Auditory Imagination: The Sense of Sound

Transcription

Judith
Kitchen
Auditory
Imagination:
The Sense
of
Sound*
In a poet,theauditory
involves
a feelimagination
andrhythm,
a senseoftheprimitive
ingforsyllable
anditsrelation
to thehighly
an earfor
developed,
theechoesbehindwords.
-Denis Donoghue,
Warrenpoint
In thelong traditionof talkingabout poetry-almostas old as the traditionof
composingit- "music"has nearlyalwaysbeen listed (thoughseldomdefined)
as one of the qualitiesthat characterizesa poem. When we speak of music
in poetry,most of us are referringto a combinationof cadence, rhythm,
meter,rhyme,alliteration,
assonance,patternsof vowels and consonants-and
more.
That
something
"something,"of course,is ineffable,
yetin any language
it is what oftenmakes the deepestimpression.Althoughwe cannot put extrinsicvalue on any aspect of sound,we instinctively
know when it is workon
us.
This
is
not
so
much
an
unconscious
ing
responseto the sound of the
as
it
is
a
semiconscious
one.
When
the
ear
is captivated,the mind (and
poem
sometimesthe heart) follows.
Perhapsbecause thesound of a poem is hardto define,manycriticsignore
it altogether.All too often,reviewersnote only the contentof the poem and
thusspeak of the sense of a book as thoughits meaningis restrictedto what
can be summarized.The consequence is to divorce the concept of "sense,"
with its connotationsof logic and intellectualmeaning,fromthe senses.Such
readings reiteratethemes-as in the monthlyplot-sketchesthat have supplanted poetry reviewsin The Neiv York Times Book Review- instead of
attemptinga fullassessmentof a book's worth.But in poetry,words are not
chosenfortheirmeaningalone; indeed,thesoundsof a poem,and the patterns
ofsoundwithina book of poems,are oftenthebestindicationof how to make
sense of it. These sounds are an embodiment.They speak the poet. It is
throughthemthatwe come to recognize the individualvoice makingsome
kind of specificorder out of the possibilitiesof language.
* An
of
essay-review
BlessedComing
OffLadders.
TN: IonBooks,1990.40 pp.
ByPamelaGross.Memphis,
$7.50,paper.
Let EveningCome.By JaneKenyon.St.Paul,MN: Graywolf
Press,1900.viii,70 pp.
$16.95.$9-95,
paper.
The CityinWhichI LoveYou.ByLi-Young
Lee.Brockport,
NY: BOA Editions,
1990.
89pp.$18.00.
$9.00,paper.
The DrownedRiver.By ThomasLux. Boston:HoughtonMifflin,
1990.xii,68 pp.
$14.95.$8.95,paper.
Echoesof the Unspoken.
of GeorgiaPress,
By WayneDodd.Athens:The University
1990.X,78pp.$18.00.
$8.95,
paper.
[ 154]
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JUDITH
KITCHEN
155
There are syntacticalpatternsin spoken English that, with all their
regionalvariations,helpto determinethestressesin a sentence.Obviously,this
is wherethe difference
betweenwords on the page and words in the (Southern? Western?New England?) poeťs own voice becomes evident.Often it
is possibleto identifysyllabicstresson the page, but thatdoes not necessarily
revealthe poeťs own inflection-theway he or she actually"hears" language.
Both William Carlos Williams and Robert Frost were tryingto achieve
a kind of music that would approximatethe spoken voice of Americans-a
musiceach had recordedin hisinnerear. Williams,in the vanguardof Modernism,experimentedwith his "variable foot" in what we call free verse.
Frost,workingin an older tradition,mergedthoughtwithmusicin the strictest of metricalforms,strivingto capturewhat he called "the sound of sense"
-patterns of thoughtthatcould be recognizedin patternsof sound. When
I look at the distinctiveresultsof thesetwo approaches,I cannot help wonderingwhethertheremightnot also be a "sense of sound"- a way in which
sounds themselvesserve as the basis of meaning,where sound gives rise to
idea. I suspect thereis, for sound speaks to us as the center of meaningin
many poems. It tells us how to interpreta passage, how to fita particular
poem into the larger contextof the book. Reading for sound is one route
towardunravelingmeaning.
The music of a poem has a logic of its own. If we attendto its sounds,
respondingthroughthe ear,we may discoverwhat Denis Donoghue calls the
auditoryimaginationof the poet. The very physicalityof sound is a part of
the process-we reside in the poem (and therefore,briefly,with the poet),
where rhythmsof thoughtand of feelingbecome one. Of course, poetic
musicis subjectivein writerand readeralike.Not all of us will recognizethe
same poem as being especially musical-what excites one ear may fall flat
on another-but it is our job as readersto listenfor the individualmusic of
the poet. As I siftedthroughthe thirtybooks I was consideringforinclusion
in thisreview,I notedwhich books I picked up a second time,a third.What,
I wondered,made one book standout fromthe largerpile? Again and again,
the answer was sound. The sense of sound- the poeťs particularauditory
imagination-caught my attention,kept my attention,pulled me deeper into
the shape of the book. The "echo behind words" had worked its magic- a
magic I want to explorehere,thoughI can bringonly an echo of thatecho
to thesepages.
#
Blessed Coming Off Ladders by Pamela Gross is a testamentto precisionof
language; she bringsto poetry a sharp,scientificeye- and an ear to match.
The opening lines resound, fillingthe ear with internalrhyme and unexpected rhythms:
156
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BirdsoftheNightSky/ StarsoftheField
We areafraidtheywilldisappear
we watchtoocloseornot
whether
at all: thesmall,palecrumbs
we'vemarkedthisdark
ofnervouschatter
with.Fastas we couldscatter
them,we'vesweptthemup again,as if
theinvisible
ofwidgeonswhosefrail
flight
toy-duckcalltrollsthenightsky'sblind
waterswouldstealourthoughts.
We are pulled into a densityof language that capturesthe vacillationsbetween light and dark,known and unknown.These lines are typical of this
trulyslimvolume (only twenty-onepoems in all), and they give some idea
of how a complex of sound and intellectcan reveal meaning,much as the
"chatter"revealsthe presenceof unseenbirds.
But Pamela Gross knows what those birds are-and names them. She
is unflinchingas she looks hard at what is usually hidden ("the world is all
undersides,"she saysin "LettingGo"). Her telescopicgaze may take herinto
the nightsky,but it's withthe microscopethatshe is mostat home. She peels
back layerupon layer- of memory,of experience-untilshe,like the Darwin
of "Variations on Domestication,"is imagining"the regressiontoward/a
simplerstate,to cast offaccretions/ of habit,the half-life'sstubborn/ inchforward-double-back."Each poem a section on her slide,she gazes intently
throughthe outerlayersto discoverunderlyingmeaning.
Some of that meaningis more readily available to the ear than to the
eye. Owls, as theyinhabitthenight,know somethingimportant:
To hearas theowl hearsismostly
a matter
oflearning
to split
differences.
Imbalance
mediatesa questforabsolutes,
andeveninperfect
dark,thestrike
is perfect.
The tiniest
rasp
ofleafon leafissignalenough
to turnthegreatdishfacetoward
thehushedbreathing
ofthemouse.
(from"In PitchDark")
or
. . . He knows
howthesoftoneswaitwithout
knowing.How theirpulses'muted
hammers
tapoutthesimplecode
thathaltscoldhislooseflight's
renders
thesnub-nosed
bullet
stumble,
JUDITH
KITCHEN
157
ofhisbodyhelplesstoimpulse,
to thedizzy,graniteweighteddrop.
(from"WhattheOwl Knows")
Justas the owl discoversa living world from sound, Gross also hears the
inaudible.The owl may triangulateto finda victim,but what, she ponders,
determineswho will be the victim of cancer? Its shadowy image is everywhere in this book, growing "in pitch dark." But the order of the poems
reversesthe process,givingus firstthe griefand thenthe peeled-backstages
of discovery.Initiallythereis the starkfact of the word tumor, which later
in the book is seen to "ride burrowed/ in the body's deep, / unopened
pockets," later still becomes "a knot wedged / how long in the shoulder's
mass,"and in the finalpoem becomes merely"a colony of cells." A friend/
a would-be lover/anunnamed"you" is slowly dying.Even as the progression of the diseaseis reversed,the growingimpossibility
of a fullrelationship
unfolds.There are no miracles,or, if thereare, they are small and specific,
as in the titlepoem. But the poem goes on to suggestthatlove outgrowsall
barriers.Love, then,is what cannot be pinned down. "What name shall I
give you?" Gross asks in the face of a passion restrictedby marriageand
illness.
If Gross has found an answer,it lies in the namingthat calls forthher
own brand of music. The harsh,packed consonantsthat evoke the "anger"
of "SplittingWood" give way to the lush vowels of the penultimatepoem.
Here she learns somethingof how "to settlefor less" by transforming
the
into
experience
song:
LettingGo
In summer,
inthathour
whenthetreestakethelight's
Each
leaving,theworldis allundersides.
ofthemaples'fathandspalms
gold.We openourownhands,as if
we couldreceivetheglittering,
ofthepairedwarblersflirting
thefuss,theflutter
withlight,withshadow.
As ifwe couldseizetheirdappleandsplash,thebrightplay
ofthesebutteryellowpiecesofflight
intheirspill,retrieve,
spill.
We wantto shakethemlooseandset
theirperfect
coinsuponoureyes.
Surrender's
hardworkis slow.
its
Inhalereluctant
to relinquish
thelungwillstarve.
exhale,so fearing
The body,captiveto itsnotionsofnextandbeyond,
andtheheartriveted
158
THE
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truthofletting
to thefirst
go:
Thatitbeginswithholding.
Blessed ComingOffLadders is a firstbook- and I, for one, am eager for
more.But thiscollectionis so tight,so integrated,thatit will be a hard act to
follow.
#
JaneKenyon's is a simplertune,oftenas starkas the New England landscape
she reflectsupon. Let Evening Come opens,however,with full-blownsong:
A secondcropofhayliescut
Fivegleaming
crows
andturned.
searchandpeckbetweentherows.
Theymakea low,companionable
squawk,
andundertakers
andlikemidwives
possessa weirdauthority.
(from"ThreeSongsattheEnd ofSummer")
But summeris shortin New Hampshire,and most of the book has a more
melancholytone. As a collection,Let Evening Come is reallyabout solitude,
and JaneKenyon's solitaryvoice is distinctivein its searchfor what is "simple and good." She findsit in a carefullycontrolledsense of sound, spilling
across deceptivelysimplelines.Look at "SpringSnow," for example.A , £, /,
O, U- the vowel sounds clusterlike bees, swarmingin sequence through
stanzaswhich offera consonantbase shiftingfromH to M to N to P, together
formingan alphabetof snow thatbecomes,in the poet's reverie,a projection
of earlysummer:
snowcomesfalling. . .
A thoughtful
seemsto hangintheairbefore
thatitmustfall
concluding
flakes
here.Huge aggregate
alighton themuddyruts
ofMarch,andthestanding
waterthatthawsby day
andfreezesbynight.
Venusis content
toshineunseen
thisevening,
havingrisenserene
abovesprings,
andfalsesprings.
ButI, restless
aftersupper,pace
thelongporchwhilethesnowfalls,
I won't
dodgingtheclothesline
useuntilpeoniessendup red,
plump,irrepressible
spears.
This progressionof sound becomes a movementof mind,which only
leads to furthersolitude.The poet, anchored to landscape,moves through
JUDITH
KITCHEN
159
time.In poem afterpoem, she discoversin herselfthe child who waited at
home while her brotherexplored the world- a child who could lie on her
back in a fieldand love the world with a passion"so violent/ it was hard to
distinguishfrompain." Perhapsit is thisrediscovered"child" who is happier
at home than at a dinnerparty,more comfortablewith the companionship
of her dog thanof most people, more intimatewith the sounds thatcome to
her across water thanwith the claustrophobicnoises of neighborswhen she
visitsher in-laws.Perhapsit is thisinitialpain that,now, makesthe poet hold
on to her immediatelife with such intensity.In thisway, she can claim her
brother'slargerworld as herown.
Kenyon claimsthisworld by renderingit specific.Hers is a quiet landscape, somethinglike the finaltwo minutesof CharlesKuralťs Sunday Morning televisionprogram-a landscape unsulliedby humanbeingsin which one
can hear the cry of a bird or can savor the slant of fallingflakes.And yet
Let EveningCome is a decidedlyhumanbook, filledwith empathyand compassion. In "Father and Son," Kenyon speaks from hindsight,watching a
dying neighborcut his last pile of wood:
wood
startedcutting
August.My neighbor
theblue
on cool Sabbathafternoons,
plumeofthesaw'sexhaustwaveringover
I didn'tmindthenoise
hishead.Atfirst
butitcameto seemlikea speciesofpain.
As the saw's stutter(au-a-a-aw-au) fillsthe afternoon,the poet feels the
powerlessnessof thosewho cannot change the course of things.
This is a book of middleage, a timewhen "some power has gone from
the sun." The speakerof thesepoems enduresthe loss of parents,neighbors,
friends;she findsechoes in the lives of Keats and Akhmatova;she grieves
quietly,privately.This is not a book that"comes to terms,"nor does it conquer its fear-rather,it createsa hiatus,a state of waiting.It does not seem
to be seekinganswersto anything;it merelywantsto catch the world before
it is gone. With such titlesas "We Let theBoat Drift,""Waiting,"and "Now
Where?" everythingseemsto be held in abeyance: "If I lie down / or sit up
it's all the same: //the days and nightsbear me along. / To strangersI must
seem / alive."
But naturewill not comply,fillingthe world with its storms,its onrush
of seasons,its "irrepressible"buds. The dog must be walked- he is in tune
withthe day, whateverthe weather,happy to launch himselfon the worldwhile thespeakernotesherinabilityto freeherselffromthe leash. She is tied
to landscape,to human relationship,to a profoundsense of self. Life, not
death,is what is at stake here-and life is definedby a rich innervoice that
sometimesrisesto the level of hymn.The titlepoem acts as both evensong
and invocation:
l6o
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Let thelightoflateafternoon
shinethrough
chinksinthebarn,moving
up thebalesas thesunmovesdown.
Let thecrickettakeup chafing
as a womantakesup herneedles
andheryarn.Let eveningcome.
Let dewcollecton thehoeabandoned
inlonggrass.Let thestarsappear
andthemoondisclosehersilverhorn.
Let thefoxgo backtoitssandyden.
Let thewinddiedown.Let theshed
go blackinside.Let eveningcome.
To thebottleintheditch,tothescoop
intheoats,to airinthelung
leteveningcome.
Let itcome,as itwill,anddon't
be afraid.God doesnotleaveus
so leteveningcome.
comfortless,
On thisreverentnote, Kenyon makesa meaningfuldistinctionbetween
resignationand acceptance. With its steady but evocative refrainthe poem
plays to the ear and its expectations,gainingmomentumeven as it becomes
increasinglyhushed.Kenyon's sound patternhereworkswith-but is not the
same as- the patternof sense. A reader who attendsonly to the latterwill
missmuch of the richnessin thesematureand memorablepoems.
*
Li-Young Lee's second book, The City in Which I Love You , is the 1990
LamontPoetrySelectionof The Academy of AmericanPoets. This is a work
of remarkablescope- musicallyas well as thematically-offeringa sweeping
perspectiveof historyfromthe viewpointof the émigré.He speaks for the
but from the particularvoice of a late-twentieth-century
disenfranchised,
Chinese-Americantryingto make sense of both his heritageand his inheritance. Positioninghimselfas fatherand son, Chineseand American,exile and
citizen,Lee findshimselfon the cusp of history;his duty,as he sees it, is to
"tell my human/ tale, tell it against/ the currentof that vaster,that/ inhumantelling."
The City in Which I Love You picks up where Lee's firstbook, Rose,
leftoff.The openingpoem, "Furious Versions,"is a long, seven-partaccount
of his family'sexile. Fueled with the sense that he is the
only one who has
lived to tell it, Lee recounts his father'sfracturedlife and the loss of his
brother.The effectis more than personal; it is admonitory-as if to warn
JUDITH
KITCHEN
l6l
us thatwe cannotface the "nextnervousone hundredhumanyears" without
a knowledge of what his past represents.But whereas the centralfigurein
Rose is the father,here the "furiousversions"belong to the son- because his
"memory'sflaw/ isn'tin retentionbut organization."This long poem seems
to fillin some gaps leftby the previousbook, but its languageis angrier,less
elegiac:
It wasa tropicalnight.
It washalfa yearofsweatandfatalmemory.
It wasoneyearoffire
outoftheworld'sdiaryoffires,
flesh-laced,
fire,
mid-century
teethandhairinfested,
andskull-hung
fire,
napalm-dressed
andimminent
fire,an elected
firecometo robme
ofmyowndeath,mydampbed
inthenoisyearth,
night.
myrockingtowarda hymn-like
Althoughthe storyis personaland unique, the poems are declamatory,
public even in theirintimacy.They have as two of theirsources Whitman
and theBible,and theyhave as theirintentiona passionateneed to synthesize
and instruct.They challengeus withtheirheightenedrhetoric,exhibitingthe
dangers (as well as the glories) of eloquence. Lee's very strengthsare his
potentialweaknesses.The echo of Whitman may need to be muted; even
Lee's own tremendousverbal resourcesmay demandmodulationin order to
achieve theirfinestrealization.One more adjective,one more item in a list,
and thepoem could tip overinto excess.
The ambitioustitlepoem, 166 lines in the middle of the book, marksa
turningpoint where the experienceof exile is no longer the speaker'salone.
horror
"The City in Which I Love You" is a collage of twentieth-century
the
some
in
onrush
of
rendered an
nightlynews, others
evoking
fragments,
"I"
of
the poem searches
the
surrealistic
nightmare.In a devastatedcityscape,
beloved
for a "you"- an other.The other is more than a
(the epigraphis
some
fromthe Song of Songs) ; rather,it seems to signify
impossiblefulfillment,a connectionto humanitythroughwhich love mightstillbe possible,
and sufferingredemptive.Informingthe poem is a dense language, thick
withurgentrhythmsand relentlessdesire-as thoughlanguageitselfwere the
other,the body of thebeloved.
In the face of the largerhistory,Lee must discoverthe meaningof his
individuallife: "He was not me," "They are not me," "None of themis me."
This discoveryis centralto thebook, forthe nextseveralpoemsare rootedin
a quiet familylife-love poems to a woman who tasteslike iron and milk,a
IÓ2
THE
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REVIEW
child who wants a story,a fatherwhom death has made giant."Goodnight"
is a lullaby,in slant-rhymecouplets,sung to his son. It moves, ultimately,
toward fullrhyme:
Wheredidyou,so young,learn
suchsacrifice?
Now
I no longerheartheapplesfall.Buthow
though
theygo! Incessantly,
withno noise,no
oftheirgravity.
bluntannouncements
See!
no end
Thereis no bottomtothenight,
to ourdescent.
eachothertohaveeachothera while.
We suffer
The book endswithanotherlong poem,"The Cleaving."Here Lee looks
to the present;the immigrantfigureis no longer his father,the story no
longer only autobiographical.It has become a text.A young man with his
own identityand historyentersa butchershop. The butcheris familiar-he
could be grandfather,father,brother,nomad, Gobi, Northern,Southern.
He is American,a man at work:
He lopstheheadoff,chops
theneckoftheduck
intosix,slits
thebody
open,groin
to breast,
anddrains
thescaldingjuices,
thenquarters
thecarcass
withtwofasthacksofthecleaver,
old bladethathasworn
intothesurfaceoftheround
foot-thick
chop-block
a scoopthatcradlesprecisely
thecurvedsteel.
The languageis packed, sound clickingagainstsound,consonantshacking their own blades, reminiscentof Lowell. The sounds are Americanharsh,hurried,energetic-and theycarrythe reader toward meaningas Lee,
self-consciousthatthisis as much the makingof poetryas the tellingof tale,
comes to termswith the violentwrenchingsof his immigrantexperience.He
savorsthe tasteof meat-a hungerat last satisfied,
because it is a hungerthat
can be satisfied.He accepts his varied,though finite,humanties. He finds,
in thebody of a fish,a shape thatcomplementsthe shape of his mind: "I take
it as text and evidence/ of the world's love for me, / and I feel urged to
JUDITH
KITCHEN
163
utterance,/ urgedto read thebody of the world,urged / to say it / in human
terms,/ my reading a kind of eating,my eating/ a kind of reading,/ my
my noise / a love-in-answer."
sayinga diminishment,
"The Cleaving,"is the intellectualflipside of the titlepoem. In it, Lee
accepts his body and its appetites,accepts his inevitabledeath,eschews the
need for transcendence.With its explorationinto every nuance of the title,
its love of detail,and its journey into the abstract,"The Cleaving" has the
feel of a major Americanpoem. It throwsaside some of the Americantraditions he has previouslyfollowed: "I would eat these features,eat / the last
three or four thousandyears, every hair./ And I would eat Emerson, his
transparentsoul, his / soporifictranscendence."Above all, "The Cleaving"
predictschange-a changethatis necessaryif Lee is to grow into otherbooks.
It is the birthof the self out of personaland global history,a self thatis not
the sum of its storiesbut of its experience-assimilated,whole, and wholly
alive in a chamberof sound:
violence.
No easything,
One ofitsnames?Change.Change
residesintheembrace
andtheeffacer,
oftheeffaced
inthecovenantoftheopenedandtheopener;
theaxeaccomplishes
iton thesoul'saxis.
WhatthenmayI do
butcleavetowhatcleavesme.
I kissthebladeandeatmymeat.
I thankthewielderandreceive,
whileterror
spirits
mychange,sorrowalso.
The terrorthebutcher
scriptsintheunhealed
air,thesorrowofhisShang
face,
dynasty
Africanfacewithsliteyes.He is
this
mysister,
beautiful
Bedouin,thisShulamite,
diviner
keeperofsabbaths,
ofholytexts,
thisdark
dancer,thisJew,thisAsian,thisone
withtheCambodianface,Vietnamese
face,thisChinese
I dailyface,
thisimmigrant,
thismanwithmyownface.
With itsmixtureof verbaland visionaryimagination,The Cityin Which
I Love You is reminiscentof Kinnell's Book of Nightmares
, maybe even of
Eliot's Waste Land. The personalnightmarebecomes general.Lee's poetry
makes us look hard at the world and the place our own "furiousversions,"
at once interconnected
and isolated,have in it.
164
THE
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*
the
It is especiallyhardto makemusicout of theugly,the angry,the horrific,
comic- and theseare, at leastin part,what Thomas Lux exploresin his latest
book, The Drowned River. The floodgatesare open,and Lux unleashesimage
to take is thatwe
afterimage of violence and cruelty.What is mostdifficult
our
ones
of
the
the
are
cruelties;they
daily lives,and they
recognize
petty
are everywhere.Lux findsthem in rustedback-yardswing sets and seedy
motelswith cinderblocks the color of "exhaustedgrave grass,"as well as in
or the
the more exoticinstancesof a travelingexhibitof tortureinstruments,
use of Haitian cadaversin medicalschools because they are so thin"thatthe
organsjustbeneaththeskin,theorgans/ yieldto theblade withamazingease."
These poems are meantto work "just beneaththe skin."They enterthe
ear, unnerveit, and work themselvesinto the body- loud, irregular,even
cacophonous. For example,the consonantsof "Cellar Stairs" make a syncopated,unsettlingmusic:
On a shelfabove,tools:shears,
weedhacker,ice pick,
three-pronged
poison-ratsand bugs-and on the landing
halfwaydown,a keg of roofingnails
you don'twantto fallfacefirstinto.. . .
Lux floodsus with such imagesbecause the world itselfis floodedwith them
-this is a mediablitz,nothingleftout,tribalwarfarein our livingrooms.Lux
takes on the rough political realitiesof our time, incorporatingfacts and
figures,forcingus to look back at a catalogue of historicalhorrors-from
Stalin ("Uncle Joe never loved nobody, nobody ever loved Joe") through
World War I (phosgeneand mustardgas) to the dead (or dying) at Andersonville.The peripheralis made central-and Lux dwells on it. But why does
he seem to be drowningin obsession?What is at the heartof thisbook?
Lux is looking for the meaningof life and death,but somehow, in a
book of thispower, thatfeelsless like a cliché and more like a necessity.In
the end, Lux looks for what is human. In a marvelouspoem called "Mr.
Pope," Lux shows how theword can grow largerthanthe personality:"I reI report/ thembreathportyourverses,/ theirragingsense/ and tenderness,
ing,shiningblack / ink on whitepaper,intact!/ 1 close the heavy,huge book
of your life./ You live outside,above, its pages,/withinthe humantherein
created."
At the very center of The Drowned River is another testamentto
humanity."For My Daughter When She Can Read" examinesthe week
beforehis daughter'sbirthand hereventualentryintotheworld. The speaker
of the poem is reading threedifferent
books, each a litany of "facts"-dictators,tribes,religions-and at the same time dreaming,not of the infant
who was "nothing/ then . . . under water but not drowned ... an abstrae-
JUDITH
KITCHEN
165
tion,"but of "what we all always dreamof: ourselves."Speaking directlyto
hisdaughter,now achinglyreal to him,he is aware thatherbirthwas accompanied by simultaneousdeaths,that the next day's newspaperschronicled
movie reviews,governmentlies, and bulldozers for sale. How to offerhis
child more thanthe daily grindingdown? He would wish for her both rage
(a necessity)and rapture(anotherkind of necessity).
The Drowned River is not as cynical as thismay suggest.Lux counters
an existentialdespairwith an equally desperatehumor.And underneathit all
is song. A quiet song, born of hope- and born of a new sense of self. We
encounterthatselfin "Still,"a poem thatmovesin three-linestanzas,willfully
forcingthe tongue to stop, to savor each word, to shut down. As the body
holds itselfstill,Lux gives us what we always knew- our own fundamental
loneliness:
notto move
one centimeter
up or down,
to allbuthaltthephysical,
to callforwhatever
youcalltheopposite.
To be still,thisstill-eyelashes
loweredlikebars
acrosssight,andtheprison,thebody,
sweetly
quiet,holdingtheprisoner
inhiscell.
The body is a prison.The body is in dangerof drowningin dailiness,in compromise,in facts.The spirit,like the finalimage of "At Least Let Me Explain," mustenterthe realm of rain,starlight,snow, "each brave flake/ not
cold / but alone."
Alone, man is leftto findmeaning.Againstthe backdrop of history,the
poet offershis cache of words and his fundof dark irony.Is it good luck or
bad, Lux asks,to be the child who is "filledwith world?" The child has no
choice, he "hears a fallingthroughthe leaves" and "knows a bird falls,and
grieves/ withoutknowingwhy or at what cost." This child,called to words
and to concernfortheworld,mustseek (as poet) the meaningof his calling.
In the face of nothingness,or, paradoxically,in the face of too much
brutaldetail,man looks for God. Lux pondersHis existencein hismostmusical poem, a poem filledwith an alliterationthat weaves a patternof sound
like a web. At the same time Lux is creatingthis complex of sound, he is
unravelingmeaning,as suggestedby the title,"Irreconcilabilia":
whatyoudo
No matter
holditlong
cannot
you
ortakeitbackagain.
166
THE
GEORGIA
REVIEW
The sky,thebarelyblue
blanksky,thetightmoss-bound
housesofsleep,willcall.
No matter
howhardyoulove,
thatlovewillpass,willpass,
yourfriends
imparadized,
blaze,
gone,lost.The summers
theyears,andwhatyouknow
growsdim,hurtbythedark.
No matter
child,or wife,
or art.The riverbends
andbendsagainseaward.
The softlip-clickofworms,
a spider'sfeetacross
a leaf:yousee,youhear.
No matter
blessings,
rage,
orrest:thedeadstaydead.
You walk,spinealive,youkneel,
youlayyoureardownon
theground.Does God livethere?
Does God liveanywhere?
So, at the root,the unanswerablequestion.This is an exampleof how sound
leads us to sense-the repetitionsalert the ear to a patternof thought.No
matter.... In the end, "you see, you hear," and by extensioncome to
know. The quiet tone of thispoem,in contrastto the noise and stingof many
of theothers,leads us to understandthatLux is reachingforsome equilibrium.
Later Lux stopslookingforthe"capitalG" God and comes to termswith
one in lower case thatwe mightnot recognizebut who is both wonderfully
humanand remote:one who letstheworld unfoldbeforehimand is sad when
people fear theirlives- "those solitudes/ so small beside the tundra,polar
caps, / Congo River (whose everycurve he loves)." Lux raisesa song in his
praise,knowing that the act is a human necessity,not somethingany god
has asked for:
He loveswhat'ssane,serene,andfiercely
calm,
whichhe didn'tinventbutunderstands.
The perfect
god-andgod,yes,isperfectis impassive,
aloof,alert,
patient,
andneedsnotourpraisenorourblame.
Andneedsnotourpraisenorourblame.
Many of Lux's poems vividly capture the odd, demented quality of
present-daylife,and in dwellingon his more tranquilpoems,I have chosen
JUDITH
KITCHEN
167
those that underscore,by counterpoint,the need to findsome order in the
chaos. So I have not done full justice to this sharply originalvoice. The
Drowned River demandsour best attention,forcingus to examinethe space
where lack of dissentbecomes compliance. In it, Lux has expanded old
themesand thrusthimselfinto new territorywith challengingwit and a
wisdom.
terrifying
*
Americahas generatedpoetswho, for the mostpart,are storytellers,
perhaps
becauseitsown storyis stillin themaking.The lyricvoice is rarein American
poetry;thereare lyric momentsin otherwisenarrativepoems,but the pure
lyricis hard to find.Luckily,Wayne Dodd bringsto his latestbook, Echoes
of the Unspoken, the music of an intenselysensuousinnervoice. The lyric
is alive- and well- in thisexcitingvolume.
Echoes of the Unspoken invitessome analysisof its method,for how
as what theysay. In fact,how theyunfold
the poems unfoldis as interesting
is what they say, or a great part of it. Dodd is continuallyamazed at the
"miracle" of words- the sound of themin the ear, the sightof them on the
page. "On the Page" shows words making theirpresencesfelt,"the mysterious/ shapes and sounds they make// generationaftercentury.""What,
Lasting, Comes Toward Us" re-createsthis mystery: "these presences//
come without warning/ from hidden sources into the / hidden mind but
the words //when one findsthem/ come from the mysterious/ and universalwomb // of necessity,that/ sudden shadowing/ of wings."
Dodďs interestin the historyof language and the power of the word is
evident in the way his lines call attentionto, and divert attentionfrom,
meaning.They displaythemselveson thepage in a nervousmovementof short
lines and white space. He is willing to end his poems on prepositions,truncated, in midsentenceor midthought.In thisway, he is able to show us the
slippage of meaningsand, at the same time,call our attentionto sound and
before
syntax.Because Dodd is approximatinga presyntacticstate,a time
words are locked into theirman-madeprison,his poems feel more like whisper thanspeech,more like the undercurrentof thought(with its falsestarts,
its barelyfeltdistinctions)thanthe logic of rhetoric.If one
itsmeanderings,
reads thesepoems aloud, the tonguetwists,the eye movesbackwards,trying
to reasserta kind of sense.Dodd knows this-rejoices in it- givingthe reader
more the possibilityof meaningthan a limited,syntacticalchoice. In fact,
he breaksdown Frost'sconcept of the "sound of sense."If thereis sensehere,
it is sensein the making,a feltsense thatoccurs long beforeall the commas
are in place. We experiencethe innervoice, alive to every nuance. Notice
the play on the sensoryas well as the intellectual,the image as well as the
abstraction,in a poem like "Song":
l68
THE
GEORGIA
REVIEW
Not onlythoughts
andwillwe arerain
fallingthrough
treesourhair
wetaboutourfacesourarms
risingandfalling
therhythm
our
lifeis
sandandwind
on ourbacksourlegsthelong
grassoh theworld
worldssaysHeidegger
whitepetalslight
fallson likepollen
theyellowdusting
ofwords
on ourlipsourearsourthroats
Any line or pair of lines can serve as example.Where, for instance,does
"our / life is" fit-at the end of one phrase or at the beginningof another?
"White petalslight"moves into the nextline so thatlightfallson the petals,
but, briefly,the petals themselvesare light. This the mind apprehendsinstinctively-buthow to expressit in words? Dodd offersus some visual
possibilities.
If Echoes of the Unspokenwere only an exercisein deconstruction,
it
mightexcitethe theorists-but not the poets. The reasonto read thisbook is
to findthose insightsthat sometimesget lost in the syntaxof narrative,to
feel the junctureswhere self and world converge,to discover something
about theprocessof beingalive withouthavingto make somethingof it.
The "world worlds" in thesepoems.We watch it come into being,as in
"Hylocichla Mustelina":"By thistimeyou can see / throughthewindow the
trees//in growinglightdetachingthemselves/ one by one fromthe dark//
the foresthas all night/ been part of." But thisworld (which we all share)
is seen individually.Dodd gives us a privatevision-one that is
essentially
lonely. The presencesof othersare just that: presences,felt even in their
absence. In this netherworld of the inner ear, time disappears.The world
flashesby as if fromthewindow of a train.You look down, as in "All Night,"
to find a turtlesurfacingthroughthe sky mirroredin the
pond- and you
realize that your life is like the turtle'sand that you might,
someday,rise
the
to
surface
somehow.
somewhere,
through
sky
The world worlds,and we are only fleetingly
a part of it. Echoes of the
Unspoken is filledwith phrasesthat emphasizebrevity: "vanishes,""for a
JUDITH
KITCHEN
169
moment,""in an instant,""momentary,""while we're here." The world
persists;each nightwe leave it brieflyas we dream.Each morningwe wake to
it,freshin sunlight,wordless.These smalldeaths-and births-are preparation.
The music is alreadythere;Dodd relieson the world to sing for him. What
would, of necessity,be formalizedin a morepublic voice, findsonly "echoes"
here. The reader listensin, and is privy to anotherway of being. We live
insidehis silences,just as we live in our own noisysilences.Yet "no one can
hear/ the sounds we are making,the small// envelope of air / inside us //
around us / vanishingforever."
Dodd attendswell to the world- and to his own state of being: "We
wake / in thesamemoment//to ourselves/ and to things."The convergence
of self and world generatesthe private music that ensues and, in Dodďs
words,letsus "see / the music happen." In manyways, thisis what Williams
was tryingto do in the firsthalfof thiscentury.In a visual age, we mustsee,
as well as overhear,the lyric.The best way to demonstratehow sound does,
somehow, create a sense of its own is to watch it workingits way to the
surfaceof Dodďs finalpoem:
On AnyGivenAfternoon
As iffromwindows
framedon thegroundthefamiliar
faceslookup
towardthelightthebirds
aboveus whistleandtrillandyodel
in.The greenmatoftheirhair
thedarkcentersoflight
atthemargins,
theirremembered
eyesare
intheearth. . . Theirmouths
areclosedandyet
wordsenterus
likesong,likethepresenceofBeing
all
itself,
out
thelostlovedvoicessinging
its
thelanguageofexistence,
deepwarpofshadows
acrosstheyard,
thecountless
deerthatmove
nearus
invisibly
woods
inthedense,
7svllabic
¥

Auditory Imagination: The Sense of Sound

Transcription

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