File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_2000/phillitcrit.0008, message 237


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



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