CONSENSUAL VERSE (2)
(05-25-2010)
PREFACE
I have ever cherished the common origins of our belovéd English language. Among them are the literary fragments and Beowulf, the romances, Chaucer and the Gawain poet, the English and Scottish ballads of the 15th century, the songs and sonnets of William Shakespeare (whoever wrote them), and the King James version of the Bible. I count with them the Mother Goose nursery rhymes as a primer of the English poetic.
I have kept Mother Goose by my bedside seemingly forever. I re-read them now and again. Their simple, blunt but profound and subtle rhymes and themes re-invigorate my sense of English verse. I suspect I knew the nursery rhymes before I could read, as my older sisters recited them to me when I was a child. One of my favorite verses is “Sing a song of sixpence.” There is something implicit in its rude and laconic rhymes that intrigues: a love triangle suppressed (the king, the queen, the maid), a threat of blackbirds and their beaks, a remnant of enforced social inequity, an assault on the person of the maid, a possible garden of illicit activity.
At one time, in my reading of English Literature, I was impressed with the concept of the Bible as literature. I was assured, upon reading the Song of Songs anew after many years, that it was a poem, and a sensuous one. I pored over the implication that the Song of Solomon contained a love triangle within it: king, maiden, lover.
Thus one winter night a number of years ago, with both the Song of Solomon and “Sing a song of sixpence” banging away in my head, I was seized with a poetic conceit. I saw, in the nursery rhyme, a trace of the theme of the Song of Solomon. I compulsively wrote a poem that made explicit my intuition.
POEM
A Song of Sensual
A song, a song of sensual:
A pocket full of breath,
For a lovely black maid
Baked almost to death.
When the pie was broken,
The maid began to weep
A dish of tears before the king
When he began to reap.
The king was in his cutting-house
Cutting out our gunny;
The man was in the wildwood
Eating locust, honey.
The maid was in the garden
Hanging on his voice,
When down swooped a bluebird
And snatched up their choice.
CRITIQUE
The few persons to whom I showed my poem did not recognize its value. Therefore, I will explicate it in depth and hope to enlighten them about the poem. I do not intend an impressionistic or free associational parsing, but tie it to the metrical structure of the poem. The elements of my explication alternate between the nursery rhyme and the biblical love song. The poem replicates the Mother Goose rhyme but is stuffed with the import of the Song of Songs. It is a conceit, a device used by the Metaphysical Poets of the past – John Dunne and company – or a grand metaphysical metaphor; or, further, it is an instance of wit, as the ability to see similarity in disparity. (The value of a conceit lies in how disparate are the elements that are brought together. I submit that the biblical song and the nursery rhyme are considerably different.)
I wrote my poem in the same ballad measure as the nursery rhyme. The English ballad measure is a line of iambic heptameter divided into a couplet of four and three beats rhyming at the end of the second and fourth lines. I wrote four stanzas of two couplets or four lines each or sixteen lines, the exact same as the nursery rhyme. The ballad measure in English most notably is that of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by S. T. Coleridge.
At the start, I will point out that in the title the word sensual means primarily “of the senses,” and not sensuality, a word that refers to the flesh, or the carnal in human affairs. The connotation of carnality exists but is suppressed. It has the same number of syllables as does the title of the nursery rhyme.
Line 1 – “A song, a song of sensual.”
I sing a song of the senses and not of carnality. It is the difference between natural, loving sexual appetite and lewdness. The repeated “a song” is rhetorical emphasis to announce the display of the poem. It mimics the first line of the nursery rhyme.
Line 2 – “A pocket full of breath.”
It says in the Song of Songs, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.” A pocket of breath is a metaphor for a mouth that kisses. Or, a mouth can be considered a pocket of breath apt for kisses. It is the breath of life for love. The word “pocket” is used in the nursery rhyme: “A pocket full of rye.”
Lines 3 & 4 – “For a lovely black maid/Baked almost to death.”
That is what it says in the Bible verse: “I am black but beautiful.” Whatever was meant by the original authors, or subsequent translators, whether an African woman or a Semitic woman burned by the sun, the black connection circa the early 21st century is apt. It is a creative fortuity and a sign of an inevitable poem. The maiden is baked, and in the pie with blackbirds, suggestive of much else, and of the momentous.
Line 5 – “When the pie was broken.”
Of course, it is the pie of the world, of Creation, that is broken with all the unhappiness that follows it. In the Song of Songs, it thus is of a love and a crisis that occurs after the Fall that attempts to obliterate that disaster in sensual bliss. I see it in the nursery rhyme also. The blackbirds represent the raucous, discordant and anarchic world after manifestation, and after the Fall and expulsive from the Garden of Eden. Both end ambiguously.
Line 6 – “The maid began to weep.”
I conflate the daughters of Jerusalem with the maid in the nursery rhyme into the grammatical and symbolic singular. What else should a maiden do at the frustration and tragedy of love in the world or over an individual lover except weep? It is the feminine principle.
Line 7 – “A dish of tears before the king.”
I assume that every human being has wept a dish of tears of rue and sorrow at the world and presented it before the Creator as ritual supplication. The tears are tasty and as sweet as wine, as it is distilled of our essence, character, soul, psyche.
Line 8 – “When he began to reap.”
The line is key. The poem is about life, love and the reward of blissful union at death, --- the triumph of star-crossed lovers. That is what life is: a preparation for a reaping here intensified by lovers. It is another sign of an inevitable poem in the history of our civilization. The reaping is the harvesting of our moral distillate.
Line 9 – “The king was in his cutting-house.”
The king has many mansions in his house, as St. Teresa Ávila stated. He has a counting-house, a cutting-house, a room in which to drink a dish of tears, a reaping room.
Line 10 – “Cutting out our gunny.”
Our “gunny” is our material existence. It is that strong, coarse material made from jute used to bag bulk goods such as potatoes. It is also known as “burlap.” I do not believe in the separation of mind and body, but I use that belief in the poem because it is a remnant of my background. (There is no morality in art. It will use anything at hand to serve its purpose.)
Lines 11 & 12 – “The man was in the wildwood/Eating locust, honey.”
The queen in the nursery rhyme is eating honey. I draw on various sources to place the man in the wilderness under duress in his love in its anti-social aspect eating as would a religious acetic.
Line 13 – “The maid was in the garden.”
So is the maid in the nursery rhyme in a garden. It is paradise that etymologically is the garden of a Persian nobleman.
Line 14 – “Hanging on his voice.”
I use a contemporary expression to note the interest of the maiden in her lover. And why is she hanging on his voice listening to every word? It is because that voice is saying, from the wildwood, “You are so beautiful,” in so many words, and in various other words, again from the biblical verse. It is what women in love long to hear. What woman could resist such pleas?
Line 15 – “When down swooped a bluebird.”
Yes, not a blackbird but a bluebird: the bluebird of happiness. It arrives like a bolt from the blue.
Line 16 – “And snapped up their choice.”
The choice is of each for the other, and of their choice parts, ---their love and passion. And as the bluebird is an emissary of the Creator, it is for their divine parts. The word “choice” is used in all its multiple meanings. It is a mark of an inevitable poem.
*
The words and expressions in my poem relate both to the Song of Songs and to the Mother Goose rhyme. However, there are three in the composition of the poem, another love triangle: the biblical song, the rhyme of the nursery, and me the poet.
My poem is made of “gists” and “piths” as Ezra Pound says that a poem should be. Nor does my parsing exhaust the possibilities of it. (If I do not follow Ezra Pound’s practice, whose practice should I follow, --- and why should I do so? Nor is my question rhetorical.)
*
VERSIFICATION
The verse form, as described above, is the ballad measure irregularly iambic and trochaic with other irregularities. It rhymes on the second and fourth lines of each quatrain. It emulates the nursery rhyme. The effect is that of a rough swaying and banging back and forth. Such accentual verse used to be thought analogous to the action of the sea, and masculine in its action. It is the magic genius of verse in the English language, and why it is thought to be the language par excellence of poetry. It is pleasing to my ear. Scansion, though, is a subjective and individual affair.
First Quatrain
The first line of the poem begins with two iambic feet. The repeated “a song, a song” is metrically emphatic and parallels the rhetorical emphasis mentioned above. The first line ends with the word “sensual” considered as a dactyl (one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones) or with the first and last syllables both stressed but to different degrees. (Those scholars who study prosody have been arguing for generations about the value of the sounds in verse, whether there are three or four degrees of stress in the words depending on syntax besides the basic stressed or unstressed syllables. However that is considered, the final syllable in “sensual” occupies an intermediate position of stress between being fully stressed or unstressed. Thus it can be considered either way in my poem, either to make the four stresses – or beats – of the paradigmatic ballad measure line, or to make a poetic irregularity.) Metrically, the dactyl of “sensual” at the end of the first line is matched by the compound word “cutting-house” at the end of the first line in the third quatrain. The third syllable of this compound word is stressed more than is the third syllable of “sensual,” though still not fully stressed.
Line 2 is a regular iambic trimeter as per the ballad form.
Line 3 after a slight pause indicated by the comma at the end of the second line, as if providing a missing beat, this line is either iambic or trochaic tetrameter with both the words “black” and “maid” having full stress and without an unstressed syllable between these words,--- a spondee, to be technical. An unstressed syllable is not needed because of the force and duration of these words appearing together. The line could also be read as trochaic trimeter irregularly without the fourth beat typical in the first and third lines of the ballad measure.
Line 4 can be read as either iambic or trochaic trimeter with either a missing unstressed syllable at the beginning or at the end respectively.
I will point out in the first quatrain that the word “baked” in general discourse is pronounced as if it contained two syllables, the second one being very unstressed, or slurred because of the peculiarities of our English speech. It is similar for the words “swooped” and “snapped” in lines 15 and 16. It reminds me that in the history of our language the “-ed” suffix was pronounced, and is still seen in such lexical formations as “bearded, and in “belovéd,” with which I opened my critique still used with the acute accent mark. The important element is the clang and clash of the beats and the words.
Second Quatrain
The fifth line is trochaic trimeter and the sixth is iambic trimeter continuing the pattern of the first quatrain. The seventh and eighth lines are paradigmatic to the ballad form. The nursery rhyme struggles both with and against the ballad measure.
*There are 101 syllables in the poem. The 51st syllable, the exact center of the poem, which occurs at the end of the second quatrain, is the word “reap.” (It is the 51st syllable counting either from the beginning or the end of the poem.) It is the axis of the poem, for that is what life is, a reaping of some sort of which we are ignorant. It is the mark of an inevitable poem.
Third Quatrain
The first line of the second half of the poem, the ninth, especially recapitulates line 1. The word “cutting-house” is a dactyl paralleling “sensual.” Certainly, the third syllable of “cutting-house” is more strongly stressed than is the third syllable of “sensual.” (If I were to delineate the four probable intensities of stress in England words in verse with #1 being full stress, then “sen-“ and “cut-“ would be #1, “-su-“ and “-ting-“ would be #2, “-house-“ would be #3 and “-al-“ would be the weakest at #4.) Such metrical subtlety indicates the prosodic genius of English, and why it is the language of poetry par excellence.
The tenth line is trochaic. Each word of the line contains the letter “u.” It displays the lugubriousness of our physical existence. The entire third quatrain contains seven “u’s,” many more than the other quatrains combined, with four.
The eleventh line is iambic with four beats as “wildwood” is a spondee like “black maid” above in line three. There was the option of using the word “wilderness” in this line. (It is used in the Song of Songs.) It would, in my view, make the line overly regular and less masculine. (It would also destroy the syllable count.) The biblical verse is more feminine in metrics than is the nursery rhyme. The double “-oo-“ in “wildwood” matches the “o’s” in “locust” and “honey.”
The twelfth line is trochaic. Furthermore, the “honey-gunny” rhyme is fortuitous. Of the other rhymes for them, none are suitable for the tone of the poem, and this is another sign of an inevitable poem. (“Sunny” does not suit the tone of the poem. Neither is the Song of Songs a “sunny poem,” but is suffused with dark, tragic portent in opposition to the world.)
Fourth Quatrain
The thirteenth line is iambic with a syllable added at the end to parallel line eleven in sense and meter. The caveats are that “wildwood” can be a trochee, and the second syllable of “garden,” (also a trochee) because of the force of the metrical pattern is stretched out emphatically. It thus has more stress and the second syllable is not slurred in pronunciation, but elongated. The second syllable in fact could be considered to have a full stress to match metrically the word “wildwood” and oppose it thematically.
The fourteenth line is iambic, again acatalectic, and again with the pause provided by the comma making a syllable. Or, rather, line fourteen makes up for a lack of a beat with the emphasis of the content. In this, it is similar to the fourth and sixteenth.
*(The mode of my poem is a rocking and swaying back and forth with iambs, trochees --- mirror sounds of each other --- , pauses and dramatic emphases. It mimics the crash of the seas, and the motion of the blackbirds buffeted in their nest. The words, lines and sentences can be pronounced variously.)
Line the fifteenth has four beats with “down swooped” and “bluebird” both spondees. It recalls the other spondees in the poem. It can be paralleled with line 7 that occurs as the penultimate to the first half of the poem, as line 15 is penultimate to the finale. While line 7 has eight syllables and line 15 six, they are equivalent in time-sound---as spoken (quantitatively). And though “down swooped” has a downward motion, it nevertheless is stressed action. Both syllables of “bluebird” receive full stress with an upward movement, even as there is a hint of the word “bird” being somewhat less stressed. (It is the bluebird of happiness, after all, that resides in paradise and thus upward in our Western mythos.) The different movements of “down swooped” and “bluebird” are notable in their opposing dynamics. My versification makes it all intriguing in sound and sense.
In Line 16, “snapped up” is similarly a spondee and stressed up again in creative opposition to “down swooped” in the line previous to it. The line has three beats in five syllables and is massively stressed.
I will point out that “voice” and “choice” are the only monosyllabic rhymes for each other in the English language, except for a few names that are not legitimate rhymes for the subject of my poem. It is another mark of an inevitable poem. (English may be relatively poor in rhymes compared to the Romance languages, but this impoverishment makes the rhymes precious, potent and sweet.)
Throughout
I mentioned above that “sensual” and “cutting-house” are parallel metrically. They are the last words of the first lines of each half of the poem (lines 1 and 9). They further contain consonantal rhyme in “-house” and “sensu-,” as these words are pronounced: “how’z” and “sen’z.” They also work against each other in that a “cutting” may jar that which is “sensual” or pleasurable, connotatively.
Further, there is the parallel of “broken” and “garden” that are even short rhymes. They are the first lines of the second quatrain of each half of the poem (lines 5 and 13).
Considering the final word in the first lines of each quatrain, while “sensual” and “cutting-house” have three syllables and “broken” and “garden” only two, the long sound (in quantity) of “bro-ken” and “gar-den” makes them equivalent. It participates in the subtle beauty of English verse.
The glory of the English language is that sound, sense and connotation, accent, stress and unstress, syntax, individual pronunciation and rhetorical sweep cohere in an integrated whole whether spoken aloud or heard in the mind. These elements make its prosody and create song without which a lyric poem is inadequate. It makes the variety that is the spice of life in love-making and in poetic versification, and is a principle of the universe.
While the import of the poem is philosophically of the senses, I strove at its sexual charging, an example of the opposing claims of the abstract and the concrete in art.
All significant poems as works of art are about poetry. They all seek to express the prosody and thus the genius of their languages. My poem, The Song of Sensual, participates in the explication of English versification whether accentual, syllabic or freed.
I could continue to parse my poem, but I have made the case for it.
CONSIDERATIONS
When I made certain points in my analysis both thematic and prosodic, I wrote that it indicated an inevitable poem. My usage of the word “inevitable” is from musical composition, and is applicable for versifying. It means that once a few phrases or bars of music are set up, the remainder is bound to occur as natural or inherent and is immediately heard as such. (The inevitable in music is heard most emphatically in the harpsichord pieces of Bach.)
*
I have concluded the explication of my poem. I believe it can sustain the deepest criticism. I challenge you not to understand it. If you do not have the perception to do so, that would not bother me. Everyone gets a shot at accomplishment and lives or dies by what he decides in life, in love and in poetry.
T. R. CATANZARITE
