Forche, Knox, and the Psycho-Political Muse
I found both the Forche and Knox poems to be very challenging. I would like to discuss their difficulty in light of the assumptions about “radical poetics” that Breslin uncovers in the selection from The Psycho-Political Muse.
What I had heard about Knox did not prepare me for the ordered stanzas—quatrains, tercets, couplets, etc.—and closed forms that I saw on the pages of A Beaker. I do not normally associate these with “radical poetics.” In his description of the post-WWII rejection of “traditional forms,” Breslin expresses my assumption more eloquently than I can: [t]raditional forms, whether the prosodic exactions of rhyme and meter or the plotting of narrative, belonged to the realm of the external, the rational, and the rigid; it was necessary to break from them in order to have the greater spontaneity of ‘improvised forms’” (2). Knox’s poems seem to contradict this assumption. Although she often uses elements of “traditional forms—“ closed forms and ordered stanzas in particular—her poetry is anything but “rational” and “rigid.”
She shows “greater spontaneity” in a sestina, one of the most demanding traditional forms, than I have seen displayed in many poems that are written in “improvised forms.” The title of “Canzone: Lenses” refers not only to the poem’s subject—Knox losing her contact lenses—but also to an Italian closed form. It took me awhile to realize that the poem is more of a sestina than a canzone. (As far as I know—and I could be wrong—the two forms are mutually exclusive). Each line in the poem ends in one of five, as opposed to the traditional six, words: “sky,” “open,” “curtain,” “door,” and “window.” Knox even complicates the traditional order in which the “end-words” are supposed to appear in each stanza. (Perhaps this is why she calls the poem a canzone) I will not go into how she does this. Suffice it to say that each “end-word” appears more often than it would in a typical sestina.
Although the form of “Canzone,” once uncovered, is predictable, the content is anything but. It is amazing to see what Knox does with a simple story about losing her contact lenses and experiencing blurred vision. There is a short reflection on the Copernican and Ptolemaic universes, a recollection about seeing the Aurora Borealis, a quotation from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey, and so on. Like “Canzone,” Knox’s other poems demonstrate how traditional closed forms can be quite radical. She does not shy away from the fact that formal demands—such as only being able to end a line with one of five words—work against the logic and rationality of normal discourse.
The most observable difference between the poems in Forche’s The Country Between Us and The Angel of History is the absence of a stable “I.” (Interestingly, Forche returns to the stable “I” in The Blue Hour). She explains this change in the endnotes to Angel: “The first-person, free-verse, lyric-narrative poem of my earlier years has given way to a work which has desired its own bodying forth: polyphonic, broken, haunted, and in ruins, with no possibility of restoration” (81). Out of all the different “radical poetics” that Breslin describes, Forche’s resembles Charles Olson’s in that it “oppose[s] to the ego not the deeper authority of the unconscious so much as a dissolution of the ego’s fixities through participation in the continual becoming of the material world” (20). However, Forche’s “I” dissolves not in “the continual becoming of the material world” but in time and memory. The “I” is fragmented into personal memories. It is also fragmented into historical memories—memories of those events, mostly atrocities, which, though she did not experience them, have nevertheless affected the way she understands herself and the world. The child in the poem, whom I assume is Forche’s son, might represent the unconscious, a state quite different from the historical and material world. The earliest stage of childhood and the afterlife, which is much more prominent in The Blue Hour, appear to be states of peace and coherence that are barely imaginable in the material world. In Forche’s poetry, the unconscious and the afterlife may be the “deeper authority” but they are not easy to enter or understand, a fact that, according Breslin, certain poets of the 50s and 60s failed to grasp.
What I had heard about Knox did not prepare me for the ordered stanzas—quatrains, tercets, couplets, etc.—and closed forms that I saw on the pages of A Beaker. I do not normally associate these with “radical poetics.” In his description of the post-WWII rejection of “traditional forms,” Breslin expresses my assumption more eloquently than I can: [t]raditional forms, whether the prosodic exactions of rhyme and meter or the plotting of narrative, belonged to the realm of the external, the rational, and the rigid; it was necessary to break from them in order to have the greater spontaneity of ‘improvised forms’” (2). Knox’s poems seem to contradict this assumption. Although she often uses elements of “traditional forms—“ closed forms and ordered stanzas in particular—her poetry is anything but “rational” and “rigid.”
She shows “greater spontaneity” in a sestina, one of the most demanding traditional forms, than I have seen displayed in many poems that are written in “improvised forms.” The title of “Canzone: Lenses” refers not only to the poem’s subject—Knox losing her contact lenses—but also to an Italian closed form. It took me awhile to realize that the poem is more of a sestina than a canzone. (As far as I know—and I could be wrong—the two forms are mutually exclusive). Each line in the poem ends in one of five, as opposed to the traditional six, words: “sky,” “open,” “curtain,” “door,” and “window.” Knox even complicates the traditional order in which the “end-words” are supposed to appear in each stanza. (Perhaps this is why she calls the poem a canzone) I will not go into how she does this. Suffice it to say that each “end-word” appears more often than it would in a typical sestina.
Although the form of “Canzone,” once uncovered, is predictable, the content is anything but. It is amazing to see what Knox does with a simple story about losing her contact lenses and experiencing blurred vision. There is a short reflection on the Copernican and Ptolemaic universes, a recollection about seeing the Aurora Borealis, a quotation from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey, and so on. Like “Canzone,” Knox’s other poems demonstrate how traditional closed forms can be quite radical. She does not shy away from the fact that formal demands—such as only being able to end a line with one of five words—work against the logic and rationality of normal discourse.
The most observable difference between the poems in Forche’s The Country Between Us and The Angel of History is the absence of a stable “I.” (Interestingly, Forche returns to the stable “I” in The Blue Hour). She explains this change in the endnotes to Angel: “The first-person, free-verse, lyric-narrative poem of my earlier years has given way to a work which has desired its own bodying forth: polyphonic, broken, haunted, and in ruins, with no possibility of restoration” (81). Out of all the different “radical poetics” that Breslin describes, Forche’s resembles Charles Olson’s in that it “oppose[s] to the ego not the deeper authority of the unconscious so much as a dissolution of the ego’s fixities through participation in the continual becoming of the material world” (20). However, Forche’s “I” dissolves not in “the continual becoming of the material world” but in time and memory. The “I” is fragmented into personal memories. It is also fragmented into historical memories—memories of those events, mostly atrocities, which, though she did not experience them, have nevertheless affected the way she understands herself and the world. The child in the poem, whom I assume is Forche’s son, might represent the unconscious, a state quite different from the historical and material world. The earliest stage of childhood and the afterlife, which is much more prominent in The Blue Hour, appear to be states of peace and coherence that are barely imaginable in the material world. In Forche’s poetry, the unconscious and the afterlife may be the “deeper authority” but they are not easy to enter or understand, a fact that, according Breslin, certain poets of the 50s and 60s failed to grasp.
posted by MJS at 12:50 PM
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