#jv cunningham

[ravedeath1990]

[ohtheladyboner]

from Doctor Drink, #1 - J. V. Cunningham

In the thirtieth year of life I took my heart to be my wife, And as I turn in bed by night I have my heart for my delight. No other heart may mine estrange For my heart changes as I change, And it is bound, and I am free, And with my death it dies with me.

[wordmakingpoets]

Poetry Analysis: “History of Ideas” by J. V. Cunningham

History of Ideas by J.V. Cunningham

God is love. Then by conversion Love is God, and sex conversion.

Sophomore year of college, I decided I would write a paper that was a decent chunk of my grade on a twelve-word poem. I’m pretty sure it started with me flipping through my anthology frantically trying to find a poem to write about and settling on something that looked easy. Then it turned into “challenge accepted” when I realized that twelve words is not many words at all. But I prevailed!--and got an A. Much of the following analysis is based on that paper. (It’s totally going to read like an essay. Sorry not sorry, folks.)

The meter and visual structure of “History of Ideas” establish both its mathematical pulse and the subject matters of math and sex. The poem is written in trochaic tetrameter with only one variation:

God is love. Then by conversion Love is God, and sex conversion.

After the meter is established by the first three words, the word “then” can potentially interrupt that meter by being stressed, turning the second foot into a spondee and the third into a pyrrhic substitution. This reading is not definitive, as the already-established trochaic pulse may create a singsong pattern that maintains the meter. However, when read most naturally, the poem suggests a caesura after “love,” which allows for “then” to be easily stressed. This reading, which more closely mimics natural speech, highlights the word “sex” in the second line, as the poem moves from relative metrical chaos to organization. The perfect trochaic tetrameter contrasts with the preceding line, and the stressed “sex” stands out by maintaining the meter where previously “then by” did not.

This poem is a treat visually if it’s in the right typeface, lining up like a balanced equation. The two lines are mirrors of each other, each with six words, and four of those six repeated. Again, “sex” becomes very obvious as it breaks the pattern of repeated words, and unlike “then,” “by,” or “and,” it carries heavy connotations. The poem may further be divided into four equal segments of three words each. These segments are all separated from one another by punctuation or a line break, and Cunningham actually forgoes grammar to maintain these equal parts. There should be a comma following “sex” because of the implied “is” from the previous clause. A comma would interrupt the visual harmony of four equal segments, while a third “is” would change the meter, the three-word segments, and the pattern of repeating a word only once. The resulting twelve-word poem looks like a balanced equation, structured so intentionally that the rules of grammar are broken.

Y’all. The grammar nerd in me is freaking out that Cunningham manages to break grammar and have it help his poem. And I’m also pretty sure “then” could use a comma after it, as it is technically an adverbial clause… but don’t quote me on that. If that’s the case, Cunningham’s broken grammar seems doubly intentional!

“God is Love” is a familiar sentiment. It comes from 1 John 4:8, which reads, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (ESV). Though not quoted, the allusion offered by the 1 John verse may allow for a biblical reading of the word “sex,” as in “two [becoming] one flesh” seen in Mark 10:8. This verse follows with Cunningham’s ideas of “conversion” and math. Math, sex, and religion become deeply connected.

The use of a mathematical structure and the word “conversion” alludes to logic. A converse statement asserts that if p = q, then q = p. The poem clearly follows this pattern by stating the God is love and love is God, but it also breaks the rule by using two kinds of love. The “love” from 1 John is agape, unconditional love, while the second “love” is likely the passionate eros as it closely connected with sex. This poem is actually saying that if p = q, then Q = p, but q and Q are, though similar, not the same. It is also uncertain if the two different uses of “God” have the same meaning. The first “God” is clearly the Judeo-Christian personal God, but the second “God” can be read as an abstract, driving force rather than a sentient being. (Think “Our Love is God” from Heathers. If you’re not listening to Heathers--go do that!) In using different meanings of the same words in his argument, Cunningham both appeals to and rejects the rules of logic. Reducing religious and philosophical statements to simple mathematics requires one to bend the rules of logic.

...And now the title, the part of the poem I totally skipped when I wrote my paper. I’m still wrestling with it a bit. In a way, this poem is its own “history,” a timeline or flowchart showing the evolution of Christian fundamentalism into a sort of pagan, “free love” ideology. Or maybe the title refers to the various time periods from which its themes come: first-century early Church, Aristotelian logic rules, the 20th century sexual revolution, the primitive drive for sex. I’m not sure what exactly I think of the title, except that Cunningham likes poking holes in things. If the poem is meant to be a timeline of sorts, the history if out of order; “God is Love” comes from the first century whereas converse statements in logic predate by a few centuries. Then, he jumps back to the Christian sense of “conversion.” These big ideas just won’t fit into the tiny boxes he’s putting them in--and I think that’s the point.

“History of Ideas” is a carefully-crafted poem that maximizes the use of its twelve words. The poem suggests a reductionist perspective, that God, love, sex, and even poetry may be reduced to simple mathematics. At the same time, Cunningham intentionally breaks the rules of logic and grammar in making his argument, so perhaps there are still things that math cannot explain.

[poetryforpixel-blog]

Meditation on Statistical Method

J. V. Cunningham

Plato, despair! We prove by norms How numbers bear Empiric forms, How random wrong Will average right If time be long And errors slight; But in our hearts Hyperbole Curves and departs To infinity. Error is boundless. Nor hope nor doubt, Though both be groundless, Will average out.

[wordinhand]

On a cold night I came through the cold rain And false snow to the wind shrill on your pane With no hope and no anger and no fear.  Who are you? and with whom do you sleep here?

   53     J.V. Cunningham

[the-end-of-art]

With every woman

62 by J. V. Cunningham You ask me how Contempt who claims to sleep With every woman that has ever been Can still maintain that women are skin deep? They never let him any deeper in.

[quotesandpoemsandthings-blo-blog]

Epigram You ask me how Contempt, who claims to sleep With every woman that has ever been Can still maintain that women are skin deep? They never let him any deeper in.

-J.V. Cunningham

[dontmesswithalady]

29 History of ideas God is love. Then by conversion Love is God, and sex conversion. 33 On a cold night I came through the cold rain And false snow to the wind shrill on your pane With no hope and no anger and no fear. Who are you? And with whom do you sleep here? 55 I had gone broke, and got set to come back, And lost, on a hot day and a fast track, On a long shot at long odds, a black mare By Hatred out of Envy by Despair. 62 You ask me how Contempt who claims to sleep With every woman that has ever been Can still maintain that women are skin deep? They never let him any deeper in. 76 Good Fortune, when I hailed her recently, Passed by me with the intimacy of shame As one that in the dark had handled me And could no longer recollect my name.

from A Century of Epigrams by JV Cunningham