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.