POETICA : 4
6 Dec 20 Sun
Poem of
the Week
Between
Walls
By
William Carlos Williams
the back wings
of the
hospital where
nothing
will grow lie
cinders
in which shine
the broken
pieces of a green
bottle
Theme
Poetry and Punctuation –II
Punctuation is a marker in syntax which is an
important area in grammar. It simply means ‘connecting words in a meaningful
order’. And punctuation is its handmaiden of syntax in this process of
organization. What is important to see is that poetry communicates meaning by a
different kind of grammar of the same language. It operates on a higher level
of semantics. All the ingredients of language – clause, phrase, collocations, word-formation,
etc - regularly used in prose, and fully organized according to the set rules
of its grammar, change their character as they enter into the realm of poetry.
They become more fluid and flexible to innovative experimentation. For example,
in the poem quoted above: it’s one single sentence from ‘the back wings’ to
‘green bottle’. The first ‘the’ does not begin with a capital ‘T’, as in a
normal sentence, and there is no comma after ‘grow’ which would be a definite
requisite in a normal sentence. Also, there is no full stop to end the
sentence. All this pertains only to orthography, or the normal accepted way of
writing or printing a sentence.
Obviously, it doesn’t follow the normal rules of
grammar – of normal prose. It’s on a higher level of communication, where you
need a different set of equipment to experience and respond. The only ruse is
that the words look all too familiar and easy. Though some of the words, too,
are sometimes fractured, like pieces of a broken mirror. And it’s all arranged
in a new form, as you saw in e e cummings’ poem quoted in P-2, where
‘fall-i-ng’ was a fractured word. That poem (or piece of a longer poem) wasn’t
even a regular sentence – but, rather, pieces of a sentence in a jumble. No
capital letters, no full stop. An end bracket with its first counterpart
missing. You notice many other quirks.
No, it doesn’t even look like normal poetry. In
fact, Cummings was one of the most innovative experimenters in modernist
poetry. Modernist poetry had experimenters of all kinds, indeed! You heard
Williams about not using rhymes and capital letters beginning each line of
written/ printed poetry. ‘Between Walls’ has no capital letters(except in its
title, which is only an identification tag). In fact, it’s all about fluidity
of thought in poetry. After all, we are not saying or hearing something
ordinary, as we do in prose. Poetry is not of the ordinary. It works on a
frequency that is much higher.
William Carlos Williams [1883-1963] is a major
modernist American poet. He was a doctor (paediatrician) by profession. Here in
the poem he presents only a single vivid image – just as in Imagist poetry: ‘hard,
concrete image captured in the minimum words’. Williams was a close friend of
Ezra Pound and Hilda Dolittle. The single image of a ‘broken bottle’ looked at
intently evokes a response; may be a personal response by the reader, as
intended by the poet. The crucial words are – hospital, cinders, green bottle,
and ‘where nothing will grow’. The poem works by symbolism where every object
has an apparent as well as a metaphysical meaning.
Like so many of Williams’ poems, ‘Between Walls also
is experimental. “It lacks punctuation, relies on erratic or unusual lineation, and
generally dissolves the traditional boundaries between one thing, or idea, and
another. He had a famous maxim, ‘No ideas but in things,’which I take to
mean that to speak about ideas, emotions, and abstractions, we must ground them
firmly in the things of the world.” (CM
Teicher)
Williams has professed his aversion to rhymes and
the capital letter. We shall consider ‘rhyme’ later in our discourse, but what
does he gain by not using capital letters, as he says – “The decision lasted all the rest of my
life”.
Let’s look at the non-use of capital letters in
poetry. An initial capital letter in every line of a poem serves primarily as a
line boundary marker. We don’t have this problem in non-roman script languages
like Hindi or Bangla or Urdu. The purpose is served by line-breaks only. But in
English poetry if this device of a line-break marker is not used, it will
instantly become like prose with continuous lineation, and will necessitate
punctuation more urgently - to keep the meaning well-organized; and without the
use of sentence markers (capital and full stop), any punctuation will look
quite illogical. The modernist’s argument is – they will use or not use it as
they need to and quite rarely; like the half bracket in Cummings. Because
modernist poetry pleads for total syntactical freedom for poetry.
Personally, not writing poetry under the influence
of any particular school, I, too, find punctuation a hindrance, except in rare
positions, and feel that the flow of the verse itself should indicate the
line-breaks (i.e. line lengths). However, I like to use capital letters only as
line-starters as it saves me from the compulsion of using all the other
punctuation markers. In fact, in my poems, initial capital letters are used
only as fence staves to create a boundary for the ‘garden of words’ on their
poem side – separating it from the blank margin. Williams would have none of
it.
Freedom is of essence in poetry, as Lawrence said in
P-2: “Not I, not I, but the
wind that blows through me!” You may have your window frames to allow the wind to blow in, but you
cannot hold it in your fists.
If you find poetry
close to song or music – something of an anti-thesis of prose in spirit and
form – the argument against use of
punctuation as a rule, holds water pretty well!
We shall consider
Williams’ repugnance of rhyme (alternatively spelt ‘rime’) in our next episode.
© Dr BSM Murty
Images
: Courtsey Google
Visit my 2 other blogs for more of my writings in Hindi & English : vibhutimurty.blogspot.com & vagishwari.blogspot.com
Contact : bsmmurty@gmail.com Mob No 7752922938
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