NOTES ON DONALD JUSTICE, THE STUDY OF PROSODY, & THE COLLECTED POEMS: A DONALD JUSTICE PRIMER (PART II)

NOTES ON DONALD JUSTICE, THE STUDY OF PROSODY, & THE COLLECTED POEMS: A DONALD JUSTICE PRIMER (PART II of III)

Sound and sense

Here, in Justice's class, we moved into a Special Topic entitled Sound and Sense. Here is a quote on the subject from Justice in its entirety:

“Probably it is the rhythm of poetry which is its most definitive feature. We may leave aside the usual natural analogies, although for some these provide a warrant for the appearance and almost mystical signifigance of rhythm in poetry—the cycles of the seasons, the tides, even the blood pulse and the process of breathing, all of which are, indeed, in their various ways and at their various paces, rhythmical; however suggestive, they seem to me except perhaps for the analogy to breathing, fairly remote. All successions of spoken words necessarily have a rhythm of sorts, and the rhythm of poetry has a natural enough warrant in this alone, for its rhythm is only the rhythm of speech—or prose—more highly organized and therefore presumably more notable. Its rhythm is not only a significant aspect of the formal character of a poem, continually insisting as it does on the fact that the materials of the poem are not haphazardly there but are the result of an at least partially willed arrangement; rhythm is not only one of the significant means by which special attention is called to the words of a poem, insinuating as it does their sound-values into our consciousness (beyond whatever aptness the words may bear to the plain sense or argument of the poem) and moreover placing and binding them together in a context that is not merely syntactical: the rhythm exists for these purposes, certainly, but for its own sake as well. And all this istrue, more or less, whether the poem is written in traditional meters or in free verse, whether the ‘music’ of the poem approaches the one extreme of song or the other extreme of speech. It has often been suggested that the meters serve to reinforce speech. It has often been suggested that the meters serve to reinforce by their appropriateness the subject of the poem, that is, to imitate somehow: so ion Browning’s ‘How They Brought the Good New from Ghent to Aix’ the trisyllabic meters gallop as the horses theoretically do, with a sort of desperate kuh-kloppety-klop, and there is a famous passage in Pope’s ‘An Essay of Criticism’ which means to illustrate this way of thinking:

Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows:
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:
When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so, when shift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o’er the’unbending corn, and skims along the main.

On the other hand, any imitation so direct is likely to seem primitive or naïve, and John Crowe Ransom suggested that what the meters imitate is nothing less than an abstraction, a sort of Platonic universal—which is perhaps to say somewhat grandly and speculatively only that the meters operate with less realism than does the argument or ‘plot’ of the poem; in other words, the meters can and do exist as an object of interest apart from the paraphrasable meaning of the poem and are therefore capable of their own perfections without respect to their possible function in following the sense.”

In this section of the course Justice quoted from sources such as T.S. Eliot, more Ransom and McAuley, and then at long last two short pages of notes authored by Donald Justice himself. Two pages of notes clarifying why rhythm is the most definitive element of poetry, why imitative rhythms are naïve, why Free Verse has the best chance at providing sophisticated imitative rhythms, and ultimately that rhythm is a psychological compulsion, a “magic to keep an unpredictable world under control.”

The passage quoted above and the passage quoted below are two of the only sections of the coursework that Justice authored. It appears to me as if the 78 page course syllabus and the 16 or so book Bibliography are, in a certain way, the context in which Justice sees his contribution to the study of prosody nested. It resides in “Sound and Sense” a hinge, topically speaking between normative and non-normative meters. As if to suggest that he is most comfortable situating himself in this twilight between the nebulous if not tenuous ground of not quite metrical verse and not quite free verse. Justice is a poet of the crepuscular so I like this idea of him inhabiting this zone between the purely metrical and non metrical realms.

To close the topic of “Sound and Sense” Justice writes:

“Even the meters—so it seem to me—can imitate only by convention. Let me take a simple case. Yvor Winters once offered his line, “the slow cry of a bird,’ as an example of metrical imitation, not strictly as he put it, of the birdcall itself but of ‘the slowness of the cry.’ The convention would seem to be that two or more strong syllables in succession carry associations of slowness and heaviness, while two or more weak syllables in succession carry contrary associations of slowness and heaviness, while two or more weak syllables in succession carry contrary associations of rapidity and lightness: melancholy on the one hand, playfulness on the other. But the displacement of a stress from of to cry in the Winters line, bringing two stresses together, fails to slow the line down, as I hear it. Substitute for this “The quick cry of a bird,” and the two weak syllables following cry can be said to do as much to speed the line up, or a as little. But whether the cry is to sound quick or slow, the metrical situation remains, practically speaking, identical. If any question of interpretation arises from the reversed foot, the meaning of the reversal must depend on the denotation of the adjective rather than on the particular arrangement of syllables and stresses, for denotation overrides any implication of the meters apart from it. Though apparently agreed on by generations of poets (or perhaps only critics), the minor convention on which Winters was depending is hardly observed any longer except in criticism or occasionally in the classroom. Nor was it, for that matter, observed by Milton in his great melancholy-playful pair, “Il Penseroso” and “L’Allegro,” or if observed , than only to be consciously played against. Composers of music for the movies learned early that direct imitation of a visual image through sound was best restricted to comic effects (pizzicato, trombone, glissandi, and staccato bassoons). Pushed far enough, and that is not very far at all, the results of metrical imitation can seem similarly cartoon like:

I sank to the pillow, and Joris, and he;
I slumbered. Dirck slumbered, we slumbered all three.

In any case, simple imitation by means of rhythm would seem to be more plausible in free verse, with its greater flexibility, and most workable in prose, which is allowed any and every arrangement of syllables. And yet I have seen nowhere any critical offering to this effect.

If the meters do represent or imitate anything in general, it may be nothing more (or less) than some psychological compulsion, a sort of counting on the fingers or stepping on the cracks, magic to keep an unpredictable world under control.”

There are so many great poems by Justice that could illustrate the passage Justice wrote for the close of “Sound and Sense.” Here is a brief list of accentual-syllabic poems that demonstrate “magic to keep an unpredictable world under control.”

ANNIVERSARIES
SONNET TO MY FATHER
LADIES BY THEIR WINDOWS
POEM
IN THE ATTIC
THE SUNSET MAKER

Song meters

In addition to being a poet, Justice was a composer. He wrote libretto’s as part of how he expressed himself as an artist. So it is no surprise that as a foil to “Sound and Sense” Justice introduced “Song” as the next topic in the class. Justice quotes a long passage from Auden’s An Elizabethan Song Book and adds in his own commentary and musical notation to illustrate his interests.

After the Auden Justice provides more reference: Campion, some anonymous songs, Shakespeare, George Peele, Ben Jonson, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Yeats, Gershwin, Robert Johnson, John Donne, John Dryden, and William Wordsworth. The key lesson in the song section from justice was that songs treat syllables not as stressed or unstressed quantums but as durations—that is that the qualitative value of the sounds take priority over the quantitative quality of the sounds.

To fully appreciate what Justice is up to in his songs, a close look at Auden will help the reader greatly.

My short list of songs to check out in Justice’s collected:

ON AN ANNIVERSARY
TREMAYNE
NOSTALGIA AND COMPLAINT OF THE GRANDPARENTS
OCTOBER: A SONG
ODE TO A DRESSMAKER’S DUMMY

OCTOBER: A SONG though slight is dear to me because I golf. How rarely do is see poems with golf courses in them? Also, it is unique in its clearly defines the type. One can, ironically, hum along to this odd little tune as if one were a cheerleader.

OCTOBER: A SONG

Summer, goodbye.
The days grow shorter.
Cranes walk the fairway now
In careless order.

They step so gradually
Toward the distant green
They might be brushstrokes
Animating a screen.

Mists canopy
The water hazard.
Nearby, a little flag
Lifts, brave but frazzled.

Under sad clouds
Two white-capped golfers
Stand looking off, dreamy and strange,
Like young girls in Balthus.

The meter’s have a scansion but it is inconsistent, compare the penultimate line of the poem with the penultimate line of the second stanza. They don’t align metrically, but they do align musically. The slant rhymes also are experimental in the way they mostly get us thinking of the similar sounds without needing rhyme. “Green” & “screen” are the exceptions here. Additionally what makes this poem of type is that they so interestingly align along musical notation.

The music in the first stanza establishes the notation and can be sung with some minor variations throughout:
2/2: 1 3 1 3 / 1 2 1 2 2 / 1 2 .5 2 .5 2 / 1 3 1 3

The beat hits on the following syllables: on “sum” on “good” on “days” on “short” on “cranes” on “fair” on “now” on “care” and on “or”. Tap your hand on the desk as you read the firsts stanza keeping the beat so that you hit the desk in time with these syllables. This musicality is fully intentioned. Does not the awareness of music notation when considering this poem not deepen the pleasure of it?

Summary of Certain Types of Free Verse

In the latter half of the course Justice focused on Free Verse. Again quoting from references we are situated by discursive samplings from Li Po, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Remy de Gourmont, Pound, Eliot, and Ginsberg. P. Mansell Jones, Gustave Kahn, Edouard Dujardin, Beum and Shapiro, Paul Fussell, Yvor Winters, J.V. Cunningham, Vladimir Nabokov, Hugh Kenner, George Saintsbury, DW Harding, Derek Attridge. James McAuley, W.C. Williams, Denise Levertov, and Robert Creeley.

The examples of free verse came from Pound, Ginsberg, W.C. Williams, Robert Lowell, Yvor Winters, Harvey Gross, and Derek Attridge on The Waste Land. These selections ended his introduction to his “Summary of Certain Types of Free Verse.”

In Justice we find many, many examples of free verse of the corresponding types. His affection for understanding the why and how of free verse as an experiment against form and as a type of musical measure is something I came to better understand.

Long-line Free Verse

In our discussions of Long-line free verse, Justice noted three principle types:
• Type A was the “dithyrambic or oracular” as found in the Bible, in Whitman, and so forth.
• Type B was the “loosened blank-verse line.”
• Type C is “prose broken up into line.”

As examples of Type A Justice provided samples from the Bible such as Psalm 19 & 29, plus samples from Christopher Smart, James MacPherson, Willaim Blake, Walt Whitman, Laforgue, Sculley Bradley, DH Lawrence, Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Koch, GK Chesterton, Paul Cladel, Rafel Alberti, & Mark Strand.

In Justice’s own work we find much free verse but not an overwhelming plethora of each type of free verse. These lists are samplings, not complete lists.

Some poems of long-line free verse Type A from Donald Justice’s Collected:

ANONYMOUS DRAWING
NARCISSUS AT HOME
UNFLUSHED URINALS
MULE TEAM AND POSTER
INVITATION TO A GHOST

Here is the first stanza from MULE TEAM AND POSTER to illustrate how Justice managed to demonstrate the type:

“Two mules stand waiting in front of the brick wall of a warehouse, hitched to a shabby flatbed wagon.
Its spoked wheels resemble crude wooden flowers pulled recently from a deep and stubborn mud.”

As examples of Type B Justice provided samples from Wallace Stevens, TS Eliot, Pound, Stephen Spender, Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarell, Elizabeth Bishop, Apollinaire, and Mark Strand.

Some poems of long-line free verse Type B from Donald Justice’s Collected;

HOMAGE TO THE MEMORY OF WALLACE STEVENS
WARM FLESH COLORED ODE from THREE ODES
ABSENCES
VARIATIONS ON A TEXT BY VALLEJO
A MAN OF 1794

In VARIATIONS ON A TEXT BY VALLEJO justice takes the loosened iambic pentameter line to its greatest variability. Compare the tetrameter of the first line ‘I will die in Miami in the sun,” to the nearly regular pentameter first line of the last stanza, Donald Justice is dead. One Sunday the sun came out.” I say nearly regular but for the unacceptable variation of the inverted final foot.

VARIATIONS ON A TEXT BY VALLEJO

Me moriré en París con aguacero...

I will die in Miami in the sun,
On a day when the sun is very bright,
A day like the days I remember, a day like other days,
A day that nobody knows or remembers yet,
And the sun will be bright then on the dark glasses of strangers
And in the eyes of a few friends from my childhood
And of the surviving cousins by the graveside,
While the diggers, standing apart, in the still shade of the palms,
Rest on their shovels, and smoke,
Speaking in Spanish softly, out of respect.

I think it will be on a Sunday like today,
Except that the sun will be out, the rain will have stopped,
And the wind that today made all the little shrubs kneel down;
And I think it will be a Sunday because today,
When I took out this paper and began to write,
Never before had anything looked so blank,
My life, these words, the paper, the grey Sunday;
And my dog, quivering under a table because of the storm,
Looked up at me, not understanding,
And my son read on without speaking, and my wife slept.

Donald Justice is dead. One Sunday the sun came out,
It shone on the bay, it shone on the white buildings,
The cars moved down the street slowly as always, so many,
Some with their headlights on in spite of the sun,
And after a while the diggers with their shovels
Walked back to the graveside through the sunlight,
And one of them put his blade into the earth
To lift a few clods of dirt, the black marl of Miami,
And scattered the dirt, and spat,
Turning away abruptly, out of respect.

From the almost but not quite trimeter or slant tetrameter of the first line, “I will die in Miami in the sun,” to the fifteen syllable six foot fifth line, “And the sun will be bright then on the dark glasses of strangers.” The first stanza clearly establishes the bounds of free verse type B. This means there appear to be feet. There appears to be a line of an average number of feet. But the number of feet in the lines vary regularly from that metrical standard.

As examples of Type C Justice provided samples from Frank O’Hara, Ted Berrigan, and Gary Snyder.

Some poems of long-line free verse Type C from Donald Justice’s Collected;

ORPHEUS OPENS HIS MORNING MAIL
THE VOICE OF COL. VON STAUFFENBERG ASCENDING THROUGH THE SMOKE AND DULL FLAMES OF PURGATORY

IN ORPHEUS OPENS HIS MORNING MAIL we get more of Justice’s peculiar sense of humor. In this four line poem Justice takes to the extreme several absurdities, including the long line free verse of Type C itself.

Here is the fourth and final line of ORPHEUS OPENS HIS MORNING MAIL:
“Finally, an invitation to attend certain rites to be celebrated, come equinox, on the river bank. I am to be guest of honor. As always, I rehearse the scene in advance: the dark; the guards, tipsy as usual, sonorously snoring; a rustling, suddenly, among the reeds; the fitful illumination of ankles, whitely flashing… Afterwards, I shall probably be asked to recite my poems. But O my visions my vertigoes! Have I imagined it only, the perverse gentility of their shrieks?”

And this is not the longest line in ORPHEUS OPENS HIS MORNING MAIL. This little commentary on idle / idol worship strikes me as appropo.

(Doing a Danel Nester impresson tonight...we are going to the WE WILL ROCK YOU musical here at Ballys. Down $30 at the Hold'em tables. Wife is up $130.Sot a 99 on Desert Pines this morning.)

PART III More idle (sic) worship tomorrow…