Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2000 22:07:43 -0400 (EDT) From: David Langston <dlangsto-AT-mcla.mass.edu> Subject: Re: PLC: Literary Saints On Thu, 17 Aug 2000 zatavu-AT-excite.com wrote: > LOVE TOWN by Anne Carson > > She ran in. > Wet corn. > Yellow braid. > Down her back. > > SHort, but beautiful. Ethical? Only if the beautiful is ethical. Grasping the ethical dimension of Carson's poem is indistinguishable from reading it. The first operation of interpretation is following the lead of the words. As I thought about it, I could see enough suggestions in the first three lines to write several pages, and I don't have the time. However such a reading would involve teasing out the tension in the title, "love town." Then the reading would look at "she," "ran in" (not "he" or "it" and not "ran out" or "ran down"). "Running in," and "love," and "town," and "she" combine to suggest a protected space where human associations are fostered and cared for. Making that case is at least a 500-word operation. Then attention of the reading would then shift to the "wet corn" line would need to explore why it is "grain" and not "leaves" or "grass" and why the corn is not dry or moldy. 300-500 more words. Then the "Yellow braid. / Down her back." image. This discussion would need to explore the phenomenon of braiding, and why the braid is in back and not curled around a neck etc. That portion of the interpretation would end with a discussion of the moving of wet corn to interiors and exploring why that operation might be appropriate to a love town. The more I thought about it this afternoon, I see the poem celebrating an interior space which fosters human connection and toward which a "she" can run with enthusiasm. This portion of the reading might would look something like a Gaston Bachelard's treatment of "space" (_Poetics of Space_) with its appreciation of the values of protection and human closeness, but the reading would note Carson's sense of that movement to interior is more active and more celebratory of the human presence in that space. This portion of the poem would also explore the tension between reading the poem line by line, and reading it as a single sentence with no periods: "she ran in wet corn braid down her back." The analysis would look a the way in which this equivocation strengthens both the suggestion of interiority and the active agency of the "she." Step two of any interpretation is to take these suggestions of the words and look at the poem in terms of other poems. One is immediately struck with the fact that this is an imagist poem, and that recognition reminds one of the archetypal imagist poem, Williams's "Red Wheelbarrow." so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens Williams's poem also celebrates the intersection of natural processes and human caring. The case would need to be made now that Carson's poem is a variation of the Williams poem, each of which brings together images from the natural world and the realm of human motives and presents them as comfortable, harmonious, and mutually accomodating. Making this case would involve a 500-word discussion of imagist poetry and a further discussion of a larger pattern of which runs through a large swatch of imagist poetry which marries humanity to the natural world. We would also discuss for some 1000 words the way that imagist poems direct the reader's attention to the status and quality of poems themselves. Like all modern art, imagist poetry is concerned on some level with the character and status of art. The third step is to look at the poem in its historical moment, and we would find that Anne Carson is a 50-year-old writer who came of age at the moment that women were staking a claim as equals in American culture. We would also find that she had written several books of poems and essays, and that her writing subjects frequently concentrated on erotic love and the peculiar tensions which that raised for women. We would also discover that she writes where she writes quasi-imagist poety which depends on limpid, simple images which call up a host of larger questions and metaphysical concerns. We might compare her to Annie Dillard and Henry David Thoreau. We would conclude that "Love Town" is a revision of "Red Wheelbarrow" which gives a stronger, more active role to human agency and which locates that agency in a running woman whose hair is braided into the semblance of an (phallic?) ear of corn. We would explore the shift from a wheelbarrow whose function is containing and bearing to an agricultural product which stands alone, but like a leaf of grass is gathered into large collections to nourish. We would also discuss how the line, "wet corn" is a central image which has multiple resonances for the the braid, to the complete running figure, and to the field in which the "she" runs. This part of the discussion would depend for its method on a general pattern of imagist poems and looking at "Love Town" for its substitutions and transpositions as a poem against other poems and as a piece of ideological work. 1500 words. And while we would admire the unadorned directness of Carson's work, we would also outline how the effect of its beauty requires the reader to see what is there and what is not there (standard post-Saussurean method, that). The bottom line on ethics is not that the poem directs us to do one thing or another (respect the harvest, take runs in cornfields in the rain, create love by becoming a vegetarian); rather its drama aligns its readers with human agency, caring, harvesting, and nurturing. That alignment is evoked within its historical context where those values are being contested, and its ethical advice is, therefore, a pretty heavy message. It is not a poem that aligns its readers with the values of Pat Buchanan. Neither can we say that it has timeless beauty, nor does it give timeless advice. How it will align the commitments of its readers in 2050 remains to be seen. I send along this rough and ready summary of how to proceed with the poem Troy selected to clear up (hopefully) some of the reductionist approaches to the question of literature and ethics which have been floating around. It may not be obvious, but this outline draws directly on the practical criticism of a a variety of phenomenological critics which include both Burke and Sartre. It also suggests how this approach considers all literature -- even brief imagist lyrics -- as wisdom and not as a hypostasized ideal which has no history, has no place in an historical debate, and therefore has no impact on history. David Langston --- from list phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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