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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