Hello again! Dr. Musgrove here. Welcome back to our course together. As always, please take a moment to get settled into a place and time that is distraction-free and peaceful, and a sitting position that is comfortable so that you can focus your attention and energy on learning the ideas I'll be presenting in this video lecture. In addition, once you are ready, make sure you have the method you like for taking notes during this lecture, either by writing or drawing them by hand, or by opening another window and typing them. Whatever method you use, just pause the video along the way when you want to write or draw as ideas or questions come up in your mind. Let me also encourage you to give yourself permission to take your time and feel confident and proud about what you are learning. You'll learn best if you think of your notes as a creative act, by putting what you are learning into your own words and images rather than copying information directly from the lecture. These notes, custom-created by you, will also help you prepare for the reflection assignment that follows the viewing of this lecture. In this lecture, I'd like to introduce some basic concepts that will help us in our study of poetry, both as a genre and as a discipline, especially as they relate to shape in poetry. Previously, we focused on the four elements of the text: author, reader, form, and topic. These are presented in the visual of the subdivided triangle to show how they can be identified and discussed separately, but also to accentuate their relationships within what the text has to offer. However, in this lecture, we will be focusing on the form and what it delivers specifically in the shape or the body of the poem. Also mentioned previously, there are five elements authors use to create poetry. They are the basic language elements of: shape line music comparison balance These five elements must be in place for a poem to be a poem. Ultimately, we will be looking for ways these elements are assembled artfully and create poetic beauty. The first thing we notice, in most cases unconsciously of course, is the body of the poem and its figure on the page. These shapes may be small or large, wide or thin, tall or short, ordered or random, stanzaed or not. And though we may not consciously acknowledge the shape of the poem on the page, we often do respond to this shape in automatic ways that motivate us to turn away from the poem or to see it as a more welcoming presence. There are some who even go "blind" when they see a poem on the page; their previous experiences have been so unproductive and unpleasant. It is very much similar to the way we respond to other visual information in our lives, depending upon the kind and size of the body, shape, image, or color we see. This includes shapes of natural objects like trees and mountains and bodies of water, or the size of a meal, or the size of a book, or the size of a dog, or the size of a car, the size of a house, especially the size and color of another person. We all come with assumptions and learned prejudices that automatically prompt us to respond to the shapes and forms and colors we see with deeply embedded emotional habits like fear or desire before we even realize it. In any case, the visual impact of the poem on the page, even before we read the title or the first line, triggers a response in our mind and determines whether we think we are up to the challenge to develop a relationship or not. So, here are the aspects of shape: Image: A concrete pattern or shape is composed to visually depict the subject of the poem. Length: The degree to which a poem is short or long on the page, as well as its corresponding emotional impact (e.g., a short poem may be more inviting than a long poem). Regularity or irregularity: This is the degree to which a poem is consistently shaped (e.g., a consistently shaped poem will have a different aesthetic impact than an inconsistently shaped poem). Open space: This is the absence of text, both the framing of the poem on the page and the white space between letters, words, lines, and stanzas. Stanza: A unit of a poem, often repeated in the same form throughout a poem, a unit of poetic lines, also known sometimes as the first paragraph. Width: The degree to which a poem is narrow or wide on the page, as well as its corresponding emotional impact (e.g., a narrow poem may be more inviting than a wide poem initially, though a wide poem will have its satisfactions as well). The example poems we're going to look at come from a nice collection titled The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy, edited by John Brim. So, here's an example of an image poem titled "Old Geezer" by A.R. Ammons, who lived to be 76 years old. In this case, you see how the poem quickens or gets shorter line by line as it travels down the page: Old Geezer the quickest way to change the world is to like it the way it is The subject of the poem is quickness, that is, the sooner we learn to accept things as they are, the happier we'll be. There may be other image poems that are shaped to mirror other topics or objects, but in this case, the shape or body of the poem corresponds to its subject. In other words, its form on the page is an appropriate container for what it contains, its topic. This is also an excellent example of what we call balance or aesthetic unity in a poem. The next aspect of shape is length. This is the degree to which a poem is short or long on the page, as well as its corresponding emotional impact. That is, a short poem may be more inviting than a long poem. In some cases, the poem on the left is brief; the poem on the right is long. On the left, a poem by Ezra Pound: In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. Ezra Pound's poem is a very brief poem, similar to the form of a haiku. It is a simple description of people's faces in a crowded subway station. They are phantom apparitions, anonymous without features, but delicate as wet blossoms on a dark tree branch. This contrast between the ghost-white petals and the darkness of the metro station accentuates the contrast not only in color but highlights the dehumanized and anonymous life of those crowded together in the damp underground. In other words, even though the poem is very short, it represents a form of poem, haiku, that is both the result of intense contemplation upon the visual content of the natural world as well as its relationship to human thought and feeling. It is also a form that requires intense contemplation by the reader. So, the size of the poem is meant to be similar to the potential impact of a seed or acorn, rather than a small pebble or speck of dust. Ruth Stone's poem is a much longer poem in comparison, but by no means as long as others in our anthology or as long as an epic poem or ballad. Train Ride by Ruth Stone All things come to an end: small calves in Arkansas, the bend of the muddy river. Do all things come to an end? No, they go on forever. They go on forever: the swamp, the vine-choked cypress, the oaks rattling last year’s leaves, the thump of the rails, the kite, the still, white, stilted heron. All things come to an end: the red clay bank, the spread hawk, the bodies riding this train, the stalled truck, pale sunlight. The talk, the talk goes on forever: the wide, dry field of geese, a man stopped near his porch to watch. Release, release. Between cold death and a fever, send what you will, I will listen. All things come to an end. No, they go on forever. So, this poem has an effect upon the reader, who may not want to dedicate the time necessary to read it through and consider its potential emotional impact and relevance. In this poem, we have a long train ride wherein the narrator is noticing things along the way. There's also the debate between whether all things come to an end or go on forever. The length of the poem on the page makes a space for this noticing, and though the poem ends at the bottom of the page, the narrator claims that these sorts of debates about the end of the world or human life will always continue. In other words, the container is long, but it is also open at the bottom, representing the narrator's view that there is no end. The listening will continue. Here we have some examples of regular and irregular shapes in poetry. This is the degree to which a poem is consistently shaped; that is, a consistently shaped poem will have a different aesthetic impact than an inconsistently shaped poem. The poem on the left is a thin poem with consistently shaped or regular stanzas. This is another poem by Ammons; it's titled "Reflective." I found a weed that had a mirror in it and that mirror looked in at a mirror in me that had a weed in it. And then the poem on the right is an inconsistently shaped poem, and one long stanza: The Joke by Rod Paget When Jesus found himself nailed to the cross, crushed with despair, crying out, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” he enacted the story of every person who suddenly realizes not that he or she has been forsaken but there never was a forsaker, for the idea of immortality that is the birthright of every human being gradually vanishes until it is gone, and we cry out. The regularity of the poem on the left, "Reflective," is also an image poem because it reflects or mirrors its subject, reflection. The speaker discovers a doubling between the weed and the speaker's self: the weed is the speaker, and the speaker is the weed. The four stanzas also double, split between the first two ("the weed with mirror in it") and the second two ("the mirror with a weed in it"). The three-line stanzas might also be said to reflect the number of characters in this poem: the weed, the mirror, and the speaker. The title itself, "Reflective," mirrors the mirroring that will be going on in the poem. The container of the poem fits the contained topic; balance, aesthetic unity, appears again here. The irregularity of the poem on the right, "The Joke," is represented in the casual and informal tone of the poem. A joke is casual and informal; a joke is a casual and informal language trick, a kind of kidding not to be taken seriously. But this casual and informal presentation, as it is shaped on the page, contains a more serious message. In other words, the casual or irregular form is joking with us because the topic is very serious indeed. Immortality is not available to us; it was never even promised to us. And when we face death at last, we cry out because we believe somehow, even though the evidence points elsewhere, that we alone deserve to live forever. The form is also irregular because it reflects how irregular that belief in our immortality should be; it's not consistent with what we should know to be true about human mortality. Again, the container of the poem fits the contained; they are unified in purpose. The next aspect is the open space we find around a poem. This is the absence of text, both the framing of the poem on the page and the white space between letters, words, lines, and stanzas. This aspect focuses not on the image or shape of the poem as much as on the negative or open and white area of the page—how the poem's words, lines, and stanzas are framed—as well as its emotional aspect. In other words, the shapes of these two poems are like this and this, but the white space of the page is like this. White space framing the left poem accentuates the concentrated nature of the small poem as it sits on the left top position of the page. The white space framing the right poem accentuates the regular short stanzas and the space between the stanzas. To be honest and clear, these frames are decisions that to some degree depend upon how the design editor of this book positioned these poems: one per page, on a particular size page, and in a particular letter size. Still, the framing can accentuate the visual image of the poem, or more specifically, attention to this framing is a reminder that poetry is always a visual art. Spatial relationships matter. Poets carefully and intentionally place words and lines and stanzas on the page. These shapes and their relationships to each other and to other dynamics on the page represent self-imposed constraints of size and pattern. To put it another way, a poet is always working in two kinds of images: the images of description and the image of the poem on the page. Again, any correspondence between these images—a container and the contained—demonstrates a skilled poet and artist and the desire for balance and aesthetic unity. When interested and skilled readers attend to these relationships and look for opportunities to find balance in those relationships as well, they acknowledge that poets are doing more than working within the limits of words and sentences and metaphor and repetition. The shape of the poem and its visual impact as a whole on the page offers another opportunity to communicate thought and feeling. The small poem on the left is a wide frame of white by Issa. This haiku: The distant mountains are reflected in the eye of the dragonfly. Visually, with such a vast amount of white space, the poem can be understood to be off in the distance like a giant mountain, but small in terms of the larger landscape, tiny as the eye of a dragonfly, and even tinier as a reflection in that eye. Contemplating on this comparison in size, this equivalency, the poet asks us to imagine the faraway mountain and the close-up of the dragonfly as no more important or grander than the other. They are both brought into focus and balanced, large and small, and unified in a miniature poem positioned on a large page. The larger poem on the right has a thinner frame of white and white between the four two-line stanzas by Po Chü-i: Autumn Thoughts Sent Far Away We share all these disappointments, a failing autumn a thousand miles apart. This is where autumn wind easily plunders courtyard trees, but the sorrows of distance never scatter away. Swallow shadows shake out homeward wings, orchid scents thin drifting from old thickets. These lovely seasons and fragrant years falling lonely away, we share such emptiness here. Superficially, this poem is very consistently presented. Again, there are four two-line stanzas, and the lines have the same length throughout. The frame of white, like the lines and stanzas, attempts a symmetry or balance on the page. This highly controlled space is reflected in the poet's desire to control both the distance and the loneliness the poet is expressing here. By that, I mean the balanced frame and consistent space between the stanzas reflect the poet's attempt to portray the permanence of "the sorrows of distance never scatter away" and the "emptiness" the poet says they share. The consistent white space between the stanzas also slows the reader down. There's no obvious reason why the sentences should be paired and spaced apart in this way, but the space between stanzas does suggest that the reader should pause and take more time, as if the declining year in autumn reflects the sadness of an aging poet, slowing down and falling lonely away. Stanza may be the most familiar of spatial aspects in poetry. Stanza is a unit of a poem, often repeated in the same form throughout the poem, a unit of poetic lines, also known sometimes as a first paragraph. The poem on the left has three four-line stanzas by William Stafford: Listening My father could hear a little animal step or a moth in the dark against the screen, and every far sound called the listening out into places where the rest of us had never been. More spoke to him from the soft wild night than came to our porch for us on the wind; we could watch him look up and his face go keen till the walls of the world flared, widened. My father heard so much that we still stand inviting the quiet by turning the face, waiting for a time when something in the night will touch us too from that other place. The poem on the right has five two-line stanzas, another poem by Ammons, this one titled "Clarifications." The crows mangled powder white arrive floundering through the heavy snowfall; they land ruffling stark black on the spruce boughs and chisel the neighborhood sharp with their cries. "Listening" by Stafford uses three regularly rhyming stanzas to communicate three main ideas in three sentences, each stanza a complete sentence. The first stanza describes the father's power of listening beyond what the children can hear. The second stanza describes the children carefully watching the father's face as he listens. The third stanza describes the children attempting to be as good at listening as the father. But this is more than a poem about listening; it's also about connecting with the father, becoming the father themselves. In other words, the first stanza is the father's stanza, the second stanza is the children's stanza, the third stanza is the transformation of the children into the father—a spiritual union only made possible by attending carefully to what very few can hear and be touched by it. In other words, the three stanzas are chosen not because Stafford had more than two or less than four; he needs three containers to accomplish his specific purpose. "Clarifications" by Ammons uses one sentence broken into five stanzas to describe the awkward flight of crows in a heavy snowfall, landing on spruce branches as they shake off the snow and send their sharp cries into the neighborhood. The title "Clarifications" refers both to the blackening of the crows as they throw off their white shrouds of snow and their calls that chisel through the muffled silence a heavy snowfall makes. The five brief and short-line stanzas reflect the different crows, the different movements, and their different moments of arrival on the tree branch, as well as the distinctly timed cries of the crows. The five black-worded stanzas on the white background of the page also present a visual representation of the standing crows framed in the snowfall. The final aspect of space on our list is width. Width is the degree to which a poem is narrow or wide on the page, as well as its corresponding emotional impact. That is, a narrow poem may be more inviting than a wide poem. The poem on the left is thin, by K. Ryan: The Niagara River As though the river were a floor, we position our table and chairs upon it, eat and have conversation. As it moves along, we notice, as calmly as though dining-room paintings were being replaced, the changing scenes along the shore. We do know. We do know this is the Niagara River but it is hard to remember what that means. And the poem on the right is wide, another poem by Stafford: It's All Right Someone you trusted has treated you bad. Someone has used you to vent their ill temper. Did you expect anything different? Your work, better than some others, has languished neglected, or a job you tried was too hard and you failed. Maybe weather or bad luck spoiled what you did. That grudge held against you for years after you patched up has flared and you've lost a friend for a time. Things at home aren't so good, on the job your spirits have sunk. But just when the worst bears down, you find a pretty bubble in your soup at noon, and outside at work a bird says, “Hi.” Slowly the sun creeps along the floor. It is coming your way. It touches your shoe. These poems are of particular widths, and these are not random choices. The choices in form, including shape, are just as intentional as the emotional content. The poem on the left is thin because it is also an image poem that reflects the narrow shape of a river. It is also a poem that comes to a stop. In other words, if we remember what it means to be on the Niagara River, we know that we better get off of it before it turns into the Niagara Falls. It is also a poem about forgetting the dangers of a river and thinking it is just a floor. The poem on the right is wide because it is intended to be a weightier or heavier poem in terms of its subject matter, which is that the world will weigh heavy on all of us. We will be betrayed and under-appreciated and misunderstood and unforgiven. But as the title of the poem says, "It's All Right." We will also find beautiful surprises that will lift us up. Given this moment of clarity and renewed focus, we will have the strength to carry the burdens that will always come knocking on our doors. But in the end, as the end of the poem argues, it will be worth it to persevere through even to the end of the poem itself. Again, both poems then are wide, are appropriately shaped containers for their messages. Form and content are balanced in an aesthetic unity. Okay, there you have it: the aspects of shape as one of the formal causes of beauty in poetry, one at a time—image, length, regularity or irregularity, the open space, the stanza, and width. In a previous lecture, I introduced the concept of poetic consciousness and how the discipline of poetry can provide us training in developing mindfulness, and that poetry itself, especially their poetry and haiku, can be understood as brief guided meditations. In other words, poets create through verse an opportunity for us to practice a heightened sense of conscious attention. Poetry is also designed to give us continual practice in sharpening and directing our attention so that we can give better attention to ourselves, to others, and to the world for the benefit of everyone. When we consciously attend to the shape of poems and their various aspects on the page, we also gain practice in consciously attending to other visual information and spatial relationships we encounter in our daily lives, moment-to-moment. And these would not only be about how the spatial relationships exist exterior to us, but how our shapes and our bodies fit in and relate to other shapes and other bodies. And this includes how the perceptions we have of the shapes of our own bodies—good or bad, fit or unfit, beautiful or not—have been shaped by other bodies. Okay, so this is the end of this lecture. If you wish to review, please watch again and take notes along the way that will help you remember what you've experienced. One of the main topics I'd like you to remember from this lecture is that the shapes and spatial relationships of poems on their pages are powerful contributions to what the text has to offer to us in a reading relationship. They are often unconscious contributions to our attitude toward these poems and to whether we decide to reach in and try to find ourselves in the words and the images and emotional friendships offered there. As always, email me if you have any questions or concerns about this lecture or our course together.