I just opened Randall Jarrell’s The Complete Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969) and my eye fell on his introduction, which I don’t remember having read before. I was struck by this passage:
I have read these poems many times to audiences of different sorts, and all the audiences liked listening to them better, and found them easier, if I said beforehand something about what a ball turret was, or a B-24, or Tatyana Larina — and said it in “plain American that cats and dogs can read.” Not that my poems aren’t in plain American, but there it’s verse, not prose. Prose helps; it helps just by being prose. In the old days, when readers could take or leave prose, poets sometimes gave them a good deal of it: there are hundreds of pages of notes and prefaces and reminiscences in Wordsworth’s or Tennyson’s Collected Poems. But nowadays, unless you’re reading Marianne Moore or Empson or The Waste Land, you rarely get any prose to go along with the poems.
The war — the Second World War — has been over for a long time; there are names and events people knew they would never forget which, by now, they have forgotten they ever knew. Some of these poems depend upon, or are helped by, the reader’s remembering such names and events; other poems are helped by the reader’s being reminded of some particular story or happening or expression — something you remember if you have lived in the South, or been in the Air Force, or gone to Der Rosenkavalier, or memorized some verse of the Bible. I’ve put into this introduction some prose sentences about a few of these things. But they are here for the reader only if he wants them — if you like poems without prose, or see after a few sentences that I am telling you very familiar things, just turn past this introduction.
That’s both a helpful attitude and an odd thing for a poet to say; since the days of Wordsworth and Tennyson, poets have generally felt that their poems should speak for themselves (and it’s generally thought that Eliot’s ostentatious notes for The Waste Land were not a good idea). And some of Jarrell’s really are very familiar things: “A blind date is an unknown someone you accompany to something: if he promises to come for you and doesn’t, he has stood you up,” forsooth. Mind you, there’s a lot of useful information there, things you wouldn’t have known: “In ‘A Pilot From The Carrier,’ genius is another form of the word jinnee.” But I have to say, it does nothing to dissuade me from the sense that Jarrell’s gift was for prose (he was a fine critic); when I flip through the poems, none of them speak to me very distinctly and there are few lines that make me want to say them out loud or that sink into my memory. The exception, of course, is “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” of which that Wikipedia article says “Jarrell came to fear that his reputation would come to rest on it alone.” I fear his fear was not unjustified.
Another thing that struck me: when he wrote “The war […] has been over for a long time,” it had only been ten years!
The first citation for blind date in Green’s is 1927; Jarrell was not to know that it would still be going strong almost a century later. Ephemeral slang, or what seems ephemeral, is well worth glossing.
By “since Wordsworth”, do you mean after his time, or includlng and after his time? If the latter, there is the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. If the former, there is Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition”. From earlier times, of course, there is La Vita Nuova, the bulk of which is a prose commentary by Dante on his poems written up to a decade before.
The first citation for blind date in Green’s is 1927; Jarrell was not to know that it would still be going strong almost a century later.
By the time he wrote that, it had been going strong for almost thirty years and was clearly common knowledge (Wodehouse used it casually in 1949 in Mating Season: “I disliked taking on blind dates”).
By “since Wordsworth”, do you mean after his time, or includlng and after his time?
The former, as should be evident from the fact that I quoted Jarrell’s “there are hundreds of pages of notes and prefaces and reminiscences in Wordsworth’s or Tennyson’s Collected Poems.” This is what happens when you insist on reading a thousand pages a minute, or whatever your normal reading speed is. And Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition” is irrelevant; I’m not talking about standalone essays, I’m talking about prose apparatus to accompany poetry.
Genius is not another form of the word jinnee. However, the spelling “genie” is an amalgam of the two.
Genius is not another form of the word jinnee. However, the spelling “genie” is an amalgam of the two.
IIRC, it’s supposed to be jinn singular, jinni plural. But I’m not sure how that actually came out back when the spellings still varied.
These days genie is probably the best known spelling.
Genius is not another form of the word jinnee.
Right, but I took him to mean “I was using genius to mean jinnee.” Who knows, though. He may have been completely mistaken about the origin of the word. In any case, it’s helpful information if you’re reading the poem.
IIRC, it’s supposed to be jinn singular, jinni plural.
No, it’s the other way round: singular jinnī, collective plural jinn.
The former, as should be evident from the fact that I quoted Jarrell’s “there are hundreds of pages of notes and prefaces and reminiscences in Wordsworth’s or Tennyson’s Collected Poems.” This is what happens when you insist on reading a thousand pages a minute
My apologies; I am distracted these days, and particularly so today, when $JOB entails solving a knotty problem that I don’t even know where to start on.
No problem, I just enjoy twitting you when I get the chance! Good luck with $JOB; I suggest taking a break (maybe a shower) and letting your subconscious work on it for a while.
@languagehat: It’s entirely possible Harrell knew that the two words were distinct, although oftentimes somewhat conflated. If that’s the case, I think he merely phrased the note badly. However, my years of teaching and editing have led me to conclude that when the most natural parsing of someone’s words seems to indicate they have made a fairly commonplace error (even if another plausible reading actually works), the person almost always is indeed making that error.
But I have to say, it does nothing to dissuade me from the sense that Jarrell’s gift was for prose (he was a fine critic); when I flip through the poems, none of them speak to me very distinctly and there are few lines that make me want to say them out loud or that sink into my memory.
90 North? Hope? The best of “The Lost World”?
Jarrell risked a caring sentimentality, which never became fashionable. But he was still a more human poet than his flashier contemporaries.
Speaking of prose supplements and reputational change, Frances Dickey’s blog about T. S. Eliot’s newly unsealed letters to Emily Hale at
https://tseliotsociety.wildapricot.org/news
is giving us all an ongoing view of the former in the possible act of effecting the latter. Imagine explaining to the woman you say you love that getting a divorce from your estranged wife would cause the Church of England its most grievous loss since the conversion of John Henry Newman.
If Eliot’s reputation can survive Lloyd Webber, it can survive anything.
Personally I’ve never seen him in quite the same light since discovering that he wrote (in fits and starts, as seems appropriate) a pornographic epic entitled King Bolo and his Big Black Queen.
(Perhaps a better candidate for film adaptation? Who can say?)
Why not a musical? Everything gets made into a musical these days…
I’m not sure how this reflects on Elliot or Lloyd-Webber, but it always seemed quite ironic to me that the one really memorable and artful song from Cats (“Memory”) is uniquely the one that actually has lyrics not taken from Elliot’s book.
Jarrell risked a caring sentimentality, which never became fashionable. But he was still a more human poet than his flashier contemporaries.
But that stuff has nothing to do with what I want out of poetry. Sure, “90 North” is quite a nice poem, but, well, here’s the final quatrain:
I wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me—
Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,
The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom. It is pain.
The wrung/flung rhyme is nice, and the chiming “nothing comes from nothing,” but then it just kind of dribbles off, as far as I’m concerned. “And we call it wisdom. It is pain.” That just doesn’t sound like poetry to me. I realize it was the kind of thing people loved in the postwar era, but I don’t love it. Richard Wilbur, now that’s poetry.
Not too difficult to like both Jarrell and Richard Wilbur even if the former’s sentimentality doesn’t always come off and the latter is sometimes too smoothly lubricated.
I think the bleakness of 90 North’s deliberately “unpoetic” last lines works, as climax earned through the building up of the whole poem’s conceit and specific imagery. Even if some people loved this kind of thing post-war (I’d say Bly and Wright learned a lot from Jarrell’s tone), the poem itself was published in 1941.
John Ciardi “a box comes home”
http://carboninnovations.net/node/464
Another thing that struck me: when he wrote “The war […] has been over for a long time,” it had only been ten years!
A quarter of his life (he was 40ish). Besides, twice the length of the war itself, roughly, must have seemed a long time when you’d been terrified every other day during its progress. And he had no 75 years after as a comparison to the ten, as we have.
Even if some people loved this kind of thing post-war (I’d say Bly and Wright learned a lot from Jarrell’s tone), the poem itself was published in 1941.
Yes, I realize that, but the ’50s was the great age of this kind of thing, just as it was the great age of Sinatra. I’m not putting down either Jarrell or Sinatra (whom I greatly enjoy in certain moods), and certainly not the people who love them, but neither of them is at the focus of my artistic interests. Different strokes.
And he had no 75 years after as a comparison to the ten, as we have.
Yes, but since we have, it sounds a little funny from this distance.
Just to head off an obvious misunderstanding: I’m not in any way comparing Jarrell and Sinatra, he was just the first example that popped into my head of somebody who was big in the fifties.
I remember The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner from assigned reading in high school.
Everybody does. That’s why he was afraid of being remembered for it. It’s short, punchy, and easy to understand.
Like Larkin’s “This Be The Verse,” which gave him a similarly well-founded fear.
This may be just me, but the only part of “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” that I ever remember is the last line. I reread the poem yesterday, but in two weeks, the first four lines will almost certainly be forgotten (unless this online discussion is still ongoing and serving to keep the poem fresh in my memory).
Billy Collins has a good poem, or at least a good joke in poetic form, called “The Introduction,” which is nothing but the preliminary prose notes for the poor auditors at the poetry reading:
I don’t think this next poem
needs any introduction –
it’s best to let the work speak for itself.
Maybe I should just mention… (and it goes on and on with random facts).
Someone typed it up here.
Funny, and it sounds as if he was riffing off that Jarrell introduction.
Jarrell’s “there are names and events people knew they would never forget which, by now, they have forgotten they ever knew” is very nicely written, although of course it’s nicely-written prose.
Personally I’ve never seen him in quite the same light since discovering that he wrote… a pornographic epic entitled King Bolo and his Big Black Queen.
In a good or a bad way?
Blind dates are, of course, quite different from blind testing.
The wrung/flung rhyme is nice, and the chiming “nothing comes from nothing,”
The latter, at least, is Shakespeare:
“Monad” – well, you all know what a monad is.
Unfortunately for me, I do. Too much.
In a good or a bad way?
I was exaggerating for rhetorical effect. In retrospect I wasn’t really surprised.
After all, Eliot was an American. One must make allowances. It’s all pretty venial compared with Lloyd-Webberism, anyway. Not that he could have foreseen that.
this is a banal thing to point out, but I think we’ve very much entered another golden age of prose annotations and commentary online.
Look at genius.com, song exploder, or all the youtube videos that are “explainers” of something.
Heck, even the lowliest wikipedia article bristles with efflorescent incrustations of footnotes and virtual palimpsests of past meta-debates that would make Charles Kinbote proud.
JWB: Jarrell’s “there are names and events people knew they would never forget which, by now, they have forgotten they ever knew” is very nicely written, although of course it’s nicely-written prose.
I agree.
Bathrobe: Blind dates are, of course, quite different from blind testing.
… and none for the better. In badly designed blind dates, participants can collaborate to identify and systematically work to infer the personality of eachother. Many researchers believe that a majority of relationships are based on little more than expectations and unconscious biases.
@John: “Monad” – well, you all know what a monad is.
Unfortunately for me, I do. Too much.
Does that belong on another thread ? How many too much ? There are different kinds:
1) those qui n’ont point de fenêtres, par lesquelles quelque chose y puisse entrer ou sortir
2) the unintelligibly explained kind that Haskell rejoices in. [# The sheer number of different monad tutorials on the internet is a good indication of the difficulty many people have understanding the concept. #]
3) the partially intelligible kind that category theory sports. 2) may be an application of 3).
4) something like Optional in Java, which is very useful without any rabbiting about “monads” needed.
Hat, please rescue my monad comment from oblivion ! Akismet doesn’t like monads either, it seems, but it’s too stupid to recognize that we’re on the same team.
I thought monads were, umm, something quite different. I have now realised my mistake.
What’s that? You didn’t know what nomads are? Now that I think about it, I suppose that’s excusable; after all, how many people nowadays have ever seen a nomad?
“Nomad”, of course, was originally a synonym of “saint”, deriving as it does from “no” and “mad” (i.e. someone who is never angry). An alternative etymology is that it comes from nomas, a word meaning “no more”, and thus originally meant “someone who is mad as hell and can’t take it anymore”.
Roberto Durán, the original “No más” nomad/monad.
Monads previously. That’s Stu’s 3); IIRC, Haskell was conceived as a vehicle to explore using category theory in programming, so 2) is indeed an application of 3); 4) was probably nicked from Haskell because it’s useful and you don’t need 3) to explain it.
Those tutorials remind me of the first marginal note in Galileo’s Dialogo that my eye fell on: Alcuni ſcriuono quel che non intendono, e però nõ non s’intende quel che eſsi ſcriuono. (Well, in Danish — I don’t know how to resolve nõ, it may just be an abortive copy of the next non because it didn’t fit the very short line in the margin, but the gist of it is “Some [people] write stuff they don’t understand, and then you don’t understand what they write”).
“Some [people] write stuff they don’t understand, and then you don’t understand what they write”
It must have been an astounding revelation at the time. No credit extended, even writers must pay cash.
@lars
I would replace “and then” with “for this reason”
https://www.garzantilinguistica.it/ricerca/?q=per%C3%B2
2. (lett.) perciò; può essere preceduta da e, che può anche essere unita nella grafia epperò: E però tu te n’andrai prima… (BOCCACCIO Dec. IX, 1)
I thought monads were, umm, something quite different
Indeed. “Monad” is of course the original Bantu singular form of the word, now generally replaced by the original plural (which occurs much more commonly in practice), and with a new analogical plural in -s.
Banads?
Absolutely. What did you think I meant?
Bunad?
The root is indeed polysemous, though one can see the connections of thought.
Another thing that struck me: when he wrote “The war […] has been over for a long time,” it had only been ten years!
This reminds me a little of something Tolkien put in the preface to The Lord of the Rings – “as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years.” That’s him writing in 1954.
I wouldn’t say ASCII won, it’s more it got left behind as the default for a part of the encoding nobody felt a need to have variants for. Once Latin-1 was useful we dropped the national variants of IEC-646 as fast as we could.
But yes, if anybody runs a system that’s limited to seven bits, in this day and age, it will be ASCII. Such as host names on the internet… some Ph.D. student at Berkeley in the eighties misimplemented the DNS protocol so it was impractical to use better character sets when they became available.
(There is a flat text file format of a DNS zone that is able to specify anything the protocol allows, but when early versions of BIND fetched a zone from another server and saved it, basically anything except ASCII was saved wrong. Never mind that it would break if encountering domain labels containing periods or NULs in the OTW representation).
For some reason, prose helps puts me in mind of this.
Optional in Java, which is very useful without any rabbiting about “monads” needed
Quite so, although I prefer the term Maybe as snappier. In any case, lots of familiar things from lists to procedures turn out to be monads when seen through the proper windowless glasses.
The root is indeed polysemous
Probably the connection was mediated through Afro-Asiatic, where the consonants count for very little and the vowels for nothing at all.
“There’s No ASCII Like US-ASCII”, the unofficial theme song of the ASCII Consortium.
“We’re In The Monad”.
(Great thanks to Harry Warren and Irving Berlin respectively.)
prose helps
Love hurts. (Or in the 1980 recension, “Love stinks”.)
Hate Avis, love Hertz.