#robert pinsky

[redfield-by]

Жыхары (мешканцы) Пінска. Цікава чуць палескі говар, які нагадвае украінскую мову.

[7r0773r]

The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide by Robert Pinsky

Now winter nights enlarge The number of their hours, And clouds their storms discharge Upon the airy towers.*

I think that if a reader understands that accent is relative, and that it comes in degrees, and understands, moreover, that accent is sometimes reinforced by quantity (a synonym for "duration"), and sometimes not, then the reader will better perceive the attractive, dance-like rhythm in these lines.

Here is a specific analysis to show what I mean. In the first line, the three pairs of syllables (the technical word for such a pair or unit is "foot," plural "feet") create a pleasing effect of crescendo: changes in degree of accent, changes in the difference between the unaccented and accented parts of each foot, changes in quantity, and the way the verb "enlarge" swells or reaches over the line ending toward its object "The number"—all of these elements contribute to the process of crescendo over the three feet, in three corresponding stages.

More minutely: in the first foot, the difference between the unstressed and stressed syllables is relatively slight, with the longer but unstressed syllable "Now" preceding the shorter but stressed vowel in the first syllable of "winter." The effect is a kind of acceleration from the long, unstressed syllable to the short, stressed one, with maybe some sense of tension in what might be called the "interference pattern" between quantity and accent. Then, in the second foot, the difference between the two halves is more distinct, with maybe a less strained or tense movement, because here the duration and accent are in less conflict, though the unstressed syllable of the foot (the "ter" of "winter") is pretty long in quantity. And in the final, third foot, which consists of the word "enlarge," the difference between the two halves is quite distinct: duration and accent both emphasize the second syllable of the word.

This little movement is from quick and tense toward increasingly slow and luxuriant.

*Thomas Campion, "Now Winter Nights Enlarge." (pp. 18-19)

***

A few other terms, of occasional usefulness: one is "sprung rhythm." Sometimes an unstressed syllable is omitted, jamming two stressed syllables together; thus, Fulke Greville writes, about arising in the middle of the night to pursue a forbidden love affair:

Up I start believing well To see if Cynthia were awake; Wonders I saw, who can tell? And thus unto myself I spake.*

The second and fourth lines are straightforward four-foot, essentially iambic lines. The first line omits the first syllable, and the remarkable third line omits the unstressed syllable before "who," creating a double stress "saw, who" in the middle of his line; that is, Greville did not write the more conventional lines,

So up I start believing well To see if Cynthia were awake; Wonders I saw, that who can tell? And thus unto myself I spake.

This small difference, emphasizing the accents, makes the lines that much more various and, in the context of the narrative, that much more sexy—and, perhaps, less complacent and more off-balance.

*Fulke Greville, Caelica, #56. (p. 62)

[quotefeeling]

The heart grows brutal from feeding on fantasies.

Robert Pinsky, , “In Defense of Allusion”

[othellho]

Robert Pinsky, Country Music.

[thehopefulquotes]

The heart grows brutal from feeding on fantasies.

Robert Pinsky, , “In Defense of Allusion”

[catmint1]

Part of making a poem is a process of day-dreaming.

—Robert Pinsky, Singing School: Learning to Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying with the Masters

[thoughtkick]

The heart grows brutal from feeding on fantasies.

Robert Pinsky, , “In Defense of Allusion”

[chapelofthechimes]

Robert Pinsky, "Impossible to Tell"

To Robert Hass and in Memory of Elliot Gilbert

Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,    Bashō and his friends go out to view the moon;    In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,

The secret courtesy that courses like ichor    Through the old form of the rude, full-scale joke,    Impossible to tell in writing. “Bashō”

He named himself, “Banana Tree”: banana    After the plant some grateful students gave him,    Maybe in appreciation of his guidance

Threading a long night through the rules and channels    Of their collaborative linking-poem    Scored in their teacher’s heart: live, rigid, fluid

Like passages etched in a microscopic circuit.    Elliot had in his memory so many jokes They seemed to breed like microbes in a culture

Inside his brain, one so much making another    It was impossible to tell them all:    In the court-culture of jokes, a top banana.

Imagine a court of one: the queen a young mother,    Unhappy, alone all day with her firstborn child    And her new baby in a squalid apartment

Of too few rooms, a different race from her neighbors.    She tells the child she’s going to kill herself.    She broods, she rages. Hoping to distract her,

The child cuts capers, he sings, he does imitations    Of different people in the building, he jokes,    He feels if he keeps her alive until the father   

Gets home from work, they’ll be okay till morning.    It’s laughter versus the bedroom and the pills.    What is he in his efforts but a courtier?

Impossible to tell his whole delusion. In the first months when I had moved back East    From California and had to leave a message

On Bob’s machine, I used to make a habit Of telling the tape a joke; and part-way through,    I would pretend that I forgot the punchline,

Or make believe that I was interrupted— As though he’d be so eager to hear the end    He‘d have to call me back. The joke was Elliot’s,

More often than not. The doctors made the blunder    That killed him some time later that same year.    One day when I got home I found a message

On my machine from Bob. He had a story    About two rabbis, one of them tall, one short,    One day while walking along the street together

They see the corpse of a Chinese man before them,    And Bob said, sorry, he forgot the rest.    Of course he thought that his joke was a dummy,

Impossible to tell—a dead-end challenge.    But here it is, as Elliot told it to me: The dead man’s widow came to the rabbis weeping,

Begging them, if they could, to resurrect him.    Shocked, the tall rabbi said absolutely not.    But the short rabbi told her to bring the body

Into the study house, and ordered the shutters    Closed so the room was night-dark. Then he prayed    Over the body, chanting a secret blessing

Out of Kabala. “Arise and breathe,” he shouted;    But nothing happened. The body lay still. So then    The little rabbi called for hundreds of candles

And danced around the body, chanting and praying    In Hebrew, then Yiddish, then Aramaic. He prayed    In Turkish and Egyptian and Old Galician

For nearly three hours, leaping about the coffin    In the candlelight so that his tiny black shoes    Seemed not to touch the floor. With one last prayer

Sobbed in the Spanish of before the Inquisition He stopped, exhausted, and looked in the dead man’s face.    Panting, he raised both arms in a mystic gesture

And said, “Arise and breathe!” And still the body Lay as before. Impossible to tell In words how Elliot’s eyebrows flailed and snorted

Like shaggy mammoths as—the Chinese widow    Granting permission—the little rabbi sang    The blessing for performing a circumcision

And removed the dead man’s foreskin, chanting blessings    In Finnish and Swahili, and bathed the corpse    From head to foot, and with a final prayer

In Babylonian, gasping with exhaustion, He seized the dead man’s head and kissed the lips    And dropped it again and leaping back commanded,

“Arise and breathe!” The corpse lay still as ever.    At this, as when Bashō’s disciples wind    Along the curving spine that links the renga

Across the different voices, each one adding    A transformation according to the rules    Of stasis and repetition, all in order

And yet impossible to tell beforehand,   Elliot changes for the punchline: the wee    Rabbi, still panting, like a startled boxer,

Looks at the dead one, then up at all those watching,    A kind of Mel Brooks gesture: “Hoo boy!” he says,    “Now that’s what I call really dead.” O mortal

Powers and princes of earth, and you immortal    Lords of the underground and afterlife,    Jehovah, Raa, Bol-Morah, Hecate, Pluto,

What has a brilliant, living soul to do with    Your harps and fires and boats, your bric-a-brac    And troughs of smoking blood? Provincial stinkers,

Our languages don’t touch you, you’re like that mother    Whose small child entertained her to beg her life.    Possibly he grew up to be the tall rabbi,

The one who washed his hands of all those capers    Right at the outset. Or maybe he became    The author of these lines, a one-man renga

The one for whom it seems to be impossible    To tell a story straight. It was a routine    Procedure. When it was finished the physicians

Told Sandra and the kids it had succeeded, But Elliot wouldn’t wake up for maybe an hour,    They should go eat. The two of them loved to bicker

In a way that on his side went back to Yiddish,    On Sandra’s to some Sicilian dialect.    He used to scold her endlessly for smoking.

When she got back from dinner with their children    The doctors had to tell them about the mistake.    Oh swirling petals, falling leaves! The movement

Of linking renga coursing from moment to moment    Is meaning, Bob says in his Haiku book.    Oh swirling petals, all living things are contingent,

Falling leaves, and transient, and they suffer.    But the Universal is the goal of jokes,    Especially certain ethnic jokes, which taper

Down through the swirling funnel of tongues and gestures    Toward their preposterous Ithaca. There’s one    A journalist told me. He heard it while a hero

Of the South African freedom movement was speaking    To elderly Jews. The speaker’s own right arm    Had been blown off by right-wing letter-bombers.

He told his listeners they had to cast their ballots    For the ANC—a group the old Jews feared    As “in with the Arabs.” But they started weeping

As the old one-armed fighter told them their country    Needed them to vote for what was right, their vote    Could make a country their children could return to

From London and Chicago. The moved old people    Applauded wildly, and the speaker’s friend    Whispered to the journalist, “It’s the Belgian Army

Joke come to life.” I wish that I could tell it    To Elliot. In the Belgian Army, the feud Between the Flemings and Walloons grew vicious,

So out of hand the army could barely function.    Finally one commander assembled his men    In one great room, to deal with things directly.

They stood before him at attention. “All Flemings,”    He ordered, “to the left wall.” Half the men Clustered to the left. “Now all Walloons,” he ordered,

“Move to the right.” An equal number crowded    Against the right wall. Only one man remained At attention in the middle: “What are you, soldier?”

Saluting, the man said, “Sir, I am a Belgian.” “Why, that’s astonishing, Corporal—what’s your name?”    Saluting again, “Rabinowitz,” he answered:

A joke that seems at first to be a story    About the Jews. But as the renga describes    Religious meaning by moving in drifting petals

And brittle leaves that touch and die and suffer    The changing winds that riffle the gutter swirl,    So in the joke, just under the raucous music

Of Fleming, Jew, Walloon, a courtly allegiance    Moves to the dulcimer, gavotte and bow,    Over the banana tree the moon in autumn—

Allegiance to a state impossible to tell.