Responsorial poetry

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. - Frank Zappa

Before we start this post properly I'd like you to read a poem and decide what you think about it. It's a wee experiment.

T-JUNCTION

This is the way to go.

This way or that.
It's hard to tell.

They are Yin and Yang.
They are Chang and Eng.

If I'm not here
I must be there

or on the road to there.

Sunday, 22 March 2009

That's us. For the moment we'll just leave it there. We'll come back to it later. Thank you for your patience.

Now, on with the article.

Since I've begun writing this blog I have found that I have taken my poetry into some interesting directions. I've certainly written a steady stream over the last couple of years and that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I always feel more real when the poetry is flowing. If I never wrote a line of prose again it wouldn't bother me that much but when the poetry dries up I wander around like a little lost soul. I really do.

I almost never sit down to write a poem and it has annoyed the hell out of me the number of times I wanted to write a poem in response to something and come up blank. And then at other times the daftest thing gets me started. And I've never made any great efforts to muck around with that arrangement. I enjoy the unexpectedness of my poetry. Like an old friend I never know when it'll call or how long it'll stay when it does.

One question people ask sometimes is, "What inspired you to write that?" and most of the time you're really stuck because you have to translate what you saw or what you experienced into words for them and that's never that good. My poem 'Common Denominator' was inspired by simply walking down a street in Glasgow one afternoon, the street was Blythswood Street and it was notorious – at least Blythswood Square which was to my right was – for being a place one could go to pick up a prostitute. It's not a very inspiring street. You could transplant it and drop it in San Francisco and no one would notice. It's part of the business district, nothing but offices. And then there's the lane running off at right angles on my left. (Surely it should be left angles if that's the case.) As I walked down the street – it was a nice day, not raining – the cars drifted by me – it's a pretty steep hill so they have to be careful – and I imagined that scene later that day, once the sun had set and I would be safe and sound at home. I'm sure you've got a picture in your head but it'll be wrong. Because you can't possibly imagine what I saw. And I'm sure what I see now is not what I saw that day. There are no fire escapes in that part of town for starters and, let's face it, they're not commonplace in the UK anyway.

That said, you don't need to know what inspired the poem. You have the poem and it can take you any place you want. Inspiration is like the husk – it gets chucked away leaving the soft, juicy poem. The husk is a part of the process – it protects the poem as it develops in you head – but then its work is done.

Now that's fine if your poem is a coconut but what if it's an apple? The peel can be cut off – I remember my mother doing that for me as a child (she even cut the skin off my cucumber) – but there's no need. In fact, as that same mother was keen to tell me years later – the goodness is in the skin. She used to say you should eat the skin of a potato and throw the rest out, not that we did.

I only discovered the term ekphrastic poetry a few months ago. If I'd heard it before then I must have blanked it. Simply put (What would be the point of putting it complicatedly?) it's writing that comments upon another art form, for instance a poem about a photograph or a novel about a film. Keats' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is the one everyone cites, since the entire poem concerns the appearance and significance of an ancient piece of pottery, and that's us mentioned it too.

The first time I read Keats' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' there was no picture accompanying it. It worked just fine. I didn't like it much. I'm still not that keen on it. But the important thing is that I didn't feel there was something missing. I'd seen Grecian urns before. Was Keats responding to a specific urn or to Grecian urns in general I don't know. I do know that he was prompted to learn more about the subject after reading two articles by Benjamin Haydon in the Examiner on 2 May and 9 May 1819. I do know he visited Haydon's office and saw various collections of prints that contained imaged Greek artwork including urns. According to James A. W. Heffernan though, in his book Museum of Words:

The urn, as Ian Jack has demonstrated (to my satisfaction at least), is an ideal object composed from various actual sources: neo-Attic vases, the paintings of Claude Lorraine, and the Elgin Marbles.

It doesn't matter that ekphrastic poetry has a name. Most things have names but we don't need the name before we have permission to do the thing. We do the thing and maybe years later discover it has a name. Maybe in the interim we've given it our own name. I guess that's where many euphemisms come from, not so much avoiding using the proper word but not knowing it in the first place.

What I'm working up to is the fact that, up until very recently, I have never written a poem about or inspired by a work of art. And in 1000+ poems you'd think I might have had a crack at one. I've certainly referenced works of art – One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest – jumps to mind but the poem wasn't about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest I simply quoted a chunk at the end of a poem that was probably far too long already which is why I have no intention of reproducing it here.

And then I met a bloke called Art Durkee. What can I say about Art that he hasn't said himself in ten or twenty-thousand words? Actually nothing because everything I know about Art comes via words. Well, not everything, but I'll get to that. Let me just say that we are very different people. We shouldn't get on and yet we do. It's the chocolate-coated pretzel thing. I never got it either but I kept shoving them in my gob as I tried to work it out. I like to give Art a plug every now and then because he writes one of the most intelligent blogs I've come across and I heartily recommend you check out his site. Here's a link. If you want to go and have a look now I'll wait.

One major way that Art and I are different is that he doesn't see music, art and writing as separate things. Me, I like to colour inside the lines.

Another way that we're different is that Art spends a great deal of his time in natural settings. He goes on road trips and camps in national parks and the like. I couldn't tell you the last time I stepped on grass or even wanted to.

Art seems to need nature. It revitalises him and it inspires him. His site is full of photographs of trees and rivers and waterfalls and even the occasional creature if it'll stay still long enough. And frequently he responds to what he sees by writing poetry, haiku mainly. Here's an example:

 

   trillium:
   ghosts ascending
   the hillside

 

Now the question has to be asked: does the poem need to photo to be meaningful? Personally I think not. However, the photo is given added significance by subjoining a poem.

Does nature need poems written about it? I mean what says 'sunset' better than a real live sunset. Words are a sorry alternative. Art is not simply concerned with replication however. Part of its function is interpretation and communication. It's a huge topic and I'm not going to get too involved in it here, suffice to say that a poem about a sunset, even if all it talks about is the sunset will really be about something else. Words are tainted. You cannot say one thing without evoking other things.

Take a word like 'cat'. I have a very personal understanding of what a cat is and that understanding is growing. My daughter has just sent me a photo of her new cat – she's been pining after one for years – and that photo is now my desktop. And when I get to meet the cat in person I have no doubt that a connection will be made even if she hasn't decided on a name for the creature by then. 'Rufus' is the going favourite by the way. Of course each and every one of you will have different and unique experiences of cats. Bottom line: there is no such thing as a 'cat' – it is as real as the number 4.

My daughter's cat

A cat is not a work of art even if most of them act as if they are.

You might argue that Art's photo of the trilliums is not a work of art. And photography has had that cross to bear since it arrived on the scene. I think that any image taken out of context can be a work of art. If I framed the photo of 'Rufus' would it suddenly become art? I think so. I think it is art all on its own.

Now, when Art Durkee wrote his wee poem was he responding to the flowers in situ or, later on, did he look at the image afresh and was struck by what he saw? If it's the former is his poem truly ekphrastic? It's all semantics but I would say not.

In Art's case he is both photographer and poet. I'm not sure it makes a damn bit of difference since everything is all running about inside his head. Keats' poem is a different kettle of fish completely since he was merely an outsider responding to what he was seeing, be it an image of the urn or the actual urn itself.

Okay, here's another photo by Art and the poem he wrote, whether in response to the location or picture of the location I don't know. I could ask but most of the time we get presented with some art we don't have access to the work's creator. So, let's just run with it:

 

   Lake Superior, Upper Peninsula, MI

   taunted by warm winds
   of mid-March, the mendicant
   longs for summer's road

 

You can read the original post here if you're interested.

Personally I've never been to Michigan but there's a sign like that on the A77 near Fenwick as I recall; it's been a few years. It's pretty much a universal road symbol I would have thought. The British sign doesn't have the arrows though. If it's a one-way road then there will be a single arrow to indicate the direction the traffic is coming but that's about it with arrows.

The photograph struck me. Who knows why one thing catches a man's imagination when something else doesn't? I've long stopped worrying about it. The best one can do is to be open to it and make the most of every opportunity that comes.

I didn't write my poem right away. I'd read his post – I may or may not have commented – and then passed on. But I found the image stuck in my head so I found the post again and copied the photo onto my desktop where I could focus on it sans text. It didn't take long before I wrote this:

T-JUNCTION

This is the way to go.

This way or that.
It's hard to tell.

They are Yin and Yang.
They are Chang and Eng.

If I'm not here
I must be there

or on the road to there.

I sent Art a copy of the poem and he seemed quite pleased and then I printed a copy out along with Art's photo and stuck it in my big red folder. Personally I don't think it's that great a poem but it's certainly a better poem with the photo. Art's photo was and is complete in itself. It does not need the poem. The poem, however, was designed to comment on the photo; the photo is a part of the poem; the poem is an extension to the photo.

Proximity is important and yet no one notices the plinth on which the sculpture stands. It's not art even if an artisan spent many hours in its manufacture. Firstly, there's never any collaboration between the plinth-maker and the sculptor, and, secondly, the plinth is not – and here's the key word – representational; the plinth was not created in response to the sculpture; it supports it, it compliments it, but that's it. And indeed there was no collaboration between Art and I. He took his picture and, unbeknownst to him, I wrote a poem after seeing it. Is this a bad thing? Does it take away from the photo? Yes, I suppose it, does. This ekphrastic piece is like a diptych, an art form I've always struggled with a little – What do you mean it's not two paintings side by side? – and I find my eye drifting back and forth between the photo and the poem, trying to connect them.

Art is designed to generate a response. In most cases all I get is: "Yes, I like it. It's a good poem," and I have to be satisfied with that. No one's ever presented me with a drawing and said: "Your poem made me want to do this," and I can live with that, but it would be nice. Most people who have read my stuff though are not creative people. They respond in the only way they can. Some have burst into tears. That's good too. I mean what more could any writer ask for? And yet an artist's natural mode of expression is, in my case, to write about things; for others it will be to paint or compose or do a wee dance. Each to his own.

The way Art talks about it, in his post 'Responsories', is like this:

There is something sacred about the act. It is, in the hands of some artists, worshipful, almost religious. It is not impossible to view artwork as responsorial, in the sacred sense: responsory chants to the voices of the other singers. Two choirs singing across a gallery from one another.

You see how different we are? I'd never use language like that. But I agree with his point of view. I like the notion of responsorial poetry. It makes more sense to me that ekphrastic poetry although it still falls short because all poetry is written as a natural reaction to something. The word 'ekphrasis' comes from the Greek ek and phrasis, 'out' and 'speak' respectively, verb ekphrazein, to proclaim or call an inanimate object by name. Either term works I suppose. Then again, why not reactionary poetry?

Let me go back to Art:

What do we call art that responds to the art of other artists?

Recursive self-referential art? Insular, navel-gazing art? Critics of art that interprets and responds to other art would call it this and many other disparaging labels, all the while forgetting that recursion (self-referentiality) is a natural function. The branching forks of a river delta repeat the veins of a leaf, the branches of a tree, the way capillary blood vessels merge into veins in your own forearm.

See, again, I would never look to nature to explain that. What comes to my mind are mathematics and science. In both these fields everyone stands on the shoulders of giants. No one has enough life to prove every formula for themselves. But they build on them and they get lauded for the bit the added on that expands our knowledge. No one objects that they've not done all the groundwork themselves. It's accepted and expected.

So, why is my building on Art's photo any different?

I don't think that it is.

I think Keats' poem is significantly different though in that there is no specific work of art to which he is appending his poem. The poem does, and always has, stood on its own. I would therefore question, although it is often cited as an example of ekphrastic poetry, whether it really is the best example. It doesn't mean it's suddenly a rotten poem but it does stand or fall on its own merits. At best you could call it 'notional ekphrasis'. If you're looking for what I think is a good example, have a look at Auden's 'Musée des Beaux Arts'.

There are different schools of thought about what ekphrasis should be and maybe I'll come back to the subject later; some say you should describe the object, others are more flexible. Personally I think as soon you label a can of worms everyone starts fishing for their tin openers.

For the moment I'll simply leave you with the complete work and you can decide for yourselves whether it works.

 

   T-JUNCTION

   This is the way to go.

   This way or that.
   It's hard to tell.

   They are Yin and Yang.
   They are Chang and Eng.

   If I'm not here
   I must be there

   or on the road to there.