myths 17:26.073 --> 17:30.943 that are one of the central motifs of that poem: 17:30.936 --> 17:37.246 one of the central motifs that embody for Eliot a sense of the 17:37.247 --> 17:40.687 holy, which is present, 17:40.687 --> 17:46.127 however, for Eliot only through literary allusion, 17:46.127 --> 17:51.227 something fascinating but unavailable as actual 17:51.233 --> 17:55.613 experience; something available only, 17:55.608 --> 17:58.308 in a sense, as quotation. 17:58.309 --> 18:01.579 Poetry in Frost, as in Eliot, 18:01.575 --> 18:06.235 does the work religion no longer does. 18:06.240 --> 18:12.480 But notice how in Frost, in "Directive," the belief that 18:12.479 --> 18:17.469 poetry asks from us is a belief in a fiction, 18:17.471 --> 18:22.741 in make-believe. And in this Frost is strangely 18:22.741 --> 18:28.951 and wonderfully and surprisingly perhaps fully the contemporary 18:28.945 --> 18:34.645 of Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane whose work proceeds from 18:34.648 --> 18:37.248 that same assumption. 18:37.250 --> 18:45.120 Stevens's wartime poem "Asides on the Oboe" begins: 18:45.120 --> 18:47.660 The prologues are over. 18:47.660 --> 18:51.460 It is a question, now, Of final belief. 18:51.460 --> 18:56.170 So, say that final belief Must be in a fiction. 18:56.170 --> 19:01.670 It is time to choose. This is the theme of Stevens's 19:01.672 --> 19:06.502 wartime masterpiece "Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction." 19:06.500 --> 19:10.980 And notice the contradictory impulses in Stevens's title. 19:10.980 --> 19:16.320 When poetry takes the place of religion for Stevens it presents 19:16.323 --> 19:21.243 itself as a supreme fiction, a total representation of the 19:21.235 --> 19:23.385 world and experience. 19:23.390 --> 19:28.890 But we only have partial, provisional access to that 19:28.891 --> 19:33.321 fiction. What Stevens gives us is merely 19:33.322 --> 19:38.412 notes – notes, something that Elizabeth Bishop 19:38.405 --> 19:41.645 might present us with, too. 19:41.650 --> 19:44.910 In this sense, in Stevens the shift from 19:44.911 --> 19:49.511 religion to poetry is also a shift from totalization, 19:49.509 --> 19:55.769 from system to contingency and incompletion, 19:55.774 --> 20:00.294 to parts rather than a whole. 20:00.289 --> 20:04.099 For Stevens, the disappearance of the 20:04.104 --> 20:08.664 Christian God as the center of emotional, 20:08.660 --> 20:14.130 spiritual, cultural life is essentially, however, 20:14.134 --> 20:17.104 a cause for celebration. 20:17.099 --> 20:26.649 In Eliot it's a cause for mourning--mourning and anxiety, 20:26.653 --> 20:31.773 distress. In Yeats it's a cause of 20:31.765 --> 20:38.835 fascination and horror; in Crane, for the making of new 20:38.842 --> 20:41.572 myths, new metaphors. 20:41.569 --> 20:48.049 Hughes's secular poems are Christ-haunted. 20:48.049 --> 20:54.489 Christ and all of the iconography associated with him 20:54.492 --> 21:01.562 is a source of hope and also irony for black culture and a 21:01.555 --> 21:05.515 reproach to the white world. 21:05.519 --> 21:10.869 How do people, how does culture find bearing 21:10.868 --> 21:15.468 in a world without divine sanction? 21:15.470 --> 21:19.570 This is played out as an ethical question, 21:19.573 --> 21:25.183 a question about how to live and act rightly in Moore and 21:25.177 --> 21:27.677 then later in Bishop. 21:27.680 --> 21:32.980 In general, it is a less urgent question, a less central one in 21:32.982 --> 21:36.662 the later poets than in the earlier ones. 21:36.660 --> 21:41.210 "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold," Yeats 21:41.207 --> 21:43.947 says in "The Second Coming." 21:43.950 --> 21:49.200 Bishop is fundamentally at home in this condition, 21:49.201 --> 21:55.311 which is a condition of centerlessness or homelessness. 21:55.309 --> 22:04.019 She liked the phrase "the world's an orphan's home" in 22:04.015 --> 22:10.355 Moore. Bishop is at home then with a 22:10.358 --> 22:15.558 certain kind of homelessness. 22:15.559 --> 22:22.779 Travel is her metaphor for the mobility of consciousness in a 22:22.779 --> 22:26.629 world without a stable center. 22:26.630 --> 22:32.880 Her poetry is written from the disturbingly and disorientingly 22:32.884 --> 22:38.934 decentered point of view that we find already in those early 22:38.934 --> 22:42.614 poems of hers, a point of view that takes for 22:42.609 --> 22:46.149 granted the absence of central authority that religion once 22:46.147 --> 22:48.797 provided. Remember in "Over 2,000 22:48.801 --> 22:53.731 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance" that holy grave? 22:53.730 --> 22:57.540 It's not even particularly holy, she says. 22:57.539 --> 23:04.369 The place of the sacred in Bishop has been vacated. 23:04.370 --> 23:07.420 Might poetry fill it? 23:07.420 --> 23:12.340 This isn't a question Bishop asks or is concerned with. 23:12.339 --> 23:16.179 But it is, as I've been suggesting, an urgent one in 23:16.181 --> 23:19.421 many ways for the poets who preceded her. 23:19.420 --> 23:24.010 The poetry of the period 1920 through 1940, 23:24.014 --> 23:30.584 say--really the great phase of modern poetry-- this period is 23:30.578 --> 23:35.918 structured, I think, by two big questions: 23:35.918 --> 23:41.958 how should poetry be written and what can it do, 23:41.960 --> 23:45.790 what can it accomplish in the world? 23:45.789 --> 23:50.679 In the first lecture I talked about these different impulses 23:50.679 --> 23:54.329 which are at once opposing but also, I think, 23:54.326 --> 23:56.726 related and interlocking. 23:56.730 --> 24:01.940 I called one of them formal and inward-turning, 24:01.940 --> 24:05.980 an aesthetic; the other rather outward 24:05.983 --> 24:10.673 turning, concerned with the moral, the political, 24:10.672 --> 24:15.172 and the social. The first one tends to limit 24:15.168 --> 24:21.228 the definition of poetry to say what is particular to this art, 24:21.233 --> 24:24.953 to isolate what is essential to it. 24:24.950 --> 24:28.820 The other works to extend poetry's scope, 24:28.815 --> 24:33.835 to give it an expanded role in culture, in the world, 24:33.840 --> 24:35.870 and in our lives. 24:35.869 --> 24:41.119 You see different versions of both of these impulses in the 24:41.123 --> 24:43.753 career trajectories of H.D. 24:43.750 --> 24:50.430 and William Carlos Williams, who begin as masters of a 24:50.434 --> 24:57.884 certain kind of short poem and go on to create epic poems of 24:57.875 --> 25:05.185 cultural sweep – H.D.'s being called Trilogy, 25:05.190 --> 25:08.580 Williams's Paterson. 25:08.579 --> 25:15.249 But the poet who more than any embodies these two impulses in 25:15.249 --> 25:19.139 the shape of his career is Pound, 25:19.140 --> 25:23.010 of course: as I said, the author of the shortest and 25:23.008 --> 25:25.738 the longest poem in modern poetry, 25:25.740 --> 25:31.490 the exponent of Imagism, and the author of The 25:31.492 --> 25:35.062 Cantos. Imagism seems to want to get 25:35.063 --> 25:38.013 outside of history, to explore the "sudden 25:38.011 --> 25:41.751 liberation… from space limits and time limits," 25:41.750 --> 25:47.930 Pound says, in a kind of autonomous aesthetic experience. 25:47.930 --> 25:51.420 The Cantos, however, are a poem, 25:51.419 --> 25:54.999 as Pound called it, "including history": 25:55.000 --> 26:00.970 a poem of the greatest possible range and scope and ambition. 26:00.970 --> 26:08.900 In Imagism, there's an attempt to establish the primary poetic 26:08.904 --> 26:15.804 unit, to cut away what is inessential, to find what is 26:15.799 --> 26:19.129 true. This is a kind of formal 26:19.130 --> 26:24.440 program that expresses a drive towards truth telling that we 26:24.440 --> 26:30.290 find in somewhat different terms in Frost and Auden and Moore. 26:30.289 --> 26:37.829 Think of Frost's sense of fact versus, in "Mowing," the "easy 26:37.834 --> 26:42.114 gold at the hand of fay or elf." 26:42.109 --> 26:48.519 Or think of Yeats's stylistic transformation as expressed in 26:48.517 --> 26:55.357 that short poem "A Coat" or "The Fisherman," poems from 1915. 26:55.359 --> 27:01.879 Think about Moore's and Auden's severe revisions of their work, 27:01.884 --> 27:08.204 in each case involving cutting out poems or cutting away many 27:08.198 --> 27:13.458 lines in order to arrive at what Moore called, 27:13.460 --> 27:18.410 in "Poetry," that poem subjected to severe revision, 27:18.407 --> 27:23.177 "the genuine." These are all creative acts of, 27:23.178 --> 27:28.258 I think you could say, self-limitation and they're 27:28.264 --> 27:34.294 linked to the general recurrent theme in these poets – in 27:34.285 --> 27:38.225 these poets in particular: Auden, 27:38.230 --> 27:45.340 Moore, Frost – to the general theme of restraint or reticence. 27:45.339 --> 27:48.859 "The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; 27:48.859 --> 27:52.509 / not in silence, but restraint." 27:52.509 --> 27:58.239 Remember Auden's stone god "that never was more reticent, 27:58.243 --> 28:02.853 / always afraid to say more than he meant." 28:02.849 --> 28:07.729 This impulse that I'm describing in modern poetry is 28:07.732 --> 28:12.712 also related to formal experiments with restraint. 28:12.710 --> 28:19.800 You see this worked into Moore's syllabics. 28:19.799 --> 28:24.559 Modern poetry in many ways seeks to restrain the singing 28:24.556 --> 28:29.306 voice and the lyric voice of romantic poetry as received 28:29.313 --> 28:32.603 through nineteenth-century poetry. 28:32.599 --> 28:37.569 Frost's vernacular, his will to get the "sound of 28:37.573 --> 28:42.343 sense" into his poems functions in this way. 28:42.339 --> 28:46.369 So does Hughes's vernacular, his black speech. 28:46.369 --> 28:52.889 Think about Eliot's syntactic and logical discontinuities and 28:52.890 --> 28:57.130 disjunctions, the way they interrupt and 28:57.128 --> 29:02.488 fragment lyric utterance, or think about Pound's 29:02.494 --> 29:07.734 incorporation of blocks of prose, as he did in The 29:07.730 --> 29:11.110 Cantos. There is in all of these 29:11.112 --> 29:16.042 examples a tendency to define what is modern in modern poetry 29:16.044 --> 29:20.404 by the incorporation of traditionally non-poetic forms 29:20.400 --> 29:25.590 of speech and language use and, moreover and importantly, 29:25.594 --> 29:30.514 non-traditional methods of organizing poetic language. 29:30.509 --> 29:34.389 At the same time, this impulse can be seen as a 29:34.389 --> 29:38.689 way not of limiting or curtailing poetry's scope, 29:38.690 --> 29:41.330 but rather the opposite: expanding it, 29:41.327 --> 29:44.817 expanding it to include even, as Moore puts it, 29:44.819 --> 29:48.959 "school-books and business documents," making poetry 29:48.963 --> 29:53.513 available for people and cultures and experience that had 29:53.512 --> 29:57.252 not previously been represented in poetry. 29:57.250 --> 30:03.280 Other modern poetry is experimental in a very different 30:03.281 --> 30:09.871 way, indeed in its revival and recovery and incorporation of 30:09.872 --> 30:13.002 historical poetic forms. 30:13.000 --> 30:18.890 You could understand Hart Crane's reclaiming of 30:18.886 --> 30:24.256 Elizabethan and nineteenth-century forms of 30:24.260 --> 30:30.910 ornamental rhetoric and versification as exactly this 30:30.913 --> 30:36.803 kind of reclaiming of archaic materials. 30:36.799 --> 30:43.359 There's something similar going on in Pound, in Pound's recovery 30:43.361 --> 30:49.191 of Provençal and Anglo-Saxon verse forms, his revival of 30:49.193 --> 30:54.413 these forms. Pound and Crane are both heroic 30:54.408 --> 30:56.898 poets. They answer that question – 30:56.896 --> 30:58.056 what can poetry do? 30:58.060 --> 30:59.890 what can it effect in culture? 30:59.890 --> 31:05.630 – by saying simply "everything." 31:05.630 --> 31:09.740 That's really the extraordinary presumption of their long poems 31:09.743 --> 31:13.263 – The Bridge and The Cantos. 31:13.259 --> 31:19.489 They are very different poets, however, and to some extent 31:19.486 --> 31:23.196 exposed – no, opposed figures, 31:23.200 --> 31:32.370 although indeed their claim for poetry made them both exposed 31:32.374 --> 31:38.954 figures in poignant and complicated ways. 31:38.950 --> 31:41.350 When I talk about their difference, I'm thinking of 31:41.346 --> 31:44.136 Pound's suspicion of rhetoric, his suspicion of 31:44.141 --> 31:47.531 representation, and his will or drive to get 31:47.533 --> 31:51.953 beyond these things versus Crane's faith in rhetoric, 31:51.950 --> 31:55.550 faith in rhetoric and imagination, and their power to 31:55.554 --> 31:57.084 transform the world. 31:57.079 --> 32:00.719 In a sense, you couldn't have two more different poets. 32:00.720 --> 32:05.940 But both of these poets take poetry as a kind of metaphor, 32:05.939 --> 32:10.519 as not only a metaphor but as the salient instance, 32:10.518 --> 32:14.088 of the creative impulse in history. 32:14.090 --> 32:15.660 What makes history happen? 32:15.660 --> 32:21.640 What makes action in history? 32:21.640 --> 32:27.600 And they place poetry at the center of all that is most 32:27.601 --> 32:30.141 important that we do. 32:30.140 --> 32:36.240 They both propose that poetry can fulfill the central 32:36.235 --> 32:41.505 mediating functions that religion once did. 32:41.509 --> 32:45.479 Pound and Crane become cautionary figures for later 32:45.475 --> 32:49.455 poets. To some extent Yeats does, too; 32:49.460 --> 32:53.960 that is, figures who seem to show the limits of poetry 32:53.962 --> 32:57.702 precisely in their efforts to expand them. 32:57.700 --> 33:03.510 This is one way we can understand Bishop's poem, 33:03.508 --> 33:08.698 "Visits to St. Elizabeth's" on page 133. 33:08.700 --> 33:15.370 This is a poem that describes Bishop's periodic visits to Ezra 33:15.368 --> 33:20.068 Pound in St. Elizabeths Hospital where Pound 33:20.068 --> 33:23.898 was institutionalized, incarcerated, 33:23.895 --> 33:31.105 after his return to the United States on charges of treason. 33:31.109 --> 33:35.929 Bishop was living in Washington as the Poetry Consultant to the 33:35.929 --> 33:40.589 Librarian of Congress and it befell her almost as an official 33:40.594 --> 33:43.804 duty to visit Pound, hear him talk, 33:43.800 --> 33:49.160 and bring people to Pound, and it became the occasion for 33:49.164 --> 33:54.724 this poem built on the form of "This is the House that Jack 33:54.720 --> 33:59.560 Built." This is the poetry that Jack 33:59.559 --> 34:01.179 made. This is the house of 34:01.175 --> 34:02.375 Bedlam. This is the man 34:02.380 --> 34:04.340 that lies in the house of Bedlam. 34:04.340 --> 34:07.370 This is the time of the tragic man 34:07.369 --> 34:10.279 that lies in the house of Bedlam. 34:10.280 --> 34:14.060 And she continues adding, each time adding and, 34:14.062 --> 34:18.092 of course, in Bishop's distinctive manner not only 34:18.092 --> 34:22.782 repeating but revising the terms that she's given us; 34:22.780 --> 34:27.910 again, a poetics of constant readjustment. 34:27.909 --> 34:34.529 As the poem builds, characters are included, 34:34.525 --> 34:42.985 not only Pound but Pound represented as the man but also 34:42.986 --> 34:47.756 a soldier, a boy, and a Jew, 34:47.757 --> 34:54.217 figures that are versions of Pound perhaps, 34:54.223 --> 35:00.693 reaching a climax in the final stanza: 35:00.690 --> 35:03.590 This is the soldier home from the war. 35:03.590 --> 35:07.260 [Perhaps that's Pound in some sense.] 35:07.260 --> 35:10.680 These are the years and the walls and the door 35:10.679 --> 35:13.529 that shut on a boy that pats the floor 35:13.530 --> 35:15.870 to see if the world is round or flat. 35:15.870 --> 35:23.680 [Again, Bishop touching a map.] This is a Jew in a newspaper hat 35:23.679 --> 35:27.599 that dances carefully down the ward, 35:27.599 --> 35:30.659 walking the plank of a coffin board 35:30.660 --> 35:32.780 with the crazy sailor that shows his watch 35:32.780 --> 35:34.560 that tells the time of the wretched man 35:34.559 --> 35:38.219 who lies in the house of Bedlam. 35:38.220 --> 35:41.030 It's a great poem. 35:41.030 --> 35:45.770 I spoke of Auden's and Bishop's perspectivism. 35:45.769 --> 35:50.419 Here, Bishop gives us multiple perspectives on Pound and by 35:50.423 --> 35:55.163 extension on the social and political ambitions of modernist 35:55.157 --> 35:58.807 poetry. Pound is "tragic," "talkative," 35:58.809 --> 36:03.809 "honored," "old," "brave," "cranky," "cruel," and finally 36:03.811 --> 36:09.441 simply "wretched" – a word that comes from "The Seafarer." 36:09.440 --> 36:17.180 Arguably, one strain of modern poetry ends here in 1950 in the 36:17.178 --> 36:19.968 madhouse, in Bedlam. 36:19.969 --> 36:25.969 Importantly though, it is not that Bishop stands 36:25.971 --> 36:31.591 apart form, in a position to judge, Pound. 36:31.590 --> 36:38.160 Instead, she is interestingly, I think, implicated in the 36:38.161 --> 36:41.851 scene. She must have enjoyed, 36:41.850 --> 36:47.480 and by her choice of title calls attention to, 36:47.477 --> 36:54.847 the irony that Pound is in a madhouse that has the same name 36:54.854 --> 36:59.734 as Bishop. In Bishop's great war poem 36:59.733 --> 37:06.433 "Roosters," there is a sense that to oppose conflict out in 37:06.433 --> 37:12.443 the world one must encounter conflict in oneself. 37:12.440 --> 37:19.590 Here, too, I think in multiple ways Bishop implicates herself 37:19.593 --> 37:24.843 in the objects of her critique and satire. 37:24.840 --> 37:28.380 The child's verse form, it's important. 37:28.380 --> 37:32.880 Bishop identifies with, I think it's fair to say – 37:32.884 --> 37:36.594 she's certainly interested in – children, 37:36.593 --> 37:38.893 throughout her poetry. 37:38.889 --> 37:43.309 This interest points, I think, to Bishop's sense of 37:43.311 --> 37:48.951 herself as a minor poet; that is, a mapmaker, 37:48.950 --> 37:54.630 not a historian; a poet who refuses to write the 37:54.632 --> 37:59.682 major, culturally central, aggressively ambitious poetry 37:59.675 --> 38:06.935 to which modernism and, above all, the poetry of Pound 38:06.936 --> 38:10.886 aspired. Auden's perspectivism in 38:10.891 --> 38:17.121 "Musée des Beaux Arts" seems to position the poet and poetry 38:17.120 --> 38:20.800 similarly. So does that famous statement 38:20.803 --> 38:24.343 in the Yeats elegy, "For poetry makes nothing 38:24.344 --> 38:26.264 happen." These poems, 38:26.260 --> 38:30.130 "Musée des Beaux Arts" and "In Memory of W.B. 38:30.125 --> 38:34.755 Yeats," read like rebukes to modern poetry's promethean 38:34.763 --> 38:40.983 ambitions – its verticality, if you like – and rebukes, 38:40.981 --> 38:46.831 too, to Auden's own political poetry of the 1930s, 38:46.829 --> 38:51.679 exemplified by a poem like "Spain 1937." 38:51.679 --> 38:55.109 But, as I stressed, Auden doesn't put a full stop 38:55.105 --> 38:58.095 on that sentence, "For poetry makes nothing 38:58.103 --> 39:01.803 happen." Rather, he punctuates it with a 39:01.800 --> 39:05.100 colon and continues, "it survives." 39:05.099 --> 39:08.949 There is perhaps a double implication here. 39:08.949 --> 39:14.559 Either poetry does not have an effect on the world but still 39:14.562 --> 39:19.892 survives, despite its lack of making something happen, 39:19.889 --> 39:25.679 or it survives because it makes nothing happen. 39:25.679 --> 39:32.109 It is not a cause and it doesn't take up causes 39:32.112 --> 39:36.052 effectively. What it does rather, 39:36.052 --> 39:40.612 as Auden represents it here, is create a space: 39:40.611 --> 39:44.531 a space of happening, a landscape, 39:44.528 --> 39:51.068 and a model of the world, seen in the same time as a 39:51.068 --> 39:56.848 valley and a river, the river that flows through it. 39:56.849 --> 40:01.999 There's terrific power of affirmation in this claim about 40:01.999 --> 40:06.689 poetry's survival at the moment of Yeats's death, 40:06.690 --> 40:12.650 at the moment of the onset of the Second World War when "all 40:12.651 --> 40:15.381 the dogs of Europe bark." 40:15.380 --> 40:20.290 Ultimately, in Auden, poetry survives as "a way of 40:20.287 --> 40:25.997 happening," as he calls it, that is, a "way" in a sense of 40:25.995 --> 40:30.685 both a method and a path; and implicitly, 40:30.692 --> 40:36.432 as I suggested talking about this poem earlier; 40:36.429 --> 40:44.499 it survives as a kind of open space, a place to come into to 40:44.499 --> 40:48.739 collect and gather in for us. 40:48.739 --> 40:54.059 And it is figured, I think, finally and implicitly 40:54.059 --> 41:00.789 as a mouth, the human mouth – open to speak old words and new 41:00.791 --> 41:05.901 words, too. Poetry survives in my mouth and 41:05.898 --> 41:10.608 also in yours, which seems like a good last 41:10.610 --> 41:14.650 sentence to end this course with. 41:14.650 --> 41:25.000 So, thank you very much.