03-11-2025, 08:12 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-11-2025, 08:16 PM by RiverNotch.)
When I think of free verse that deals chiefly with abstract ideas rather than with images or with stories, I think first of Eliot's "Burnt Norton" (though, *Carthago delenda est*, the man was a total piece of racist and sexist shit). Here are its first eight lines.
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
Note how they evade long-windedness by using, as much as possible, the simplest of terms, or else by being, for the most part, fewer than 12 syllables in length. The longest words---eternally, unredeemable, abstraction, perpetual, possibility, speculation---either cannot be substituted with something simpler, or else (as in the case of "eternally" and "perpetual") to substitute them with simpler terms is to remove their references to a larger context, in this case (likewise with "unredeemable") to Christianity. Then there is also the use of other, subtler poetic devices, such as the constant repetition, to give them a sentimental quality beyond the ideas they peddle---for me, these lines seem meditative, even hypnotic---not to mention how their ideas are commonplace only in religious prose, so far as I know, and not in modern poetry.
The first two lines of this poem are the exact opposite of Eliot's work.
"You cannot tell who you are until it's who you were" is a common enough idea to be the subject of at least a few pop songs: right now, I can only think of all the songs that refer to Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi", even if "Oh, it always seems to go / that you don't know what you've got till it's gone" seems to refer exclusively to the other, rather than to the self, but I think the point still stands. Also, the line has a whopping six stresses scattered across thirteen syllables: it's almost an Alexandrine, to me the most ponderous kind of line in English prosody. The next line then peddles in an idea even more common, and because the idea is an image I can venture to say it's cliche: "the mirror of my soul", only it expands "mirror" not with a metaphor but through a pair of abstractions that even in prose would be seen as amateurish, and all contained in a line that is most definitely an Alexandrine.
The third line would be better, but the association between "time", "emotion", and "evolution" seems rather haphazard: aside from being another state of mind or category of sentiment, what exactly connects "emotion" with the other two words? Or else, is not "evolution" a mere tautology of time?
The fourth line, again, is a sort of tautology, considering what the first two lines say, but then the fifth line---most frustratingly!---seems to take it all back. "Or so I say". Of course it's what the speaker says, we haven't been given any indication so far that this is some kind of conversation, or that there is anything to what the speaker has so far said that provokes any sort of doubt.
This, I think, is the general pattern of this piece. The next stanza reads like, I dunno, a self-help book: I say "I dunno" because I don't read self-help books, but it's the sort of navel-gazing pseudointellectualism I expect of the genre. The third stanza finally gets to an image but, by God, it seems designed to taunt the careful reader: either the speaker really ought to open the book, as dictionaries contain the very building blocks of the poetic craft, or else the speaker lies, having already abused it through overuse. The fourth stanza especially: "I have convictions entombed in glaciation / Yet springtime melts my frosted obstinacy." What is that even supposed to mean?!
The most gimmicky part of this piece is the one stanza that I think merits preservation. Though I am someone who can't read binary, the translation actually works: it's pithy, it's idiomatic, and the fact that the sentiment, however common, is inseparable from its form---a binary prisoner, a poem written in binary, a poem published in a digital medium---is enough to get off, say, Marshall McLuhan.
Afterwards, the poem returns to a mode I find rather infuriating---of course whatever the poet wrote is what they feel, isn't that the bloody point?!---with which it sticks to the end. My advice for this poem specifically is to jettison everything but the bit in binary (or should I say the bits?), enclosing the translation in a spoiler. My advice overall....read "Burnt Norton".
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
Note how they evade long-windedness by using, as much as possible, the simplest of terms, or else by being, for the most part, fewer than 12 syllables in length. The longest words---eternally, unredeemable, abstraction, perpetual, possibility, speculation---either cannot be substituted with something simpler, or else (as in the case of "eternally" and "perpetual") to substitute them with simpler terms is to remove their references to a larger context, in this case (likewise with "unredeemable") to Christianity. Then there is also the use of other, subtler poetic devices, such as the constant repetition, to give them a sentimental quality beyond the ideas they peddle---for me, these lines seem meditative, even hypnotic---not to mention how their ideas are commonplace only in religious prose, so far as I know, and not in modern poetry.
The first two lines of this poem are the exact opposite of Eliot's work.
"You cannot tell who you are until it's who you were" is a common enough idea to be the subject of at least a few pop songs: right now, I can only think of all the songs that refer to Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi", even if "Oh, it always seems to go / that you don't know what you've got till it's gone" seems to refer exclusively to the other, rather than to the self, but I think the point still stands. Also, the line has a whopping six stresses scattered across thirteen syllables: it's almost an Alexandrine, to me the most ponderous kind of line in English prosody. The next line then peddles in an idea even more common, and because the idea is an image I can venture to say it's cliche: "the mirror of my soul", only it expands "mirror" not with a metaphor but through a pair of abstractions that even in prose would be seen as amateurish, and all contained in a line that is most definitely an Alexandrine.
The third line would be better, but the association between "time", "emotion", and "evolution" seems rather haphazard: aside from being another state of mind or category of sentiment, what exactly connects "emotion" with the other two words? Or else, is not "evolution" a mere tautology of time?
The fourth line, again, is a sort of tautology, considering what the first two lines say, but then the fifth line---most frustratingly!---seems to take it all back. "Or so I say". Of course it's what the speaker says, we haven't been given any indication so far that this is some kind of conversation, or that there is anything to what the speaker has so far said that provokes any sort of doubt.
This, I think, is the general pattern of this piece. The next stanza reads like, I dunno, a self-help book: I say "I dunno" because I don't read self-help books, but it's the sort of navel-gazing pseudointellectualism I expect of the genre. The third stanza finally gets to an image but, by God, it seems designed to taunt the careful reader: either the speaker really ought to open the book, as dictionaries contain the very building blocks of the poetic craft, or else the speaker lies, having already abused it through overuse. The fourth stanza especially: "I have convictions entombed in glaciation / Yet springtime melts my frosted obstinacy." What is that even supposed to mean?!
The most gimmicky part of this piece is the one stanza that I think merits preservation. Though I am someone who can't read binary, the translation actually works: it's pithy, it's idiomatic, and the fact that the sentiment, however common, is inseparable from its form---a binary prisoner, a poem written in binary, a poem published in a digital medium---is enough to get off, say, Marshall McLuhan.
Afterwards, the poem returns to a mode I find rather infuriating---of course whatever the poet wrote is what they feel, isn't that the bloody point?!---with which it sticks to the end. My advice for this poem specifically is to jettison everything but the bit in binary (or should I say the bits?), enclosing the translation in a spoiler. My advice overall....read "Burnt Norton".