Patterns and Poetry

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"All art [is] cognitive play with pattern"--Brian Boyd, Why Lyrics Last, pg. 5

Rhythm and pattern are fundamental to understanding and finding meaning in the world. Rhythms and patterns are examples of a particular rule found at every scale of nature. Both involve repetitions of either objects (which would include grammatical structures and syntax) or sounds (such as rhymes and regular rhythms such as iambic). Poetry that has rhythms and patterns are thus participating in and adding to nature as nature itself expresses itself.

In Aeon Magazine there is a fascinating article on repetition and music. In it the author notes that people consider repeated sounds as more musical. More, repeated words become more like songs.  And by extension, more like poetry. 

What this implies, then, is that Fred Turner is right about poetry in, well, everything he has written about poetry. Poetry is repetition. It is repeated sounds, repeated rhythms, repeated words, repeated structures. This would also explain why some forms of poetry involve repeated lines. 

Sonnets, for example, have repeated sounds in the end rhymes and in the iambic pentameter rhythms.

With ghazals there is the repetition of the end phrase.

Then there is the villanelle, in which we have entire lines repeated. 

But if we take a poem like my poem In the Multiverse, one may wonder how it is any different from prose simply cut up into lines:

In the Multiverse

If there are really many universes,
As many physicists now claim, if there
Are infinite universes out there–
Then I exist an infinite number
Of times and places, and so do my wife
And baby daughter. In some, sadly, I
Do not exist; in some, my wife and I,
We never met. And that’s the tragedy.
But out there too my mother also lives
And, living, knows and loves my daughter who,
In my own universe, she’s never seen–
And, knowing that, I think on it with joy.

Well, first, the poem is in iambic pentameter, so there is that level of repetition. But it is in blank verse, so sound repetition seems gone. But note that there are in fact several repetitions of sentence patterns:

"If there are..." is repeated. "In some," is repeated. "And, [progressive verb]," is repeated. As we've discussed before, parallelism such as this is a kind of repetition, and is not uncommon in poetry--see for example the Psalms. 

But is non-repetitive poetry even possible? If not, what do we make of the works out there called poetry but do not have repetition? Are they merely prose with line breaks? 

The writer who wants to successfully move his audience is one who will use repetition. If you want to make memorable works, you have to use repetition. If you want your work--poem, prose, play--to embed itself in the minds of your readers, you have to use repetition. With repetition, your reader, viewer, listener will go away with you forever in their minds. The more repetitions (without being overbearing), the more patterns and rhythms, the more memorable overall.

Patterns are spatially organized. They are arrangements of forms and/or colors, which is to say, they are designs. In literature, they create meaning and motif. They are imitations or copies, which comes from the etymology of “pattern,” derived from the Old French, patron, since a client would copy his patron, since the patron provided a model for the client to follow–the patron would act as the ideal, example, exemplar. Thus there a connection between patterns and ethics, and between beauty and ethics, since patterns are part of beauty. 

Rhythms, from the Greek rhein, to flow, are temporally organized. Rhythms are regular repetitions over time, typically of sound. Nonetheless, there is a connection to pattern: in a work of art, a rhythm holds the parts together to create a harmonious whole through the repetition of form and/or color. Since rhyme come from the Greek rhythmós, we see that rhyme is a kind of rhythm. There is also an ethical component to rhythm, since a rhythm in biology is a pattern of involuntary behavior or action that occurs regularly and periodically. 

In the realm of behavior, rhythms are involuntary actions, whereas patterns are consciously followed. A rhythm is meant to carry us along, to help our actions flow, while patterns help create meaning by making us more conscious. In this formulation, one could see rhythm as Dionysian, or (to use Milan Kundera’s terms) Demonic, while patterns would be Apollonian, or Angelic. A tragic work of art, using Nietzsche’s formulation, would be one that contains both rhythm and pattern.

Brian Boyd, in his book Why Lyrics Last, argued that we have an "innate attraction to information that we can see as patterned, since if we recognize patters we can process information rapidly, in real time" (5). He also argues that there is a "hyperconcentration of pattern in pure lyric" (5), by which he means the regular rhythms, rhymes, etc. typically found in formalist verse. However, there are other patterns which can emerge when we have stories. If the story is long enough, such as a novel, we can end up with very complex patterns--fractal patterns--of theme words, as I demonstrated in my dissertation (the relevant chapter of which you can find and read here). 

Stories make poems easier for the reader to engage with the poem because narrative structure is the pattern we live and think by. This isn't to say that lyric poems ought to have what we typically think of as a standard story structure, but certainly if you have some sort of story in mind, the reader will fill in the blanks and make the implied story their own. This also suggests that storytelling shouldn't be shunned in poetry--nor, I would argue, should poetry be shunned in storytelling. The patterns which storytelling create are complex, and they will complexify your poems, just as making stories poems (including plays, in verse) will also complexify and make more memorable your stories. 

Boyd, again, points out that patterns are vital elements to the arts, and that storytelling in particular provides complex patterns to the reader:

We incrementally fine-tune our neural wiring through our repeated and focused engagement in each of the arts. Fiction in particular, by harnessing the advanced power of human social cognition, our ability and inclination to track actions, intentions, and thoughts of others, also expands our imaginations so that we can make sustained forays into possibility space. (11)

In other words, "human art refines our performance in our key perceptual and cognitive modes, in sight (the visual arts), sound (music), and social cognition (story)" (11). 

Combining the patterns of rhythmic lines, rhymes, sound repetitions, word repetitions, and storytelling create a set of patterns within patterns The creation of patterns within patterns creates fractal depth, and unity among diversity, as found in nature. And as the brain is part of nature, in art too. Nature has fractal geometry–the repetitious repetition of repetitions. Great works of art have fractal geometry too, in the same way that nature is fractal, not in the repetition of the same fractals, but of the superposition of different fractal geometries on top of each other. Again, uniformity in variety. We again see the use of repetition, of patterns, and therefore, of rhythm, at the most basic levels of nature. And it goes all the way down. 

Light is made of waves – they are repetitious and have a steady rhythm. Quantum particles (including quantum strings) all vibrate–they have steady rhythms (this quality of vibrating at a steady rhythm is why we use Cesium–which vibrates at a known, constant rate–in our atomic clocks). Crystals all have patterns, planets all orbit in steady rhythms (as do stars in the galaxy). That is, nature is rhythmical, patterned, all the way down. It has fractal depth. So we should not be surprised to find the use of rhythm in the development of biological organisms, including humans–and our brains. 

Nor should we be surprised we find rhythms and patterns comforting–and beautiful. This suggests we would expect our art to be patterned, rhythmical, since both the creator and the audience finds patterned, rhythmic art beautiful. At the same time, one cannot have just regular patterns repeating over and over and over and over and over again. Violation of patterns is also important. It catches your attention. It is meaningful to the reader/viewer. It prevents the reader from getting board. 

Imagine a regular rhythm of grasses as a breeze blows across the savanna. It's calming, soothing. A little boring, but that's ok. Then, you notice a disruption in that regular pattern. Now you're paying attention, you're on alert. What could that be? What could it mean? Is there an enemy approaching? A lion? You focus on the disruption in the regular pattern, at the new pattern which is emerging. 

Regular patterns, then, have the danger of making the reader board. That's why it's important to introduce irregularities and complex patterns. It draws the attention. 

This same problem of boredom keeps artists innovating, creating new patterns, suggesting new rhythms that can potentially help us to see new things in the world, helping us to better adapt to and learn about the world. That is the true power of patterns. It's not just in their regularity, but in their irregularities as well. 

Metamodern Poetry: An Introduction

Abduction, by Jesse Mockrin

 Here, at last, is the promised post on metamodern poetry--or, at least, what I think metamodern poetry is and ought to be, or at least, how I practice metamodern poetry. In other words, I'm going to present you with my theory of poetry writing. In any class on poetry writing--even in a blog of mini-lessons--one ought to know the teacher's theory of poetry. That way, you know where they are coming from, and you can make up your own mind about what you want to pay attention to and what you want to ignore in the development of your own poetry. 

There are several ideas on what "metamodernism" means, from cultural analyses to aesthetic ones. Obviously, we are more interested in the aesthetic aspects, but both are concerned with the synthesis of Modernism and Postmodernism, and with the affirmation of paradox. In aesthetics, the affirmation of paradox includes such things as bring both serious and ironic simultaneously, or in turn. 

Now, depending on what one means by "Modernism," a synthesis of Modernism with Postmodernism can mean several things. Aesthetic Modernism is typically considered to have developed in the late 19th through early 20th century. Literary Modernism can be considered to have started with any number of writers, though I would argue that its foundations are certainly in such writers as Walt Whitman (free verse), Flaubert, Dostoevsky, and Baudelaire. 

With the aesthetic Modernists, there is a self-conscious break with past forms and an infusion with the ideas of people like Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx. However, there is another kind of Modernism, which starts much earlier, with the work of Descartes, and which has its origins in the Renaissance (which itself created a break with the past, with Medieval culture). This era comes to an end with the ideas of Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud, who are the fathers of Postmodern culture, which can be considered to have begun (in my mind) at the same time as Aesthetic Modernism. 

Meanwhile, what we consider to be Aesthetic Postmodernism began in the 1960s with the advent of pop art in the visual arts and in literature (with Don Barthelme, who is often considered the father of postmodern literature). Postmodern art tends to be fragmented, and gradually became academic art, dominated by university artists and writers. Postmodern art gave us and is the product of the creative writing class at our universities. 

Metamodernism in both cases is an attempted synthesis of Modernism and Postmodernism. However, an Aesthetic Metamodernism that only embraces and synthesizes (in an atonal fashion, without full synthesis of either) Aesthetic Modernism and Postmodernism is going to be different than one that embraces and synthesizes (again, agonally) Cultural Modernism and Postmodernism. After all, the literature of Cultural Modernism included Enlightenment literature, Romantism, Neo-Classicism, Realism, and Naturalism, while Cultural Postmodernism includes Aesthetic Modernism and Postmodernism. 

For my money, I think that Aesthetic Metamodernism ought to include influence from all of the movements within both Cultural Modernism and Cultural Postmodernism. A consequence of this is that I fully embrace all of the formalism used in the literatures of the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Neo-Classicism, Realism, and Naturalism as well as the aesthetic discoveries made by the Modernists and Postmodernists of the past 150 years or so. It makes little sense to me to only embrace Aesthetic Modernism and Postmodernism, as there is much more continuity between them than the Cultural versions. 

Indeed, I would argue that Aesthetic Postmodernism is the "normal art" of Aesthetic Modernism. Here, I'm using Thomas Kuhn's paradigm theory and applying it to the arts. Aesthetic Modernism was a paradigm shift, but Postmodernism wasn't. Postmodernism was merely a fine-tooth development of all that Modernism had discovered in the aesthetic realm. This had happened, too, with the Academic Art of the 19th Century, where the Academic Artists merely covered the same ground as the Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo periods, and whatever they developed was well within that paradigm. Postmodern art, too, does the same thing--and it's even more properly called "Academic Art" due to its almost exclusive presence in our Universities and by those trained in our Universities. 

If Metamodernism is to be a new paradigm shift, it will have to do something revolutionary in relation to the Aesthetic Modernism/Postmodernism that runs through Cultural Postmodernism. 

What will that look like? I have a few suggestions. While such wonderful novelists as Dave Eggers, Michael Chabon, and Jonathan Franzen are now considered Metamodernists, from the standpoint of their being part of the New Sincerity, I have to wonder if they are truly revolutionary. Perhaps closer to what I'm talking about are writers like Zadie Smith, Haruki Murakami, and Frederick Turner, who synthesize the Modern with the Postmodern, and their own cultures with others. Further, Turner writes sci-fi epic poetry, which synthesizes a more ancient form with a more contemporary one. 

My own version of Metamodernism looks more like Frederick Turner's, as he describes his aesthetics in his nonfiction books, Natural Classicism*, Beauty*, and The Culture of Hope*. In other words, a synthesis of Postmodernism, Modernism, Medievalist literature, and ancient literature, as well as not just the West, but cultures across the world, from (ancient to contemporary) China and Japan to India and Iran, Mali and Nigeria, the Americas, and throughout the world. This would include a recognition that there's no such thing as an "African culture," for example (an idea which is the ultimate kind of kitsch), but rather that there are hundreds of different cultures across Africa, about which we should all learn something, and whose literatures we ought to be reading just as much as we ought to be reading the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans. In other words, in Turner's formulation, we ought to embrace a "natural classicism."

If you were to embrace natural classical metamodernism, what kinds of poetry do you think you would produce?  

Inspiration and Knowledge

 The Greeks believed that the Muses were the offspring of Zeus (God) and Memneke (Memory). One way of understanding this insight is that poets produce their art due to a combination of inspiration and memory. 

In other words, we have to have some kind of knowledge in order to create good poems. You cannot be an ignorant poet. Indeed, one could argue that there is no such thing as a great poet who is ignorant. Think about the great poets. Goethe was a scientist who studied the physics of light and biology, a bureaucrat who helped manage a princedom, a well-read writer, and a traveler. He studied languages and history, read philosophers and ancient writers. Shakespeare demonstrated his knowledge of the Trivium, of history, of philosophy, and of the literatures of other cultures in his works. Keats was a doctor, as was Chekov. The point is that these were educated people. 

The poet must be an educated person. Not just educated in a narrow sense--having a B.A. in English, a M.A. in English, and a Ph.D. in English is being educated in a narrow sense--but in as broad and universal a sense as possible. There are English-major Marxists, English-major Freudians and Jungians, and English-major theorists; unfortunately, actual economists, psychologists, and philosophers barely recognize the English-major versions of their fields. 

This is not to denigrate English as a degree. I do, after all, have a major in English, a Master's in English, and a Ph.D. in the Humanities that focused on creative writing and literary studies, and I learned a great deal from my literary theory classes--and I took as many literary theory classes as I could, because I enjoyed them so much. However, I did also major in biology and minor in chemistry, I do have two years of graduate classes in molecular biology, and I taught myself enough economics, psychology, and sociology to have peer-reviewed publications in those fields. I have studied mythology on my own and to get my Humanities degree. I truly believe in the synthesis of science and the humanities, that there shouldn't be "two cultures." I don't know if any of this makes me a great poet, but it certainly means I have a great many things in memory. 

This knowledge of course has to include thousands of poems, as well as novels, short stories, and plays. There is no such thing--anywhere at any time--as a poet who is anything less than mediocre who isn't well-read. This "reading" includes oral traditions, including songwriters who are inspired/influenced by other songwriters. There's no such thing as a writer who wasn't a prolific reader. The two go hand-in-hand. 

But knowledge and ideas are not enough. We also need inspiration. 

The word "inspiration" literally means "breathe in." However, in many languages, the word for soul or spirit is "breath." To have inspiration is thus to have a spirit within you. You may call that spirit God, or you may call it, along with Socrates, a "daimon," but whatever it may be, it feels like it's coming from somewhere other than yourself. It's certainly coming from somewhere other than your conscious self. If you feel inspired, there is a kind of sudden insight that makes you want to write (or paint, or make music, etc.). 

If you prefer a less mythical/mystical version of inspiration, there's also a psychological one. Our minds are often working on problems in the background, then feed the finished solution to our conscious minds all at once, in what we call "a flash of insight." This can happen with scientists--Einstein being a famous case, with his insight about relativity coming to him in a dream--and it can certainly happen with poets. 

With poets, though, inspiration is more of a learning something that is of personal importance to us. That is, it's a kind of subjective knowledge. When we communicate what we have learned in verse, we express poetic truth. How well we communicate that truth depends upon our skills as poets. 

When you communicate your subjective understanding, you add to the wealth of human knowledge. We need your insight, your understanding, your interpretation of things--and we need you to write so well someone will read it, so it actually becomes part of human knowledge by becoming a part of your reader and how your reader ever after thinks. And that means writing something people can and will remember.

At the same time, if you are only relying on inspiration, you may write a few dozen poems in your life, none of them any good. As we've already seen, there's more to writing poetry. 

Secular Free Verse vs. Religious Formal Verse

E.E. Cummings, "The Grasshopper"

 I think there are good reasons why formal poetry the world over preceded free verse and artistic prose. Those reasons are likely to be biological rather than directly connected to religion, but the ancient naturalness of both seem to be connected.

On the other hand, free verse and the non(anti)-formalist verse that followed seem to be distinctly secular in manmade-and-therefore-"unnatural" fashion. (There is nothing unnatural humans do, though there are choices which are more conscious and choices which are more instinctual, even if the latter, in poetry, follows manmade forms.) The anti-formalists often argued that formal verse was antidemocratic, indeed, elitist—while their verse was democratic and anti-elitist. Of course, the opposite was true. People prefer lyrical rock, country, and rap songs to surrealist, LANGUAGE, and postmodern poetry. It was the latter which the masses hated, loving formal verse. 

With the addition of music especially, formal verse seems to tap into a deep Dionysian element that much 20th century free verse and almost all postmodern anti-formalist poetry completely discards in favor of the Apollonian. Formal verse seems to tap into the very rhythms of the universe—including our mental/neural universe—which makes it deeply religious in its experience. This is something free verse, and especially anti-formalist verse, cannot typically create, whatever other interesting elements they may have. In this sense nonformalist poetry is deeply secular insofar as it cannot connect us to those deep rhythms which we describe as religious.

Poetry is likely to have its origins in song. Songs and poetry are the reunion of language and music, which bifurcated from an ancestral primate mating song (think gibbons). Indeed, we know that The Iliad and The Odyssey were sung, and these were religious texts. It seems likely that perhaps most initial songs were connected to religion as well. Of course, if you want to get right down to it, songs and dancing were both likely connected to mating calls and sexual demonstrations (as they still do). At the same time, I am convinced that the emergence of language gave rise to the simultaneous emergence of religion. Which may be why the earliest narratives are religious texts. This double origin of poetry—in sexual music and language-giving-rise-to-religion is probably why there is so much tension with religion and sex in poetry.

If the idea of formal/rhythmic verse being "religious" makes you uncomfortable, think rather of it being connected to the spirit, of being spiritual. There are many spiritual traditions, and they all had formalist kinds of verse associated with them. More than that, if you want your poetry to make a kind of spiritual connection with your audience—if you want a Dionysian element to your poetry—then formalist verse is truly the way to go.

This isn't to say that formalism is superior to non-formal verse. The Modernist non-formalists certainly made some major contributions in the creation of free verse and in surrealist poetry. However, I would argue that, for the most part, postmodern non-formal verse is primarily academic in nature, and the content of such poetry reflects that fact. The academic poets do have something to say, and they do have something to contribute to poetry as a form. What would perhaps be interesting, though, is the synthesis of what the non-formalists have discovered with the spiritualism of the formalists. It doesn't have to be either-or, after all. Both-and can crate some interesting works.

Building from Words

 My friend, Brandon, and I play Wordle and Quordle together and share the results via text. Quordle is basically a Wordle where all your guesses go into four grids, and you have nine chances to get all four words. 

One day, after we shared our results, I jokingly told him, "Now, make a story with the four Quordle words." The words that day were: woken, brown, field, and ovary. This is what he responded with:

"Woken in a brown field of wheat, springs new life from mother earth's ovaries."

Let me first note that Brandon isn't a poet. Do note, though, that his response is without question an example of poetry. The restriction of using the four words in a sentence (I had said story, but he restricted himself further to a sentence) resulted in his creating both strong imagery and a very strong metaphor. By using these constraints, Brandon was able to create a very poetic sentence. This is the power of limits.

When I was working on my Master's in English, I was talking with someone about writing poetry, and I bragged that if she gave me five nouns and a verb, I could turn it into a poem. The words that day were: heart, rose, bird, door, apple, and open. This is what I wrote:

Open

My heart opens --
A book, a rose,
The beak of a baby bird
In an old, bent apple tree --
Until I know, now
Its warmth is not wasted
On your door, cracked open.

This was when I was still writing free verse poetry. Now, I would add the additional restrictions of iambic pentameter and rhyme. 

I have also found that making a point of using certain words helped me to write better stories. I consider my short story, "Regret," to be my first successful short story. It came about because of an assignment in a short story writing class. We were supposed to build a story around lists (something I already tended to do, and still tend to do), but a took that assignment in a different direction than the rest of the class. What I did was make a list of words that I semi-randomly found by flipping open both a regular dictionary and a dictionary of biological terms. I then took the words and used each one at the beginning of each paragraph--not as the first word, but as a word that would then be defined by that paragraph. Out of it came a coherent story. You can read it here. 

In each of these cases, the restriction to have to use certain words pushed us to find a poetic way of fitting the words together. 

There is also a form where the strict use of words is a necessary part of the form. In the sestina, you have six stanzas of six lines each, ending with a triplet (called an envoy). You have to use the same six end words in each of six stanzas, while in the envoy, one word has to be buried in the line while the second word has to end the line. Further, the words have to be in a specific order:

ABCDEF

FAEBDC

CFDABE

ECBFAD

DEACFB

BDFECA

Envoy:

(Line 37): BE

(Line 38): DC

(Line 39): FA

As you can see, the result is a 39-line poem.  

Here's my example of a sestina:

My Spring

The winter ends with the emergent crocus
That violates the snow. Bright daffodils
Add sun to melting sun. The fiery tulip
Cups sun and dew before the watery iris
Brings violet once again. The blood-tipped dogwood
Flowers spread white beside the rosy redbud.

Is this a tiny pea upon the redbud
Tree, smaller than the tiny grounded crocus?
The flat and woody flowers of the dogwood
Approach in size the nodding daffodils,
While all the twisted petals of the iris
Bring beauty different from the simple tulip.

In streaks of color, there's no simple tulips --
In small complexity, match the rich redbud
While solid color, simple lines on iris
Flowers balance complexity, and crocus
Delight us with their sign. Fields of daffodils
Spread dancing delight beneath the dogwood.

The forests turn white in the spring with dogwood
When snows are gone. I fill a crystal tulip
Vase, bring the spring in yellow daffodils
Into my home. Outside our window redbud
Trees purple yards. There's but a final crocus
Left in our yard, transferring roles to iris.

The ground shoots forth the green blades of the iris,
A contrast with the trunk and limbs the dogwood
Displays. And lost within the grass the crocus
Hides thin leaves. Waxy, wavy, thick, the tulip
Leaves look so artificial. The dark redbud
Twigs hide in hearts. Strap leaves grow daffodils.

You are the dance and sun of daffodils,
As complex and as bold as are the iris,
The red and heart of fractal-branching redbud,
As solemn and as layered as the dogwood,
Delightful and inspiring as tulip
Flowers, you break my snows like the first crocus.

The daffodils all fade beneath the dogwood
Cross -- then the redbud beans. Aspiring tulip
Beds fail. The iris seize spring from the crocus.

As you can well imagine, constructing such a poem isn't easy. The sestina--especially with the added restriction of iambic pentameter--may come close to pushing the upper limits of constraints being generative of something interesting. There is always a delicate balance when it comes to using constraints to create greater freedom in your writing. 

Ensuring that you use certain words in a poem can be a fun way to write. And I think you'll often be surprised at the things you'll come up with. Rules often make us cleverer--and sometimes more of a poet--than we actually are.