Craig,
Thanks for your kind note. I've been finding surprising and wonderful references recently to poets' conscious cultivation of tone units even in the late 19th century. If you know of any sources that might be of interest, please let me know. I hope to embark on a project considering the role of intonation in verse, with Williams and Frost (a surprising but articulate exponent on the topic) as anchors.
On a different note, there are wonderful letters between Robert Creeley and Williams in which Creeley tries to pin Williams down to what he means by the various ways he discusses breath units. I think Creeley is an important link between Williams and Olson, and Creeley believed that what he and the Black Mountain poets were doing was deeply indebted to Williams but not consciously imitative of him.
I would have emailed you off the list if I had your address. If you'd like to continue the conversation, please send it or email me directly at [log in to unmask]
Natalie
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Craig Hancock
Sent: Sun 12/7/2008 9:40 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Graphic Syntax--a corrected example
Natalie,
I think you're right on target with this. There are ways in which
syntax and intonation coincide in a sort of "default" pattern, but the
voice can override that. You can think of them as separate systems that
nevertheless have to work together. I think Williams was trying to work
out that tension, or at least create a music out of that tension.
"Immediacy" might be a good word. Olson describes it as an
attentiveness to the "breathing" of the poet, but I think that was a
distraction. "Tone group" or "intonation group" might be better.
Pound called it listening to "the musical phrase" and not the metronome.
It's interesting that poets were/are trying to work it out without an
underlying understanding of language.
Craig
This is a fascinating exchange for me. I've spent a great deal of time
> studying William Carlos Williams' triadic-line verse and arguing that it
> approximates the chunking of intonational phrasing in English as a means
> of conveying the spontaneity and affect of immediate speech acts. In other
> words, in his best poems, the "graphic syntax" doesn't coincide with
> syntactic units at all, but breaks them in ways that mimic a speaker's
> idiosyncratic sense of the significance of their speech. Complete
> syntactic units would be a kind of default--what occurs often at the
> beginning and end of the poems--to indicate neutral feeling or statements.
>
> I think other poets, like cummings, Apollinaire, Pound, or Olson, use the
> resources of the page and of typography to different ends that I'm
> intrigued by but haven't thought enough about. I quite like Paul's playful
> imitation of cummings.
>
> Natalie
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Paul E.
> Doniger
> Sent: Sat 12/6/2008 2:30 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Graphic Syntax--a corrected example
>
>
> It
> all deep end
> -zzz
> Up
> on
> the poet('s OR s')
> S-
> -tile (or sty els)
> of
> Right
> Ink
> !
>
> (wink, wink to mr. cummings),
>
> Paul D.
>
> "If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable
> fiction" (_Twelfth Night_ 3.4.127-128).
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Scott Woods <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Saturday, December 6, 2008 12:13:33 PM
> Subject: Re: Graphic Syntax--a corrected example
>
>
>
>
> Poets
> who write
> in traditional forms
> based on meter and rhyme
> chunk their poems
> but
> in a different way
> from graphic syntax,
> which chunks
> based on grammatical
> units.
> Both,
> I believe,
> can make text easier to comprehend.
>
> My students report
> that they can understand difficult texts better
>
> --- On Sat, 12/6/08, Carolyn Hartnett <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> From: Carolyn Hartnett <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Graphic Syntax
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Saturday, December 6, 2008, 9:51 AM
>
>
> Isn't the way much poetry is printed somewhat similar to graphic syntax?
> It makes poems easier to read, I believe.
>
> Carolyn Hartnett
> Professor Emeritus, College of the Mainland
> 2027 Bay St.
> Texas City, Texas 77590
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