酷我-北美枫

[ericcoliu]

How to Write a New Kind of Poetry: The Ideogrammic Poetics (The Second Draft)


Poem text of In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.


Poem Review in a Contextualized Setting

All ages are modern in their own time, but the era between 1900 and 1945 was characterized by such an intense and radical sense of its own difference from the past that even now it continues to be referred to as the Modern Period, and its style and ideology are known as Modernism. It was an age of self-consciously new thought, new fashion, new art, new architecture, new music, and a challenging new sense of self.

In art and in literature, it was an age of radical experimentation as writers and artists sought new languages to express individual visions. In the first decade of the twentieth century, American poet and Chinese poetry translator Ezra Pound once proclaimed "Make it New" and said good-bye to all that was past. It seemed quite natural to him that "an artist should have just as much pleasure in an arrangement of planes or in a pattern of figures, as in painting portraits of fine ladies, or in portraying the Mother of God as the symbolists bid us".

In the introduction of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, it firmly states: "Pound first campaigned for 'imagistic,' his name for a new kind of poetry. Rather than describing something - an object or situation - and then generalizing about it, imagist poets attempted to present the object directly, avoiding the ornate diction and complex but predictable verse forms of traditional poetry." In his 1913 poem entitled In a Station of the Metro, Pound demonstrates his imagistic characteristics in two lines: precision of imagery, clear, sharp language, and experimenting with non-traditional poetic forms.

Influenced by the Japanese and Chinese poetic traditions, Pound writes his poem in a Japanese haiku style known for its Zen Buddhism-influenced simplicity and brevity, and he employs his newly conceived poetics of the sign, which he calls “ideogrammic” that prefers merely putting things side by side without comment or explicit conjunction. Following Ernest Fenollosa's view of the Chinese written language system and classical Chinese poetry, he bases his ideogrammic poetics on the false assumption that Chinese characters are essentially ideographic and non-phonetic in nature and the sense of individual characters is visually generated by the juxtaposition of their graphic components. The famous example used by his mentor, Fenollosa, is the following:

人 見 馬 --> MAN SEES HORSE

“First stands the man on his two legs. Second, his eye moves through space: a bold figure represented by running legs under an eye, a modified picture of an eye, a modified picture of running legs, but unforgettable once you have seen it. Third stands the horse on his four legs ... Legs belong to all three characters; they all alive. The group holds something of the quality of a continuous moving picture.”

Fenollosa claims, and Pound echoes him, that the Chinese ideogram presents a necessary relationship between its components: “eye on legs” can only mean “see,” because in

“this process of compounding, two things added together do not produce a third thing but suggest some fundamental relation between them.”

The key term in the above passage is relation. In his view, “relations are more real and more important than the things relate,” on which Pound adds a footnote: “Compare Aristotle’s Poetics: Swift perception of relations, hallmark of genius.”

Ezra Pound wrote his “Metro” poem in 1913 while living in Paris. In his article entitled Vorticism, he describes seeing a series of "beautiful faces" in the crowd while in the Metro at La Concorde and wishing to convert this image into language. It takes him two years to find the ideogrammic method to translate this vision into a poem.

His poem is essentially made up of two images that have unexpected likeness and convey the rare emotion that Pound was experiencing at that time. The original printing of the poem emphasizes the intervals that punctuate the poem, each semantic unit of words functioning as a discrete character, three characters to each line:


The apparitionggggggof these facesggggggin the crowd;
Petalsggggggon a wet, blackggggggbough.

His “ideogrammic juxtaposition” of images is relatively simple and straightforward to the point, and through the metaphoric suggestion of the catalyzing word ‘apparition,” Pound combines the mundane image of "faces in the crowd," with an image possessing visual beauty and the rich cultural-aesthetical connotations of countless poems about spring. There is a quick transition from the factual statement of the first line to the vivid metaphor of the second one; this ‘super-pository’ technique, one idea set on top of another, exemplifies the Japanese haiku style.

What Pound wants is to bring out “some fundamental relation between things": the two lines are juxtaposed and this should enable one to read them in much the way that his conceived Chinese person would read “eye on legs” as “see.” From a Chinese philological perspective, Ezra Pound, and surely including his intellectual mentor Ernest Fenollosa, definitely made a mistake about the characteristics of Chinese written language system, but it was a beautiful mistake.

His genius is the discovery of the living matter, the artistic force, of Chinese poetry. Two years later after writing In a Station of the Metro, he published the first book-length collection of poems entitled Cathay, which marked, in T. S. Eliot’s words, “the invention of Chinese poetry in our time.” Furthermore, Hu Shi’s 1917 groundbreaking Manifesto, which launched the “Chinese Renaissance” in literature, were mainly inspired by Pound’s 1913 imagist Manifesto. Rather stuffing the English translation of Chinese poetry into the corset of traditional poetic forms, Pound created a new kind of poetry -- “making it new” as he had hoped for.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

How to Write a New Kind of Poetry: The Ideogrammic Poetics (The Second Draft)


Poem text of In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.


Poem Review in a Contextualized Setting

All ages are modern in their own time, but the era between 1900 and 1945 was characterized by such an intense and radical sense of its own difference from the past that even now it continues to be referred to as the Modern Period, and its style and ideology are known as Modernism. It was an age of self-consciously new thought, new fashion, new art, new architecture, new music, and a challenging new sense of self.

In art and in literature, it was an age of radical experimentation as writers and artists sought new languages to express individual visions. In the first decade of the twentieth century, American poet and Chinese poetry translator Ezra Pound once proclaimed "Make it New" and said good-bye to all that was past. It seemed quite natural to him that "an artist should have just as much pleasure in an arrangement of planes or in a pattern of figures, as in painting portraits of fine ladies, or in portraying the Mother of God as the symbolists bid us".

In the introduction of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, it firmly states: "Pound first campaigned for 'imagistic,' his name for a new kind of poetry. Rather than describing something - an object or situation - and then generalizing about it, imagist poets attempted to present the object directly, avoiding the ornate diction and complex but predictable verse forms of traditional poetry." In his 1913 poem entitled In a Station of the Metro, Pound demonstrates his imagistic characteristics in two lines: precision of imagery, clear, sharp language, and experimenting with non-traditional poetic forms.

Influenced by the Japanese and Chinese poetic traditions, Pound writes his poem in a Japanese haiku style known for its Zen Buddhism-influenced simplicity and brevity, and he employs his newly conceived poetics of the sign, which he calls “ideogrammic” that prefers merely putting things side by side without comment or explicit conjunction. Following Ernest Fenollosa's view of the Chinese written language system and classical Chinese poetry, he bases his ideogrammic poetics on the false assumption that Chinese characters are essentially ideographic and non-phonetic in nature and the sense of individual characters is visually generated by the juxtaposition of their graphic components. The famous example used by his mentor, Fenollosa, is the following:

人 見 馬 --> MAN SEES HORSE

“First stands the man on his two legs. Second, his eye moves through space: a bold figure represented by running legs under an eye, a modified picture of an eye, a modified picture of running legs, but unforgettable once you have seen it. Third stands the horse on his four legs ... Legs belong to all three characters; they all alive. The group holds something of the quality of a continuous moving picture.”

Fenollosa claims, and Pound echoes him, that the Chinese ideogram presents a necessary relationship between its components: “eye on legs” can only mean “see,” because in

“this process of compounding, two things added together do not produce a third thing but suggest some fundamental relation between them.”

The key term in the above passage is relation. In his view, “relations are more real and more important than the things relate,” on which Pound adds a footnote: “Compare Aristotle’s Poetics: Swift perception of relations, hallmark of genius.”

Ezra Pound wrote his “Metro” poem in 1913 while living in Paris. In his article entitled Vorticism, he describes seeing a series of "beautiful faces" in the crowd while in the Metro at La Concorde and wishing to convert this image into language. It takes him two years to find the ideogrammic method to translate this vision into a poem.

His poem is essentially made up of two images that have unexpected likeness and convey the rare emotion that Pound was experiencing at that time. The original printing of the poem emphasizes the intervals that punctuate the poem, each semantic unit of words functioning as a discrete character, three characters to each line:


The apparitionggggggof these facesggggggin the crowd;
Petalsggggggon a wet, blackggggggbough.

His “ideogrammic juxtaposition” of images is relatively simple and straightforward to the point, and through the metaphoric suggestion of the catalyzing word ‘apparition,” Pound combines the mundane image of "faces in the crowd," with an image possessing visual beauty and the rich cultural-aesthetical connotations of countless poems about spring. There is a quick transition from the factual statement of the first line to the vivid metaphor of the second one; this ‘super-pository’ technique, one idea set on top of another, exemplifies the Japanese haiku style.

What Pound wants is to bring out “some fundamental relation between things": the two lines are juxtaposed and this should enable one to read them in much the way that his conceived Chinese person would read “eye on legs” as “see.” From a Chinese philological perspective, Ezra Pound, and surely including his intellectual mentor Ernest Fenollosa, definitely made a mistake about the characteristics of Chinese written language system, but it was a beautiful mistake.

His genius is the discovery of the living matter, the artistic force, of Chinese poetry. Two years later after writing In a Station of the Metro, he published the first book-length collection of poems entitled Cathay, which marked, in T. S. Eliot’s words, “the invention of Chinese poetry in our time.” Furthermore, Hu Shi’s 1917 groundbreaking Manifesto, which launched the “Chinese Renaissance” in literature, were mainly inspired by Pound’s 1913 imagist Manifesto. Rather stuffing the English translation of Chinese poetry into the corset of traditional poetic forms, Pound created a new kind of poetry -- “making it new” as he had hoped for.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[christine]

[[christine]]

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[clair]

[[clair]]

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[ericcoliu]

What follows is the reply, a different take on Pound's "Metro" poem, from my newly acquainted poet friend Emusing at Wild Poetry Forum, which is listed as one of the "101 Best Websites for Writers" by Writer's Digest.


Chen-ou,

I couldn't have received a better explanation to articulate what Pound did from a Chinese literary perspective.

I am personally a fan of Bly’s doctrine of imagism which he calls “leaping poetry.” While I’m not a fan of the “third brain” concept because I believe creations exists outside the physical realm, his idea of physic energy resonates more closely with my own sensibilities:

“Let's imagine a poem as if it were an animal. When animals run, they have considerable flowing rhythms. Also they have bodies. An image is simply a body where psychic energy is free to move around. Psychic energy can't move well in a non-image statement.” Robert Bly

Whereas Pound says:

The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.
~~Ezra Pound

This sounds similar in concept except when you examine it closely you find that Pound’s energy is linked to concept and Bly’s energy is a metaphysical leaping.

If you are interested in this phenomena from another perspective, read Leaping Poetry by Bly. He examples my favorite poets, Lorca, Rilke, Neruda and discusses the Spanish surrealists who enter into poems with a heavy body of feeling, piled up as in a dam.

So with Pound’s idea you have the transference of the method to transfer Asian Haiku sensibility into English image-dense simile and metaphor (as I see it and forgive my simplistic definition) versus the emotive faculty of the Latin poets making the leap from a plank of highly charged feeling into energy that pulls in images from beneath the surface. Bly might called it a leap from the conscious to the unconscious. I just call it a leap from the known objects of the physical to the world that exists outside the physical boundaries.

I would draw a line too of one style conveying a controlled or non-emotional Modern or post-Modern style and the other a direct spark from the emotive bank which erupts in wild association. I see much poetry in the former in today’s poetry journals which leaves me feeling unmoved. But this is my aesthetic.

-- Emusing, published poet and editior of Word Walker Press, Moonday Poetry, and Kyoto Journal
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

What follows is the reply, a different take on Pound's "Metro" poem, from my newly acquainted poet friend Emusing at Wild Poetry Forum, which is listed as one of the "101 Best Websites for Writers" by Writer's Digest.


Chen-ou,

I couldn't have received a better explanation to articulate what Pound did from a Chinese literary perspective.

I am personally a fan of Bly’s doctrine of imagism which he calls “leaping poetry.” While I’m not a fan of the “third brain” concept because I believe creations exists outside the physical realm, his idea of physic energy resonates more closely with my own sensibilities:

“Let's imagine a poem as if it were an animal. When animals run, they have considerable flowing rhythms. Also they have bodies. An image is simply a body where psychic energy is free to move around. Psychic energy can't move well in a non-image statement.” Robert Bly

Whereas Pound says:

The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.
~~Ezra Pound

This sounds similar in concept except when you examine it closely you find that Pound’s energy is linked to concept and Bly’s energy is a metaphysical leaping.

If you are interested in this phenomena from another perspective, read Leaping Poetry by Bly. He examples my favorite poets, Lorca, Rilke, Neruda and discusses the Spanish surrealists who enter into poems with a heavy body of feeling, piled up as in a dam.

So with Pound’s idea you have the transference of the method to transfer Asian Haiku sensibility into English image-dense simile and metaphor (as I see it and forgive my simplistic definition) versus the emotive faculty of the Latin poets making the leap from a plank of highly charged feeling into energy that pulls in images from beneath the surface. Bly might called it a leap from the conscious to the unconscious. I just call it a leap from the known objects of the physical to the world that exists outside the physical boundaries.

I would draw a line too of one style conveying a controlled or non-emotional Modern or post-Modern style and the other a direct spark from the emotive bank which erupts in wild association. I see much poetry in the former in today’s poetry journals which leaves me feeling unmoved. But this is my aesthetic.

-- Emusing, published poet and editior of Word Walker Press, Moonday Poetry, and Kyoto Journal
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[ericcoliu]

The following is my reply to Emusing last post:

Hi! Emusing:

Thank you so much for your close reading of and insightful comment on my essay.

Emusing wrote:

“Let's imagine a poem as if it were an animal. When animals run, they have considerable flowing rhythms. Also they have bodies. An image is simply a body where psychic energy is free to move around. Psychic energy can't move well in a non-image statement.” Robert Bly

Whereas Pound says:

The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.
~~Ezra Pound

This sounds similar in concept except when you examine it closely you find that Pound’s energy is linked to concept and Bly’s energy is a metaphysical leaping.

I think Bly's energy is a Jungian psychic leap. Unlike his French surrealist forefather André Breton, Bly's work is chiefly influenced by Carl Jung's conception of the unconsciousness.

Yes. Bly doesn't like the imagist "objective and abstract" approach Pound advocates:

"But 'Imagism' was largely 'Picturism.' An image and a picture differ in that the image, being natural to the speech of the imagination, cannot be drawn from or inserted back into the real world. It is an animal native to the imagination. Like Bonnefoy's 'an interior sea lighted by turning eagles,' it cannot be seen in real life. A picture, on the other hand, is drawn from the objective 'real' world. 'Petals on a wet black bough' can actually be seen."

He criticizes the imagist approach as drawing pictures from the objective world and sees it as "merely another form of the flight from inwardness." He offers a different version/vision of a poetics of the image, a poetics of leaping between the consciousness and the unconsciousness:

"In ancient times, in the 'time of inspiration', the poet flew from one world to another, 'riding on dragons'.... They dragged behind them long tails of dragonsmoke.... This dragonsmoke means that a leap has taken place in the poem. In many ancient works of art we notice a long floating leap at the center of a work. That leap can be described as a leap from the conscious to the unconscious and back again, a leap from the known part of the mind to the unknown part and back to the known."

But, if read in the context of American poetry in the 1950s, Bly's surrealist-influenced Leaping Poetry is his poetic reaction against the Eliot/Pound/Williams Modernists and Confessionalists, one that is similar to Breton’s reaction against the French Symbolists and the Romantics.

In fact, what Bly’s leaping poetry articulates can boil down to one key idea: leaping is the ability empower with the Jungian psychic energy to associate fast 9wild association), which is a diffusion of Ezra Pound’s translation of Aristotle: “Swift perception of relations, hallmark of genius.”
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

The following is my reply to Emusing last post:

Hi! Emusing:

Thank you so much for your close reading of and insightful comment on my essay.

Emusing wrote:

“Let's imagine a poem as if it were an animal. When animals run, they have considerable flowing rhythms. Also they have bodies. An image is simply a body where psychic energy is free to move around. Psychic energy can't move well in a non-image statement.” Robert Bly

Whereas Pound says:

The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.
~~Ezra Pound

This sounds similar in concept except when you examine it closely you find that Pound’s energy is linked to concept and Bly’s energy is a metaphysical leaping.

I think Bly's energy is a Jungian psychic leap. Unlike his French surrealist forefather André Breton, Bly's work is chiefly influenced by Carl Jung's conception of the unconsciousness.

Yes. Bly doesn't like the imagist "objective and abstract" approach Pound advocates:

"But 'Imagism' was largely 'Picturism.' An image and a picture differ in that the image, being natural to the speech of the imagination, cannot be drawn from or inserted back into the real world. It is an animal native to the imagination. Like Bonnefoy's 'an interior sea lighted by turning eagles,' it cannot be seen in real life. A picture, on the other hand, is drawn from the objective 'real' world. 'Petals on a wet black bough' can actually be seen."

He criticizes the imagist approach as drawing pictures from the objective world and sees it as "merely another form of the flight from inwardness." He offers a different version/vision of a poetics of the image, a poetics of leaping between the consciousness and the unconsciousness:

"In ancient times, in the 'time of inspiration', the poet flew from one world to another, 'riding on dragons'.... They dragged behind them long tails of dragonsmoke.... This dragonsmoke means that a leap has taken place in the poem. In many ancient works of art we notice a long floating leap at the center of a work. That leap can be described as a leap from the conscious to the unconscious and back again, a leap from the known part of the mind to the unknown part and back to the known."

But, if read in the context of American poetry in the 1950s, Bly's surrealist-influenced Leaping Poetry is his poetic reaction against the Eliot/Pound/Williams Modernists and Confessionalists, one that is similar to Breton’s reaction against the French Symbolists and the Romantics.

In fact, what Bly’s leaping poetry articulates can boil down to one key idea: leaping is the ability empower with the Jungian psychic energy to associate fast 9wild association), which is a diffusion of Ezra Pound’s translation of Aristotle: “Swift perception of relations, hallmark of genius.”
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[ericcoliu]

The following is Emusing's reply to my last post:

Chen-ou,

I'm thinking about this fascinating discussion-- poems from the interior or the exterior. I know Bly had been pigenholed for his objection to Pound but as I look deeply into the light of Bly's philosophy and work which moves ever closer to the ecstatic with his recent book of ghazals and his close association to Coleman Barks, the imminent interpreter of Rumi's poetry I think less of the psychological aspects and more of the spiritual realm. Ultimately I see creation as an emanation of lifeforce. I make the parallel to your discussion of language and the desire of a Chinese native speaker to articulate self, emotions, ideas into the another language which is completely foreign to yours. I see poetry as a similar terrain. We take the unsayable and translate it into the language of words. We must struggle with grammar, syntax, sequitur of thought and meaning in a similar way. This is just my idea. I can only relate it to my experience in other countries where I had to rely on other means than words to convey my ideas. It's all interpretation.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

The following is Emusing's reply to my last post:

Chen-ou,

I'm thinking about this fascinating discussion-- poems from the interior or the exterior. I know Bly had been pigenholed for his objection to Pound but as I look deeply into the light of Bly's philosophy and work which moves ever closer to the ecstatic with his recent book of ghazals and his close association to Coleman Barks, the imminent interpreter of Rumi's poetry I think less of the psychological aspects and more of the spiritual realm. Ultimately I see creation as an emanation of lifeforce. I make the parallel to your discussion of language and the desire of a Chinese native speaker to articulate self, emotions, ideas into the another language which is completely foreign to yours. I see poetry as a similar terrain. We take the unsayable and translate it into the language of words. We must struggle with grammar, syntax, sequitur of thought and meaning in a similar way. This is just my idea. I can only relate it to my experience in other countries where I had to rely on other means than words to convey my ideas. It's all interpretation.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[dundas]

Gee! Insightful discussions between two minds with discerning eyes and passion. A different kind of discussion.

[[dundas]]

Gee! Insightful discussions between two minds with discerning eyes and passion. A different kind of discussion.

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[ericcoliu]

What follows is my reply to Emusing's last post:

Hi! Emusing:

Emusing wrote:

I know Bly had been pigenholed for his objection to Pound.

Yes, it’s unfortunate. But I think the main reason is that Bly adopted a polemic tone to criticize Pound’s imagist approach.


"But 'Imagism' was largely 'Picturism.' An image and a picture differ in that the image, being natural to the speech of the imagination, cannot be drawn from or inserted back into the real world. It is an animal native to the imagination. Like Bonnefoy's 'an interior sea lighted by turning eagles,' it cannot be seen in real life. A picture, on the other hand, is drawn from the objective 'real' world. 'Petals on a wet black bough' can actually be seen."


If we pay close attention to Pound’s explanation about his moment of revelation and intense emotion he felt at the Metro at La Concorde, Paris:

“Three years ago in Paris I got out of a "metro" train at La Concorde, and saw suddenly a beautiful face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful child’s face, and then another beautiful woman, and I tried all that day to find words for what this had meant to me, and I could not find any words that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that sudden emotion. And that evening, as I went home along the Rue Raynouard, I was still trying and I found, suddenly, the expression. I do not mean that I found words, but there came an equation . . . not in speech, but in little splotches of colour. It was just that - a "pattern," or hardly a pattern, if by "pattern" you mean something with a "repeat" in it. But it was a word, the beginning, for me, of a language in colour. I do not mean that I was unfamiliar with the kindergarten stories about colours being like tones in music. I think that sort of thing is nonsense. If you try to make notes permanently correspond with particular colours, it is like tying narrow meanings to symbols.
That evening, in the Rue Raynouard, I realized quite vividly that if I were a painter, or if I had, often, that kind of emotion, of even if I had the energy to get paints and brushes and keep at it, I might found a new school of painting that would speak only by arrangements in colour.”

I would say Pound is likewise interested in “leaping,” a quick and imaginative form of association that “increases the excitement of the poetry.” However, I would like to admit that Bly has infused contemporary American poetry more with emotionalism and spontaneity achieved through his wild association of deep images, and that he has put more effort to focalize the movement towards an increase in speed and range of association, which “gives such fantastic energy and excitement to ‘modern poetry’”.

Emusing wrote:

as I look deeply into the light of Bly's philosophy and work which moves ever closer to the ecstatic with his recent book of ghazals and his close association to Coleman Barks, the imminent interpreter of Rumi's poetry I think less of the psychological aspects and more of the spiritual realm.

Yes, I agree with you. Bly is inclined to use religious motifs in his two latest books in the ghazal form, which, in my view, is to continue his spiritual exploration stemming from his ground-breaking anthology of spiritual poems, Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures.

In discussing the form with John Habich, Bly states that, in ghazal poetry, “you really can’t become obsessed with yourself,” the idea being that the “scope” of the poem changes every three lines, not allowing the poet to become settled within the form. The “leap” is inherent in this form of poetry.

By the way, Bly was featured on PBS's Bill Moyers Journal, August 31, 2007 -- "The poetry of Robert Bly has touched on spiritual insights and deep truths about American culture." You can watch the whole program online at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08312007/profile.html .

Emusing wrote:

Ultimately I see creation as an emanation of lifeforce. I make the parallel to your discussion of language and the desire of a Chinese native speaker to articulate self, emotions, ideas into the another language which is completely foreign to yours. I see poetry as a similar terrain. We take the unsayable and translate it into the language of words. We must struggle with grammar, syntax, sequitur of thought and meaning in a similar way. This is just my idea.

I’m very fond of your translation metaphor. Yes, translation is more than a leap from dictionary to dictionary, from the ideographic to the alphabetic; it is a reimagining of the language (or poetry in your case). The act of writing in itself is an act of translation: translation into/from the writer’s intellectual and emotional life.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

What follows is my reply to Emusing's last post:

Hi! Emusing:

Emusing wrote:

I know Bly had been pigenholed for his objection to Pound.

Yes, it’s unfortunate. But I think the main reason is that Bly adopted a polemic tone to criticize Pound’s imagist approach.


"But 'Imagism' was largely 'Picturism.' An image and a picture differ in that the image, being natural to the speech of the imagination, cannot be drawn from or inserted back into the real world. It is an animal native to the imagination. Like Bonnefoy's 'an interior sea lighted by turning eagles,' it cannot be seen in real life. A picture, on the other hand, is drawn from the objective 'real' world. 'Petals on a wet black bough' can actually be seen."


If we pay close attention to Pound’s explanation about his moment of revelation and intense emotion he felt at the Metro at La Concorde, Paris:

“Three years ago in Paris I got out of a "metro" train at La Concorde, and saw suddenly a beautiful face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful child’s face, and then another beautiful woman, and I tried all that day to find words for what this had meant to me, and I could not find any words that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that sudden emotion. And that evening, as I went home along the Rue Raynouard, I was still trying and I found, suddenly, the expression. I do not mean that I found words, but there came an equation . . . not in speech, but in little splotches of colour. It was just that - a "pattern," or hardly a pattern, if by "pattern" you mean something with a "repeat" in it. But it was a word, the beginning, for me, of a language in colour. I do not mean that I was unfamiliar with the kindergarten stories about colours being like tones in music. I think that sort of thing is nonsense. If you try to make notes permanently correspond with particular colours, it is like tying narrow meanings to symbols.
That evening, in the Rue Raynouard, I realized quite vividly that if I were a painter, or if I had, often, that kind of emotion, of even if I had the energy to get paints and brushes and keep at it, I might found a new school of painting that would speak only by arrangements in colour.”

I would say Pound is likewise interested in “leaping,” a quick and imaginative form of association that “increases the excitement of the poetry.” However, I would like to admit that Bly has infused contemporary American poetry more with emotionalism and spontaneity achieved through his wild association of deep images, and that he has put more effort to focalize the movement towards an increase in speed and range of association, which “gives such fantastic energy and excitement to ‘modern poetry’”.

Emusing wrote:

as I look deeply into the light of Bly's philosophy and work which moves ever closer to the ecstatic with his recent book of ghazals and his close association to Coleman Barks, the imminent interpreter of Rumi's poetry I think less of the psychological aspects and more of the spiritual realm.

Yes, I agree with you. Bly is inclined to use religious motifs in his two latest books in the ghazal form, which, in my view, is to continue his spiritual exploration stemming from his ground-breaking anthology of spiritual poems, Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures.

In discussing the form with John Habich, Bly states that, in ghazal poetry, “you really can’t become obsessed with yourself,” the idea being that the “scope” of the poem changes every three lines, not allowing the poet to become settled within the form. The “leap” is inherent in this form of poetry.

By the way, Bly was featured on PBS's Bill Moyers Journal, August 31, 2007 -- "The poetry of Robert Bly has touched on spiritual insights and deep truths about American culture." You can watch the whole program online at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08312007/profile.html .

Emusing wrote:

Ultimately I see creation as an emanation of lifeforce. I make the parallel to your discussion of language and the desire of a Chinese native speaker to articulate self, emotions, ideas into the another language which is completely foreign to yours. I see poetry as a similar terrain. We take the unsayable and translate it into the language of words. We must struggle with grammar, syntax, sequitur of thought and meaning in a similar way. This is just my idea.

I’m very fond of your translation metaphor. Yes, translation is more than a leap from dictionary to dictionary, from the ideographic to the alphabetic; it is a reimagining of the language (or poetry in your case). The act of writing in itself is an act of translation: translation into/from the writer’s intellectual and emotional life.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul