1 00:00:01,170 --> 00:00:05,300 [Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] So if you haven't. 2 00:00:15,050 --> 00:00:25,630 Welcome. Can everyone hear me? Great. Um, I take as my text this evening an aphorism from Oblique Strategies. 3 00:00:25,650 --> 00:00:29,070 Repetition is a form of change. 4 00:00:30,480 --> 00:00:34,920 Oblique strategies, if you haven't run into them, is the name of a deck of cards. 5 00:00:35,520 --> 00:00:45,780 Um. The first edition in 1975 contained 113 cards with various pieces of gnomic advice for recording artists and musicians, 6 00:00:46,290 --> 00:00:56,040 but which nearly always apply equally well to any creativity, any creative act, and two songwriters of the ditties of no tune that we call poems. 7 00:00:57,040 --> 00:01:01,900 Invented by the painter Peter Schmidt and recording artist and musician Brian Eno. 8 00:01:02,350 --> 00:01:12,310 Um. The cards in Eno's own description quote, evolved from our separate observations on the principles underlying what we were doing. 9 00:01:12,880 --> 00:01:18,010 Sometimes they were recognised in retrospect intellect, catching up with intuition. 10 00:01:18,340 --> 00:01:21,340 Sometimes they were identified as they were happening. 11 00:01:21,550 --> 00:01:25,300 Sometimes they were formulated. So it was a way to get around. 12 00:01:25,330 --> 00:01:28,570 Um, I guess the recording artist version of writer's block. 13 00:01:28,930 --> 00:01:37,090 Um, when you're watching the clock tick while you're running up a big studio bill, or for a painter in the middle of a heavy painting session. 14 00:01:37,690 --> 00:01:46,269 Um, they realised that this pressuring time tended to get them away from the ways of thinking they found more productive, 15 00:01:46,270 --> 00:01:52,000 and the strategies were a way to jog the mind, um, of how one might progress. 16 00:01:52,750 --> 00:01:57,910 Um, so this here, a collation repetition is a form of change. 17 00:01:58,510 --> 00:02:02,050 Um, and that's actually one of Peter Smith's paintings. Um. 18 00:02:03,810 --> 00:02:09,020 Was something to me, a little bit like you can never step into the same river twice. 19 00:02:09,030 --> 00:02:16,980 Very Heraklion. Um, the other oblique strategy that is my favourite was the first one, which is honour thy error as a hidden intention. 20 00:02:17,610 --> 00:02:21,750 Um. Some others include. Use an old idea. 21 00:02:22,050 --> 00:02:27,150 State the problem in words as clearly as possible. Only one element of each kind. 22 00:02:27,360 --> 00:02:30,420 What would your closest friend do? What to increase. 23 00:02:30,570 --> 00:02:34,170 What to reduce? Are there sections? Consider transitions. 24 00:02:34,470 --> 00:02:37,590 Try faking it. Ask your body. 25 00:02:38,010 --> 00:02:41,489 Decorate. Decorate. Faced with a choice? 26 00:02:41,490 --> 00:02:46,230 Do both. Don't avoid what is easy. Work at a different speed. 27 00:02:46,680 --> 00:02:52,050 Do the washing up. That really works about as well as anything. 28 00:02:52,740 --> 00:02:56,879 Um, these act as a sort of sorts for Giuliani, for creativity. 29 00:02:56,880 --> 00:03:04,740 And I think one of the things that appeals to me about them, um, is their introduction of that random oracular element that divination, 30 00:03:04,740 --> 00:03:14,370 if you will, something that avant garde poets and poets who work and received form share is a belief in random constraints as a form of liberation, 31 00:03:14,670 --> 00:03:21,149 a giving up of control to the universe, which is to say, the muse, the avant garde poet, 32 00:03:21,150 --> 00:03:26,700 and the formalist are less in opposition to each other than they are both in opposition to the mainstream. 33 00:03:27,330 --> 00:03:36,360 But I digress. Back to repetition in art forms whose medium is air and time, music and poetry and utterance. 34 00:03:36,360 --> 00:03:43,950 For example, repetition makes visible and audible that hear a collection river that we can never touch as the exact same person. 35 00:03:44,310 --> 00:03:49,530 Repetition makes time audible and invisible, because by returning we see that we are changed, 36 00:03:49,800 --> 00:03:54,000 or the place where we were is not quite what we thought we thought it was. 37 00:03:54,330 --> 00:03:59,700 Repetition may be musical. Rhetorical. Humorous, emphatic. 38 00:03:59,700 --> 00:04:07,349 Dialectic. Epiphanic. There are many poetic forms of repetition that currently enjoy a great deal of popularity, 39 00:04:07,350 --> 00:04:10,830 such particularly as anaphora, repetition at the beginning of a line, 40 00:04:11,400 --> 00:04:23,040 um, and some of the popularity of forms of repetition may have to do with creative writing programs and their use of these as prompts or assignments. 41 00:04:23,400 --> 00:04:33,480 Thus, we see a host of villanelle sustenance triplets panting as guzzles, though for some reason hardly ever any rondos or ballads. 42 00:04:33,960 --> 00:04:39,330 And there are new inventions that take from several of these, such as Jericho Brown's Duplex. 43 00:04:39,360 --> 00:04:46,950 Duplex. Often when I see a contemporary poem in repeated forms, the repetitions are not verbatim, 44 00:04:46,950 --> 00:04:53,070 but in a sort of variation which can work wonderfully, perhaps most in literary blues poems. 45 00:04:53,610 --> 00:05:01,500 But I realise I am more interested in the change wrought or brought to light by strict repetition and repeated forms, 46 00:05:01,770 --> 00:05:04,919 but also in the use of return a motif, 47 00:05:04,920 --> 00:05:15,780 chorus, refrain or burden, an element poetry has borrowed from song and psalm, and even singular instances in a poem of a repeated line. 48 00:05:17,010 --> 00:05:27,830 Of these terms. I think refrain and burden are most potent as descriptions that both refrain and burden refer to a repeated element in a lyric. 49 00:05:27,840 --> 00:05:31,770 They come to this meaning by almost opposite paths. 50 00:05:32,160 --> 00:05:41,760 Refrain sounds as though it has something to do with restraint, but in fact comes from a breaking or interrupting, whereas burden, 51 00:05:41,760 --> 00:05:52,200 which sounds so onerous and poets love to pun on burden like heaving a heavy sigh, seems to come from a French word meaning the drone of a bumblebee. 52 00:05:52,200 --> 00:05:53,849 So it's a sort of obbligato. 53 00:05:53,850 --> 00:06:04,499 So one is an idea of a thought, um, that is intrusive and breaks through and the other of something kind of always being there in the background, 54 00:06:04,500 --> 00:06:08,730 a verbal earworm, the rain reigneth every day. 55 00:06:11,960 --> 00:06:18,290 I'm going to start with a poem that probably is known to most of you, and yet it's something of a one off. 56 00:06:18,860 --> 00:06:25,130 Perhaps there are many other poems by this poet, but this is the only one I've ever encountered. 57 00:06:25,730 --> 00:06:29,300 It was written while he was awaiting execution in the tower, 58 00:06:29,690 --> 00:06:36,260 and this execution would actually involve disembowelling before hanging, which seems overkill. 59 00:06:37,100 --> 00:06:43,880 Um, impending execution is perhaps the ultimate oblique strategy for shaking off writer's block. 60 00:06:45,680 --> 00:06:53,090 As Samuel Johnson has. It depended upon it, sir. When a man knows he is to be hanged, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. 61 00:06:53,960 --> 00:06:57,410 Um. So this by two the tick borne. 62 00:06:57,410 --> 00:07:00,710 I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, if I am pronouncing it correctly. 63 00:07:00,980 --> 00:07:04,280 Um, it sounds a little bit, um, like Lyme disease. 64 00:07:04,970 --> 00:07:11,390 Um, so the tick borne, um, here we have my prime of youth is but a frost of cares. 65 00:07:11,840 --> 00:07:18,320 My feast of joy is but a dish of pain. My crop of corn is but a field of tares. 66 00:07:18,680 --> 00:07:21,710 And all my good is but vain hope of gain. 67 00:07:22,250 --> 00:07:26,510 The day is gone. And yet I saw no sun. And now I live. 68 00:07:26,720 --> 00:07:32,280 And now my life is done. The spring is passed, and yet it hath not sprung. 69 00:07:32,790 --> 00:07:35,880 The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green. 70 00:07:36,480 --> 00:07:42,420 My youth is gone. And yet I am but young. I saw the world, and yet I was not seen. 71 00:07:42,930 --> 00:07:46,080 My thread is cut and yet it was not spun. 72 00:07:46,620 --> 00:07:53,070 And now I live. And now my life is done. I sought my death and found it in my womb. 73 00:07:53,520 --> 00:07:59,040 I looked for life and saw it was a shade. I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb. 74 00:07:59,610 --> 00:08:04,649 And now I die. And now I am but made. The glass is full. 75 00:08:04,650 --> 00:08:08,190 And now the glass is run. And now I live. 76 00:08:08,490 --> 00:08:17,100 And now my life is done. I'm used to calling this stanza form the Venus and Adonis stanza. 77 00:08:17,460 --> 00:08:20,900 Um, it rhymes b a, ab, c, c. 78 00:08:20,910 --> 00:08:25,080 Except this poem is from 1586 and Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. 79 00:08:25,140 --> 00:08:29,430 Adonis is from 1593. So perhaps I've got it the wrong way round. 80 00:08:29,820 --> 00:08:39,000 This poem, moreover, links the stanzas so that each stanza ends on the same rhyme sound and repeats the same last line. 81 00:08:39,270 --> 00:08:42,570 And now I live. And now my life is done. 82 00:08:44,080 --> 00:08:51,220 This poem makes me think about how, like light a poem is, both particle and wave. 83 00:08:51,640 --> 00:08:58,840 When spoken or read aloud, um, or silently, the poem is experienced in time, 84 00:08:59,260 --> 00:09:07,570 sequentially washing over us or through us, but we are also swimming through it, written down. 85 00:09:07,690 --> 00:09:12,670 The average lyric poem can be taken in whole at a glance. 86 00:09:13,030 --> 00:09:16,240 The poem exists all at once, like time, perhaps. 87 00:09:16,450 --> 00:09:24,310 So when we first encounter and now I live, and now my life is done, we are aware there is two thirds of the poem to go, 88 00:09:24,820 --> 00:09:28,840 and in this second instance that there is still something more to go. 89 00:09:29,020 --> 00:09:31,660 But the last line is utterly final. 90 00:09:32,500 --> 00:09:41,650 Not only does the last line repeat, but as with a lot of poems that involve repetition, there are many other kinds of repetition within the poem. 91 00:09:41,830 --> 00:09:46,330 We have is, but is, but and yet and yet and yet. 92 00:09:47,310 --> 00:10:02,010 Now, now nine times in 18 lines, most urgently, as the poem and the life nears its end now totals five times in the last three lines. 93 00:10:02,520 --> 00:10:09,600 The imminence of death is realised, is pushed back or postponed and finally fulfilled. 94 00:10:10,470 --> 00:10:14,280 Um, I'd also like to put in a word for tears here. 95 00:10:14,640 --> 00:10:21,900 Um, this is a biblical word for weeds. It's such a wonderful word and such a great rhyme word, and I, I keep wanting to use it, 96 00:10:21,900 --> 00:10:26,310 but I, I'm told it's it's it's a little bit too antique, but it's a wonderful word. 97 00:10:26,940 --> 00:10:32,700 Um, this poem also makes me think of a rather famous Johnny Cash song. 98 00:10:33,180 --> 00:10:36,970 Um, 25 minutes to go. I don't know if you know this song. 99 00:10:36,990 --> 00:10:44,490 It was actually written by the American poet, uh, for children, Shel Silverstein, who had a very dark side. 100 00:10:45,060 --> 00:10:51,780 Um, it's about a man about to be hanged. Um, which starts while they're building a gallows outside my cell. 101 00:10:52,080 --> 00:10:56,810 And I have 25 minutes to go, and the whole town's waiting just to hear me. 102 00:10:56,820 --> 00:11:00,750 Yo. 24 minutes to go, and it goes all the way down. 103 00:11:00,750 --> 00:11:05,040 So that at the very end I can see the buzzards. I can hear the crow. 104 00:11:05,280 --> 00:11:09,339 I have one more minute to go, and then it just ends. And here I go. 105 00:11:09,340 --> 00:11:15,240 Whoa, whoa whoa whoa. Let me skip ahead. 106 00:11:17,770 --> 00:11:25,630 367 years or so to an American poem that nonetheless puts me very much in mind. 107 00:11:26,750 --> 00:11:34,080 Of. I'll just get my clock back going. Very much in mind of, um, this elegy of tick borne. 108 00:11:34,470 --> 00:11:43,200 Um, the Waking by Theodor Rafiki. I feel that Theodor Rafiki has somewhat fallen off the radar when I was coming up as a baby poet. 109 00:11:43,230 --> 00:11:47,850 Um, he was still a huge presence. Born in Michigan in 1908. 110 00:11:48,270 --> 00:11:52,020 He was one of the most accomplished and influential poets of his generation. 111 00:11:52,020 --> 00:11:56,490 James Dickey described him as the greatest poet this country has yet produced. 112 00:11:57,030 --> 00:12:04,350 That may be, again, a bit overkill, but, um, his students did include James Wright, Carolyn Kaiser, Tess Gallagher, 113 00:12:04,860 --> 00:12:11,790 Jack Gilbert, Richard Hugo, David Wagner, and he was an outsized influence on the young Sylvia Plath. 114 00:12:12,330 --> 00:12:16,350 Um, this poem is not in Venus and Adonis stanzas. It is in a villanelle. 115 00:12:16,860 --> 00:12:21,810 Um, but at the same time, I'm very much put in mind of the elegy, The Waking. 116 00:12:23,100 --> 00:12:26,220 I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. 117 00:12:26,760 --> 00:12:32,850 I feel my fate and what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. 118 00:12:33,540 --> 00:12:36,570 We think by feeling. What is there to know? 119 00:12:37,140 --> 00:12:43,380 I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. 120 00:12:43,980 --> 00:12:47,400 Of those so close beside me. Which are you? 121 00:12:47,880 --> 00:12:51,480 God bless the ground. I shall walk softly there. 122 00:12:51,840 --> 00:12:56,159 And learn by going where I have to go. Light takes the tree. 123 00:12:56,160 --> 00:13:01,290 But who can tell us how the lonely lowly worm climbs up a winding stair? 124 00:13:01,590 --> 00:13:04,740 I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. 125 00:13:05,400 --> 00:13:09,420 Great nature has another thing to do to you and me. 126 00:13:09,690 --> 00:13:14,280 So take the lively air and lovely. Learn by going where to go. 127 00:13:14,790 --> 00:13:21,810 The shaking keeps me steady. I should know what falls away is always and is near. 128 00:13:22,290 --> 00:13:25,320 I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. 129 00:13:25,620 --> 00:13:28,650 I learn by going where I have to go. 130 00:13:30,150 --> 00:13:33,360 This is a villanelle, so it's a 19 line poem. 131 00:13:33,360 --> 00:13:39,420 The villanelle is taken out of French and kind of more codified and more popular in English, but originates in the French. 132 00:13:39,840 --> 00:13:43,500 Um, a 19 line poem. And it's it ends with a quatrain. 133 00:13:43,860 --> 00:13:53,190 There are two rhyme sounds and two repeated lines, refrains, if you will, that waltz around and around each other but never touch. 134 00:13:53,940 --> 00:14:00,599 This is, I think, the third most famous villanelle in the language behind, in no particular Order. 135 00:14:00,600 --> 00:14:07,500 Do not go gentle into that good night and Elizabeth Bishop's one art like do not go gentle. 136 00:14:07,710 --> 00:14:15,210 It has achieved a certain pop culture of visibility, and is quoted in novels by Kurt Vonnegut and Stephen King. 137 00:14:16,320 --> 00:14:19,900 To me, though the poem strongly echoes. Conscious or not. 138 00:14:19,920 --> 00:14:24,540 Tick borne. There is the simplicity of language with its repeated assertions. 139 00:14:24,840 --> 00:14:36,420 It's flirting with paradox I wake to sleep, this shaking keeps me steady, etc., and its awareness of the fleeting moment going, going, gone. 140 00:14:36,990 --> 00:14:40,020 Here is repetition as the river you cannot step into. 141 00:14:40,020 --> 00:14:44,309 Twice the river flows and you are changing and everything is falling away. 142 00:14:44,310 --> 00:14:52,290 And everything is always. Its appearance in Slaughterhouse-Five is in the context of the mystery of time. 143 00:14:52,290 --> 00:14:56,250 This is from chapter one. The time would not pass. 144 00:14:56,580 --> 00:15:02,690 Somebody was playing with the clocks, and not only with the electric clocks, but the wind up kind too. 145 00:15:02,700 --> 00:15:10,440 That's certainly true in the examination schools. The second hand on my watch would twitch once and a year would pass, and then it would twitch again. 146 00:15:10,860 --> 00:15:18,270 There was nothing I could do about it. And as an earthling, I had to believe whatever clocks said and calendars. 147 00:15:18,750 --> 00:15:22,350 I had two books with me, which I meant to read on the plane. 148 00:15:22,350 --> 00:15:26,850 One was words for the Wind by Theatre Rescue, and this is what I found there. 149 00:15:27,150 --> 00:15:30,240 I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. 150 00:15:30,480 --> 00:15:33,780 I feel my fate and what I cannot fear. 151 00:15:34,020 --> 00:15:36,600 I learn by going where I have to go. 152 00:15:37,110 --> 00:15:45,150 It's worth, I think, pointing out, that Slaughterhouse-Five is that rare, or maybe not so rare instance of a prose work with a refrain. 153 00:15:45,450 --> 00:15:50,450 So it goes. I. 154 00:15:50,470 --> 00:15:53,610 We've started with some poems about, uh, mortality. 155 00:15:53,630 --> 00:15:57,670 I thought we might shift to a poem about joy. 156 00:15:58,240 --> 00:16:02,590 Um, this is Edna. Saint Vincent Millay is quite famous, Ricardo. 157 00:16:03,250 --> 00:16:10,050 Um, and, uh, I don't know if I have. This may have got to race, but, um. 158 00:16:12,030 --> 00:16:16,019 You can go on YouTube and hear Saint Vincent Millay read this poem, 159 00:16:16,020 --> 00:16:21,210 but I don't necessarily recommend that you do that because her accent is going to shock you. 160 00:16:22,020 --> 00:16:25,410 Um, Ricardo, we were very tired. 161 00:16:25,530 --> 00:16:29,910 We were very merry. We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. 162 00:16:30,270 --> 00:16:33,120 It was bare and bright and it smelled like a stable. 163 00:16:33,120 --> 00:16:38,970 But we looked into a fire and we leaned across a table, and we lay upon a hillside underneath the moon. 164 00:16:39,210 --> 00:16:42,240 And the whistles kept blowing. And the dawn came. 165 00:16:42,240 --> 00:16:46,190 Soon we were very tired. We were very merry. 166 00:16:46,200 --> 00:16:50,729 We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. And you ate an apple. 167 00:16:50,730 --> 00:16:54,690 And I ate a pear from a dozen of each we had bought somewhere. 168 00:16:54,690 --> 00:17:03,480 And the sky went one. And the wind went cold, and the sun rose, and the sun rose dripping a bucket full of gold. 169 00:17:04,050 --> 00:17:09,030 We were very tired. We were very merry. We had gone back and forth all night. 170 00:17:09,030 --> 00:17:17,489 On the ferry we hailed good morrow, mother, to a shawl covered head, and we bought a morning paper which neither of us read, and she wept. 171 00:17:17,490 --> 00:17:23,220 God bless you for the apples and pears. And we gave her all our money but our subway fares. 172 00:17:25,340 --> 00:17:28,850 Um, this is, uh, a favourite poem by Saint Vincent Millay. 173 00:17:29,270 --> 00:17:36,290 Um, and very different from the poems that we've looked at and is using, maybe repetition in a different kind of way. 174 00:17:36,830 --> 00:17:46,490 Fairies in poems tend to be one way, and nocturnal and infernal crossing alone the night at ferry, as Housman would have it. 175 00:17:46,850 --> 00:17:51,380 But this one is iterative, joyful and mature to know. 176 00:17:52,130 --> 00:17:54,980 There are two origin stories of this poem. 177 00:17:55,490 --> 00:18:05,600 Um, one of them, Floyd Del, who was a very charismatic, very left wing newspaper editor in Greenwich Village at the time, 178 00:18:05,810 --> 00:18:11,660 and one of her early lovers, um, writes in his autobiography about a night, um, 179 00:18:11,660 --> 00:18:18,680 when the armistice was about to be announced and he and John Reid and Edna Saint Vincent Millay went back and forth 180 00:18:18,680 --> 00:18:25,250 on the Staten Island Ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island all night long and celebrated the end of the war. 181 00:18:25,820 --> 00:18:31,930 Um, I don't know that that necessarily tracks as closely onto this poem as you might think. 182 00:18:31,940 --> 00:18:40,040 And there is a 1959 letter, um, that Floyd Doe writes to Edna Saint Vincent Millay, 183 00:18:40,040 --> 00:18:45,440 Sister Norma, when he explains that that isn't what this poem is about at all. 184 00:18:45,470 --> 00:18:53,090 This is about another crossing all night long, perhaps on the ferry, um, with the Nicaraguan poet Salomon de la Selva. 185 00:18:53,570 --> 00:18:56,780 Um, also one of innocent Vincent Miller's lovers. 186 00:18:57,020 --> 00:19:03,559 I think all three of the people I've mentioned, um, uh, although one which is not in, um, 187 00:19:03,560 --> 00:19:09,020 Savage Beauty, Nancy Medford's Milford's, um, biography of Edna cements place so she missed one. 188 00:19:09,770 --> 00:19:18,290 Um, the Staten Island Ferry is free, and it's one of the few sightseeing things that you can do in New York for no money. 189 00:19:18,380 --> 00:19:22,370 Um, I only recently did it this January, um, with my son. 190 00:19:22,370 --> 00:19:28,160 It goes constantly back and forth between Manhattan and Staten Island and passes by the Statue of Liberty. 191 00:19:28,430 --> 00:19:32,940 It is free, and it's an exercise in freedom. The Staten Island. 192 00:19:32,960 --> 00:19:37,190 Um, I think we simply cannot ignore the Spanish of the title. 193 00:19:38,240 --> 00:19:42,380 Um recuerda, which is, um, memory or souvenir. 194 00:19:43,190 --> 00:19:49,849 So while it might contain memories of this armistice celebration, it is more intimately, 195 00:19:49,850 --> 00:19:53,300 I think, nodding to the romantic excursion with the Nicaraguan poet. 196 00:19:54,110 --> 00:19:59,240 If so, we might also think about the Statue of Liberty promised to immigrants in the background, 197 00:19:59,840 --> 00:20:08,360 and we might also consider the foreign formality of good Morrow, mother, which served several people have written about to a shawl coloured hat. 198 00:20:08,750 --> 00:20:17,180 Shawl covered head is less strange if we consider that this conversation might have happened in Spanish or with a non-native English speaker, 199 00:20:17,390 --> 00:20:22,010 and that the shawl covered head may partly be an indication of a recent immigrant. 200 00:20:22,880 --> 00:20:26,600 The frenetic singsong, the wonderful rhythm of the repetition. 201 00:20:26,600 --> 00:20:29,780 At the beginning of each stanza we were very tired. 202 00:20:29,780 --> 00:20:30,829 We were very merry. 203 00:20:30,830 --> 00:20:39,920 We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry, helps to blur the various trips back and forth into one gilded and giddy memory. 204 00:20:40,370 --> 00:20:46,639 It isn't at all clear whether each stanza represents a trip, or whether they are all part of one day, 205 00:20:46,640 --> 00:20:52,580 dawning over and over again, alighting their iterations into one joyful souvenir. 206 00:20:53,030 --> 00:21:00,679 Um, I, I looked up at the Staten Island, um, terminal, and I realised there were these giant letters everywhere, 207 00:21:00,680 --> 00:21:08,160 and suddenly I realised that her poem was all over the terminal, and that's one of my favourite sightings in the wild. 208 00:21:08,180 --> 00:21:20,650 We were very tired. So this poem is doing something else with its repetition. 209 00:21:20,890 --> 00:21:22,470 We've had refrains. 210 00:21:22,480 --> 00:21:32,110 I'm also interested in kind of one off repetitions, um, when suddenly, um, two lines are repeated, not 3 or 4 times, but only once. 211 00:21:32,110 --> 00:21:33,040 And what happens? 212 00:21:33,040 --> 00:21:43,210 Especially in a very short poem, if you think about a poem of 12 lines, what happens when it's only ten unique lines within the 12 lines? 213 00:21:43,990 --> 00:21:47,520 This is a favourite poem of mine by William J. 214 00:21:47,530 --> 00:21:52,240 Smith. He was born in Louisiana in 1918. 215 00:21:52,690 --> 00:21:57,420 Um, he was the 19th Poet laureate consultant to the Library of Congress. 216 00:21:57,430 --> 00:22:05,950 That's the American poet laureate. Um, he's arguably the first American poet laureate of Native American descent. 217 00:22:06,370 --> 00:22:14,470 Um, despite looking at the name, he was part Choctaw, and he wrote an epic poem about the Trail of Tears called The Cherokee Lottery. 218 00:22:14,920 --> 00:22:23,410 He's also an Oxford person. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Wadham and was the first Rhodes Scholar of Native American descent. 219 00:22:24,390 --> 00:22:32,410 You can see from his dates, 1918 to 2015, that he was a teenager during the Great Depression. 220 00:22:32,460 --> 00:22:38,130 Probably the most traumatic, um, American memory from that generation. 221 00:22:38,640 --> 00:22:45,330 Uh, I was able to meet him towards the end of his life. He was a very, um, lovely formal southern gentleman. 222 00:22:47,010 --> 00:22:54,150 I'm a sucker for poems from the point of view of a child, especially if they are eerie or creepy. 223 00:22:55,890 --> 00:23:01,370 Something about the innocence of the child allows for a special species of dramatic irony. 224 00:23:01,380 --> 00:23:07,860 And another poem I would put into that category is Robert Graves's Wonderful and very creepy I Hate the Moon. 225 00:23:08,640 --> 00:23:12,629 Um, we might consider the title again with short poems for the repetition. 226 00:23:12,630 --> 00:23:22,620 The title is often doing a lot of work. American Primitive could refer to a style of primitive 19th century anonymous painting, 227 00:23:22,620 --> 00:23:27,850 where you'd have itinerant painters go around and paint these very awkward portraits of 228 00:23:27,870 --> 00:23:32,010 families where maybe the bodies were already there and they just put in the faces and so on. 229 00:23:32,610 --> 00:23:37,020 Um, but I think the American primitive also is making some other moves here. 230 00:23:37,620 --> 00:23:43,710 Look at him there in his stovepipe hat, his high top shoes and his handsome collar. 231 00:23:44,130 --> 00:23:49,530 Only my daddy could look like that. And I love my daddy like he loves his dollar. 232 00:23:50,470 --> 00:23:54,010 The screen door bangs and it sounds so funny. 233 00:23:54,310 --> 00:23:58,930 There he is in a shower of gold. His pockets are stuffed with folding money. 234 00:23:59,170 --> 00:24:02,650 His lips are blue and his hands feel cold. 235 00:24:03,250 --> 00:24:07,300 He hangs in the hall by his black cravat. 236 00:24:07,960 --> 00:24:11,170 The ladies faint and the children holler. 237 00:24:11,770 --> 00:24:17,530 Only my daddy could look like that. And I love my daddy like he loves his daughter. 238 00:24:21,640 --> 00:24:29,470 Yeah, the plucky aphorism of the first stanza gives way to an absolute shudder at the end. 239 00:24:29,800 --> 00:24:34,570 And when we reread this poem, we realise that the child I am, I'm pretty sure it, 240 00:24:34,570 --> 00:24:40,990 as a child, has been pointing us to a photo or portrait not of the living, but of the dead. 241 00:24:41,350 --> 00:24:47,590 Look like that goes from the boast of pride to a realisation of ghastly horror. 242 00:24:48,010 --> 00:24:51,549 Um, these are 12 lines of which only ten are unique. 243 00:24:51,550 --> 00:24:58,900 But the state space travels between the two repeated lines is an almost insurmountable gulf, 244 00:24:59,140 --> 00:25:09,520 and I think we have to then reread American Primitive in the, um, the light of, uh, brutal American capitalism and boom and bust. 245 00:25:09,760 --> 00:25:13,120 And that I love my daddy like he loves his dollar. 246 00:25:13,360 --> 00:25:19,720 I also like how we have this, um, shower of gold, which maybe suggests DNA in her coins. 247 00:25:19,990 --> 00:25:24,970 Um, and then we have this wonderful, very idiomatic American expression, folding money. 248 00:25:25,390 --> 00:25:32,170 Um, but this is a poem. I often actually share this poem with, um, young students. 249 00:25:32,170 --> 00:25:35,799 And it does take them a long time to kind of tease out what is happening. 250 00:25:35,800 --> 00:25:37,990 But when they do, it does come as a shock. 251 00:25:41,760 --> 00:25:52,680 Another short poem that goes a long way, um, and does something maybe different with repetition is Elizabeth Bishop's Casablanca. 252 00:25:54,570 --> 00:25:58,650 I could have done any number of Elizabeth Bishop poems. I didn't want to do one art. 253 00:25:58,710 --> 00:26:01,800 Um, if you don't know that poem, you know, go revisit that. 254 00:26:02,130 --> 00:26:08,670 Um, there's also the wonderful visits to Saint Elizabeth's, which is the kind of the House that Jack built poem about Ezra Pound. 255 00:26:09,060 --> 00:26:17,430 This poem, I think, often gets overlooked, perhaps because it's reference has maybe slipped out of the public consciousness. 256 00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:25,440 Um, Casablanca. When Bishop wrote and published this poem, the reference to the title would have been much better known. 257 00:26:26,220 --> 00:26:36,510 Casablanca is a resounding ballad by Phylicia Harmon's popular poet, um, most famous female poet in Byron's time. 258 00:26:36,840 --> 00:26:42,300 Um, and it was a poem that many generations of schoolchildren had to memorise. 259 00:26:42,720 --> 00:26:49,020 In fact, it was such a popular chestnut for memorisation, um, that there are tons of parodies out there. 260 00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:52,980 The poem um starts the Felicia Harmon's poem. 261 00:26:53,550 --> 00:26:59,470 Um. The boy stood on the burning deck once all but he had fled the flame that lit the battle's wreck. 262 00:26:59,550 --> 00:27:08,790 Shown round him or the dead. It's a poem about, in theory, an actual event that happened in 1798 during the battle of the Nile. 263 00:27:09,180 --> 00:27:13,170 Um, when there were eyewitness accounts of the French flagship. 264 00:27:13,620 --> 00:27:18,300 Um, uh. Young boy. Ten. 11. 12. The son of the captain stood on deck. 265 00:27:18,360 --> 00:27:21,930 How anyone knows any of this? I don't know. Um, standing on the deck. 266 00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:27,450 Um, who? Because his father has told him he must stand on the deck until he's told he can leave the deck. 267 00:27:27,900 --> 00:27:31,709 And in the meantime, the powder magazine is hit and the. 268 00:27:31,710 --> 00:27:35,070 The boat explodes and the boy goes up in flames. Um. 269 00:27:35,070 --> 00:27:38,310 Humans specialises in poems. 270 00:27:39,320 --> 00:27:44,840 About patriotic or pious suicides of women and children. 271 00:27:45,410 --> 00:27:51,799 Just what it is. Um. The poem ends with mast and helm and pen. 272 00:27:51,800 --> 00:27:58,790 An affair that, well, had born their part. But the noblest thing which perished there was that young, faithful heart. 273 00:27:59,150 --> 00:28:04,850 Um. I had a thrill when I was watching the film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. 274 00:28:05,180 --> 00:28:11,570 Um, there's sort of that last scene, um, where Cumberbatch, who I think is playing Peter William, 275 00:28:11,810 --> 00:28:19,340 is testing the recording device in the safe house, and he starts with the boy stood on the burning deck once all but he had fled. 276 00:28:19,340 --> 00:28:26,559 And I thought, oh, is that in the novel? But it's not. So here we get all of this is to get around to Casablanca. 277 00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:31,389 To give you a little bit of background. Loves the boys. 278 00:28:31,390 --> 00:28:35,290 Stood on the burning deck trying to recite. 279 00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:40,330 The boy stood on the burning deck. Loves the sun. 280 00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:45,880 Stood stammering. Elocution. While the poor ship in flames went down. 281 00:28:46,510 --> 00:28:54,640 Loves the observant boy, the ship, even the swimming sailors who would like a schoolroom platform to. 282 00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:59,380 Or an excuse to stay on deck and loves the burning boy. 283 00:29:01,480 --> 00:29:06,070 Hear the stammering repetition of the first line of humans. 284 00:29:06,070 --> 00:29:13,960 Poem is the first stanza of Bishop where Cleverly Stood works transitively and then in transitively, 285 00:29:14,380 --> 00:29:19,390 and it sets us up for a nesting box of references and repetitions of words, 286 00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:26,530 and the nightmarish hall of mirrors, which is the humiliation of a schoolroom recitation gone bad, 287 00:29:26,950 --> 00:29:35,710 presumably in front of a judge mental father Harmon's poem is all about obedience to a father unto the point of death, 288 00:29:36,370 --> 00:29:45,010 where the boy reciting in the schoolroom is, in a way, as brave and as doomed as the boy in the poem he is reciting. 289 00:29:45,730 --> 00:29:55,270 I find this poem gutting. The burning boy at the end is Casa Bianca and the anonymous boy in the classroom and love himself. 290 00:29:59,720 --> 00:30:08,209 Perhaps my favourite form, um, standard form of repetition is not the villanelle, which usually kind of spins its wheels. 291 00:30:08,210 --> 00:30:10,940 They are more fun to write than to read as a rule. 292 00:30:11,570 --> 00:30:18,500 Um, but the triplet, which is much shorter, um, and has some of the same elements, it has two repeated lines. 293 00:30:18,500 --> 00:30:21,530 It has to, um, rhyme sounds. 294 00:30:22,010 --> 00:30:25,670 Um, but it often covers vastly more space. 295 00:30:26,210 --> 00:30:30,440 Um, there are two main masters of the triplet or truly in English. 296 00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:34,670 Um, one of them is the comedic master Wendy Cope. 297 00:30:35,670 --> 00:30:40,139 Um. I used to think all poets were Byronic, mad, bad and dangerous to know. 298 00:30:40,140 --> 00:30:44,700 And then I met a few. Yes. It's ironic. I used to think all poets were Byronic. 299 00:30:44,880 --> 00:30:50,310 They're mostly wicked as a generous tonic and wild as pension plans. 300 00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:56,040 Not long ago, I used to think all poets were Byronic, mad, bad and dangerous to know. 301 00:30:56,340 --> 00:31:04,079 So you can see how, um, the chill that sort of sets up a kind of statement and maybe a proof or refutation of that statement, 302 00:31:04,080 --> 00:31:09,569 and then a sort of QED at the end. Um, Hardy also is a master of this. 303 00:31:09,570 --> 00:31:14,340 He writes a number of them. This is my favourite. It does not go over well with students. 304 00:31:14,760 --> 00:31:22,880 Um, I think it's because of the subjunctive and the counterfactual and maybe the word twain. 305 00:31:22,890 --> 00:31:27,420 I don't know, but, um, I think this is a masterpiece at a hasty wedding. 306 00:31:27,720 --> 00:31:31,320 If hours be years, the twain are blessed. For now. 307 00:31:31,320 --> 00:31:35,940 They solace swift desire by bonds of every bond. 308 00:31:35,940 --> 00:31:40,110 The best if hours be years. 309 00:31:40,620 --> 00:31:45,720 The twain are blessed. Do eastern stars slope never west. 310 00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:49,800 Nor pallid ashes follow fire. If ours be years. 311 00:31:49,800 --> 00:31:54,690 The twain are blessed. For now they solace, swift desire. 312 00:31:55,410 --> 00:32:00,809 Um. I like how the two repeated lines are kind of bound to each other, 313 00:32:00,810 --> 00:32:06,510 and they try to escape each other, but they end up, um, you know, permanently attached at the end. 314 00:32:06,510 --> 00:32:09,959 That seems to be part of what is happening in the poem. Um, the chill. 315 00:32:09,960 --> 00:32:12,330 It picks more of a punch, though it's shorter. 316 00:32:12,420 --> 00:32:18,420 It's almost has the power of a miniature sonnet, and the best ones have a bolt, uh, or turn or explosion. 317 00:32:18,750 --> 00:32:27,300 And around the fifth or sixth line, um, uh, this basically covers as much emotional ground as Jude the Obscure. 318 00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:31,700 And it's in eight lines. So. 319 00:32:32,810 --> 00:32:36,290 There's that to say for it. Um, I'll just show you this one. 320 00:32:36,290 --> 00:32:41,870 I won't read it. Um, but I think this might be the shortest or one of the shortest plays in the English language. 321 00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:48,979 It's a triplet. Um, he's got a whole set, a setting of scene and a set of characters, and it's quite delightful. 322 00:32:48,980 --> 00:32:52,490 This does go over well. I sometimes assign people to read these parts. 323 00:32:53,890 --> 00:32:59,240 Um, there are several contemporary, um, cellists that I am a great fan of. 324 00:32:59,260 --> 00:33:04,360 This might be one of the only poems by a living poet that I have by memory. 325 00:33:05,050 --> 00:33:08,200 Um, if I could do it, I don't know. They're over now. 326 00:33:08,200 --> 00:33:11,710 Forever. This is called Cold Turkey by Joshua Morgan. 327 00:33:12,650 --> 00:33:15,950 They're over now forever. The long dances are. 328 00:33:15,950 --> 00:33:19,220 Woods are quiet. The God is gone. Tonight. 329 00:33:19,730 --> 00:33:24,680 Our girls, good girls, have shaken off their trances. 330 00:33:25,100 --> 00:33:29,989 They're over now forever. The long dances. Only the moonlight. 331 00:33:29,990 --> 00:33:34,069 Sober and real. Advances over our hills. 332 00:33:34,070 --> 00:33:38,030 To touch my head with white. They're over now forever. 333 00:33:38,300 --> 00:33:41,540 The long dances. Our woods are quiet. 334 00:33:41,870 --> 00:33:50,430 The God is gone tonight. This is another short poem where the title is doing a lot of work. 335 00:33:51,120 --> 00:33:58,410 Uh, cold turkey would imply that someone is giving up something addictive drugs or alcohol. 336 00:33:58,440 --> 00:34:01,200 I think the implication here is alcohol. 337 00:34:01,560 --> 00:34:13,650 I also like the extreme contrast of, uh, the register of cold turkey, um, with this very beautiful, um, trance like poem. 338 00:34:14,070 --> 00:34:22,230 Maybe there's even a suggestion of Wild Turkey in here. Um, we can figure out who the God is, I think, and who the girls are. 339 00:34:22,260 --> 00:34:27,000 I believe the god would be Dionysus. And the girls are the Buckeye. 340 00:34:27,450 --> 00:34:34,800 Um. One of the things that this does there is the shock of cold turkey going off the source. 341 00:34:35,130 --> 00:34:40,320 And repetition is often about finality and endings. 342 00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:45,870 So that there is the abruptness of the title. Yet they're over now. 343 00:34:45,870 --> 00:34:50,099 Forever keeps getting repeated. They're over now. 344 00:34:50,100 --> 00:34:55,020 Forever. That's how the poem starts. Um, but it comes back. 345 00:34:55,020 --> 00:34:59,190 It comes back again in the middle of the poem. They're over now, forever. 346 00:34:59,190 --> 00:35:04,379 The long dances. And it takes a while before the long dances really are over. 347 00:35:04,380 --> 00:35:13,140 Forever. I think this is a very honest poem in the sense that, um, if the speaker is is giving up something like alcohol, 348 00:35:13,470 --> 00:35:22,290 there is also a fondness and a nostalgia, um, uh, longing for the wildness that's being left behind. 349 00:35:22,650 --> 00:35:29,309 Um, I have spoken to Joshua a little bit about this poem and, um, how much I just love these repeating lines. 350 00:35:29,310 --> 00:35:34,710 They're over now, forever. The long dances. Our girls, good girls, have shaken off their chances. 351 00:35:34,980 --> 00:35:45,960 And he pointed out that he had actually kind of, um, fetched the phrase the long dances out of the Eve ru penguin version of the book II of Euripides. 352 00:35:46,290 --> 00:35:51,570 Um, so I went and looked at that. And part of that is will they ever come to me ever again? 353 00:35:51,780 --> 00:35:55,469 The long, long dances on through the night. 354 00:35:55,470 --> 00:36:08,240 Till the dim stars wane. Repetition can also be used to humorous effect, 355 00:36:08,250 --> 00:36:15,960 as we saw in the Wendy Cope poem pushing a joke close to tediousness before coming out on the other side of absurdity. 356 00:36:16,290 --> 00:36:24,570 As we've seen, repetition is about time itself and our experience of it, and often prefers to be in the iterative present. 357 00:36:25,260 --> 00:36:32,100 And Leslie Monster's villanelle, the Kiss which begins this kiss is growing less and less platonic. 358 00:36:32,310 --> 00:36:40,629 What tastes and playing is starting to taste sweet. And yes, I'll have another gin and tonic by the end of 19 lines. 359 00:36:40,630 --> 00:36:45,600 She will have had at least four and is delightfully intoxicated. 360 00:36:46,110 --> 00:36:54,900 Parody and translation themselves could be thought of as kinds of repetition, repetition with variation, um, which we'll see a bit later. 361 00:36:54,930 --> 00:37:00,000 Ballads have not had the kind of explosion of popularity in English that the villanelle has. 362 00:37:00,330 --> 00:37:09,800 They are much harder to write. Um, but there are a few crackers and, um, this is a very famous translation from the French version. 363 00:37:10,110 --> 00:37:20,580 Um, I have the Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Ballad of Dead Ladies, uh, where we have this wonderful catalogue of the beautiful ladies of the past. 364 00:37:20,850 --> 00:37:24,929 And, um, I think the translated, uh, version of the refrain. 365 00:37:24,930 --> 00:37:29,880 But where the snows of yesteryear has practically passed into English idiom. 366 00:37:30,450 --> 00:37:34,739 Um, tell me now, in what hidden way is lady Flora, the lovely Roman? 367 00:37:34,740 --> 00:37:38,160 Where's who? Park here. And where is this? Neither of them. 368 00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:44,310 The fair woman. Where is echo beheld of no man only heard on river and mare. 369 00:37:44,490 --> 00:37:50,070 She whose beauty was more than human. But where are the snows of yesteryear? 370 00:37:50,760 --> 00:37:53,999 It's the ultimate obedience limit. Um. 371 00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:59,879 The catalogue of dead beautiful ladies, um, is a genre as old as the Odyssey. 372 00:37:59,880 --> 00:38:05,730 The names melt away even as the snows recur and return. 373 00:38:06,060 --> 00:38:10,410 But they, too, are ephemeral, cold and lost, and the repetition of them. 374 00:38:11,390 --> 00:38:23,660 Emphasises their impermanence. Um, this is maybe my favourite parody of this by, um, the very satiric and sharp poet artist Gwen. 375 00:38:24,440 --> 00:38:29,610 Uh, the Yale Younger series, um, is a very important series in the States. 376 00:38:29,630 --> 00:38:34,460 It is like the debut if you debut your book of poems of the Yale younger. 377 00:38:34,760 --> 00:38:37,010 Um, you're supposed to go on to fame and fortune. 378 00:38:37,370 --> 00:38:45,800 Uh, but then if you actually look at the list of the last, uh, 50 Yale younger poets, it turns out most of them are not people that you have heard of. 379 00:38:47,330 --> 00:38:53,629 Tell me where or where are they? Those younger poets of old Yale whose laurels flourished for a day. 380 00:38:53,630 --> 00:39:00,110 But whither now? Beyond the pale? Where are Chubb, Farrar and vino, with fame as fragile as a bubble. 381 00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:05,090 Where is the late Paul Tan? And where is Lindley Williams? 382 00:39:05,090 --> 00:39:08,820 Hubble? Where's banks? Where's Boyle? Where's Grant? 383 00:39:09,060 --> 00:39:13,920 Francis Claiborne. Mason. Where's T.H. Farrow? Dorothy Reid or Margaret Haley? 384 00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:18,719 Simmering in bad poets. [INAUDIBLE] jingles, metaphysical sword hacking critics. 385 00:39:18,720 --> 00:39:26,430 Weeds to stubble. Young Ashbery, that is John L and where is Lindley Williams? 386 00:39:26,430 --> 00:39:32,190 Hubble? Um. A ballad always ends with a pitch to a prince or a lord prince of all poets. 387 00:39:32,190 --> 00:39:35,730 Here I pray and raise them from their beds of rubble. 388 00:39:35,970 --> 00:39:41,790 Where is younger Carolyn? For Shay. And where is Linley Williams? 389 00:39:41,790 --> 00:39:46,900 Hubble? Gwen's ballad about the melting away of literary reputation. 390 00:39:46,910 --> 00:39:50,570 Also, a list of names and the refrain itself is a name. 391 00:39:51,020 --> 00:39:56,690 I am afraid that once a well-known poet and translator, Lynley Williams Hubble, 392 00:39:56,690 --> 00:40:02,509 the insistence somehow on the middle name adds to the absurdity, as if he's not to be confused with another. 393 00:40:02,510 --> 00:40:12,500 Lindley Hubbell will ultimately be known for this poem, um, in which the repetition of his name makes it more and more anonymous. 394 00:40:16,650 --> 00:40:21,960 The Pentium is another. Poem of repetition. 395 00:40:22,950 --> 00:40:26,490 Yeah. Um, the panting was a Malaysian form. 396 00:40:26,500 --> 00:40:30,060 Um, it comes into English. A lot of these forms come in by translation. 397 00:40:30,360 --> 00:40:37,980 The pantomime comes into English largely via the French and French Franco filmic poets like John Ashbery. 398 00:40:38,460 --> 00:40:42,530 And you can see that every line gets repeated. They kind of braid through. 399 00:40:42,540 --> 00:40:47,189 So the second line of the first stanza becomes the first line, the second stanza, 400 00:40:47,190 --> 00:40:54,930 and on and on and on until the last stanza, where in theory the third and the first line are going to come round again. 401 00:40:55,410 --> 00:40:59,070 Um, this is a painting by Donald Justice. 402 00:40:59,640 --> 00:41:07,900 Uh, poet, uh, born in Miami. Um, he's the poet of Florida and a poet of the Great Depression. 403 00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:12,180 Um, he's sort of the bard of the Great Depression in the States. 404 00:41:12,540 --> 00:41:16,800 Um, I was lucky enough to hear him read this poem once in Suwannee, Tennessee. 405 00:41:17,250 --> 00:41:21,720 Um, at the time, I don't think it made a huge impression on me. Perhaps it it felt flat. 406 00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:26,160 Um, but now I've come to understand that the flatness is the point. 407 00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:38,290 Pantomime of the Great Depression. Our lives avoided tragedy simply by going on and on without end and with little apparent meaning. 408 00:41:38,830 --> 00:41:45,160 Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes. Simply by going on and on we managed. 409 00:41:45,610 --> 00:41:50,380 No need for the heroic. Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes. 410 00:41:50,410 --> 00:41:54,160 I don't remember all the particulars we managed. 411 00:41:54,490 --> 00:42:00,040 No need for the heroic. There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows. 412 00:42:00,370 --> 00:42:05,890 I don't remember all the particulars. Across the fence the neighbours were our chorus. 413 00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:09,280 There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows. 414 00:42:09,430 --> 00:42:13,000 Thank God no one said anything in verse. 415 00:42:13,660 --> 00:42:18,310 The neighbours were our only chorus. And if we suffered, we kept quiet about it. 416 00:42:18,910 --> 00:42:22,750 At no time did anyone say anything in verse. It was the ordinary. 417 00:42:22,750 --> 00:42:27,370 Pities and fears consumed us. And if we suffered, we kept quiet about it. 418 00:42:27,670 --> 00:42:35,170 No audience would ever know our story. It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed as we gathered on porches. 419 00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:43,570 The moon rose. We were poor. What audience would ever know our story beyond our windows shone the actual world. 420 00:42:44,260 --> 00:42:47,889 We gathered on porches. The moon rose. We were poor. 421 00:42:47,890 --> 00:42:51,130 And time went by. Drawn by slow horses. 422 00:42:51,610 --> 00:42:57,999 Somewhere beyond our windows shone the world. The Great Depression had enter or entered our souls. 423 00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:01,870 Like fog. And time went by. Drawn by slow horses. 424 00:43:02,290 --> 00:43:09,090 We did not know ourselves what the end was. The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog. 425 00:43:09,100 --> 00:43:12,550 We had our flaws. Perhaps a few private virtues. 426 00:43:13,150 --> 00:43:18,280 But we did not ourselves know what the end was. People like us simply go on. 427 00:43:18,550 --> 00:43:22,390 We have our flaws. Perhaps a few private virtues. 428 00:43:22,780 --> 00:43:26,110 But it is by blind chance only that we escape tragedy. 429 00:43:26,410 --> 00:43:30,700 And there is no plot in that. It is devoid of poetry. 430 00:43:32,880 --> 00:43:36,990 I think the point where I suddenly clicked the poem. 431 00:43:37,740 --> 00:43:40,890 What is going on here is when I hit pities and fears. 432 00:43:41,340 --> 00:43:50,550 Um, that should start to set off, um, some bells for people who have read, um, anything in Aristotle's Poetics about tragedy. 433 00:43:51,180 --> 00:43:56,819 Uh, and then if you go and you look at that definition, tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, 434 00:43:56,820 --> 00:44:01,500 complex of a certain magnitude and embellished language, arousing pity and fear. 435 00:44:01,650 --> 00:44:10,500 The catharsis of such emotion. It has a plot that means a beginning, a middle and an end, a Petya, a change of fortune or catastrophe. 436 00:44:10,710 --> 00:44:18,780 We talk about virtues and tragic flaws, so you can see how the whole poem becomes a refutation of the idea of tragedy. 437 00:44:19,200 --> 00:44:22,920 Um. The words that start to stick out at you. 438 00:44:22,950 --> 00:44:26,040 Blind chance. There is no plot. There is poetry. 439 00:44:26,700 --> 00:44:33,330 Um, but it's also more complex than that because it is spoken in the first person plural. 440 00:44:33,690 --> 00:44:43,230 He says there is no chorus and no one is saying anything in verse while he is performing a chorus and people are speaking in verse. 441 00:44:43,440 --> 00:44:49,590 It is a poem. And though he keeps saying it is not tragedy and there is nothing great, 442 00:44:49,770 --> 00:44:56,580 there is a word great in there, and it's the Great Depression, and that perhaps becomes the tragedy. 443 00:44:56,910 --> 00:45:05,490 Yet our lives escaped it simply by going on and on, something that the repetition emphasises. 444 00:45:07,240 --> 00:45:10,960 I'm gonna talk briefly about the blues form. 445 00:45:11,560 --> 00:45:15,250 Um, variation cannot really exist without repetition. 446 00:45:15,820 --> 00:45:20,050 It is the shadow of repetition. Repetition that is altered and repeating. 447 00:45:20,470 --> 00:45:26,440 Variation must maintain enough of the shape of the repetition to be recognised as such. 448 00:45:26,890 --> 00:45:31,270 And here is perhaps where literary repetition is different from oral performance. 449 00:45:31,690 --> 00:45:38,740 Um, literary repetition can purposefully make um, variations that maybe give us more information and so forth, 450 00:45:39,040 --> 00:45:43,450 um, that seem um, to be oral but are in fact literary. 451 00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:49,450 Contemporary novel, villanelle, s pen tum's, etc. often are employed quite liberal variation. 452 00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:56,500 Um, but I'm going to explore a completely American and indeed largely African American form the blues poem. 453 00:45:57,220 --> 00:46:00,820 Um, blues poems, literary poems come out of blues songs. 454 00:46:01,360 --> 00:46:07,660 The formal aspect is basically rhymes, terse its which are complete and independent of each other. 455 00:46:08,080 --> 00:46:11,740 Although these terse, it's may combine to form an overall emotion. 456 00:46:12,430 --> 00:46:18,850 Besides bemoaning a down and out state or a broken hearts, blues are marked by a spirit of resilience, 457 00:46:19,240 --> 00:46:23,150 and there's sometimes a witty twist in the last line of each terse. 458 00:46:23,290 --> 00:46:26,570 That's a distinctive feature. So one line makes an assertion. 459 00:46:26,590 --> 00:46:32,290 The second line repeats or elaborates on this assertion, and the third line has some kind of concluding punch. 460 00:46:33,250 --> 00:46:42,250 I remember driving through Georgia and hearing on the radio a blues song with the lyrics, hey mister gentleman, your wife's been cheating on us. 461 00:46:44,030 --> 00:46:47,450 Hey, Mr. Gentleman, your wife's been cheating on us. 462 00:46:47,870 --> 00:46:51,410 Gotta find me a good woman. One we both can trust. 463 00:46:52,390 --> 00:46:55,960 Um, I consider. So there's often quite a lot of humour. 464 00:46:55,990 --> 00:47:02,710 Um. Uh, or consider these lyrics from Long Gone Lonesome Blues, which I mostly know in the Hank Williams rendition. 465 00:47:03,280 --> 00:47:06,879 I'm gonna find me a river. One that's cold as ice. 466 00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:10,300 And when I find me that river. Lord, I'm going to pay the price. 467 00:47:10,660 --> 00:47:13,930 Oh Lord, I'm going down in it three times. 468 00:47:13,930 --> 00:47:20,870 But I'm only coming up twice. The thrill or pleasure here is in the mathematical calculation. 469 00:47:21,440 --> 00:47:27,050 I'm sorry, Housman, but I do have something of a weakness for a lyricist with an aptitude for doing sums in verse, 470 00:47:27,290 --> 00:47:30,170 which, of course, Housman does himself. And loveliest of trees. 471 00:47:30,890 --> 00:47:38,120 Um, Auden's Funeral Blues and Refugee Blues partake of the idiom and attitude of the blues, but not quite the form. 472 00:47:38,630 --> 00:47:41,720 I'd also like to take the opportunity of putting up a trial balloon. 473 00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:46,760 The form the blues, to me most closely resembles is, in my opinion, the Persian ghazal, 474 00:47:47,090 --> 00:47:53,780 where couplets rather than terse it's exist independently in a kind of radial symmetry in relation to a central theme or emotion, 475 00:47:53,780 --> 00:48:03,380 so that they can be reordered and are reliant on rhyme and refrain for wit and contrast, and which come out of a, um, spirit of performance. 476 00:48:05,530 --> 00:48:09,250 This poem is Langston Hughes. 477 00:48:09,490 --> 00:48:10,870 We got song for a Dark Girl. 478 00:48:11,320 --> 00:48:19,810 Um, maybe not technically formally a blues poem, but I notice that Kevin Young includes it in his Everyman's Library blues poems. 479 00:48:20,110 --> 00:48:26,080 And in fact, if you were to repeat the first two lines of each stanza, you would have a quite straight blues form. 480 00:48:26,650 --> 00:48:30,680 Um. Langston Hughes is a poet. 481 00:48:30,680 --> 00:48:37,040 I like to teach to my, um, group of refugee women who I'm teaching in translation. 482 00:48:37,040 --> 00:48:41,080 And, um, these are women who have been through a lot, uh, 483 00:48:41,090 --> 00:48:49,190 but maybe don't have a great grasp of English because Langston Hughes poems are often have a very simple surface, a very transparent surface. 484 00:48:49,580 --> 00:48:54,470 Um, but quite a lot of depth, um, and subtlety in their structure. 485 00:48:55,040 --> 00:49:00,290 Um, so song for a dead dark girl. Way down south in Dixie. 486 00:49:00,680 --> 00:49:04,490 Break the heart of me. They hung my black young lover. 487 00:49:04,670 --> 00:49:09,290 To a crossroads tree way down south and Dixie. 488 00:49:09,560 --> 00:49:16,220 Bruised body high in air I asked the white Lord Jesus what was the use of prayer. 489 00:49:16,880 --> 00:49:20,870 Way down south. And Dixie, break the heart of me. 490 00:49:21,290 --> 00:49:25,850 Love is a naked shadow on a gnarled and naked tree. 491 00:49:27,420 --> 00:49:36,749 That first line in each stanza is a quotation, of course, from Dixie, I wish I was in Dixie than 1859 defacto Confederate anthem. 492 00:49:36,750 --> 00:49:43,860 I realise the actual anthem was The Bonny Blue Flag, but the de facto Confederate anthem was I wish I was in the Land of Cotton. 493 00:49:44,340 --> 00:49:49,979 Um. And it ends with this refrain um, look away, look away, look away, Dixieland away. 494 00:49:49,980 --> 00:49:58,800 Down south in Dixie. Um, so to have this white Confederate quotation way down south and Dixie at the beginning of each stanza in this poem, um, 495 00:49:58,860 --> 00:50:05,849 which is about clearly a lynching, um, is quite something to have it quoted at the beginning of each way down south of Dixie. 496 00:50:05,850 --> 00:50:13,680 And then it's immediately there's a parenthetical which feels to me much more in an African American, maybe blues idiom, break the heart of me. 497 00:50:14,190 --> 00:50:19,770 And then there's this flat statement. They hung my black young lover to a crossroads tree. 498 00:50:19,920 --> 00:50:23,250 Now he doesn't put in crossroads or a tree at the crossroads. 499 00:50:23,460 --> 00:50:27,840 And there is a moment where you have that image of hanging on the cross. 500 00:50:27,840 --> 00:50:31,260 You have that Christian iconography right from the very beginning. 501 00:50:31,740 --> 00:50:39,000 Um, it's then more explicit, um, we have the black young lover is compared to the white Lord Jesus. 502 00:50:39,420 --> 00:50:48,030 And what was the use of prayer? And then these two images kind of combine, um, to do this heartbreaking, uh, 503 00:50:48,030 --> 00:50:55,680 work way down south and Dixie, break the heart of me, way down south and Dixie, break the heart of me. 504 00:50:56,070 --> 00:51:00,300 Love is a naked shadow on a gnarled and naked tree. 505 00:51:00,780 --> 00:51:06,360 And there we have both, um, the lynched woman and the Christ figure in one. 506 00:51:10,420 --> 00:51:16,630 Natasha Trethewey, um, was the US Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014. 507 00:51:16,660 --> 00:51:19,989 She won the Pulitzer for Native Cod. This is one of the poems. 508 00:51:19,990 --> 00:51:23,620 It's a terrific book. I recommend it to you if you haven't read it. 509 00:51:24,070 --> 00:51:29,200 Um. Graveyard blues. Um, she, uh, studied at the University of Georgia. 510 00:51:29,200 --> 00:51:32,410 I have some University of Georgia people here today, so do a shout out. 511 00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:38,320 In fact, I think she was a cheerleader. That's sort of frightening. Um, and African American. 512 00:51:38,320 --> 00:51:43,479 But I think also, you could say biracial. Her father was a poet and professor. 513 00:51:43,480 --> 00:51:49,990 Canadian white put Professor Eric Tress away. Her mother, um, was African-American Gwendolyn and turn brown. 514 00:51:50,320 --> 00:51:54,210 And when they married, it was a year before, um, loving versus Virginia. 515 00:51:54,220 --> 00:51:59,560 So in Mississippi, that was an illegal marriage. And they had to get it, um, ratified in Ohio. 516 00:52:00,040 --> 00:52:03,309 Um, her mother died, um, too young. 517 00:52:03,310 --> 00:52:09,219 She was murdered. That's a long story. Um, but here we have a straight up blues poem. 518 00:52:09,220 --> 00:52:16,390 Or do we? So we have this idea of repetition and variation within the repetition of graveyard blues. 519 00:52:16,750 --> 00:52:21,100 And again, graveyards. Crossroads. These are part of the blues idiom. 520 00:52:21,970 --> 00:52:27,370 It rains. The whole time we were laying her down range from church to grave. 521 00:52:27,370 --> 00:52:32,620 When we put her down, the sack of mud at our feet was a hollow sound. 522 00:52:33,400 --> 00:52:36,700 When the preacher called out, I held up my hand. 523 00:52:36,970 --> 00:52:40,090 When he called for a witness, I raised my hand. 524 00:52:40,450 --> 00:52:44,560 Death stops the body's work. The soul's a journeyman. 525 00:52:45,370 --> 00:52:48,400 The sun came out when I turned to walk away. 526 00:52:48,910 --> 00:52:57,610 Glared down on me as I turned and walked away, my back to my mother, leaving her where she lay the road. 527 00:52:57,610 --> 00:53:03,880 Going home was packed with holes, the home going roads always full of holes. 528 00:53:04,300 --> 00:53:12,190 Though we slow down times. Wheels still rolls I wonder now among names of the dead. 529 00:53:12,550 --> 00:53:16,090 My mother's name. Stone pillow for my head. 530 00:53:18,290 --> 00:53:24,049 I think if we look at this a second. Yes, it's a straight blues poem, but something else is going on here. 531 00:53:24,050 --> 00:53:29,090 And probably you have cottoned on to what is going on here. It is also a sonnet. 532 00:53:29,690 --> 00:53:37,550 Um, so this is almost like a new invented form, which I think is, is is is quite, um, attractive to me. 533 00:53:37,790 --> 00:53:44,929 So that it ends with that couplet. It almost ends a line short, it's almost cut off, and yet it's fully embracing the sonnet. 534 00:53:44,930 --> 00:53:51,980 And in a way, Natasha Trethewey is incorporating and fully embracing, um, the background of both her parents. 535 00:53:52,280 --> 00:53:58,340 Um, the African-American blues form and the traditional English sonnet here. 536 00:53:58,790 --> 00:54:03,620 Um, I'm going to kind of breeze past the duplex. 537 00:54:03,980 --> 00:54:11,540 Jericho Brown, um, in his terrific, uh, book, the tradition invented this form, the duplex. 538 00:54:12,110 --> 00:54:15,650 This is not my favourite poem in the volume. Perhaps I should say. 539 00:54:15,980 --> 00:54:21,800 Um, this form has really taken off, and it's very repetition intensive. 540 00:54:22,100 --> 00:54:27,709 He describes it as, um, write a ghazal that a ghazal that is also a sonnet. 541 00:54:27,710 --> 00:54:31,970 That is also a blues poem of 14 lines. Um, and each of the lines repeat. 542 00:54:31,970 --> 00:54:39,860 And the first line is also kind of the last line. So it's it's intensive, intensified repetition. 543 00:54:44,610 --> 00:54:51,030 But I'd like to conclude, um, on this poem by Mark strand. 544 00:54:51,690 --> 00:55:00,690 Um, the Canadian born American poet Mark strand, um, was also a poet laureate of the United States, also a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. 545 00:55:01,290 --> 00:55:06,659 Um, he died some years ago. I was lucky to have met him several times. 546 00:55:06,660 --> 00:55:14,790 And in fact, I co-taught with him two summers at Suwanee and got to know him quite well in as much as anyone could get to know Mark strand. 547 00:55:15,120 --> 00:55:20,690 Um, I don't know if any of you have ever encountered him. He was very tall, very elegant. 548 00:55:20,700 --> 00:55:30,479 He had the good looks of an ageing Hollywood star and kind of knew it, um, and, uh, was somewhat inscrutable, um, but could also be very funny. 549 00:55:30,480 --> 00:55:34,230 And I heard him read this poem, I think, first at Warren Wilson College. 550 00:55:34,740 --> 00:55:39,750 Um, and I hadn't encountered it on the page, so it did come as a surprise. 551 00:55:40,470 --> 00:55:47,330 Elevator. One. The elevator went to the basement. 552 00:55:48,170 --> 00:55:53,750 The doors opened. A man stepped in and asked if I was going up. 553 00:55:54,760 --> 00:55:58,120 I'm going down, I said. I won't be going up. 554 00:55:59,960 --> 00:56:03,770 Two. The elevator went to the basement. 555 00:56:04,370 --> 00:56:08,360 The doors opened. A man stepped in and asked if I was going up. 556 00:56:09,020 --> 00:56:18,790 I'm going down, I said. I won't be going up. When I heard him read this poem, he delivered in a jazzy, deadpan. 557 00:56:19,180 --> 00:56:23,020 Um. And the verbatim repetition without commentary. 558 00:56:23,020 --> 00:56:28,209 Um, of the first three lines came as something of a shock. The poem begins in the basement. 559 00:56:28,210 --> 00:56:34,750 It seemingly has nowhere to go, and yet it does go down a whole other story. 560 00:56:35,500 --> 00:56:39,520 Does the incident actually repeat like a recurring dream? 561 00:56:40,000 --> 00:56:45,790 The poem is funny and dark with perhaps with something of gallows humour, 562 00:56:46,120 --> 00:56:52,780 and we have seen that hanging and suspense is something that repetition seems to engage with quite a lot. 563 00:56:53,320 --> 00:56:59,320 Scouring the internet, I was hoping to find, um, a video of Mark strand reading the poems. 564 00:56:59,800 --> 00:57:05,050 I did not find a video of Mark strand reading the poem, but I found several videos of other people reading the poem. 565 00:57:05,530 --> 00:57:13,719 I found Spanish and Thai translations of the poem, and I found a whole slew of after Mark Strand's versions of the poem. 566 00:57:13,720 --> 00:57:20,350 So I would actually suggest that the elevator is itself a new form of repetition. 567 00:57:22,700 --> 00:57:28,130 I won't be going up. Is perhaps the wry remarks of a condemned man. 568 00:57:28,160 --> 00:57:32,660 Perhaps he had already got his diagnosis of cancer when he wrote this poem. 569 00:57:33,410 --> 00:57:37,520 And we are all condemned as mortals, eventually, to death. 570 00:57:38,270 --> 00:57:45,290 Repetition is what reminds us of the now being present in our changing bodies. 571 00:57:45,530 --> 00:57:53,000 As the eternal day repeats, and as the river of time its current passes through us, or vice versa. 572 00:57:54,060 --> 00:57:57,990 The glass is full and now the glass is run. 573 00:57:58,560 --> 00:58:02,940 And now I speak. And now my speech is done.