Poetry by the Numbers: (2) 3 and 4-Line Stanzas

             We call them “innings,” now, but originally time divisions in baseball were called “stanzas,” as we call the divisions in poems.  The word derives from a 16^th Italian word meaning ‘standing place.’  Sometimes students call stanzas “paragraphs,” and metaphorically speaking, stanza breaks in poetry function like paragraph breaks in prose—drop and add white space.  Shift in focus.

            Numbers are meaningful as we saw in Poetry by the Numbers: (1) What Numbers Can Mean, so, too, are the sizes and patterns of stanzas in poems.  When I was writing a poem about gender politics in baseball (note the epigraph below), I divided the lines into four-line stanzas to reflect the geometry of the baseball diamond.  I might have opted for nine stanzas to reflect the nine innings of a standard game—but the theme here is that there’s something missing, an imbalance, in the way women and men are recognized as poets.  So it’s six innings, to return the favor, for this poem:

                       Breaking Ball

           Some writers like to use the word stanza for inning,

               but I don’t.  Baseball is a sport, not poetry.

                              —David H. Martinez, The Book of Baseball Literacy

But David, poetry is a sport, not baseball—

and it’s for the boys. Who’s always up

but the Collinses and Dickeys?

When it’s Olds, it’s that she has a bat,

so to speak, in every poem.

No, the Babe in the bullpen is the ballgirl.

Stevie, Anne, Sylvia had to strike

themselves out for a scoring position

in the major leagues of all-time.

Emily had to make an appeal play

of her shut out. Come on, guys,

of course poetry is a sport. Why else

do I wind up winding up pompons in the stands?

I get The Lip for my line drives.

My hot doggerels are checked in a hawking tray.

At best, like Pam, I’m an ump in the Triple As,

out of the box, always behind the plate. Oh 

change-up Sadaharu Oh for Oh Susanna

when poetry is not just a sport but is

baseball—the growing of green turf

around our altar of dust—

the hush, The Big Hurt,

the crack, the song—

the ball we watch like the Sun—

            One of the oldest poetic forms is the ballad—four-line stanzas with regular rhyme schemes.  The name “ballad” derives from the same root as “ballet,” and it was originally a “dance song,” sung while dancing. That the ballad has four lines and a regular tempo is appropriate to its dancing origins—balanced, rhythmic, easily agreed-upon steps for the couples dancing.  Imagine dancing in a couple to a ballad—it becomes a body chant, mesmerizing, and conducive to intimacy. Here are the first three stanzas of one of my favorites, a traditional English folksong:

                           Greensleeves

Alas my love you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously;
And I have loved you oh so long

Delighting in your company.

Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves my heart of gold

Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my lady Greensleeves.

Greensleeves was my delight,

Greensleeves my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my lady Greensleeves.

These four-line stanzas, called “quatrains,” offer us the comfort of the number 4—completion, balance, predictability—especially when offering a ‘standing place’ for romantic love—which is fraught and destabilizing by its nature.

Consider, now, the effect if we divide “Greensleeves” into tercets, 3-line stanzas, instead:

Greensleeves

Alas my love you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously;
And I have loved you oh so long

Delighting in your company.

Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves my heart of gold

Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my lady Greensleeves.

Greensleeves was my delight,

Greensleeves my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my lady Greensleeves.

            If the number 4 is universally the number of balance and completeness, then threes are essentially unstable, incomplete—a sense that something is missing, a sense of longing and vigilance—as if waiting for the lover’s attention, for the lover to show some sign of recognition.

            The hesitation at the first stanza break of the tercet version, on the word “long,” introduces a sense of weariness, yearning, and loss—even whininess that could be off-putting to or guilting of the lover.  Whereas the quatrain version, ending in “Delighting in your company,” with a period at the end of the quatrain, is more assertive and flattering.  We have a resting place, a secure standing from which to launch into the next stanza.  We have the lover’s attention.

            Consider, Dylan Thomas’s famous villanelle, a form built predominantly on tercets:

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

            The tercets, again, offer an experience of instability, waiting for the fourth line and the rhyme to complement/complete the second line.  Notice, too, that the last stanza, a quatrain, does offer us the delayed stability, but, especially given a theme of the poem, we get a sense of it’s-too-late finality—after five stanzas of instable tercets, the final stanza has the sense of giving up.

            It is no surprise that the villanelle form is almost universally about loss—except for instances in which the poet is parodying the form, itself. 

            Relineate my poem into tercets.  Compare the two versions. What effects do you get?  Commit to writing two poems: one in quatrains, one in tercets. Compare the results and the experience.  What happens when you restanza them into each other’s form?

                        In our next post, we will consider the effect of five-line stanzas. 

Works Cited:

Cover Art: https://athletics.millikin.edu/news/2018/12/7/workman-family-baseball-field-construction-update.aspx

Text:

Rich, Susanna. “Breaking Ball.”  Spitball 62 Spring (2006): 7.Works Cited:

Because I Can Teach Link:

Poetry by the Numbers: (1) What Numbers Can Mean

Poetry by the Numbers: (1) What Numbers Can Mean

                    

             How many numbers do you see?  That depends on how your mind is working today. Because this is a puzzle and a challenge, most of us go into game mode, a bit of competition.  I immediately saw the 10 traditional digits in the decimal system and was so very proud of myself, thinking I aced it.  But Sister Pat, my high school math teacher, also saw numbers beyond the first ten, including 21, 24, 84, 6841, and so on. If you visited your friend who lives at 62 Grove Street, you might have seen the 62 right away—and eliminating the 62, the 1 would have popped up for you.

            Too many word people consider themselves to mathephobes—dreading anything from math classes to working the stock market.  But numbers are humanly meaningful in ways that illuminate the writing and reading of poetry.  As John Steinbeck wrote, "Poetry is the mathematics of writing, and closely kin to music."

            A digression:

            Analytic psychologist Carl Jung averred that the number four is universally symbolic of wholeness, safety, home.  The number four shows up in such quaternities as north/south/east/west; up/down/left/right; spring/summer/autumn/winter; hot/cold/moist/dry; water/fire/air/earth.  The sun, source of life on earth, is worshipped in most religions in the form of a circle.  The cross is the division of the circle into four quadrants.  The swastika, an ancient symbol of connection was based on the circle, and co-opted for evil purposes by the Nazis.  The Christian religion is based on the quaternity of Father/Son/Holy Ghost/Satan.  But, in an attempt to deny the interconnectedness of all aspects of experience, Satan is erased.  Carl Jung used the mandala, the universal symbol of life for Buddhists and Hindus, as a healing circle.

In everyday life, the number four appears in the four wheels of all but a few cars; the squaring off of walls; and in expressions as “square deal,” “square meal,” “squaring a debt,” “square shooter,” and “squared her shoulders.”

Using the number “4” as our constant will help us to interpret—to create meaning—in response to poetry.  "Poetry by the Numbers" shows up in several ways: (1) Syllabics—how many syllables are in a line; (2) Meter—what are the stress patterns in a line; (3) Stanzaics—how many lines are in the stanzas; (4) Length—how many lines and stanzas are in a poem.  We will explore these in turn in following blog posts.

For now, let’s think about what numbers mean to you.  Reply to one or more of these questions:

What is your favorite number, and why?

How do you feel about the number “13”?  Are you suffer from triskaidekaphobia?

What numbers tend to show up in your life? In what ways?

Respond to the expression: “Things come in threes.”  Name some threesomes in your life, in literature, cultural experience, popular songs, et cetera.

Find a quote that includes the number “three.”  Interpret the quote by seeing the number 3 as the expression of something missing.  What’s missing?

            

Works Cited:

Cover Art: https://themindsjournal.com/hidden-numbers/

"'To gather Paradise—'": Experiential Learning

           Eighteen of us—thirteen students from my Emily Dickinson course, a daughter, a mother, a boyfriend, my husband, and I—after ten weeks navigating 20 pages of school permission forms each (not knowing until the last week whether we would be approved), with the gracious last-minute reservations at Amherst venues—spent four days ideal for learning, bonding, creating memories that will last lifetimes.  We called it “The Emily Dickinson Tour.” The first part—the bureaucrazies and university reservations (literally, all the hold-backs of the insurance and legal departments, and administrators thwarting professors—just because), would be what Dickinson would call the “prose” of life in the introduction to a poem:

                                    I dwell in Possibility—

                                    A fairer House than Prose—

Yes, our tour experiences were a “fairer” House—both in the sense of more beautiful and more just—than the litigious, digitalized, quantified “educational” realm of Prose.

            I designed our tour for optimal Bliss.  I did not order a bus, or take attendance, or require the trip for grades; yet 13 of the 17 enrolled students came voluntarily, and enthusiastically, although, for some, this was a financial stretch. A boyfriend, a daughter, and a mom joined us, too. They car-pooled and in one case slept seven in a hotel room.  They arrived and left at different times—often opting to stay longer.

            When we were not gathering for our scheduled dates with our hosts, everyone explored on her or his own.  Sitting with them at breakfast in the HoJo lounge, I was grateful that Mali and Tori checked Yelp! for thrifting opportunities—so even before our first date—at the Amherst Historical Strong House—seven of us did Stations of the Thrift Store—including the purchase of white clothing for our Saturday night candlelight reading. Tori handed me a $3 hummingbird feeder, to celebrate one of the Dickinson poems we read, “A Route of Evanescence.” For their riff on Judy Chicago’s Dickinson plate, Destin bought an antique, rose-motif serving plate and Tori a silver one.  All the playing, finding each other treasures, dropping Dickinson lines.

At the Strong House, students cathected onto whatever caught their interest—Mali and her daughter Sam were fascinated by the 19^th century gowns and Millicent Todd Bingham’s suit with a Johnny-Jump-Up motif; Alison pointed out the display of stuffed birds under a glass bell; everyone loved Dickinson’s authentic white dress.  We discovered how tall she was when 4’11” Angie stood up on the platform to measure herself against it.  We were disappointed that we couldn’t see the bed with horsehair mattress and tightening ropes (as in “sleep tight”), but my students cared enough to ask about it.

There was a surprise exhibit of Lisa Yeisley’s drawings at The Jones Library, which served as appetizer for holographs of several Dickinson works; and Robert Frost’s hand-written draft of “Stopping by woods.”  Meanwhile, students were showing each other a miniature diorama of Dickinson’s bedroom, Dickinson’s earrings, grim photos of her father, portraits of Sue Dickinson, and other memorabilia.  I didn’t have to know what caught them—but caught they were. I was too busy oooing and ahing over my own discoveries.

It was raining, parking was impossible, no one had enough quarters for meters, and the walk was long, but after some finagling and one Uber ride, we all found ourselves—found ourselves—at the Special Collections of the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College, where Mike had brought out treasures:  a lock of Emily’s hair.  “She was a ginger,” Anastasia remarked;  the original daguerreotype of Dickinson at age 17, and a new one on loan that might have been of her and a possible lover, Kate Scott Turner. (Later, we would see her portrayed in a film.) Both plates caught reflections, so we couldn’t photograph them as clearly as on-line images, but it was fun to catch our own faces mirrored in them. 

So many holographs! Kathy especially loved the one of a small open envelope on which Dickinson had written a “house” poem—the peak of the flap was whimsically reminiscent of the peak of a pitched roof.  And there was a practice rifle which Amherst college students used to practice for conscription in the Civil War.  I delivered a very in-group comment about “Loaded Gunn” to multiple chuckles. Too many treasures to enumerate here. At night, we saw a new film, Wild Nights with Emily Dickinson, which somehow, luckily (perhaps because I had inveigled manager George enough), enjoyed its opening night for us.

The next day we visited the Dickinson Homestead, the Evergreens (her brother and beloved sister-in-law’s house), West Cemetery, where, magically, the rain stopped when we opened our car doors to visit Dickinson graves (which we decorated with white flowers); and Wildwood Cemetery, where Janice, Alison, and I decided that we wanted benches instead of gravestones when our time came.  In the evening, we had a candlelight poetry reading at Emily’s grave—and, instead of the promised rain—we had the Big Dipper right above us, and white puffy clouds—as if Dickinson, herself, had thrown her white shawl protectively above us.

I don’t know which images will stay with my students, or what will inspire them in time, but being out in the field gave us all unique, irreplaceable experiences that made what we learned embodied, multi-dimensional, and lasting.  Between the cinderblock walls of overheated or freezing classrooms, curtailed by time, too-often having no opportunities to bond and socialize, learning can be sterile.  We had time and space “More numerous of Windows—/Superior for Doors.” Many times, I have heard students say that they can’t even remember their teacher’s names—that all they cared about what taking the test and then forgetting what they had crammed into their minds the night before.

On our tour, we ate together, we karaoke-d into the night at the HoJo, we talked about our lives and hopes. Some went to see End Game after Wild Nights.  Several normally shy students emerged into their confidence as they became fierce competitors at Taboo before supper. We explored and learned for the love of learning, not for abstract get-it-over-with courses. Emily Dickinson became real.  One of the many moments I treasure was when, spontaneously, we called out favorite lines of poetry at the end of our candlelight reading.  And I was surprised to hear who spoke which line—and that they remembered phrases so well.

We dwelled in Possibility. We had the experience Dickinson captures in her poem:

I dwell in Possibility—

A fairer House than Prose—

More numerous of Windows –

Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –

Impregnable of eye –

And for an everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –

For Occupation – This –

The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise –

I like to think that she would say we were “Visitors—the fairest—”.  In writing this post, and on our tour, I and we, with her, “spread wide” our Hands, and gathered Paradise.

            Tour participants, as a keepsake for us all, please reply here with your favorite memories of our 2019 Emily Dickinson Tour, your take-aways, and your insights about how experiential learning yields surprising and lasting benefits.  Post your favorite images and videos.

Works Cited

Cover Art: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/emily_dickinson_379910

Dickinson, Emily. “I dwell in Possibility” in The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. R.W. Franklin.

            Boston: Harvard UP, 1998. #466.

Damning with Praise

 

      "Look," I said, "all the balls are together in the corner, and not one at the net."  So, in The Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Gallwey remarks to a group of students who had just finished successfully hitting  back thirty balls. Gallwey adds,

                          Although semantically this remark was simply an observation of fact, 

                          my tone of voice revealed that I was pleased with what I saw.  I was 

                          complimenting them, and indirectly I was complimenting myself as their 

                          instructor.

                                  To my surprise, the girl who was due to hit next said, "Oh, you 

                          would have to say that just before my turn!" (38-39)

       In the following series of balls, the students reported that they were less aware of their feet and hand positions--concerned as they had become with hitting the ball over the net. And they kept missing. In response to Gallwey's implicit compliment, they had become distracted, self-conscious, and absent-minded. Educator Claire Weinstein would say that they had become focused on performance instead of mastery--the score (grade, approval, ranking) instead of the what and how of a skill.

       Gallwey's book radically transformed my sense of writing workshop. Students understand how corrosive negative judgments are--vague, undeveloped, derivative, boring. But they are initially shocked when I stop them from praising each other's work. No Wow, Great, Powerful, Amazing allowed. Compliments are comparisons--they polarize. I know that in workshops of my own work, something withers in me when someone else is complimented--and, I find myself become dependent on/victim of those who will be reviewing my work. I start writing to manage their responses, instead of writing to create something genuine. In one disastrous workshop, a poet savaged my work, claiming he wanted to take me to the next level--then, feeling guilty for his harsh treatment of my work, spent the rest of the afternoon over-complimenting everyone else. Ouch!

       I've seen this happen in the classes I coach when a compliment is delivered--across the room, someone slightly rounds her shoulders, someone else masks envy with a fake smile.  The more forthright will spurt an epithet followed by "Just slit my wrists, now." When the next person's poem is in review, a writer will preface the workshop with apologies, explanations, a lot of don't hurt me chatter.  All this creates an adversarial atmosphere.

      

      So, how are we to develop our various crafts--writing, giving and receiving responses, teaching. How are we to be godparents to each other's work? How do we move from the politics of praise to appreciation? Throughout his book, Gallwey emphasizes two things:

                           (1) Keep your eyes on the ball.

                           (2) Increase your awareness of "what actually is" (34).  

Focusing on what should/might garner compliments isn't focusing on what is. As his student put it, "

                            Compliments are criticisms in disguise! Both are used to manipulate

                            behavior, and compliments are just more socially acceptable! (40)

     The language of what is is what we develop, not only in writing workshop, but in literature courses.  Let's take a stanza from Dickinson:

                             Wild nights -- Wild nights!

                             Were I with thee

                             Wild nights should be

                             Our luxury.

We could yadaya about how spare, risk-taking, sensual, breath-taking, OMG she is (notice the focus on she and not the poem). This is fawning, not appreciation. Here's how we notice what is:

(1) REMEMBER. We look away from the poem and report back what we remember. Simply, and without judgment or comparison.  We look back on what tended to stick.

(2) DISCERN PATTERNS. What is on the page?

                             four lines

                             four syllables per line

                             visually, the first line is longer than the others

                             Wild, Were, and Our are capitalized

                             the sound w appears in wild, were

                             wild is repeated three times

                             three punctuation marks, in this sequence: -- ! .

                             high frequency vowel sounds of ai in wild, nights, I, luxury

                             exclamation point after the second Wild nights

                             when reading the poem aloud, the mouth puckers and unpuckers on w's

                                 and widens on ai's

(3)  ASK WHERE DOES THE STANZA BEGIN FOR YOU? Working on our poems in process, this question helps the writer consider alternative beginnings.

(4) ASK WHERE DOES THE STANZA END FOR YOU?  See (3) beginnings=endings.

(5)  ASK WHAT DID I LEARN FOR MY OWN WRITING? 

There's more. With a student's permission, I will post a blog on how we responded to a particular poem and what we learned by KEEPING OUR EYES ON WHAT IS.      

        Alexander Pope coined the expression "Damning with faint praise." There is a lively discussion on the internet, arguing that "faint" should be "feigned." I agree. Too often, well-meaning teachers and responders will feign--pretend--a compliment--the old sandwich method--say something nice, say something critical, say something nice. That's condescension.  It's insulting.  We know it's pro forma. We walk away feeling damned with praise.

    

        Appreciating each other's words takes patience, time, and effort. It's so much easier to dismiss someone with a compliment of Great! But oh, the difference saying what is makes! I'm posting this blog on Valentine's Day, 2014.  Instead of saying, "You look great,"  my hubby said, "the gold snake on your earring picks up on the highlights in your hair."  Did he ever (in novelist Vladimir Nabokov's words) Caress the details?!

       Gallwey keeps his eyes on the ball and racket. We are writers: let's keep our eyes on the word and Penn. 

      

© 2014 Susanna Rich