Date: Wed, 29 May 2002
Subject: The huysmansization of prose
At first I thought you
were saying "huysmansization of prose" and meant, à
la A Rebours, a compartmentalization of it into separate rooms,
each painted a different color, or a sort of museum of perfumes of prose---
but, dyslexia blinked away, I see you must mean Napoleon III's
Baron Hausmann, architect of the re-design of Paris . . . in
which case I understand even less what you mean by that (or find it
less interesting when corrected, too real).
lcabri@DEPT.ENGLISH.UPENN.EDU
wrote:
> So I guess no one
else other than Chris S. and I have read S. Howe's Pierce-Arrow.
Some of my Pierce-Arrow marginalia (metrical notations subject
to error in transcription/typing: some 60 out of 144 pages in my copy
are fully scanned this way. Too laborious to re-type more [although
I will take page number "requests"!], below.
Abbreviations indicate feet. I.e., I = iamb, S = spondee, T = trochee,
etc.; P = paeon; E = epitrite. Numbers prior to metrical summary = syllabics.
A period before a macron/breve (._ or ./) indicates that syllable can
vary in accent/stress. | = some pattern
or natural pause. {p. 3}
_ / _ / _._ | _ / _ _ /
_ _ 13 iamb
_ / _ / | _ _ / _ _ ) 9 I2.3rd P
/ / | _ _ / _ | _ / 8 S.A2=S.3rdP.I
/ _ / _ / _ / _._ ) 9 T4
_ / _ _ | / _._ _ / 9 I.2ndE.A
_ / _ _ | _ _ / _ _ / _._ _ )13
/ _ _ | / _ _ | _ / _ / 10 D2.I2
/ _ | / _ |./_ | / _ | / _ 10 T5
/ _ | / | / _ / / 7
{p. 25}
2nd paeon 2nd paeon + trisyllable
undercurrent OR iamb,
primes for Gk names --Andromache, Prometheus
_ / _ _ / _._ 7 I.A
/ _ | .__/ / _ 7
_ / _ _ | / _ _._ ) 8
_ / _ _ | / / _ 7
/ / | / _ _ _ / 7 mol/spon *
/ / | _._ / _ / _ 8
/ _ / x / 5
/ _ _ / _ _ / _ _ 9 dac.trim
.__ / _ / _ / / 8
_ / _ _ / ^_ / 7 Tel{essilean}
* late field hour toward
the green {dedication}
four ep2's
one ep3/t2
{from p. 30}
clutching bandages next
.. . . . .. . . . ..
{periods indicate phonemes
[ch & g <j> = t-sh & d-zh, etc.]}
{from p. 39}
links grisly
. ... .. ..
{from p. 42; _ = long vowel}
--other archaic Greek messages
. . _.._ . .._ . . .. ..
indiscoverable lands all law
.. .. . . .. . ... _. ._
torn up nothing praiseworthy-
._.. . . . . .._ . . .._
{from p. 52}
sprung rhythm limerick
David-
-son cracked the whip
of A ris to tle
we al ways wound
up with a quar rel
humor
{from p. 58}
Occamists freq
.. . ... .. .
scis- -sor
Mis- -ter Brooks
occ(amists)><comm(it)
{from p. 62}
lakes fields springs Limniads
._. . ._ ... ... .. . .._ ..
{from p. 72}
preference for 2nd paeon
(_/_ _): "hypocrisy ...
obscurity ... analysis ... incognita (68) Piscataqua?
inveterate (65)
{from p. 91}
ALL troch.-dac. w/ one
"double spond"
{from p. 92}
"metra" when
verses
fall below hexasyllables
quoted misspellings
substitute for Howe's
trademark neologisms
--------------------------------
{Some Howe syllabics (since
they're relatively easy to re-type), for the sake of interest (and in
light of the book's illustration on p. 115). Numbers indicate line syllable-counts,
as above except horizontalized.}
15 12 7 10 10 8 9 8 10 p.
26
6 9 8 8 10 10 8 8 9 p.
27
7 9 8 8 7 9 8 7 6 9 10
9 8 p. 28
8 8 7 7 5 7 9 6 6 8 p.
29
8 5 6 6 5 8 8 6 p. 30
7 7 7 7 6 6 8 6 6 p. 35
10 8 10 9 12 8 9 11 8 p.
39
9 8 9 9 8 9 9 9 10 9 p.
47
5 6 5 8 7 6 5 6 5 6 7 6
6 p. 49
6 8 6 6 5 6 6 5 6 6 6 p.
52
etc.
-------------------------------
{My review of Pierce-Arrow,
from America Letters & Commentary 12, 2000, p. 178f (a necessarily
simplified reading, given the genre [review])}
When I asked, like a starstruck
autograph hound, to be introduced to Susan Howe after her poetry reading,
her instructions to me were direct: since I work at a university, the
library there probably owns the microfilm of the complete papers of
Charles Sanders Peirce, hero of her new book, Pierce-Arrow, and---almost
beside herself with happiness for me---I could see the manuscripts
for myself! This poetry points outside itself, like Cupid's arrow,
with an evangelism foreign to post-modernism. Out of a doctrinally non-referential
Language Poetry background, Howe is vigorously referring and
signifying back to an extrinsic world. That world, though, is not a
monolith we can return to unlettered. Howe has a didactic streak (poetry
should delight and instruct) and her lesson is our almost primal ignorance
before a protean world. The past, historical or personal, was never
something the rote memorization of schoolrooms could teach. She writes:
"Occamists frequently commit / mistakes Hume falls into / error
it may be simple / error on my part." Linguists and poets keep
asking: what is the smallest unit of meaning---the word? The syllable?
The phoneme? Regardless, Howe proves insistently that the sound bite
our age speaks is smaller than whatever that atom may be. To explain
the known in the terms of the unknown (Occam's razor) is to ask the
sub-set to contain everything that lies outside it.
I do not agree with the
self-evident reading of Howe as a "poet of history," despite
the dates she endlessly, cabalistically ticks off ("In 1900 Swinburne
who died / in 1909 just a month before / Meredith", "Sunday
Feb 15 / Deep snow / Blood was in a / little while", "In 1928
after Husserl's / last pen touched the MS / it was set aside",
"Exhausted certainty / after 1900 ink dis- / persed randomly",
etc., etc.), as if metrics were measured in years. Howe simply holds
us responsible for our naïve numerologies---the historical is interchangeable
with the imaginary in her poetry, and phenomenologically (the
book begins: "Phenomenology of war in the Iliad / how men
appear to each other when / gods change the appearance of things")
what those two modes share in common is absence. Her great theme
is what is not here. It is covered over with ink, and has serif or no
serif.
-----------------------------
{And a propos "Susan
Howe, who is a genuinely exciting poet", my review/criticism of
Howe's Bed Hangings :
http://www.granarybooks.com/reviews/bed_hangings/electronic_poetry_review.html
This is my gift, as apples
beneath a gingham coverlet in a basket, for Louis Cabri in Pennsylvania.
As Emily Dickinson says: "It is the gift of screws" (poem
675, Johnson).