The Vehicle of Language

by Billy Collins

Tags:: Billy Collins,; literary criticism,; poetry

This kind of “turn”—in Italian, la volta—has become a recognizable feature of contemporary lyric poetry. The first poetic form which virtually institutionalized the “turn” by making it an essential rule was the sonnet. Whether in its Italian or English format, the sonnet falls into two parts; to oversimplify, the first part says something and the second part reflects on the first part. It is as if after eight or twelve lines, the poet becomes stricken with self-consciousness and feels compelled to comment on what he just said. Perhaps it is no accident that the high-water mark of the sonnet occurred in the Renaissance when such concepts as individuality and authorship were just being foregrounded. Since then, much to the benefit of poetry’s readers and practitioners, the kinds of swervings that poems may execute have grown increasingly complex.

The Greek poet Yannis Ritsos strikes me as a verbal sleight-of-hand artist, who has an uncanny ability to find an invisible seam in his own poem and slip through it into a new dimension. One way he does this is by switching the terms of the comparison on which a metaphor or simile is based. After introducing an illuminating comparison, he sometimes becomes more interested in the secondary B term than the primary A term, more taken with the rose itself, say, than in its use in clarifying the subject of love. His short poem “Miniature” begins in a simple domestic setting but ends in a most unusual region:

The woman stood up in front of the table. Her sad hands begin to cut thin slices of lemon for tea like yellow wheels for a very small carriage made for a child’s fairy tale. The young officer sitting opposite is buried in the old armchair. He doesn’t look at her. He lights up his cigarette. His hand holding the match trembles, throwing light on his tender chin and the teacup’s handle. The clock holds its heartbeat for a moment. Something has been postponed. The moment has gone. It’s too late now. Let’s drink our tea. Is it possible, then, for death to come in that kind of carriage? To pass by and go away? And only this carriage to remain, with its little yellow wheels of lemon parked for so many years on a side street with unlit lamps, and then a small song, a little mist, and then nothing?

« Previous
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Next »

Get one free trial issue of Lapham's Quarterly!

Fill out this order form.
If you like the magazine, get the rest of the year for just $49 (4 issues in all).
If not, simply write cancel on the bill, return it, and owe nothing.

First Name Please enter a first name.

Last Name Please enter a last name.

Address Please enter an address.

Apt./Suite

City Please enter a city.

State Please select a state.

Postal/ZIP Code Please enter a valid
zip code.

Email Address Please enter a valid email address.

Country Please select a country.

Canadian subscribers add $10; All other international subscribers add $40.

More Essays

Comments Post a Comment »

Thanks for this essay. I found the shift of emphasis onto the poem's movement quite beautiful; a kind of Copernican revolution, you might say. Or to give a more concrete example -- the curious experience of freight trucks driving by on Greek highways, labeled "Metaphoras," i.e. shipping. I don't know enough about Ritsos to say whether this figures in his work...

What this shift reminds me of is a discussion I took part in (it was only a matter of time) on the subject of whether a person's character can fundamentally change: http://www.pandalous.com/nodes/can_ones_character_really .
It's in a different register and tone, of course, but one of the nicest points to come out of that discussion was, precisely, this issue of movement. And it's a nice exercise to read the many kinds of shifting, feinting, maneuvering you describe as possible descriptions of a personality's course through time: and surely we all know people like these examples you give, including those who mean well as they move from feeling to deep feeling.

Ultimately, what feels right to me about the shift to movement is that it dissolves, to a certain degree, the distance between the reader and the poem itself: the move towards understanding is brought into a certain resonance with the poem's own music. Something very interesting happens when a (student's) uncomprehending stare is broken by the introduction of time. I don't want to include too many links here (the hypertext imagination...), so will just mention the quote attributed, also on Pandalous, to Messaien: "Eternity is a single tone; split it in half and you have rhythm."

Posted by An appreciative reader on Mon 6 Jul 2009
Use.

Posted by Julie Freese on Mon 2 Aug 2010

Post a Comment

Name
Email
Remember personal info?

Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)
Verification

Note: Several minutes will pass while the system is processing and posting your comment. Do not resubmit during this time or your comment will post multiple times.

Published In

Travel

About the Author

Billy Collins served two terms as U.S. Poet Laureate. His latest collection of poems is Ballistics. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College, CUNY.

At no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny, as when we are busy with preparations for it. After that, there remains only the journey itself, which is nothing but the process through which we lose our ownership of it. This is what makes travel so utterly fruitless.