by Ren Powell
As long as I have been contemplating my own navel and how I can justify spending so much time with a computer, I have believed I am a poet because I see connections.
Not in the way storytellers see them, cause and effect, incident and influence — but I see how a moth that changes colors to adjust to the effects of industrial pollution in England can be connected to the camouflaging behavior of a victim of domestic violence. Tenuous connections that help me make sense of what seems senseless in the world.
While I know metaphor is not the definition of poetry, and though I have respect for haiku and for Language poets (in the abstract), metaphor is the only way I experience poetry. Probably the only way I experience experiences.
It is an uncomfortable admission to narcissism, either on a personal level or species level, that when I consider the other, I often experience it in terms of metaphors for the familiar. I anthropomorphize not only the dandelions breaking through the sidewalk, but the cracked cement itself.
A sunrise only ignites something in my solar plexus if it is mythologized somewhere along the path from my retinal nerve to my frontal lobe. It is the child dug from the rubble lifted to give us all the hope we need to keep thriving ourselves. It is the Egyptian god Ra rising from the tomb of useless artifacts to shine for 6 hours; magnificent, temporal and bittersweet.
Metaphor leads to metaphor in my mind: sunset. The letter ‘T’ and the finality of its percussive sound, despite the breath that lingers like the magentas of the setting sun; the reds, the blood that fades into blackness.
Isn’t this what we mean when we speak of accessible poetry? James Geary, in a Ted Talk on metaphors claims we speak six metaphors a minute. Many metaphors are very familiar to all of us, the connections easy to make. Metaphors stretch themselves through our subconscious synesthesia: We can skim a poem to see the shape of the letters, to know if the poem is bouba or kikki, whether the overt metaphors are familiar (e.g., sun, blood, tree). We get a feel for the poem even before we have read it. It points to the connections we know.
There are times that, as a reader, I crave this kind of accessible poetry for comfort and confirmation, but most often I need poetry that knocks my expectations out from under me, because that is also confirmation of my experience of the world: I am continually knocked onto my behind — and usually just when I am certain I am on solid ground.
It is comforting sometimes, just knowing I’m not alone in experiencing the world as a complex place: It isn’t psychotic to think lambs and lions may not, and maybe even should not, lie side by side in peace.
As a reader, I have been pushing myself lately to choose poetry that doesn’t immediately appeal to me based on biases and connections I’ve made that are limited in scope and lacking in imagination. This means I’m reading more bouba poems; it means I’m looking deeper into poems with overly familiar metaphors such as sun and blood and tree, searching for poetry that will allow me to break my familiar connections and establish new ones. I am reading poetry of the 19th century and growing as a person. Poetry as nourishment, as these lines from from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” express:
Thou, that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame!
Depart not as thy shadow came,
Depart not — lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.
I just hope establishing more connections with bouba poetry won’t make me fat.
Ren Powell has published three poetry collections and eleven books of translations. She is a graduate adviser with Prescott College’s master of arts program and is pursuing a doctorate in creative writing at Lancaster University. Learn more at her website.
It is not psychotic to separate the lambs from the lions.The only way the lamb and the lion lie in peace is if the lion is heavily sedated.
There is a place for boubalonian like Shelley’s but at the moment I’m for kikinass poems !
LOL
Thank you for posting this Ren. I thought I was the only one who thought in the way in which you describe. Which is why my metaphors tend to get pretty complex sometimes, and if I’m not careful, I get tangled up in them.
i love how you describe seeing the world in metaphors. perhaps that is how we decide to be poets
Yes! I relate to these comments so deeply in many ways — both in how I write, and in how I think about poetry. I just read a book of Robert Frost’s speeches, and he talks so much about metaphor (“You’ve had opinions. But what I call “thought” begins with connecting things in metaphor.”). Your comments, Ren, take me to new places beyond Frost. Thank you so much for this piece.
Added Remark — The TED video lecture on metaphor was great. Brief, but really packed. I loved his alternate translation of “I think, therefore I am.”
Another great post, Ren. I really like the idea of returning to poems that feel familiar and allowing them to speak again.
I wonder, though, many Language poets use metaphor, don’t they?
Nathan: I’d love it if someone would write a bit about Language poetry. I thought metaphor was incidental in the Language poems – not precluded as in haiku… but I am not sure. Wouldn’t metaphor compete with the purpose of Language poetry? If no one chimes in, I will go look it up to at least get a superficial answer. Do you know more than you’re letting on?
Nathan replied:
January 20th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
I’m not an expert, for sure. I’ve just read a few things. I just finished Ron Silliman’s “The New Sentence” and he doesn’t seem to be against metaphor. I’m not sure what he does as a poet so much, but as a critic in that book, Silliman does seem to insist on examining metaphor and other figures of speech on the level of how meaning is made rather than the meaning itself. (I’m not sure if that makes sense or not, I’m still trying to get my head around that book.)
And I’ve read some of Lyn Hejinian’s work. There does often seem to be a question of the ways different kinds of metaphor work, or, maybe the use of metaphors that are aware of themselves as metaphors. Like this from Hejinian’s “The Beginner”:
“The sun Shines. / The sun is perceived as a bear, then a boat, then an instruction: see. / The sun is a lily, then a whirlpool turning a crowd.”
I am a food writer, but also a poet… I find this an interesting read. I am drawn in by metaphor because it takes me other places…like Jessie says maybe the reason we become poets, because we do not see through our normal eye, but a dream like state in which things happen abnormally…
I admit I am not great at lit talk, but I know a good read when I see one!
BTW thanks for adding me to your tweets!
“Silliman does seem to insist on examining metaphor and other figures of speech on the level of how meaning is made rather than the meaning itself”
That is the understanding I have always had: that Language poets are nearly antithetical to the lyric? But I don’t think that’s right…that the poem is more of an expression of examination of experience rather than an expression of experience? Which I think makes it more an an intellectual exercise than a form of cognitive synethesia. But again, I am pretty sure I am wrong. I really should put more effort into understanding it…
Thanks, Chef E.:-)
This is a great discussion about Language poetry. Thank you for starting it, Ren and Nathan.
I want to chime in and say that I think rather than looking to writing and theory *about* Language poetry, we can look directly to the texts for our answers. Language either is or is not functioning as a type of metaphor — whether it be absolute, active, paralogical, loose, implicit, simple, submerged or any of the other types — and it’s relatively easy to identify whether one or more types are in play.
Here are just some examples of metaphorical language within a short passage from Lyn Hejinian’s long work, “My Life.” I don’t have time to look for more examples in this particular piece right now, but I think even what I found so far illustrates that metaphor is part of Language poetry, or at least part of this 1980 work written by a prominent Language poet.
I added brackets to highlight the metaphors in the lines below and give them prominence over other words appearing in the lines — for me, the other words always get in the way and sometimes keep me from seeing the metaphorical language at work:
There is no [solitude]. It [buries itself] in veracity.
It is the [wind slamming] the doors.
[To follow the progress] of ideas, or that particular line of reasoning, so full of surprises and unexpected correlations, [was] somehow [to take a vacation].
[A blue room is] always [dark].
[Everything] on the boardwalk [was shooting] toward the sky.
… certain [humans are situations].
Dana Guthrie Martin replied:
January 20th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
I must add that the phrase “certain humans are situations” is brilliant, in my estimation.
Dana – Thanks for your post. I must admit that I sometimes struggle with language poetry as it becomes difficult for me to focus on ideas which, to me, can seem disparate and disconnected. Your idea of “bracketing” the metaphorical language as a way to find an entry point may be helpful to me the next time I am struggling with a read.
Dana Guthrie Martin replied:
January 20th, 2010 at 10:39 pm
Donna, it really does help me focus in on the metaphors in any poem, especially those with a complex structure. It’s surprising how many start to pop out.
Awesome thoughts!
It’s interesting that you draw a contrast between storytelling connections (which I guess you could call temporal?) and poetic connections. The best storytellers incorporate the latter into their work and end up with stories (or novels)(or whatever) that feel like half-dreams, meandering along through their plot, paying as much attention to what’s happening as what happens next.
(An example: Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things”. So many of her lines feel like bits of poems, even if they would, I guess, technically be similes rather than metaphors. Spiderwebs spreading like “whispered gossip”, someone’s face “closing like a cupboard”, teeth in someone’s gums “waiting like words in a pen”, etc.)
And the same is true for traditional embellished tales, adding these unique and memorable metaphors brings those to life. But do you think it works the other way? Can these tenuous connections you’re talking about be strengthened (or at least complemented) by adding an element of space-time? How do you find that balance in a poem between moving a story along and a cascade of images, if that story is even there in the first place?
Though I also think haiku has that same connection in it, if it’s done right; it’s just harder to see. The main haiku event isn’t that the dandelion cracking the sidewalk reminds one of _____, but rather hey! there’s a dandelion cracking the sidewalk!
Hi Joseph- I would have to disagree with you regarding haiku. While I admit I know next to nothing about Language poetry – except perhaps that the fact that the metaphors don’t work on a synethesic level for me – haiku does not use metaphors or similes at all, which is why Westerners have such a difficult time with it.
I actually write mainly narrative poetry myself, so the element of time is certainly part of my poetic practice. I think for me the difference is that time does not involve cause and effect, but experience and the difference between the use of metaphor in prose and in poetry, in my mind is the depth of the metaphor and its purpose. Is it mere embellishment, or is it the element that allows the reader to leap from the situation or narrative to the poem that exists without words- the associative leaping that needs to take place to reach the “poem” (inarticulated (unable to be articulated) universal experience) that the poet is attempting to communicate. If the spiderwebs are like whispers of gossip, the whispers of gossip metaphor (or simile) needs to relate back to the spiderwebs in a meaningful way so that both are strengthened as this specific experience – and not just an image that embellishes.
Dana Guthrie Martin replied:
January 21st, 2010 at 11:59 am
Ren, as I understand it, synesthesia describes a neurological condition in which a sensory input is involuntarily perceived as a different sensory pathway. So hearing color, for example. Or smelling something visual. Is that the sense in which you are using the term? It seems like you are talking about something broader, including the anthropomorphication you mention in your article.
ren powell replied:
January 21st, 2010 at 1:09 pm
I’m not good at using the reply link. My response is below.
Joseph Harker replied:
January 21st, 2010 at 12:57 pm
If I followed that correctly… then yes, I agree.
As for haiku, I didn’t mean metaphor or simile; hell, there’s not enough room for “like a” or “as a” anyway. But the trick (as I understand it from my ages-past writing mentor) is to convey a sense of space with haiku. It’s not a straight-up metaphor, but there’s definitely a connection; the poem presents a (natural) image, then draws a line stretching off to something outside of the poem. One of Issa’s is: “父母の しきりに戀し 雉子の声”, translated (by one guy, at least) as: “The voice of the pheasant / how I longed / for my dead parents!” There’s a unique and highly personal associative leap going on, even if we have only the barest of information.
Connections and metaphors and associations and similes… it’s rather difficult to draw lines between all these. o__O
ren powell replied:
January 21st, 2010 at 1:09 pm
We’re just reading different books on theory
Ack. that sounds so pompous – I am not that sure of myself
Nathan- I’ve been trying to formulate what I understand (limited) about the Language poets and how I think the meaning and purpose of metaphor differs – I think very Aristotilian in that the purpose of poetry is to create a memises that allows us to make the leap to the pre-existing poetic truth (the experience of which *is* catharsis). As I have understood Language poetry, the purpose of the poem is not to leap to the cathartic? Therefore the purpose of metaphor in a Language poem wouldn’t be as memises for a kind of pro forma experience?
Dana Guthrie Martin replied:
January 21st, 2010 at 12:09 pm
One characteristic of some Language poetry — I am hesitant to make blanket assertions about such a diverse group of writers — is a shared meaning-making between the poet and the reader: The reader is involved actively in making those meanings. That might not be something everyone agrees with or that everyone thinks constitutes or should constitute poetry. But I do think it’s worth mentioning because it upsets the notions of “meaning and purpose,” at least in terms of them being exclusively in the hands of the poet. That makes it hard to say “This poem means x” or “That poem’s purpose is y.” x and y are variables that change from one reading to another, from one reader to another. So to extrapolate what this or that Language poet means and what the intent of his or her metaphors is can get fairly problematic.
And I don’t even care what Ron Silliman says on the matter – he’s not the only Language poet out there, and he doesn’t speak for all Language poets. I do care what he says, actually. I am just saying, let’s not forget that there’s diversity among Language poets.
Ren, you bring up interesting questions. I’m not sure about making a general statement about metaphor in language poetry. I will say, though, that I think the idea of a pre-existing poetic truth is an effect of language. And in the movement of mimesis to catharsis it seems like what gets lost is the signifier, that is language itself disappears. I love this paragraph from Silliman, for example:
“What happens when a language moves toward and passes into a capitalist stage of development is an anaesthetic transformation of the perceived tangibility of the word, with corresponding increases in its expository, descriptive and narrative capacities … These developments are tied directly to the function of reference in language, which under capitalism is transformed, narrowed into referentiality.” (“The New Sentence”)
Dana Guthrie Martin replied:
January 21st, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Oh hi, Nathan. We must have been responding at the same time. I didn’t mean to cut in above you.
“I think the idea of a pre-existing poetic truth is an effect of language.”… I think that is a basic difference in our thinking. I think that language is a way to communicate the pre-existing truth we “know”. *The effect* is that it is expressed, not brought into being. I do believe there is pre-existing truth or pro forma poems because they are experiential. I think that is why I, as a writer and as a reader, resist reader-response theories and approaches. I am attempting to communicate an experience that I believe the reader can access through the memisis I attempt to create. If they create any memisis on their own, they don’t need me
But, yes, I know there are many schools of poetry and art that do think the author is dispensable. I have no idea how the dead author theory fits with Language poets. Silliman certainly is visible 
But is the poet more like the scientist than the shaman – not creating a memisis but constructing a scientific ladder?
I am not versed
in the jargon well enough to understand “perceived tangibility of the word”.
Sorry Dana, your question didn’t show up the first time I responded. Synethesia – I should specify “Cognative Synethesia” – James Geary talks about it in his Talk. In my experience it is not uncommonly used in literary theory – it is in most literary glossaries that I have. Here is the online literary encyclopedia entry: http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1084
Here is a little conference paper: http://www.leftclick.com.au/home/emma/h335/synaesthesiaandsensibilities.html