WORDS RANGING FORMS

A Reading of Louis Zukofsky's "A" :1-12

by

Carol A. Cummings

University of B r i t i s h Columbia

' A p r i l 26, 1971

Submitted i n P a r t i a l F u l f i l l m e n t of the

Requirements for the Master's Degree i n

English

Read and Approved By:

In p r e s e n t i n g t h i s t h e s i s i n p a r t i a l f u l f i l m e n t o f the r e q u i r e m e n t s f o r

an advanced degree a t the U n i v e r s i t y of B r i t i s h C o l u m b i a , I a g r e e t h a t

t h e L i b r a r y s h a l l make i t f r e e l y a v a i l a b l e f o r r e f e r e n c e and s t u d y .

I f u r t h e r agree t h a t p e r m i s s i o n f o r e x t e n s i v e c o p y i n g o f t h i s t h e s i s

f o r s c h o l a r l y p u r p o s e s may be g r a n t e d by the Head o f my Department o r

by h i s r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s . I t i s u n d e r s t o o d t h a t c o p y i n g o r p u b l i c a t i o n

o f t h i s t h e s i s f o r f i n a n c i a l g a i n s h a l l not be a l l o w e d w i t h o u t my

w r i t t e n p e r m i s s i o n .

Department o f

The U n i v e r s i t y o f B r i t i s h C o l u m b i a V a n c o u v e r 8, Canada

ABSTRACT

It i s an i n i t i a l assumption of t h i s paper that

the reading of a poem i s an experience which the reader

undergoes, or i n which he p a r t i c i p a t e s . The reader i s part

of the process of the poem. Hence the discussion of "A":

1-12 i s focussed on a consideration of what happens i n the

reading of the poem. The point of view taken i s that the

poem i t s e l f i s an exercise i n how to read.

In the pursuit of t h i s discussion, the poem i s

observed as an object, as anoordered device; as Zukofsky's

model of the universe he perceives.

Communication theory i s used as an i n i t i a l model

for an analysis of the way i n which meaning i s conveyed to

the reader. The subsequent discussion involves a study

of Zukofsky's use of analogies and technics, as well as

an analysis of the ways i n which he uses language.

As a cumulative result, a sense of the subjective

experience of the poem i s derived through the metaphor of

c y c l i c a l i t y . The discussion of movements within the poem

become cycles of movement between the reader and the poem,

and between the wri t i n g and the poem.

P R E F A C E

I n t h e p r o c e s s o f r e s e a r c h i n g a n a l y t i c a l o r c r i t i c a l

w r i t i n g s o n Z u k o f s k y ' s w o r k , i t b e c o m e s e v i d e n t t h a t v i r ­

t u a l l y t h e o n l y p e o p l e w h o w r i t e a b o u t h i m a r e o t h e r p o e t s .

H a r r i e t M o n r o e , W i l l i a m C a r l o s W i l l i a m s , R o b e r t D u n c a n , R o b e r t

C r e e l e y , D e n i s e L e v e r t o v , G e r a r d M a l a n g a , a n d C h a r l e s T o m -

l i n s o n a r e a m o n g t h e m . T h e s e p e o p l e r e s p o n d t o Z u k o f s k y

i n w a y s t h a t p e o p l e w h o a r e n o t p o e t s d o n o t . T h a t i s , t h e r e

i s s o m e t h i n g i n Z u k o f s k y ' s w o r k t h a t t h e r e a d i n g p u b l i c r e ­

s i s t s .

I t w o u l d s e e m t h a t t h e d i s t i n c t i o n l i e s i n t h e f a c t

t h a t t h o s e w h o u s e l a n g u a g e , w h o a r e s e n s i t i v e t o t h e m o v e - . .

m e n t s o f w o r d s , a r e t h e m s e l v e s m o v e d b y w h a t Z u k o f s k y d o e s .

T h e y s h a r e a c o m m o n s e n s e o f l a n g u a g e .

A t t e m p t s t o w o r k w i t h Z u k o f s k y ' s p o e t r y w i t h o u t t h a t

e m p a t h y f o r h i s u s e o f l a n g u a g e s e e m t o h a v e o n e o f t w o s o r t s

o r r e s u l t s . J o n a t h a n W i l l i a m s , f o r i n s t a n c e , r e s p o n d s w i t h

e c s t a t i c a n d e f f u s i v e , b u t e s s e n t i a l l y u s e l e s s , c e l e b r a t i o n

i n " Z o o - c o u g h ' s K e y ' s N e s t o f P o u l t r y " . H e i s c l o s e e n o u g h

t o t h e w o r l d o f p o e t r y t o r e s p o n d , b u t i s n o t s u f f i c i e n t l y i n ­

v o l v e d i n a s i m i l a r u s e o f w o r d s t o h a v e a v o c a b u l a r y w h i c h

i s a r t i c u l a t e . I v o r W i n t e r s h a s a n a r t i c u l a t e , a l b e i t

c l i n i c a l , s t y l e i n " T h e O b j e c t i v i s t s " , b u t c o m p l e t e l y m i s -

understands Zukofsky's play of words.

A workable approach v.to writing about the poems

seems to be that method used by the poets who write about

Zukofsky. In part i t involves using techniques which

Zukofsky himself employs i n hi s ordering process. Metaphors

of mechanical processes (communication theory, for example),

analogy and etymological analysis a l l permit a mode of writing

which involves an attention to language. In addition a move­

ment from such writing to the poem i t s e l f and back again

allows the writer to break into the c i r c l e of the poem at

random, without losing a perspective on the poem as a coherent

en t i t y .

CONTENTS

Abstract i i

Preface i i i

One. THE POEM AS OBJECT 1

Two. IN ORDER TO ORDER 20

Three. THE WEAVING OP MEANING 38

Four. THE CIRCLE OF ABUSE 60

Five. THE MEASURE OF DEGREES 77

Six. IN THE COILING 94

Appendix I: Cycles of the Letter/Word "A" 113

Appendix I I : Spheres of Languages 116

Bibliography

L i s t of Works Cited 120

L i s t of Dictionaries and Reference Books 122

L i s t of Secondary Sources

THE POEM AS OBJECT

A Round of f i d d l e s playing Bach. Come, ye daughters, share my anguish--

Bare arms, black dresses, See Himi Whom?

Bediamond the passion of our Lord, See Himl How? '

His legs blue, tendons bleeding, 0 Lamb of God most holy!

Black f u l l dress of the audience. Dead century, where are your motley Country people i n Leipzig, Easter, Matronly flounces, starched, heaving, Cheeks of the patrons of L e i p z i g — "Going to church: Where's the baby?" "Ah, there 1s the Kapellmeister

i n a t e r r i b l e h u r r y — Johann Sebastian, twenty-two

Children I 1

1. Louis Zukofsky, "A":1-12(London, 1966), p.7. A l l references to sections from "A" :1-12 are drawn from t h i s e d i t i o n .

The Passion According to Matthew was performed at

Carnegie Hall i n A p r i l of 1928, almost exactly two hundred

years after i t s composition, and appropriately, at Easter

time. In the opening passage of the poem, Zukofsky combines

the mood of the 1928 performance of the Passion with com­

ments on the audience of both periods; interspersed are

passages from the l i b r e t t o of the Passion. These three per­

spectives are interwoven with one another so that they pro­

vide contrast and harmony with one another: the agony i n

the l i b r e t t o counterpointed by the "matronly flounces" and

bare arms, black dresses" of the audience (s).

The o r i g i n a l performance of the Passion had two choirs

in l o f t s opposite one another i n the church. Each had i t s

own group of instruments, and the performance commenced with

a c a l l i n g and response pattern which i s sim i l a r to the l i t ­

any i t s e l f . . . o r to the ancient r i t u a l of the Quem Quertis

trope, i n which the costumed chorus was divided into two

antiphonal groups, and chanted the story of the three Marys 2

coming to the tomb of Christ ("Come, ye daughters, share

my anguish"). The c a l l i n g and answering i n rhythmic chants

form a round, a re p e t i t i v e , c y c l i c melody, and t h i s charac­

t e r i s t i c of the Passion i s suggested i n the juxtaposition

2. John Gassner, Masters of the Drama,3rd ed. (New York, 1954), p.142.

of the contexts i n the opening passage of "A " - l . Even in

the typography, the physical r e l a t i o n s h i p of the words "A"

and "Round" i t e r a t e the cycle or the round: the "A" leads,

s y n t a c t i c a l l y , to the "Round", supplying at least two con­

t e x t s — the performance of the Passion (the polyphonic ar­

rangement of the instruments playing Bach), and the poem

i t s e l f as a round, a melody which frequently cycles back

upon i t s e l f to create resonances and harmonies.

The i t a l i c i z e d l i n e s of the passage are from the

l i b r e t t o of the Passion, and within themselves i l l u s t r a t e

the c a l l i n g and response of the choruses. But within the

structure of the poem they also form yet another antiphonal

pattern, i n that they are only one part of the commentary;

they are the counterpoint to the descriptions of the audience.

The audience i t s e l f i s evidently two audiences, one atten­

ding the f i r s t performance of the Passion i n Leipzig i n

1729; the country people, "starched, heaving", fa m i l i a r s of

Bach ("Johann Sebastian...in a t e r r i b l e hurry"). The other

audience i s the one attending the Carnegie Hall performance

in 1928: a formal crowd, i n "black f u l l dress", "bare arms,

black dresses", quite unlike the "matronly flounces" of two

3. The b i t s of conversation i n the passage ("Going to church. Where's the baby?") form a call-and-response pattern among themselves.

hundred years e a r l i e r . This i s an audience which a r r i v e s i n

honking automobiles to hear the Passion "rendered" (in which

context the "Come, ye daughters, share my anguish" becomes

sadly i r o n i c a l ) .

The i m p l i c i t differences between the two audiences

allows for the i n t e r j e c t i o n of s t i l l another context: com­

parative s o c i a l comment. "Dead century, where are your

motley/ people..."; an address to the audience of 1928, the

people who are referred to throughout the poem as "sleeping",

"dead", and "unmoving". They are those people who have not

become "enlightened" (awakened) because they have not got­

ten beyond the narrow confines of t h e i r own p a r t i c u l a r

contexts. The women of t h i s audience come to the perfor­

mance bediamoned; i n contrast i s the Passion i t s e l f , which

bediamonds "the passion of our Lord"; makes i t b r i l l i a n t ,

shining, b e a u t i f u l . The voice of the poem asks t h i s

audience, "where i s your motley", where i s your heritage,

the motley and unsophisticated people such as those who

attended Bach's own church or the trek to the h i l l at

Calvary. There i s also the suggestion of the garb of the

clown, designed so as to a t t r a c t attention; an appropriate

remonstrance to an audience who, to some extent, attend

the performance as a matter of s o c i a l behaviour, without

a sense of the deeper resonances surrounding the Passion

i t s e l f . F i n a l l y , i t should not be forgotten that the reader

forms yet another audience: the one attending (to) Zukof­

sky's performance of the Passion, a performance which i t -4

s e l f i s a motley of tones and images.

Even i n t h i s cursory reading of the f i r s t twenty

l i n e s of "A" :1-12, i t i s evident that there are many d i r ­

ections to t r a v e l at once, and i t i s not u n t i l the reader

accepts the constant s h i f t i n g s of context or focus that the

poem becomes readable, or meaningful. The poem becomes, for

the reader, a process of expansion.

In fact, a reading of "A" :1-12 might well be con­

sidered to be an exercise i n how to read a poem. In ex­

amining "A":1-12 from t h i s point of view, i t i s useful to

consider Zukofsky's statement that poetry "may be defined

as an order of words that as movement and tone... approaches

i n varying degrees the wordless art of music as a kind of

4. An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, ed. Rev. Walter Skeat (Oxford, 1968). The Etym. Diet., as i t w i l l be referred to hereafter, l i n k s the word "mot­ley" with the idea of that which i s of d i f f e r e n t c o l ­ours, and suggests that i t might well originate from the Old French, mattele, which meant "clotted, knotted, curdled or curd-like". The suggestion of a combination of contexts knotted together i n a motley becomes par­t i c u l a r l y relevant i n l a t e r discussion of "A" :1-12 as a collage or weaving.

mathematical l i m i t " . The poem i s a movement i n i t s e l f ,

composed of words and silences; a series of harmonies

through which the reader moves and i s moved by what he

perceives.

In h i s discussion of language, Fenollosa refers to

language as action or transaction. Zukofsky also speaks of

language as being animated, as possessing power or movement.

Yet there are d i s t i n c t l y mechanical orders within his poems,

and h i s d e f i n i t i o n of poetry i s framed i n terms which are

inherently mechanical: the terminology of mathematics.

It would seem that there i s a contradiction be­

tween Zukofsky's attitude towards language and his making

of poems. However, the making of a poem i s a process of 7

ordering, and i s mechanical i n that sense. Moreover, i f

5. Louis Zukofsky, "A Statement for Poetry, " Prepositions : The Collected C r i t i c a l Essays of Louis Zukofsky (London, 1967), p. 28.

6. Ernest Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Character as a medium for Poetry, ed. Ezra Pound, (San Francisco, 1964).

7. "whoever makes i t may well consider a poem as a design or construction. A contemporary American poet says: 'A poem i s a small (or large) machine made of words'. The B r i t i s h mathetician George Hardy has envied poetry i t s fineness of immediate l o g i c . A s c i e n t i s t may envy i t s bottomless perception of r e l a t i o n s which, for a l l i t s i n t r i c a c i e s , keeps a world of things tangible and whole". "A Statement for Poetry", Prepositions, p.27.

the words themselves are perhaps machines, they are 8

so i n the root-sense of the word, magh, or "power"; they

are contrivances which act as a means for ordering.

The mechanics are a way into the poem, both for

Zukofsky and the reader. Zukofsky r e f e r s ^ to hi s use of

the formula for a conic section i n wri t i n g the f i r s t h a l f

of "A"-9 as a way of releasing himself into the poem; a

mechanical approach to be abandoned once i t had served as

an ordering f u n c t i o n . 1 ^ So, i n a reading of "A" :1-12, i t

is useful to begin with an examination of the mechanics of

the poem, bearing i n mind that these patterns are set up i n

order that they can l a t e r be abandoned; that i n fact they must

be abandoned to pr o h i b i t a mistaking of the means for the

end. There would be l i t t l e to be gained by "reading"

"A"-9 for i t s d i s t r i b u t i o n of the l e t t e r s "n" and " r " .

8. Etym. Diet.

9. C i t a t i o n from an unpublished l e t t e r from Louis Zukofsky to Peter Quartermain, October 18, 1968.

10. The l e t t e r s "n" and " r " are di s t r i b u t e d throughout the f i r s t h a l f of "A"-9 i n a sequence which corresponds to the formula for a conic section.

Communication theory provides a useful means of

examining the ways i n which meaning i s revealed to the

reader; or, perhaps more appropriately, structures i n

"A" :1-12 which permit the reader to perceive the poem as

being relevant to himself. In the construction of a message,

" b i t s " (the l e t t e r s of the alphabet, for example) are strung

together i n sequences which have a greater or lesser degree

of complexity. The more complex the message i s , the less

l i k e l y i t i s that the message w i l l occur by chance. x x

Messages which occur rarely, however, capture the attention

of the receiver, and demand a conscious a s s i m i l a t i o n of the

signals being sent.

Now i s the winter of our discontent 12

Made glorious summer by t h i s sun of York

In t h i s message, the p r o b a b i l i t y of these word sequences

occurring i s very low. The use of metaphor accounts i n part

for the "unl i k e l i n e s s " of the message, and l i m i t s the number

of receivers to those who can r e l a t e to the metaphorical

contexts. It i s a message i n which there i s an elaborately-

executed analogy between peace of mind and the season, and

i t s relevance w i l l depend upon the r e c e p t i v i t y of the

11. Don Fabun, ed., "Automation", Dynamics of Change (Englewood C l i f f s , N.J., 1968), pp.10-13.

12. Shakespeare, Richard III, I . i . l .

r e c e i v e r .

In o r d e r f o r a message to be completed, i t must

have a r e c e i v e r : t h a t i s , someone f o r whom the frames o f

r e f e r e n c e are r e l e v a n t . For those who cannot p e r c e i v e a

m e t a p h o r i c a l c o n n e c t i o n between moods and season, or who

cannot observe the r e l e v a n c e o f a pun on "sun", the above

statement i s merely f l o r i d speech. The r e l e v a n c e o f a

message i s determined by the r e c e i v e r i n terms of h i s own

v o c a b u l a r y (or v o c a b u l a r i e s ) : how many ways can he p e r c e i v e

the world around him? The more complex h i s modes o f per­

c e p t i o n , the more r e c e p t i v e he w i l l be t o combinations o f

modes: image and metaphor, f o r i n s t a n c e .

When a message which c o n t a i n s i n f o r m a t i o n t h a t

appears to be extraneous to the r e c e i v e r i s sent, t h e r e i s

l i k e l y t o be a d i s r u p t i o n i n the r e c e i v e r ' s a s s i m i l a t i o n o f

the message. In communication theory, m a t e r i a l which i s

(or appears to be) i r r e l e v a n t to the message i s r e f e r r e d

13

t o as "noise". Such i n t e r f e r e n c e might be simply s t a t i c

on the r a d i o , a sudden movement which d i s t r a c t s the eye

from the m a t e r i a l a t hand, or the i n t e r p o l a t i o n o f a

13. "no i s e " i s d e f i n e d i n Webster's T h i r d New I n t e r n a t i o n a l D i c t i o n a r y as "an unwanted s i g n a l i n a communications system".

vocabulary which i s not within the context i n which the

receiver i s functioning. Meaning, then, i s that charac­

t e r i s t i c of a message which i s relevant to the receiver.

The communication process i s one of transference

of meaning from a-fb. x^ The sender, the o r i g i n a t o r of the

message, transmits (orally, v i s u a l l y , tangibly) a sequence

of signals (the message) which i s intended to be received

by another i n d i v i d u a l . The e f f i c i e n c y of the transmission

depends upon the extent to which the receiver accepts and

interprets the sequence of signals i n a context which i s

reasonably si m i l a r to that intended by the sender. That

which i s relevant to the receiver w i l l be determined by

hi s own perceptions (the s e n s i t i v i t y of his f i l t e r s ) , his

past experiences, his s o c i a l , i n t e l l e c t u a l and other biases,

and his own p a r t i c u l a r needs. People who share a common

frame of reference, as for instance a professional group,

are assured that there w i l l be relevance, or meaning, i n

the messages they transmit amongst themselves, at least

insofar as the messages are drawn from the group vocabulary.

They w i l l have l o c a l i z e d the contexts from which they draw

t h e i r vocabulary, and the spec i a l i z e d meanings attached to

the words i n that vocabulary w i l l be without ambiguity—as

14. "b" being the receiver's sensorium.

long as the usage remains within the group parameters.

Ambiguity arises when a word " s l i p s i t s context";

when the p a r t i c u l a r frame of reference i n which the speaker

or sender i s using the message i s not c l e a r l y d i s t i n c t from

other frames of reference. The meaning, or relevance, i s

not completely indicated by the context. In such a situation,

the words may be framed so that they v i o l a t e the context; so

that there are too many p o s s i b i l i t i e s of meaning, none con­

firmed by the context. But i n other instances, the ambig­

u i t y can a r i s e from there being a number of contexts which

are simultaneously relevant to the word, and therefore to

the meaning. The p o s s i b i l i t i e s of meanings, then, are en­

hanced when each p o s s i b i l i t y i s rendered available by the

context.

The l i m i t e d body Can form i n i t s e l f Only a c e r t a i n number of images, If more are formed The images begin to be confused, If exceeded, they become e n t i r e l y confused.

("A"-12, p. 208)

The concurrent contexts y i e l d a richness of meaning

to the receptive eye or ear they are many-things-happening-

at-once; a collage of d i s t i n c t areas of reference or exper­

t i s e . Puns are the most obvious examples of these multiple-

context meanings. For the mind which delights i n words for

t h e i r v i t a l i t y , the pun i s a game, a challenge to locate

the various relevant contexts i n l i t t l e more time than i t

takes for the message to get from the eye or ear to the

brain. A game of speed i n which the analogical a b i l i t y of

the mind i s involved. Meaning, or relevance, w i l l depend,

i n such a situation, upon the receiver's a b i l i t y to dis­

tinguish the various contexts.

In "A" :1-12, there are multiple contexts through

which the eye and the ear move. The e f f e c t of t h i s move­

ment i s both cumulative and simultaneous matters of time

which w i l l be taken up l a t e r . The point r i g h t now i s that

there i s no single vocabulary or f i e l d of expertise which

i s a s a t i s f a c t o r y e x p l o i t a t i o n of the poem. Since the ex­

pe r t i s e of the poet i s the harmonic ordering of the uni­

verse, i t would be naive to expect that the language of

that expertise, the poem, would be relevant to only one

special area of the universe. To be a viable ordering

process i t must account p o t e n t i a l l y , at least for a l l

areas, as Zukofsky does i n hi s use of the languages of

music, history, p o l i t i c s , philosophy, mathematics and poet­

i c s . It i s because Zukofsky does not use a single exper­

t i s e that the poem i s d i f f i c u l t to get into. In other

words, i t i s the reader's f a i l u r e to recognize other vo­

cabularies which makes the poem " d i f f i c u l t " . He hears the

noise rather than the polyphonies. "Noise" i s simply not-

meaning i n a given context. However,

Information, we must ste a d i l y remember, i s a measure of one's freedom i n selecting a message. The greater the choice, the greater i s the uncertainty that the message a c t u a l l y selected i s some p a r t i c u l a r one. Thus greater freedom of choice, greater uncertainty and greater information a l l go hand i n hand

If noise i s introduced, then the received message contains c e r t a i n d i s t o r t i o n s , c e r t a i n errors, c e r t a i n extraneous material, that would lead to uncertainty. But i f the uncertainty i s increased, the information i s increased, and t h i s sounds as though noise were b e n e f i c i a l . 1 ^

"Noise" i s c e r t a i n l y b e n e f i c i a l i n poetry. It per­

mits the counterpointing of images, allows for the inter­

weaving of metaphor, and gives r i s e to those plays on words

which illuminate the v i t a l i t y of the language. "Noise" i s

that factor i n a poem which forces the reader to tangle

with the poem; which does not permit a f a c i l e passage

through the words. The poet can make use of "noise" to cre­

ate messages which are of low p r o b a b i l i t y and high inform­

a t i o n a l content.

15. Warren Weaver, "The Mathematics of Information", Communication and Culture, ed. A l f r e d G. Smith. (Toronto, 1966) p.,201.'

It i s in t e r e s t i n g to note that communication theory-

appears to consider meaning as being located i n the message:

that i f the message i s not i d e n t i c a l , even perhaps simul­

taneous, i n the sender's and receiver's heads, then the

communication i s imperfect, i n e f f i c i e n t . Yet, as warren

Weaver notes, information increases as p r o b a b i l i t y and cer­

t a i n t y decrease. A poem i s e f f e c t i v e p a r t l y because i t

says things i n an un l i k e l y fashion (low p r o b a b i l i t y sequen­

ces; patterns which are not e a s i l y misunderstood). It i s ,

however, an i n e f f i c i e n t message, i n that i t allows for so

much s u g g e s t i b i l i t y ; so much play between the message sent

and the one received. What communication theory does not

allow for i s the ro l e of the reader i n a poem l i k e "A":1-12.

There, much of the "meaning" of the message i s derived from

the reader's a b i l i t y to rel a t e to what i s happening i n the

poem; to perceive order (s) i n the poem, the reader must, as

noted e a r l i e r , tangle with the poem. The reader thus be­

comes a subject of the poemx^. Unless he responds to the

informational value of the "noise" i n the poem, he cannot

respond to the poem. There i s no single melody, theme,

image, vocabulary or other touchstone for him to re l a t e to.

16. "The best way to fin d out about poetry i s to read the poems. That way the reader becomes something of a poet himself: not because he 'contributes' to the poetry, but because he finds himself subject of the energy". "A Statement for Poetry", Prepositions, p.31.

The universe i n "A" :1-12 i s observed from constantly s h i f t ­

ing perspectives. A reading of the poem i s a process of

expansion, an extending of awareness.

Aldous Huxley refers to t h i s kind of growth of

awareness i n The Doors of Perception:

Reflecting on my experience, I f i n d myself agreeing with the eminent Cambridge p h i l ­osopher, Dr. CD. Broad, 'that we should do well to consider much more seriously than we have hitherto been i n c l i n e d to do the type of theory which Bergson put forward i n connection with the memory and sense perception. The sugges­t i o n i s that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs i s i n the main eliminative and not productive. Each person i s at each moment capable of remember­ing a l l that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that i s happening every­where i n the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system i s to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by t h i s mass of l a r g e l y useless and i r r e l e v a n t know­ledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special s e l e c t i o n which i s l i k e l y to be prac­t i c a l l y u s e f u l . ' According to such a theory, each one of us i s p o t e n t i a l l y Mind at Large. But i n so far as we are animals, our business i s at a l l costs to survive. To make b i o l o g i c a l s u r v i v a l possible, Mind at Large has to be fun­nelled through the reducing valve of the b r a i n and nervous system. what comes out at the other end i s a measley t r i c k l e of the kind of consciousness which w i l l help us to stay a l i v e on the surface of t h i s p a r t i c u l a r planet. To formulate and express the contents of t h i s reduced awareness, man has invented and end­l e s s l y elaborated those symbol-systems and i m p l i c i t philosophies which we c a l l languages.

Every i n d i v i d u a l i s at once the beneficiary and the v i c t i m of the l i n g u i s t i c t r a n d i t i o n into which he or she has been born—the ben­e f i c i a r y inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the v i c t i m i n so. far as i t con­firms him i n the b e l i e f that reduced aware­ness i s the only awareness and as i t bedevils his sense of r e a l i t y , so that he i s a l l too apt to take his concepts for data, h i s words for actual things. That which, i n the lang­uage of r e l i g i o n i s c a l l e d 'this world' i s the universe of reduced awareness, expressed and, as i t were, p e t r i f i e d by language. The various 'other worlds', with which human beings e r r a t i c a l l y make contact are so many i n the t o t a l i t y of awareness belonging to Mind at Large. Most people, most of the time, know only what comes through the reducing valve and i s consecrated as genuinely r e a l by the l o c a l language. Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by­pass that circumvents the reducing valve. In others temporary by-passes may be ac­quired either spontaneously, or as the r e s u l t of deliberate ' s p i r i t u a l exercises', or through hypnosis, or by means of drugs. Through these permanent or temporary by-passes there flows, not indeed the perception 'of everything that i s happening everywhere i n the universe' (for the by-passes not abolish the reducing valve, which s t i l l excludes the t o t a l content of Mind at Large), but something more than, and above a l l something d i f f e r e n t from, the c a r e f u l l y selected u t i l i t a r i a n ma­t e r i a l which our narrowed, i n d i v i d u a l minds regard as a complete, or at least s u f f i c i e n t , picture of r e a l i t y .

It i s impossible for us to experience the en­

t i r e universe and to survive. We are equipped with f i l t e r s ,

the senses, through which we are i n contact with the environ-

17. Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (Penguin, 1969), pp. 21-22.

merit. (Language i t s e l f i s one of these f i l t e r s , or screens

Gertrude Stein's work, for instance, can be viewed as one

attempt on the large scale to break through the l i n g u i s t i c

b a r r i e r s . The same could probably be said of many works

of a r t ) . Our experience i s li m i t e d to a narrow range of

phenomena within the electromagnetic spectrum. We have

created other f i l t e r s with which we are able to sense

areas which were heretofore beyond the range of the sens­

or ium— radio, the telescope, x-ray etc. In addition to

these "secondary" sensors, we have developed c e r t a i n areas

of expertise (mathematics,, history, physics, etc.) i n order

to communicate the experiences of the sensorium. There are

spec i a l i z e d vocabularies through which "we" communicate

what " I " has sensed. Each area of expertise i s , l i k e the

sensorium, quantitative: each can be measured, catalogued,

evaluated, c o l l a t e d . And l i k e the sensorium, an expertise

i s a measuring device; but the areas of expertise are the

means by which we share—through sp e c i a l i z e d vocabularies,

communities of minds, etc.—what we have sensed as in­

di v i d u a l s .

Poetry i s one of these areas of expertise,

and the poet i s the "I"-voice speaking of an harmonic

ordering of a universe. For a poet l i k e Zukofsky, the

vocabulary i s that of any (or a l l the) area (s) of expertise

and as such, provides a reasonable facsimile of a. t o t a l

experience of the universe. It i s not surprising, there­

fore, that Zukofsky refers to his poetics as the i n t e g r a l

(the summation of a l l things that l i e within the given

l i m i t s ) between speech and music. The available vocab­

u l a r i e s for such a range include dance, language, and

musicology; by secondary association they also include

mathematics, r e l i g i o n , philosophy, and mythology.

The poet conveys the experience through a

series of spec i a l i z e d vocabularies, then. These special

languages are i d e n t i c a l with what i s commonly referred to

as a b s t r a c t i o n — i n that they are disassociated from any

s p e c i f i c instance; that they are one remove from the sen­

sation i t s e l f . Abstraction becomes, i n effect, simply a syn­

onym for the spec i a l i z e d vocabulary, i n that i t i s only a

way of t a l k i n g about things.... the language used to com­

municate the " I " experience to the community of minds.

The vocabularies are codes i n which the sensual experiences

are defined i n a p a r t i c u l a r language whose words are ex­

c l u s i v e of other possible areas of meaning.

In the context of what Huxley says, the poet

can be viewed as the exponent of the Mind-at-Large; the

i n d i v i d u a l who has the a b i l i t y to create (or perceive)

order beyond one or two limi t e d areas.

It i s s i g n i f i c a n t , then, that Zukofsky speaks

of poets as those who "see with t h e i r ears, hear with t h e i r

eyes, move with t h e i r noses and speak and breathe with t h e i r

f e e t . " 1 8

18. "An Objective", Prepositions, p. 25. Cf. "A"-12, "We l i v e by presuming / i n f i n i t e nose". (p.213): i n f i n i t e movement or v i t a l i t y , perhaps. The poet, Zukofsky says, speaks and breathes with h i s f e e t — t h e suggestion not only of synaesthesia, but also of a pun on the mechanics of the measure (the dance) of the poem as a movement, an orchestration.

IN ORDER TO ORDER

Zukofsky states that the "form of the poem i s

organic that i s , involved i n hi s t o r y and a l i f e that

has found by contrast to hi s t o r y something l i k e per­

fect i o n i n the music of J.S. Bach....Or to put i t i n other

words, the poet's ofrm i s never an imposition of hi s t o r y

but the d e s i r a b i l i t y of projecting some order out of 19

his t o r y as i t i s f e l t and conceived." In "A"-5, he

continues the statment of the process of the poem.

Melody, the harmony, i s one of the functions; "My one voice": ... My other : i s

An o b j e c t i v e — r a y s of the object brought to a focus

An ob j e c t i v e — n a t u r e as c r e a t o r — d e s i r e for what i s objecti v e l y perfect

Inextricably the d i r e c t i o n of h i s t o r i c and contemporary p r a t i c u l a r s .

(p.30)

19. Louis Zukofsky, "A", "A" .-1-12 (Japan,. 1959).

"Objective": i n the vocabulary of optics, that

lens i n a telescope which i s nearest to the object being

viewed (also c a l l e d the "object glass"), i n reference to

cameras or projectors, the objective i s the lens which 20

makes the image of the object. In terms of a process,

20. In t h i s complex of references to focussing, or illum­inating, many of the recurrent images of the poem are r e c a l l e d : the frequent references to Spinoza ("blest Spinoza"), philosopher and mathematician, who experi­mented with the grinding of lenses. In connection with these images of seeing c l e a r l y , of i n t e n s i f y i n g the perception, there are numerous references i n the poem to "glass", as i n that which i s seen through, or that which r e f l e c t s (note the frequent insistence that while objects may j u s t l y be mirrored, and that indeed people are a mirror of the heavens, images must not be repeated. Reflection i s not r e p e t i t i o n . It i s , i n effect, a turning-about i n order to obtain another view. In a d i f f e r e n t sense, of course, r e f l e c t i o n i s pausing, thinking, comprehending; understanding.

Tied i n with these references to perception are the images of illumination; the references to understand­ing being synonymous with seeing c l e a r l y , with being illuminated, or "awakened". Hence the open eyes mir­ror the heavens, ("A"-12, p. 178), i n the sense that the stars and planets are v i s i b l y r e f l e c t e d i n the surface, of the open eye. But the images the eye per­ceives are also cast, i n r e f l e c t i o n , or reversed, up­on the retina, and thereby passed through the f i l t e r ­ing system into the understanding. The sky i s made synonymous with the source of l i g h t (understanding or reason: "the face of sky"): that from which l i g h t em­anates, or radiates. The use of the image of r a d i a t i o n leads into the concept of the c i r c l e (the radiates of the web, perhaps), the petals of a flower, the s u n ­flower, for instance, and the etymological f a m i l i a r s of "radiation": rays, as i n l i g h t ; "array, as i n ar­rangement, an ordering of some kind etc. The use of the images or r a d i a t i o n i s discussed i n a l a t e r chap­ter; i t i s worthwhile at t h i s point, however, to take b r i e f note of the related imagery which i s not dealt with i n the text, and to make at l e a s t b r i e f note of these examples of the complexity of the inter-weaving of the imagery.

The goal and the means are thus united; the pro­

cess i s at once the aim and the function. The accomplish­

ment, Zukofsky says, i s that intense v i s i o n which "resolves 21

the complexity of d e t a i l into a single object." That ob­

ject may be the poem; i t may be a single word which i n i t s enti r e t y " i s i n i t s e l f a r e l a t i o n , an implied metaphor, an

22 arrangement, a harmony or a dissonance".

The movement i n the process i s the desire to

"place everything—everything aptly, perfectly, belonging 23

within, one with, a context". The desire to focus; "out

of deep need" ("A"-12, p. 132) to perceive order and to

est a b l i s h (or locate) harmony. The word, "objective" also refers to those things

which are "external to or independent of the mind; r e a l : 24

opposed to subjective". The poet, then, deals with the

r e a l world; rides beyond the f i l t e r s . It i s h i s goal to

achieve t h i s focus or order.

21. "An Objective", Prepositions, p.25.

22. Ibid., p.22. See Appendix I.

23. Ibid., p.23. 24. Standard College Dictionary, (Canadian Edition) ed.

Funk and Wagnall (Toronto, 1963 ).

The a c t i v i t y of ordering i t s e l f i s a process i n

which the d e f i n i t i o n s or boundaries are a r b i t r a r i l y selected

from amongst a v i r t u a l l y unlimited range of objects or sig­

nals. Wallace Stevens, for instance, sees the l i g h t s of the 25

harbour as defining i t s l i m i t s ; having done so, he has ex­

tended or projected a pattern from a random sequence of

events or occurrences. The process can be described as

a r b i t r a r y i n the sense that the number of patterns which can

be derived i s li m i t e d only by the perceptions of the "viewer",

Hamlet creates a r b i t r a r y orders i n his b a i t i n g of Polonius : Hamlet. Do you see yonder cloud that's almost

i n shape of a camel?

Polonius. By th' mass and ' t i s , l i k e a camel i n ­deed.

Hamlet. Methinks i t i s l i k e a weasel.

Polonius. It i s backed l i k e a weasel.

Hamlet. Or l i k e a whale.

Polonius. Very l i k e a whale.

Hamlet. (aside) They fool me to the top of my bent. (Hamlet, III.iii.385-90)

25. "Ramon Fernadez, t e l l me, i f you know, Why, when the singing ended and we turned Toward the town, t e l l why the glassy l i g h t s , The l i g h t s i n the f i s h i n g boats at anchor there, As the night descended, t i l t i n g i n the a i r , Mastered the night and portioned out the sea, Fixing emblazoned zones and f i e r y poles, Arranging, deepening, enchanting night."

Wallace Stevens, "The Idea of Order at Key West" 20th Century Poetry and Poetics, ed. Gary Geddes (Toronto, 1969), p.120.

Hamlet "perceives", or labels, i n an essentially-

a r b i t r a r y fashion. The point i s that he i s capable of

"seeing" these p o s s i b i l i t i e s , whereas Polonius can only

meekly go along with what Hamlet suggests. The fact that

he fears Hamlet's 'madness', coupled with h i s own lack of

perceptive imagination, make him a poor match for Hamlet's

wit. Polonius can only submit to what already e x i s t s . He

structures what he sees i n terms of a pre-programmed vo­

cabulary (Hamlet's suggestions). His view of the universe

i s thus a lim i t e d one.

"The mind may construct i t s w o r l d — t h i s i s hardly

p h i l o s o p h y — i f the mind does construct i t s world there i s

always that world immanent or imminently outside which at

leas t as a term has become an e n t i t y . " The poet derives

hi s vocabulary from any number of f i e l d s , and therefore a

p o t e n t i a l l y i n f i n i t e number of contexts are relevant to him.

His job i s to arrange them into a s i g n i f i c a n t pattern, to

make order evident.

J.R. Gothe t e l l s the story of a cat with such a 27

job. In a remote jungle v i l l a g e i n B r a z i l , l o s t somewhere

26. .'An Objective", Prepositions, p. 26.

27. Jurgen R. Gothe, "Cover Your Mouth, There's a Cat on the Amazon Tonight: or, They've Got an Awful Lot of Coughin' i n B r a z i l " , from unpubl. c o l l e c t i o n , "Edible Mushrooms of Fur Cluster, Michigan" (Vancouver, 1968).

between the imagination and the lianas, l i v e d the Piranha

brothers and t h e i r few neighbours. They mostly lay about

and did jungly things u n t i l the appearance one morning of

a self-addressed cat, who explained his presence by in­

s c r i b i n g two roads...a cross-road i n the centre of the

jungle. Having done that, the cat found i t necessary to

j u s t i f y the road's existence, and thereby created the

t r a f f i c l i g h t . Since the t r a f f i c l i g h t implied stoppings,

he further was led to the invention of the parking meter,

and limited-parking signs. Ultimately he would have had

to invent the c i t y . In the meantime, he simply created a

u t i l i t a r i a n function for the road by deluging the Piranhas

and t h e i r friends i n s e l f - m u l t i p l y i n g radioactive cough-

drops, which could only be disposed of by transporting

them i n great loads through the jungle to a nearby pine­

apple factory and c l i f f - e d g e . Using t h e i r wives as wheel­

barrows, the Piranhas traversed the road time and again,

disposing of cough drops, and creating t r a f f i c ; hence the

stoplight; and hence the parking meters. The cat subse­

quently disappeared laughing into the wilderness, having

i d e n t i f i e d himself (necessarily) as City By-Law; (we

and the piranhas are l e f t with the trappings of the cat's

s e l f - j u s t i f i c a t i o n .

The jungle i s a l l that which i s not, ordered--, at

l e a s t to the cat's perceptions. As a c i t y cat, he sees the

jungle as an inchoate universe: primal, without form, sense­

less and speechless. He has no vocabulary with which to

r e l a t e to the environment, so he creates one. He inscribes

the roads, and j u s t i f i e s t h e i r existence by creating t r a f f i c .

He j u s t i f i e s and modifies the t r a f f i c by creating the t r a f f i c

l i g h t , which implies stoppings; hence he must create the

parking meter and parking regulations. He i s forced to

intervene i n the chaotic structure on the p r i n c i p l e that

form cannot l i v e without form. He creates meaning by

creating a context. He structures a r b i t r a r i l y , but the

point i s that he structures within h i s own range of ex­

perience.

There are existent orders i n the r e l a t i o n s h i p

between the people and the environment, but they are out^~

the cat's frame of reference, and are therefore not ap­

parent to him. He i s forced to j u s t i f y h i s own existence

within the structure by determining l i m i t s which are r e l ­

evant to himself, and i n the process, finds himself forced

to re-define his processes so that they become self-explan­

atory. The process continues u n t i l the point at which he

simply drops out of the s p i r a l l i n g series of requirements

for f i n e r and f i n e r i t e r a t i o n of h i s ordering. He leaves

the Piranhas with the new environment, an i m p l i c i t require-

ment for them, i n turn, to turn the new structures to some

sort of i n t e l l i g i b l e pattern for themselves. They may

b u i l d a c i t y i n extension of the rationale for the park­

ing regulations. On the other hand, they may use the

pavement for b u i l d i n g blocks, and the parking meters for

clubs. It doesn't matter what i s done; what matters i s

why i t i s done.

Just as the cat found that the invention of the

road required the invention of the l i g h t , etc., each stage

of any ordering process leads necessarily to a further, more

finely-delineated step--a further p r e c i s i o n of d e f i n i t i o n ,

a greater degree of abstraction u n t i l the process i s

abandoned and a new one i s begun. The abstracting i s an

i n f i n i t e process i n the sense that r e - d e f i n i t i o n can be

made at any point, and that each d e f i n i t i o n can be pro­

gressively f i n e r i n d e t a i l . Hence i t i s a r b i t r a r i l y term­

inated. ..by the words "The End", by a shrug and a walking 28

away, by a laugh, or by the leap to a new process.

The cat was presented with what he reacted to

as a cause-effect s i t u a t i o n . The nature of the jungle

was such that he had to intervene; there was no meaning

for him i n the environment, and therefore lie had no

28. Or, as i n "A" :1-12, with the word, "continues".

meaning there. The irrelevance led him to impose a struc­

ture, and h i s a c t i v i t i e s are the ef f e c t s of h i s s e l f -

j u s t i f i c a t i o n . It i s ir r e l e v a n t that once he has gone the

system becomes meaningless—so i s the p o s s i b i l i t y that the

existent order was probably far more appropriate to the

people and the demands of the environment. The cat, i n

fact, observes the jungle with much the same logic as an­

other cat i s himself observed i n The Book:

Here i s someone who has never seen a cat. He i s looking through a narrow s l i t i n a fence, and, on the other side, a cat walks by. He sees f i r s t the head, then the less d i s t i n c t l y shaped furry trunk, and then the t a i l . Extraordinary! The cat turns around and walks back, and again he sees the head, and a l i t t l e l a t e r the t a i l . This sequence begins to look l i k e something regular and r e l i a b l e . Yet again, the cat turns around and he witnesses the same regular sequence, f i r s t the head and l a t e r the t a i l . There­fore he reasons that the event head i s the invariable and necessary cause of the event t a i l , which i s the head's e f f e c t . This ab­surd and confusing gobbledygook comes from his f a i l u r e to see that head and t a i l go together; they are a l l one cat. The cat wasn't born as a head which sometime l a t e r caused a t a i l ; i t was born a l l of a piece, a head-tailed cat. J

The several possible patterns of r e l a t i o n s h i p (cat to

fence, man to cat, man to fence, etc.) provide t h e i r own

29. A l l a n Watts, The Book, (Toronto, 1966) p.26.

contexts. The patterns are, then, abstractions: they come

e n t i r e l y from the head. "The product and the process are

both important. Without the process there would be no

product. Without the product or evidence of action or

achievement there might not be more than fantasy...

C r e a t i v i t y i s to be regarded as both product and process.

A problem i s a state of mind, and since symbols (in the

general sense) can e x i s t as symbols only i n the minds, the

problem cannot exi s t apart from i t s symbolic formulation".

For the cat or for the poet, the problem i s not that there

i s no order; i t i s rather one of locating a relevant one;

of creating an o r i g i n a l pattern.

The created product i s an o r i g i n a l pattern; no more, no l e s s . Let us consider a l l the things we know—the land and oceans, stars and nebulae, the things that creep or crawl or swim or f l y — a r e patterns made up from less than 100 natural elements, and these i n turn are composed of only two phenomena— matter and energy. A l l the l i t e r a t u r e that has ever been written i n the modern English language consists of patterns of only 26 l e t t e r s . A l l the paintings ever made are patterns of only three primary co l o r s . A l l the music ever written consists of patterns of no more than twelve notes. A l l the arithmetical expressions we know of consist of only ten symbols, and for the vast com­putations of d i g i t a l computers, everything i s made up of patterns of only two com­ponents, 0 and 1. A l l pieces of sculpture and mechanical inventions (which are essen­t i a l l y pieces of sculpture) are patterns

30. Don Fabun, ed., You and C r e a t i v i t y (Oakland, 1968), p. 20.

confined to only three s p a t i a l dimensions, plus duration.^1

Each pattern created i s o r i g i n a l , and i s s e l f - d e f i n i n g .

It i s an e c l e c t i c process, a means of determining cause

and e f f e c t or re l a t i o n s h i p through the patterns perceived.

But the making of a pattern changes things, makes every­

thing not included i n that order chaotic, (hence the Ab­

surd, the e x i s t e n t i a l Void, e t c . ) . So a secondary order­

ing i s necessary to accommodate the revealed chaos; and

then a t e r t i a r y (or just a t h i r d ) , and so on. The act of

ordering i s i n i t s e l f endless, for at each stage the order

requires, as the cat discovered, r e d e f i n i t i o n i n terms of

those elements s t i l l outside the parameters of the ordered

world.

It i s i n t h i s continual i t e r a t i o n of order that

complexity a r i s e s . The poet can u t i l i z e the fact that at

any number of points within a given pattern, other patterns

w i l l i ntersect i t with t h e i r own contexts and relevance.

And i t i s from the use of these simultaneous occurrences

of meaning that Zukofsky i s able to remain meaningful i n

many vocabularies at once.

In "A" :1-12, as each vocabulary, or context, i s

31. Ibid.

revealed i n the reading, i t becomes an expansion of the r e l ­

evance of a l l the contexts which have arisen before i t .

Each part i s interdependent with the others.

In fact, one way of v i s u a l i z i n g the ordering of

"A":1-12 as a whole i s to use the analogy of a web. There

are the anchor-lines, the root-lines, which are attached to

points out i n the void. These l i n e s roughly intersect one

another near the centre point of the web, and are bound to-

gather by the s p i r a l of connective work which originates

near the centre point and unites the whole as i t moves out

along the lengths of the anchor l i n e s . Thus a l l the parts

of the web are interdependent: the r o o t - l i n e s are held i n

place by the connective work, which i s i t s e l f given footing

by the r o o t - l i n e s . They are both necessary to the existence

of the web, and are therefore simultaneous i n the concept

of "web".

In "A" :1-12, the connective work i s the words them­

selves; more p a r t i c u l a r l y , those words which bridge the

spaces between two or more areas of expertise by belonging 32

simultaneously to a l l of them. These are the words which,

i n the e a r l i e r discussion of meaning, were the admitters of 32. . "There i s a land of the l i v i n g and a land of the dead

and the bridge i s love....the only meaning". Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (New York, 1963), p.139.

" n o i s e " . They belong t o more than one s p e c i a l i z e d voca­

b u l a r y , and t h e r e f o r e t h e i r use i n any one c o n t e x t i n s t a n t l y

c r e a t e s a p l a y between t h a t usage and the o t h e r s .

The v a r i o u s e x p e r t i s e i n the poem are analogous

to the r o o t - l i n e s . They c o n s t i t u t e the g a t h e r i n g t o g e t h e r

o f v a r i o u s means o f p e r c e i v i n g the un i v e r s e , but they do

not e x i s t , i n a r e a d i n g o f the poem, as i s o l a t e themes.

The frequency o f the connections between the e x p e r t i s e

c r e a t e s a r e a d i n g s i t u a t i o n where the mind i s c o n t i n ­

u a l l y " s h o r t - c i r c u i t e d " : r e d i r e c t e d f o r a time a l o n g a

d i f f e r e n t c o n t e x t u a l r o u t e . U l t i m a t e l y the reader passes

through many e x p e r t i s e , and i s thereby exposed t o a pro­

j e c t i o n out o f a l l ' o f them which amounts to a harmonic

o r d e r i n g — a p e r c e i v i n g o f i n t e r r e l a t i o n s h i p s and resonances

among the many c o n t e x t s a v a i l a b l e f o r communication exper-33

xence.

As has been noted, i t i s im p o s s i b l e t o e x t r a c t a

s i n g l e e x p e r t i s e from the poem without c o l l a p s i n g the

whole s t r u c t u r e . I f one c o u l d view one o f the e x p e r t i s e

as a l i n e l i f t e d from the web s t r u c t u r e , i t would be a

l i n e i n t e r s e c t e d a t many p o i n t s a l o n g i t s l e n g t h by what

33. An i n t e r e s t i n g approach t o the poem would be to make a c o l l e c t i o n o f a v a r i e t y o f d i f f e r e n t "readings" o f "A" .-1-12. See Appendix I.

were cross-references, but once l i f t e d from the poem, are

simply meaningless interruptions i n the context of the

expertise. The many contexts are simultaneous i n the poem

they are projections of a hist o r y . To approach the poem

from the point of view of a l i n e a r reading, implies that

Idea #2 i n the poem i s a d i r e c t r e s u l t of Idea #1: a

statement of cause and e f f e c t that i s suggestive of a

sequential development of ideas. Any attempt to read

"A":1-12 from such an approach w i l l therefore be an un­

s a t i s f y i n g reading. The poem simply does not work i n a

l i n e a r form. The analogy of the web i s i n d i c a t i v e of the

non-sequential character of the poem. The superimposing

of one time-period upon another, as i n the address to the

three audiences (Leipzig, 1729; Carnegie Hall, 1928; and

the reader, current), creates what, i n Carl Jung's terms

would be c a l l e d synchronicity.

(It i s ) . . . a concept that forms a point of view diametrically opposed to that of c a u s a l i t y . Since the l a t t e r i s a merely s t a t i s t i c a l truth and not absolute, i t i s a sort of working hypothesis of how events evolve one out of another, whereas synchronicity takes the coincidence of events i n space and time as meaning more than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the' Observer or observers. The ancient Chinese mind contemplates the cosmos i n a way comparable to that of the modern physi c i s t , who cannot deny that h i s model of the world i s a decidedly psycho-physical structure.

The micro-physical event includes the observer just as much as the r e a l i t y underlying the I Ching comprises subjective, i e . psychic con­di t i o n s i n the t o t a l i t y of the momentary s i t u ­ation. Just as c a u s a l i t y describes the sequence of events, so synchronicity deals with the coincidence of events. The causal point of view t e l l s us a dramatic story about how D came into existence: i t took i t s o r i g i n from C, which existed before D, and C i n i t s turn had a father, _B, etc. The synchronistic view on the other hand t r i e s to produce an equally meaningful picture of coincidence. How does i t happen that A 1, _B', C', D1, etc., appear a l l i n the same moment and i n the same place? It happens i n the f i r s t place because the physical events A 1 and J3' are of the same quality as the psychic events C 1 and D', and further because a l l are the exponents of one and the same momentary s i t u a t i o n . The s i t u a t i o n i s assumed to represent a l e g i b l e or understand­able picture.^4

We might regard the two performances of the Passion

—1729 and 1928—as C 1 and D' : the psychic events". The

respective audiences of the performances would be the

"physical events", A 1 and B 1. In each performance, the

audience and the performance are dependent upon one

another; there i s no performance without audience, no

audience without some sort of performance. But that

p a r t i c u l a r kind of li n k c a r r i e s through time as well, so

that the audience of 1729 has something to do with the

performance of 1928; i t therefore has some re l a t i o n s h i p

to the audience i n 1928. And since there i s a l i n k between

34. Carl Jung, "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Pr i n c i p l e " , Collected Works, Vol. 11, 1958, p. 592.

performance and audience, and indeed between performance and

performance, etc., the re l a t i o n s h i p can be made i n either

" d i r e c t i o n " of time; the 1928 audience shares something i n

common with the 17 29 one, and therefore i s an influence

upon them from the point of view of psychic event _F', the

reader, who i s encountering a l l of them i n the physical

event _E', the poem. He i s that t h i r d audience, and as

one who attends, he i s bound into the cycle as well.

It i s i n thi s p a r t i c u l a r sense of time that

Zukofsky comments i n "A"-12 that:

...instances from 'different' cultures, sur­p r i s i n g l y inwreathed,

Seem to look back at one another, A r i s t o t l e at Shakespeare (both so fond of

b l i n d heroes) And b l e s t Spinoza at Shakespeare....

(p. 181)

In terms of synchronicity, Spinoza, Shakespeare, A r i s t o t l e

and Zukofsky are concurrent events, mutually interdependent.

There i s , as Zukofsky says, a cycle, and "you cannot take

out of the c i r c l e — w h a t was i n i t , / That i s and w i l l b e — /

...an assemblage of a l l possible p o s i t i o n s — / The locus... "?

35. "A"-12, p.180. Cf. the difference between Zukofsky's sense of hist o r y (concretions of events, "bringing together facts / which appearances separate") ("A"-8, p. 108) and that of Ezra Pound, who makes use of the past as a means of interpreting the present. Pound's view suggests re p e t i t i o n , whereas Zukofsky's implies c y c l i c a l i t y , mirroring or r e f l e c t i o n from one era to another - a two-way perspective.

3-6 "

With Zukofsky's p a r t i c u l a r sense of history, i t i s

impossible to understand the poem i n terms of "theme"; such

an approach implies l i n e a r i t y — s e q u e n c e and c a u s a l i t y . A

li n e a r approach separates items, and ignores synchronous

happenings i n the poem. It does not allow for the presence

of locus, or for the con c e n t r i c i t y of images presented i n

the poem.

The synchronicity i n "A" :1-12 creates a two-fold

use of time. For while ultimately the images and the hi s ­

tory are concurrent, a reading of the poem i s necessarily

sequential: the eye must move across and down the pages.

In fact, i t can take months to read the poem. Nonetheless,

the subjective experience, the subjective time i n the read­

ing i s f i n a l l y synchronous. The poem has no beginning and

no ending; neither does the experiencing of the poem.

The poem i s ordered as a collage. Because i t s

ordering i s not linear, does not r e l y on a cause-effect

progression from one passage to the next, the time i t takes

to read through the poem has nothing to do with the poem

i t s e l f .

We begin early And go on with a theme Hanging and draping The same texture

A collage....

The poem i s "One song/ Of many voices" ("A"-5, p. 24).

The song i s begun and continued, the singer "hanging and

draping/ The same texture"; the song i s woven of words, of

languages, but i t i s not about any of these things.

THE WEAVING OF MEANING

Zukofsky says that the Hebrew, "In the Beginning"

means, l i t e r a l l y , "from the head". ("A"-12, p. 148). In

the beginning was the word. And the word comes from the

head, derived from the universe f i l t e r e d through the senses.

Fact and reason are creations of man's genius to secure a point of view pro­tected against a v i s i o n of l i f e where information and i n t e l l i g e n c e invade us and we become creations, not rulers, of what i s . Where, more, we are a part of the creative process, not i t s g o a l . 3 ^

Fact and reason are the products of the f i l t e r i n g processes.

They take the form of expertise, and are given meaning i n

those spec i a l i z e d contexts. The vocabularies of these

sp e c i a l i z e d areas are created, as noted e a r l i e r , i n order

to provide a vehicle to communicate the I-experience: to

share some common awareness. They are a way of imposing

a relevant order, and t h e i r medium i s the word. The pro­

cess i s i n i t i a l l y one of organizing, and f i n a l l y of harm­

onizing. The i n d i v i d u a l senses, orders, and communicates

36. Robert Duncan, "Ideas of the Meaning of Form", Kulchur, 4, 1961, p.60.

i n patterns which resonate (harmonize) with others who share

his vocabulary (or vocabularies). The process i s described

at the opening of the twelfth movement of "A" :1-12.

Out of deep need

Before a l l w i l l be abstracted. So goes: f i r s t , shape The c r e a t i o n — A mist from the earth, The whole face of the ground; Then rhythm— And breathed breath of l i f e ; Then s t y l e — That from the eye i t s function t a k e s — "Taste" we say a l i v i n g soul. F i r s t glyph; then syllabary, Then l e t t e r s . Ratio a f t e r Eyes, t a l e i n sound. F i r s t , dance. Then Voice. F i r s t body, to be seen and to pulse Happening together. (p.13 2)

The statement i s of the ordering process and of the

communication i t s e l f . It i s also a statement of poetics,

r e i t e r a t i n g the flow of movement i n the ordering process.

A loqopoeia, the dance of the i n t e l l e c t among the glyphs.

But e s s e n t i a l l y the "deep need" to order, to be relevant.

It should be noted that Zukofsky makes a d i s t i n c t i o n 3 7

between "glyphs" and "ciphers". In "Poetry", he t e l l s

Paul, "d e f i n i t i o n s of poetry rounding out l i k e ciphers (ab­

stra c t and l i k e numbers on clocks that read only t h i s cen­

tury or that century and no other) (would) not s a t i s f y 37. Prepositions, p.11.

either of us. For I hope that you as well as I w i l l never

want to l i v e by them". Ciphers belong to the processes of

mechanics. Mechanics are functions i n the making of the

poem, but they are not the poem i t s e l f . The poet "may f i n d

i t r i g h t to count s y l l a b l e s , or t h e i r r e l a t i v e lengths and

stresses, or to be sensitive to a l l these metrical factors.

As a matter of fact, the good poets do a l l these things, but

they do not impose t h e i r count on what i s said or made—as 3 8

may be judged from the impact of t h e i r poems."

Glyphs, however, are the graphic symbols which have

become the l e t t e r s which form the s y l l a b l e s of the l i v i n g

words. "Words grow out of af f e c t s of

A. Sight, touch, taste, smell B. Hearing C. Thought with respect to other words,

the interplay of concepts."39

Glyphs are active i n the making of a poem; ciphers are used

for the measuring of what i s being made. Hence Creeley says:

...I heard the fact of the poem's statement as well as understood i t s meaning. Such hearing i s immediately necessary i n reading Zukofsky's work insofar as meaning i s an intimate r e l a t i o n of such sound and sense. It can be as close as -

38. "A Statement for Poetry", Prepositions, p.31.

39. Ibid., p.29.

Crickets 1

thickets

l i g h t delight

(16, 29, Songs)

-or move with an apparent state­ment, seeming to "say" enough to s a t i s f y that measure; but again i t w i l l be that one hears what i s so said, not merely "deciphers" a meaning. 4^

In "A"-12, Zukofsky describes Gerhardi, who:

'worked for Sir Hugo (of Vladivostock fame) a lover of s t a f f work...besides many ordinary f i l e s he had some special f i l e s . . . o r he would write a report... .once...a very exhaustive report on the l o c a l s i t u a t i o n . . . a f t e r much though i n ­serted a number of additional commas, read i t through once again s o l e l y from the point of view of punctuation, most p a r t i c u l a r about f u l l stops, commas and semicolons...very fond of c o l o n s — by way of being more pointed and in­c i s i v e , by way of proving that the universe was one chain of causes and e f f e c t s ' ... ("A"-12, p. 265).

Gerhardi orders by ciphering; he does not deal with language,

he deals with measures. The punctuation " f i x e s " the meanings

of the words. The words are used as devices, rather than as 41

"meaningful disclosures"; they are "deciphered" by the

punctuation. 40. Robert Creeley, "...Paradise / Our / Speech...",

Poetry, 107:1, October, 1965, p.53.

41. Duncan, "Some Ideas of the Meaning of Form", p.66.

In "Poetry", Zukofsky states that:

... i n poetry one can sing without stop­ping and without commas of the redun­dant commonplace action of the species-

A dog that runs never l i e s down-and of the dog who i f not mythical has rhetor­i c a l d i s t i n c t i o n , having been stopped by commas—

A dog, that runs, never l i e s down.

A l l t h i s about dogs may be learned from a study of quantity and from the fact that both prose and poetry, i f they are that, are meant to record and elate for a l l 42 time.

Zukofsky, however, uses words as "mordents", a

musical term used to describe the rapid "alternation of a

tone with the tone immediately below i t , ending on the prin-44

c i p a l tone". The word i s also used to describe a musical

ornamentation where the subsidiary tone i s the tone imme­

di a t e l y above the p r i n c i p a l tone. Thus the words resonate,

signal harmonies of meanings. The homonym, "mordant" might

also be applied to Zukofsky's language, i n the sense of the

material which i s used to " f i x " , or locate, colour or image.

In etching, the "mordant" i s the acid used to form the ma­

t r i x , as the words are used to create the "design" of the

42. Prepositions, p.18.

43. Thomas Clark, "Zukofsky's A l l " , Poetry, 107:1, October, 1965, p.56.

44. Standard College Dictionary.

poem (sound and not-sound are functional as " r e l i e f " i n

poetry, music, e t c . ) .

In The Walls Do Not F a l l , 'H.D. observes

the meaning that words hide;

they are anagrams, cryptograms, l i t t l e boxes, conditioned

to hide b u t t e r f l i e s . . . . ^

"Anagram": o r i g i n a l l y (Greek) "to cut" or carve; also a

written character. In i t s present usage i t has the further

sense of r e f e r r i n g to a change i n a word "due to a trans­

p o s i t i o n of l e t t e r s " (as " l e t t e r s " becomes " s e t t l e r " ) .

"Cryptogram" i s derived from the Greek root-word, "to hide, or

conceal": kryptos. Its use i s generally i n reference to a

message written i n code or cipher (or both). These codes

are "conditioned": from the Latin cum, "together", and

dicere, "to say"; an agreement. There i s also the sense i n

t h i s word of the locale i n which the a c t i v i t y takes place as

having an e f f e c t on the a c t i v i t y : environed.^ The surround­

ings of the word have an e f f e c t on i t s a c t i v i t y as much as,

i n psychological terms, the environment of a c h i l d can a f f e c t

i t s actions. Each word i s a l i t t l e box, a " l i t t l e case to

45. As c i t e d i n Robert Duncan's, "The Day-Book", Origin, 10, July 1963, p.25.

46. Etym. Diet.

put things i n " . It i s a place where things (meanings) are 47

stored. The etymology of t h i s word indicates that i t s root

i s the Latin, pyxis, which occurs i n modern English as "pyx",

"the sacred box i n which the host i s kept a f t e r consecration";

i t also refers to the container i n which sample coins are

kept at the mint. A special container. ("Box" becomes

active i n the context of navigation, where i t refers to a

movement around the compass-box during which the points of

the compass are named: i n short, the i n s c r i b i n g of a c i r c l e

and an itemizing of i t s perimeter.) Thus words are secret

containers which hold meanings, which carry relevances which

have been agreed upon. And the words can be made to release,

suddenly, unexpected relevances: surprise meanings... ambig­

u i t i e s (or b u t t e r f l i e s ) .

A word always contains at least the ghosts of i t s

former meanings, and these shadows of other contexts can

be brought out i n the p a r t i c u l a r usage of a word (as the

word "conditioned" can summon up the former sense of an

agreement). A word c a r r i e s with i t , then a l l the colours

of i t s other contexts and i t s former usages. Duncan notes,

for instance, a "change from Chaucer's time, when s i l l y

47. Cf. the phylactery, "a small leathern box...worn by Jews during morning prayer...as a reminder to keep the law"; an amulet; a vessel or case containing a holy r e l i c ; a charm or a safeguard. OED.

meant happiness, the uncertain good luck of the soul, and

could mean too the uncertainty of happiness, a r i s k y eu­

phoria. ..poor, helpless, exposed... (But) to the r a t i o n a l

mind to be s i l l y was to be out of reason, so that i n

Pope's time i t was s i l l y , unlucky, to be over-serious about

a soul 1 , 4 8

This i s the l i v i n g word to which Duncan refers as

"the mothering language, i n which our s p i r i t i s continually

reborn, the matrix of meanings, of evolving thought and f e e l ­

i n g " . 4 ^ Zukofsky expresses a similar idea i n the essay

"Basic", where he discusses the r e l a t i o n s between words and

objects. Noting the f l e x i b i l i t y of language, he concludes

by st a t i n g that "to give the language a d i f f e r e n t turn i s

enough to make i t take up a t r a i n of thought that we had

no idea of before".^^

It i s the process of putting manes on saw-horses to

give them a i r s ; e s p e c i a l l y when "manes" i s k i n to the Latin

word for s p i r i t s or souls (OED). The "horses" are thereby

given l i f e ( s p i r i t s ) and " a i r s " , songs. The numerous mean­

ings are c a r e f u l l y unveiled, one context a f t e r another, but

48. "Ideas of the Meaning of Form", p.71.

49. "The Day-Book", p. 25.

50. "Basic", Prepositions, p.156.

a l l remaining, f i n a l l y , simultaneously relevant. The "horses"

of "A"-7 are the wooden "A-s": "two legs stand A, and four

together M". A A=M- But also, the combination: A+M=AM

(being; v i t a l i t y , having s p i r i t as do the horses which have

been given "manes"). "Who w i l l do it?...Words / W i l l do i t ,

out of manes, out of a i r s , birds / Of words... fellow me, a i r s !

We'll make / Wood horse, and recognize i t with our words...." 5 1

Who w i l l do i t ? Zukofsky w i l l . "A": a poem; two legs of a

horse; a i r s of a song.

The word, with i t s secrets, i t s hidden meaning, i s

revealed (discovered: enlightened), as Zukofsky shows, i n

poetry. In "A":> 1-12 i t i s the very v a r i e t y of contexts at­

tached to a given word that i n i t i a t e s r evelation i n the reader.

Something happens, or as Duncan says :

It i s a f a n c i f u l philology. To dem­onstrate that, once words cease to be conventional, customary or taken-for-granted i n t h e i r meaning, a l l things begin to move, are set into motion.

51. "A"-7, p.45. "Fellow": "give me character (s); also "follow me" - i e . I conduct, direct, order."

52. In view of the number of references to Ulysses i n "A" :1-12, i t i s worth noting that the Trojan horse i t s e l f was a wooden box on wheels—a mobile (i.e., "active") horse-metaphor, f u l l of hidden s i g n i f i ­cances.

In the figure of ploughing we see that prose and verse are two necessary move­ments i n one operation of writing. That here what we c a l l the ploughing of the f i e l d we also c a l l poetry or our own operation i n poetry. Writing that knows i n every phase what i t i s doing.

* * *

Forward and back, prose and verse, the shuttle f l i e s i n the loom.~^

The webbing...a weaving. The word "weave" i n Sanskrit means 54

"spider". The one who makes the web: Zukofsky; the web:

"A" :1-12. The poem i s an "operation", or that which pro­

duces an e f f e c t . Duncan draws his vocabulary from the con­

text of agriculture. He finds that the word "prose" i s

derived from the ploughing term, meaning 'forward i n the

l i n e ' , whereas "verse" i s drawn i n the same context from

the Latin versus, meaning to 'turn again to make another 55 ' row'. The ploughing of the f i e l d i s the poetic process

of "breaking ground", of establishing contexts, and of

turning the words to make yet another meaning. It i s a

metaphor of action, of movement. And i t i s of movement

that Zukofsky speaks i n "A Statement for Poetry" :

53. "The Day-Book, p.13.

54. OED.

55. "The Day-Book", p. 13.

...Poetry may be defined as an order of words that as movement and tone (rhythm and pitch) approaches i n varying degrees the wordless a r t of music as a kind of mathematical l i m i t .

That movement i s part of the musical qu a l i t y of the

poem; i t i s the sounded resonances and "turnings-back-to-

begin-again" that create the melodic flow i n the poem. But,

as Zukofsky cautions, t h i s i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of movement i s "a"

context associated with 'musical' shape, musical with quo­

t a t i o n marks since i t i s not of notes as music, but of

words more variable than variables, and used outside as well 57

as within the context of communicative reference." The

movement i s also a v i s u a l one; the flow of glyphs across and

down the page. And i t i s the combination of both these forms

of "movement" that leads to the "enlightening" which occurs

for the reader : together they create the play of words and

56. Prepositions, p.27.

57. "An Objective", Prepositions, p.25. The words, "more variable than va r i a b l e s " presumably re f e r to the fact that words possess a connotative value, whereas var­iables (in mathematics,, for instance) have only den­otative values. The Etym. Diet, states that the word, "vary", once bore the sense of "a p r i c k l e of conscience"; "conscience" s i g n i f y i n g knowledge. In the phrase "more variable than variables", the association of "prickle of conscience" assigns meaning to t h i s description. In other words, i t i s from the context only that the connotative values of words are determined. They do not bear fixed values. A more complete discussion of the concept of variables as they are used i n "A" :1-12 i s contained i n Chapter Five.

contexts that stimulate the i n t e l l e c t . "The test of poetry-

i s range of pleasure i t affords as sight, sound and i n ­

t e l l e c t i o n . 1 , 5 8

The common a i r includes Events l i s t e n i n g to t h e i r own tremors, Beings and no more than breath between them,

Histories, differences, walls, And the words which bind them no more than "So that", "and"— The thought i n the melody moves— A l i n e , f l a s h of photoplay.^

The movement i s c r i t i c a l : i t must e x i s t . So must the

synchronicity, however, "because a l l new subject matter i s

ineluctably simultaneous with 'what has gone before'. Post­

ulate beings and there i s breathing between them and yet

maybe no clo s e r r e l a t i o n than the common a i r which i r r e s i s -

tably includes them. Movements of bodies through history,

differences between t h e i r ideas, t h e i r connections, are

often thus no closer knit, no further away than 'So that' and

an 'and' which binds them... . "60

This sense of connection between things and between

ideas i s p a r t l y what gives the poem movement. It i s also

58. Louis Zukofsky, A Test of Poetry (New York, 1964) p . v i i .

59. "A"-6, p.33.

60. Zukofsky, "Ezra Pound", Prepositions, p..71.

the source of the sense of a c y c l i c a l , but above a l l , syn­

chronous hist o r y . Through the connections, the reader i s

moved not only from one context of relevance to another,

but also from one chronological span to another.

One of the prime movers i n "A" :1-12 i s the horse:

derived from the Latin " c u r r e r e " , ^ to run, and thus con­

nected to the idea of "current", i n both the sense of flowing

and of continually present. The references to "horse" flow

i n and out of many d i f f e r e n t areas of expertise. The horses

are also present (and past), on the street, wooden, strad­

d l i n g manholes; or moving "Over six thousand years / Not one fi 2

of t h e i r mouths worrying a b i t " .

The horses are the "singing gut", an ordering image woven

throughout the poem. "The image," Zukofsky says of Pound,

" i s at the basis of poetic form":

In the l a s t ten years Pound has not con­cerned himself merely with the i s o l a t i o n of the image—a cross-breeding between single words which are absolute symbols for things and t e x t u r e s —

The sand that night l i k e a seal's back Glossy

61. Zukofsky, "Ezra Pound", Prepositions, p.71.

62. "A"-T2, p. 245.

— b u t with the poetic locus produced by the passage from one image to another. His Cantos are, i n t h i s sense, one extended im­age. One cannot pick from them, a s o l i t a r y poetic idea or a dozen variations of i t , as out of E l i o t ' s Waste Land, and say t h i s i s the substance out of which t h i s single atmosphere emanates. The Cantos cannot be described as a sequence.... they are an image of his world, an ' i n t e l l e c t u a l and emotional complex i n an instant of time'....

"Mantis" uses t h i s idea of the image extended i n

both time and space. In "'mantis', An Interpretation",,

Zukofsky states that, "The mantis, then,/ Is a small i n ­

cident of one's physical v i s i o n / Which i s the poor's helpless­

ness/ The poor's separateness/ Bringing s e l f - d i s g u s t " . ^

He then points out that since the mantis has been around (for

hundreds of years), there should be no need for a description

of i t , but rather for "a 'movement' emphasizing i t s use".

That movement, "the twisting of many and diverse 'thoughts",^

includes entomology, biology, the rhythm of the subway, "pun,

fact, banality", economics, mythology, aeronautics, and

63.

64.

65.

"American Poetry", Prepositions, p.135.

Zukofsky, A l l : 1923-1958, (New York, 1965), p. 79.

Ibid., p.78.

naturally the coda which i s the only thing that can sum up the jumble of order i n the l i n e s weaving 'thoughts', pulsations, running commentary, one

upon the other, i t s e l f a jumble of order as far as poetic sequence i s concerned

In "Mantis" too, there i s the webbing; the interweaving of

the vocabularies of expertise. The "coda" may well be that

"empty centre" of the web: i n the weaving, the creation of

the web defines that c e n t r a l area. The anchor-lines of the

web conjoin roughly at the centre, although they do not meet

symmetrically. They are united by the f i r s t , smallest c i r ­

c u i t of connective tissue, and thereby outline the central

hollow. "Coda" i s defined as a "passage of more or less

independent character introduced a f t e r the completion of the

e s s e n t i a l parts of a movement so as to form a more d e f i n i t e

and s a t i s f a c t o r y c o n c l u s i o n " . ^ Like the c e n t r a l portion of

66. Ibid., p.79.

67. OED. The word "coda" comes from the Latin caudal, or ' t a i l ' ; i t i s 'that-which-inevitably-follows' (and i s a defining - and thereby defined - part of) the main body. We are thus re-directed to Watt's 'head-tailed cat', and observe that i n "A" :1-12 there i s a head-t a i l e d horse.

the web, the coda can only be relevant or evident a f t e r the

construction of the rest of the movement i s completed. Once

apparent, however, i t becomes an area of focus, and i m p l i c i t ­

l y orders the rest of the movement; a symbiotic r e l a t i o n s h i p .

It i s within t h i s c i r c u i t that the coda of "Mantis" l i e s , and

Zukofsky's i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of those l i n e s moves sympatheti­

c a l l y i n slow, uneven s p i r a l s within that hollow centre:

Nor i s the coincidence Of the l a s t four l i n e s Symbolism, But the simultaneous, The diaphanous, h i s t o r i c a l In one head.**8

In "A" :1-12, the coda i s more elusive. There cannot

be a summing-up of "the jumble of order i n the l i n e s " , because

an additive process i s a l i n e a r process, and, as the metaphor

of the web indicates, the poem i s not sequential. The c l o s i n g

movement, the lengthy "A"-12, pauses rather terminates, with

the f i n a l word, "continues". The l a s t four l i n e s on that

same page,

Blest Ardent C e l i a

unhurt and Happy. 6 9

68. A l l : 1923-1958, p.80.

s p e l l out an acrostic : BACH. And very simply, very quietly,

the poem c u r l s upon i t s e l f and meets l i n e one of " A " - l :

A 7 0

Round of f i d d l e s playing Bach. u

70. The Etym. Diet, indicates that the word " f i d d l e " comes from the Teutonic geige, and i s thereby related to the Old French, gigue, or giguer, to hop, or dance. Thus the "round of f i d d l e s " also s i g n i f i e s the dance of the melodic movement i n the poem (as well as sug­gesting the more c o l l o q u i a l , ' f i d d l i n g 1 , or playing about).

c f . : Better a f i d d l e than a geiger? With either there i s so much i n I And i n one....

("A"-12, p.178) Although the words ' f i d d l e ' and 'geiger' are related etymologically, they also each carry significances of t h e i r own - hence, "so much i n 1" (word-root); or, for that matter, so much i n "one"!

c f . a l s o :

If Paul loves Bach I need not t e l l him Johann Seb Bach, as he c a l l s him, Is present His legs i n a gigue

Old French, to dance (giguer) or hop From gigue (Teutonic gigue - a f i d d l e ) , Half out of hi s seat at the organ, Like h i s contemporary hopping Chassid Who might have shook To the Prelude of the Third P a r t i t a .

A round, A roundel. A round of music. A round of

poetry, Back to the beginning; or, around again to Bach.

Bach again. A l l ways the melody. Zukofsky i s meticulous

with the s l i g h t e s t d e t a i l , even i n d i c a t i n g through the sud­

den focus on those four l e t t e r s i n the acrostic the s i g n i f i ­

cance of those glyphs; that they are not just the name of

Johann Sebastian. They also represent the German musical

notations of b - f l a t , a, c, and b-natural. (The b-natural

was written as "h", to d i f f e r e n t i a t e i t from b - f l a t , which

was written as "b". Hence, b-a-c-h, a sequence of notes

frequently used by Bach i n h i s composition;^1 a coincidence

that the notation for the melody should be the l e t t e r s of

his own name). In terms of "A" :1-12, then, the l a s t four

l i n e s re-turn to, iterate, the melody (as well as the com­

poser). Round and a round: a play-Bach. Round: c i r c u l a r ;

derived from the same root as "rune", secret, mysterious;'^

written characters regarded as secretive because they bore

significance for only a few people (a code, or special 73

vocabulary.' Thus the words of the roundel (or "A" :1-12)

c i r c l e back upon themselves and are secretive i n that t h e i r 71. Percy A. Scholes", The Concise Oxford Dictionary of

Music, ed. John 0. Ward (London, 1968).

72. The OED refers to the Anglo-Saxon, run.

73. Etym. Diet.

relevance i s not immediately available to everyone.

The coda of "A" :1-12 l i e s , then, within the rounds,

woven somewhere into the web, and " i t s e l f a jumble of order/

as far as poetic/ sequence i s concerned". The horses, per­

haps: sturdy, ancient, sensitive creatures, manes flowing

as they move (in) the poem. Zukofsky comments that the man­

t i s need not be explained because of i t s f a m i l i a r i t y and an-"

t i q u i t y . By the same logic, the horses of "A" :1-12 are also

a "movement" emphasizing t h e i r own use. The horse simply Is:

what i t does, what i t emphasizes i n i t s various aspects, i s 74

what i s relevant.

74. At t h i s point we are considering the horse i n i t s as­pects as animal; i t s usefulness as a metaphor i n the poem. In the following discussion, however, "horse" i s considered as a word: the focus i s on the semantic a c t i v i t y of that sequence of glyphs (the word-horse, or work-horse). Zukofsky's saw-horses of "A"-7 come to mind i n t h i s context (saw-horse the past tense of see- (or sea-) horse?) - the a c t i v i t y of the word as v i t a l and r e a l as that of the animal i d e n t i f i e d with the word.

We h a b i t u a l l y think of "horse" (as i n the an­imal) as describing a function (the quadruped which... e t c . ) . That i s , we recognize an independent exis­tence and autonomy.

Fenollosa would observe "horse" as a verb, with a view to recognizing the a c t i v i t i e s of the animal.

Zukofsky, however, treats the words themselves as animals (or objects); treats them not 'as i f they were a l i v e , but as a l i v e . Thus i n his use of words he gives instructions on how to read the "book" of language.

The OED has l i s t i n g s for some twenty-seven d i f f e r e n t

functions for the word, "horse". Twenty-seven l i n g u i s t i c

a c t i v i t i e s performable by the one word. It occurs as a

verb, as a noun, as an a t t r i b u t i v e word, as an appositive

word, etc. And most of these functions have applications i n

highly spe c i a l i z e d contexts (the vocabularies of expertise):

astronomy, geology, botany, zoology, mythology and taxonomy.

The word also occurs i n nautical terminology, m i l i t a r y usages,

and numerous references to mechanical devices and inanimate

objects. "Horse" as word, i s active and highly variable.

It relates to many contexts, and thereby relates each to the

others at a l l moments. Out of the word spring interweavings,

and i t i s probably not inappropriate to note that the word

was o r i g i n a l l y spelled "hors", which now has the sense of

"out" or "out of". ("Who w i l l do it?...Words/ w i l l do i t ,

out of manes, out of a i r s . . . " . "A"-7). Horse-airs. Horse­

h a i r s : manes and t a i l s . The.spirits and songs of the word

horse flowing continually current throughout the poem.

In "A" :1-12, the horse i s thus one of the means

through which ordering becomes apparent. L i n g u i s t i c a l l y , i t

has a remarkable number of sp e c i a l i z e d functions and contexts

to which i t i s relevant. Etymologically, i t allows the de­

velopment, through Latin roots, of the melodies (the " a i r s "

i n the poem),, and of the concepts of flow or movement .

and contemporaneity. The word, then, i s useful because

of i t s a b i l i t y to bear numerous relevances simultaneously.

But there i s also the animal i t s e l f : the show horse, f i n e l y

bred and highly sensitive, adaptable to r e l a t i v e l y few uses

but exquisite i n i t s presence; the draught-horse, the beast

of endurance, r e l i a b l e , v a r i a b l e — c a p a b l e of ploughing

f i e l d s or bearing burdens. There i s the mythological horse

the centaur, the unicorn, magic and i n t e l l i g e n t . And for

Zukofsky, there i s even the saw-horse, or the word-horse,

be a u t i f u l i n i t s movement, variable i n i t s functions, and

magic i n i t s capacities for bearing meaning. Serviceable,

(complaisant, obliging) perhaps, as once meant the word

"common", from which we derive "communication" (Etym. Diet.

The horse i s as adaptable, mobile and elegant i n i t s sensi­

t i v i t y to i t s environment as language i s i n r e l a t i o n s h i p to

i t s p a r t i c u l a r vocabularies.

Poetry u t i l i z e s language-in- general as the medium

of i t s expertise: that i s , i t draws upon (potentially) a l l

sp e c i a l i z e d vocabularies i n order to create an harmonic

75. "useful" with i t s connotation of repleteness: f u l l of use - i . e . rather than "usable", which i s suggestive of a capacity ( a b i l i t y ) for applic a t i o n . Moreover, "useful" bears the sense of that which has been, or already i s , i n use; "usable" suggests a state of po t e n t i a l a c t i v i t y .

ordering of a universe ( i t i s , a f t e r a l l , the outcome of the

I-voice; hence representative of a p a r t i c u l a r rather than

every universe). Zukofsky's t r u s t i n words as absolute

symbols allows him to treat them as a l i v e and flowing. Each

word can be absolute i n i t s relevance to many contexts; more­

over, i n each context i t w i l l have a v i t a l i t y , a "necessary"

existence. It w i l l be made operative "out of deep need",

and i t s use w i l l give i t " l i f e " ("airs) as a c a r r i e r or

meaning.

THE CIRCLE OF ABUSE

It i s Zukofsky's p a r t i c u l a r use of words that makes

"A" :1-12 a f l u i d and i n t r i c a t e weaving. As noted e a r l i e r i n

the discussion of the web metaphor, the words are used i n

such a way that t h e i r relevances become interdepent; that

i t i s impossible to extract a single expertise without c o l ­

lapsing the whole structure. The words move within the poem;

they are seen with the eye as active bodies; they are heard

by the ear as melodic a r t i c u l a t i o n s ; they are perceived by

the mind as a network of necessary i n t e r - r e l a t i o n s h i p s .

These harmonies are sustained p a r t l y by the l o c a t i o n of the

s y l l a b l e s on the page--the breaking of a phrase to begin a

new l i n e , the i s o l a t i o n of a word—and p a r t l y by placing

words with an ear to the sounds that move around (before

and after) them, as well as those that move within them.

Jonathan Williams comments that what Zukofsky gives i s "wit

. . . i n i t s o r i g i n a l sense of 'to see and to know'." It i s

h i s fantastic a b i l i t y . . . to f i x the mind on ... minute

p a r t i c l e s of language". 7 6

76. Jonathan Williams, "Zoo-cough's Key's Nest of Poultry", Kulchur, IV:14, Summer, 1964, p.12.

This minute attention to the ways i n which the s y l ­

lables play among themselves accounts for those passages

which are deceptively simple at f i r s t reading: such passages

as :

Fishy-wishy Washy-whittle L i t t l e soul Hadrian 1s Hailing i t s e l f , What w i l l Become of you, Roman? 7 7

and:

Already a l i t t l e ode: How I had to ford To Hungerford, I can't afford Another word. 7 8

In each example, the weaving of sounds creates l i t t l e , dan­

cing songs. The f i r s t passage creates a melody of l i t t l e

watery noises, b u i l t around the use of s i b i l a n t s , glides,

and shortened, softened vowels. The l i t t l e ode sets up in­

terna l hollows with the lengthened "o" and "or" sy l l a b l e s ,

and the long, heavy, glides of the " f " and "w" sounds. In

both instances, the l i n e breaks expand the meanings available.

"Hadrian's" l i t t l e sole what? In the Ode, the "afford" and

77. "A "-12, p.218.

"Hungerford" suggest poverty and perhaps hunger; but. they

have the further suggestion of "afford" i n the context of

supplying, producing or providing, with "ford' 1 then punning

on "pass" to make the sense of " y i e l d " ; "Hungerford" then

relates to the late nineteenth century I r i s h authoress of

the same name (known more c o l l o q u i a l l y as The Duchess). So

instead of a l i t t l e s l i g h t l y sad t r a v e l l i n g song, we have a

concession of words: "I had to pass i n favour of The Duchess;

I can't produce another word."

Words are activated i n a more sedate manner i n the

hushed movements of passages l i k e :

The f i r trees grew round the nunnery, The g r i l l e gate almost as high as the f i r s , Two nuns, by day, passed i n black, l i k e

Hooded cameras, as i f photographing the world.^9

The flow of the tones i n the f i r s t l i n e peaks i n the pause be­

tween "grew" and "round"; a r i s i n g up and f a l l i n g o f f of the

tree shapes. The shape of the gate i s inscribed by the

movement of s y l l a b l e s i n the second l i n e : The s o l i d " g r i l l e

gate", followed by the s t r a i n i n g "al-most-as-high". The sharp,

c l e a r l y imaged figures, t h e i r darkness against the s i l e n t

flow of the softened f i r trees, implied i n the chopped

79. "A"-6, p.43.

movement of "Two nuns; by day": the punctuation separating

them from one another, and the v i s i o n of the two i t e r a t e d

i n the c r i s p plosives of Passed and _Black. Secretive women,

moving i n silence, t h e i r mystery and aloofness emphasized

by the "hiding" of the description of them (hooded cameras)

i n an indented niche (a cloister).beneath the preceding l i n e .

"The thought i n the melody moves/ A l i n e , a f l a s h of photo­

p l a y " . 8 0

"Literature i s an art based on the abuse of language/ 81

It i s based on language as a creator of i l l u s i o n s " . "Art": etymologically, " s k i l l " or " f i t t i n g " . "Abuse": to use amiss,

82

or as i t formerly occurred, "to miss-order". Language, the

mother-tongue, the purveyor of i l l u s i o n s ; the vehicle of ab­

s t r a c t i o n .

Philosophy, one of the areas of expertise, has a vo­

cabulary and structure which r e l y on language, semantics, and

i l l u s i o n . It i s a useful expertise to examine as an example

of language as a creator of i l l u s i o n because i t s vocabulary,

an abstraction i n i t s e l f , deals with abstractions of other

80.

81.

82.

"A"-6, p.33.

"A"-8, p.100.

Etym. Diet.

areas of e x p e r t i s e . a J The following passage from "A" :12 i s

structured along the l i n e s of a philosophical argument, de­

f i n i n g and redefining i t s terms. But i t i s also an i n t e g r a l

part of the poem as a whole, and u t i l i z e s the analogy of

philosophy to argue the function of song i n the poem:

The song does not think To say therefore I am, Has no wit so forked.

Between the simple And therefore Is a chasm. Only our thought Says, our cave Was not so simple Dark once — a fal s e leap That our c l e a r a rt Moved to d i v e r s i t y Understands and Depicts our l i v e s better. Hope says t h i s With cave i n us sometimes And art i n others With art i n us sometimes And cave i n others — As thought, extended, As body, minded With countless e f f e c t s of The same i n f i n i t e Not i n f i n i t e As affected by One of us

83. For instance, Spinoza's use of mathematics i n h i s ph i l o ophy (and, of course, Zukofsky's use of Spinoza's philo ophy: "To perceive a winged horse/ Affirms wings on a horse...". "A"-12, p. 241..

Actual as he i s But only i n so far As i t i s affected By another As actual And s t i l l another And so on To i n f i n i t y — This i s h i s t o r y — You say.... 4

The language creates i l l u s i o n s : the "miss-ordering" gives

the language "a d i f f e r e n t turn to make i t take up a t r a i n

of thought we had no idea of before". It i s the following of

t h i s "different turn", the a b i l i t y to perceive the new rele-c

vance, that allows one to leap the chasm, to create a new

order within the v o i d . 8 ^ It i s from t h i s re-ordering (in

an i n f i n i t e procession of orderings) that one can move out of

the cave and into the l i g h t . "Our clea r (lighted) a r t / Moved

to d i v e r s i t y / Understands (has a more complete awareness of)

and/ Depicts (represents, i s an i l l u s i o n of) our l i v e s

better" (better than mere forked wit can do). The mind alone

cannot depict our l i v e s (or the universe) for i t i s equipped

only with language, with i l l u s i o n s , l i k e the shadows of Plato's

cave. It i s the eye which sees, and the ear which hears that

84. "A"-12, p.206.

85. "This does not presume that the st y l e w i l l be the man, but rather that the order of his s y l l a b l e s w i l l define h i s awareness of order". "Poetry", Prepositions, p.16.

sense the universe, and communicate that experience to the

mind. There i t i s translated into an appropriate vocab­

ulary for transmission of the I-experience. As the argument

begins to wrap about i t s e l f i n t h i s passage, the referents of

each word become more numerous, and the texture of the pas­

sage becomes denser, more muscular, as the mind struggles

to locate relevance for the increasing number of available

contexts. F i n a l l y i t becomes apparent that the search for

order i s an i n f i n i t e one; one i n f i n i t e search i n a chain of DC

i n f i n i t e searches for o r d e r . 0 0 This, Zukofsky says, i s his­

tory ("the record of other men's l i v e s " ) . The inwreathed,

c y c l i c a l pattern. The web. And as he q u i e t l y points out,

when there i s an i n f i n i t e p o t e n t i a l for relevance, " i t i s 87

not easy to exceed the c i r c l e " . The c i r c l e : "a series or' process that fi n i s h e s at

88

i t s s t a r t i n g point or that repeats i t s e l f without end"; a

c i r c u l a r path or course: a c i r c u i t , or r i n g . A progression

from the "beginning" to the "end" of the c i r c l e i s imposs­

i b l e . "A" :1-12 "ends" by re-turning to i t s own opening 86. The poet's f i r s t aim i s "proper conduct" - to avoid

c l u t t e r , for instance, His "second and major aim i s not to show himself but that order that of i t s e l f can speak to a l l men". Ibid.

87. "A"-12, p.205.

88. . Standard College Dictionary.

l i n e s , "A/ Round...", and thereby continues forever i n effect,

so the concept of t r a v e l l i n g within a c i r c l e i s a concept of

endless movement. Thus, "Once the c i r c l e i s closed/ It be-

comes very small/ and very great...". Once the c i r c u i t has

been inscribed, i t contains within i t the p o s s i b i l i t y of every­

thing. The poem, for instance:

A chance word another song

of endless song,

Fern — f r u i t dot — sorus, Sora.9°

"A chance word" moves the poem into new contexts. The dis­

covered meanings illuminate the poem, create new songs within

the structure. "Fern" i t s e l f i s a chance-word, being an a c c i ­

dental transposition of l e t t e r s from the Greek word, pteron,

"feathers", to the Greek, p t e r i s , "fern". This transposition

subsequently meant that the word had the connotations of

winged or f e a t h e r e d . ^

"Sora" i s the name given to a species of marsh birds

which inhabit those areas where ferns are,abundant. "Sorus"

89. "A"-12, p. 23 2. This sense of endless motion, the i n f i n ­i t e voyage, i s also c a r r i e d throughout the poem i n the references to Ulysses.

90. Ibid.

91. OED. Note the connection between the t r a n s l i t e r a t e d Greek words and our use of them as prefixes s i g n i f y i n g "winged"; hence the winged horse of Spinoza; Zukofsky's "birds of words".

i s an obsolete variant of "sora" and refers most commonly

to the cases i n which the fern spores are stored on the

parent plant. The p l u r a l form, "sorei", i s a homonym for

"sorry", which i s derived i n part from the F r i s i a n word

meaning sensitive (connoting the delicacy of both marsh

birds and ferns). "Fruit dot" i s another term for "spore",

and i s suggestive of the p o t e n t i a l product (the f r u i t i o n ,

and the creation of another l i f e ) contained within the dot

(a small clump: the word, then, perhaps a clump of l e t t e r s 92

containing the p o s s i b i l i t y of f r u i t i o n into meaning(s).

"Spore" i s an obsolete form of "spur", which c a r r i e s the

sense of an incentive or stimulus; that which i n c i t e s ac­

t i v i t y (the horses again connoted i n the word " s p u r " ) . 9 3

The cycle of the fern, then: spore - f r u i t - fern - spore.

The spore i s the a c t i v a t i n g or regenerative phase of the

cycle. "Fern": from the French, vironner, or viron,meaning

" c i r c u i t " . Endless song", says Zukofsky. Endless cycle.

The songs of the Sora e l i c i t e d from chance words: "sorus"

to "sora". (Then, "sora" to "saw-A?) And the cycle of

"A":1-12 i s i t e r a t e d i n the song, i n the vir o n or environ

92. " F r u i t " i s derived from the Hebrew word for o f f s p r i n g (OED .

93. A l l references to etymologies i n t h i s passage are taken from the OED.

the contextual environment of the word "fern".

The c i r c l e contains then, very l i t t l e and very

much. In terms of v i s i b l e material, the f e r n - c i r c l e song

contains few items: 60 l e t t e r s ; 18 s y l l a b l e s detected by

the ear. However, the c i r c l e "expands" to include a l l

the available contexts for a l l of the words. The meaning

i s enriched by the play amongst the words (etymologically,

phonically), and thereby the "much" i s contained within

the " l i t t l e " . The contents are revealed sequentially

only i n the sense that one word must follow another on

94. Botanically, a fern i s a cryptogam; i n the context of the etymological analyses i n t h i s passage, i t i s worth noting the s i m i l a r i t y to "cryptogram": a glyph bearing (secret) meanings..

"We know that an idea, a novel or poem, may begin at some point or germ, grow, f i n d i t s being and necessary form, rhythm and l i f e as the germ evolves i n r e l a t i o n to i t s environment of language and experience i n l i f e . This i s an art that r i s e s from a deep b e l i e f i n the universe as a medium of forms, i n man's quest as a s p i r i t u a l evolution". Duncan, "The Day-Book", p.6.

Conrad Aiken also makes, a s i m i l a r statement:

But l e t us praise the lonely voice but l e t us praise the l e a f that i s the f i r s t but l e t us praise the s y l l a b l e the only that s y l l a b l e which i s the seed of worlds.

"Time i n the Rock", x x x i i i , Preludes (New York, 1966) p.113.

the printed page. The movement of the meanings of the 95

words i s at a l l times synchronous m "A" :1-12. The

contexts are revealed i n the manner of peeling the half-

formed petals away from the core of a flower bud: The music i s i n the flower, Leaf around l e a f ranged around the center; Profuse but c l e a r outer l e a f breaking on space, There i s space to step to the ce n t r a l heart: The music i s i n the flower, It i s not the sea but hyaline cushions the fl o w e r — Liveforever, everlasting. The leaves never topple from each other, Each l e a f a buttress flung for the other.

****

This i s my face This i s my form. Faces and forms, I would write

you down In a sty l e of leaves growing.96

The poem i s the flower (or the web); i t s radiates, the

words themselves. The fl o w e r c e l l i s l i k e the fern

95. Again the d i s t i n c t i o n between the subjective and objective "times" i n a reading of "A":1-12. The verbal meanings (or significances) are part of the physical a c t i v i t y of the reading (the move­ment of the eye across and down the page ass i m i l a t i n g the physical relationships - and hence much of the contexts - of the words. The subjective time discussed e a r l i e r i s related to the poem as a whole (and thereby to each word i n p a r t i c u l a r ) .

96. "A"-2, p.14.

f r u i t - d o t : the t i n y capsule i n which i s contained the com­

p l e t i o n and the commencement of the fern. The word and the 98

poem are contiguous; are the fl o w e r c e l l indeed (in deed).

That i s , there i s , on one l e v e l (or i n one sense) and

i d e n t i f i c a t i o n between the poem and the object, and the

word and the poem. "Contiguous" because the words possess

an autonomy and a v i t a l i t y which permits them to exis t

independently of the framework of the poem (or the

object). The words are moved (by context) to act with

and within the poem; that mobility i s t h e i r v i t a l i t y :

H.D.'s " l i t t l e boxes", ready to release s i g n i f i c a n c e .

The twelve movements of "A":1-12 contain within them­

selves the pot e n t i a l for a l l movement, a l l meaning, a l l

h i s t o r y : the s h i f t s of l o c i i from music to mathematics

to philosophy; intensely personal addresses to Paul and

Ce l i a ; or, crabbed, l u s t r e l e s s passages of everyday

b a n a l i t i e s :

'It's to laugh Bust up automobile p a r t s — I had 'em during the war, Henry didn't-^ Just gravy— Did I care? I had 'em, kept 'em T i l l they wanted 'em. You bet they wanted- 'em.

98. the "flower-cell liveforever, / before the eyes, perfecting". "A"-2, p. 10.

But i n peace times You've got to use things, Keep 'em i n c i r c u l a t i o n , If I a i n ' t got i t . the other fellow has.— Yes, I'm r e t i r e d '

Or:

'That's poetry,' he was t o l d . 'It's f i c t i o n , too, i s n ' t i t , ' said Henry, 'I read poetry, and I enjoy i t If i t says anything, But so often i t doesn't say anything. ' x<->0

Or

'--Lie down I ' l l marry youJ'101

Or

"And that's history, contention, A cheeseless mousetrap. F i l l s up spaced paper." Another kind of p a r t i c u l a r . We are a f t e r a l l r e a l i s t s capable of distinctions.102

A l l these movements from one context to another are motions

contained within the same c i r c l e . They are a l l facets or

radiates of the I-experience. They are a l l h i s t o r i e s .

History: the records of taste and economy of a c i v i l i z a t i o n .

P a r t i c u l a r : Every f a l l season, every spring, he needs a new coat

He loses his j o b . x 0 ^

99. "A"-6, p.39.

100. Ibid, p.32.

101. "A"-5, p.25.

102. "A"-6, p.31.

103. Ibid, p.32.

A h i s t o r y i s a legend,1° 4 a man's personal mythology.

"History" i n i t i a l l y had the sense of a romantic story,

and i s derived from the idea of "wit", to see or know:

understanding. 1 0 5 "History", then i s what Zukofsky sees/

knows: his I-experience; hi s - s t o r y . The story i s t o l d i n

par t i c u l a r s , using s p e c i f i c objects i n space and time i n

order for there to be a vocabulary which i s p o t e n t i a l l y

relevant to the reader at every point i n the poem.

An objective — nature as creator — desire for what i s obj e c t i v e l y perfect

Inextricably the d i r e c t i o n of h i s t o r i c and contemporary p a r t i c u l a r s . - ^ 6

"Perfect", from the Latin perficere, to carry out, to

make, or do; flawless, pure; refined (as the man wri t i n g

a word chooses that which he thinks "most completely

d i s t i l s him"; 1 0' 7 the perfected and r a r i f i e d rendering

of h i s perception). The "perfect" (monoclinous) flower

contains both stamens and p i s t i l s i n the same flower.

It i s a complete (perfected) and self-contained cycle.

"Direct" bears the sense of unbroken, uninterrupted; a

104. "legend": o r i g i n a l l y "to gather" or " c o l l e c t " OED • 105. from the Greek, eidenai, "to know"; idein, "to see".

Ibid.

106. "A"-6, p.30.

flow of motion from source to e n d . 1 0 8 It i s suggestive of

"perfect" i n the sense that i t implies that which i s unim­

paired by extraneous material (unimpeded i n i t s movement).

The word also refers a c t i v e l y to the process of ordering:

to cause to do or happen; to dir e c t , or orchestrate.

Hence "dir e c t i o n " has both the sense of motion pure and

complete, and of the i n i t i a t i o n of that a c t i v i t y . It i s

Zukofsky's "objective" (here used i n the p a r t i c u l a r sense

of "goal") to i n i t i a t e and sustain that pure (and har­

monic) movement of p a r t i c u l a r s . 1 0 9

Natura Naturans — Nature as creator, Natura Naturata — Nature as created.

He who creates Is a mode of these i n e r t i a l systems — The flower — l e a f around l e a f wrapped ^

around the center l e a f . . .

Creation, ordering, bringing together, can only be effected

from those things which already exist* Nature creates and

thereby i s created. Zukofsky, creating "A" :1-12 i s bring­

ing together (creating) these elements of the I-experience

which already e x i s t . As a creator, he i s a "mode", a

108. OED.

109. a " p a r t i c u l a r " i s a single item of a series or sequence; i t bears the sense of exact, or precise. OED .

110. "A"-6, p.29.

measure, "a p a r t i c u l a r form or manifestation of an under­

l y i n g substance". x l ± the universe / ("these i n e r t i a l

systems"). " I n e r t i a l " , perhaps a pun on i n i t i a l (incip­

ient orders), refers to the uniformity of motion along a

straight l i n e ; the tendency of matter to pursue a constant

motion unless acted upon by some external f o r c e . x x 2 Thus

there i s the inherent motion i n the systems of the universe,

order which i s interrupted at random and restructured by

the i n d i v i d u a l i n the expression of the I-experience. The

poet i s he who i s a product of, and himself structures,

the systems of the Great World about him:

...bringing together facts which appearances separate : a l l that i s created i n a fact i s the language that numbers i t , The facts clear, breath l i v e s

l i q with the image each l i g h t s .

The language i t s e l f i s a mode, a p a r t i c u l a r

measure of the universe (and Zukofsky). The words illum­

inate, make things c l e a r . Communication. There i s an

111. OED.

112. Ibid.

113. "A"-8, p.108.

absoluteness i n the i d e n t i t y between the word and the fact 114

or thing names; the use of the word thus gives the

speaker i d e n t i t y . A chain-form process; a l i n k i n g of

cycles which:

Becomes more and more penetrating The simple w i l l be discovered beneath the complex Then the complex under the simple Then again the simple under the complex And, and, the chain without sight of the l a s t term,

etc., Etc 115

Zukofsky moves i n and out of the simple and the complex,

the h i s t o r i c a l and the p a r t i c u l a r , o b j e c t i f y i n g at random

within the c i r c l e of the Great World; being both within

and without i t s circumference simultaneously (created and

creator). Harmonizer, orderer.

114. "...the combined l e t t e r s — t h e words—are absolute sumbols for objects, states, acts, i n t e r r e l a t i o n s , thoughts about them...". From "An Objective", Prepositions, p.22.

115. "A"-8, p.53.

THE MEASURE OF DEGREES

Those who sing Psalms, Odes of bright p r i n c i p l e Come from the sky, Uniting the d e g r e e s . x x 6

Enlightened v i s i o n , illumination, understanding,

knowing: "bright". " P r i n c i p l e " : a fundamental truth, with

the p a r t i c u l a r sense of "beginning"; ' the singer of new

songs, new orders. The bright p r i n c i p l e "comes from the 118

sky" (from the Indogermanic root, skeu, "to cover").

Throughout "A":l-12, the word " l i g h t " i s used synon­

ymously with understanding; images of illumination, of know­

ing. To see c l e a r l y implies that understanding i s possible,

that some relevant order can be constructed. The ordering

process i s the "uniting of the degrees": "uniting" being

116. "A"-12, p.177.

117. OED.

118. Ibid. Cf. "Reason: the face of sky", "A"-12, p. 138. See Appendix I.

derived from the concept of oneness; "degrees" the measure

of the circumference of the c i r c l e . To order i s to provide

a relevant continuity i n the universe; to account for the

degrees of experience i n some meaningful pattern he i t a

mathematical formula, a law of physics, or a song.

To uni t e : to bring diverse elements into conjunction. 120

The process which i s defined i n Act of Creation as the

creative a c t i v i t y . The perceptions, moving i n two or more

d i s s i m i l a r planes, intersect one another at some point along

the planes, and the unit i n g of the disparate elements becomes

the thing created. y (music ) music

or r

(speech) S

poetry

121 speech

"Unity", or concord, i n t e r n a l harmony, i s also the 122

name given to the number one. In the additive process i n

mathematics, "Unity" i s zero (a + (-a) =0); i n the multi­

p l i c a t i v e process, "Unity" i s one: a x j. = 1. A (mathemati-a

119. Etym. Diet. 120. Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (New York, 1964).

"The pattern underlying...is the perceiving of a s i t ­ uation or idea...in two self-consistent but h a b i t u a l l y incompatible frames of reference...", p.35.

121. "A"-12, p.144. 122. OED.

c a l ) unity produces no change within the operation. That

does not imply that there i s no a c t i v i t y , however. Mathema­

t i c a l l y the function exists, and the unity (whether i t be

zero or one) encompasses a l l the operations of r e a l numbers.

1

being

0 123

non-being

124

"Before the void there was neither/ Being nor non-being".

The conceptualizing of the one necessarily implies the ex­

istence of the other, just as the concept of 1 must imply

the existence of 0. Both 0 and 1 are "unity", i n d i f f e r e n t

123. "A"-12, p.170.

124. Ibid., p.132. c f . "The effacement of Philosophy": "... before the void there was neither being nor non-being; a f t e r i t came warmth and desire, and sages looked with thought i n t h e i r hearts for what i s i n what i s not". Prepositions, p.49.

operations. Moreover, because the use of one implies the

use of the other, the two are united conceptually; are part

of the same idea. One: whole, complete, pure. ("one single

number should determine our l i f e : 1./ Greater has no peace

or r e s t " . . . ) . X ^ Uni-verse.

125. "With either there i s so much i n 1 And i n one:

sound

story eyes: things thought".

("A"-12, p.179.)

Compare with t h i s , the following statement from "Poetry",

"To endure i t (poetry) would be compelled to integrate these functions : time, and what i s seen i n time (as held by a song), and an action whose words are actors or, i f you w i l l , mimes composing steps as of a dance that at proper instants c a l l s i n the vo­c a l cords to transform i t into p l a i n speech". (Prepositions, p.16)

126. "A"-12, p.178.

One turning. One c i r c u i t . One song.

It i s from t h i s idea of one-ness within the con­

structed order that the concept of the Great World a r i s e s .

Appealed inthehighest We speak of heavenly songs. They are intoned neither by harps or lutes, Are a noise i n the clouds An echo from earth; In the stars the s k i l l s are arts A l l c r a f t s are hidden A l l wisdom, a l l reason Also a l l foolishness, Without Venus, no music would ever be Without Mars, no c r a f t s (Planet — not war) Man was not born of a nothing But from a substance Limus Terrae -- extract of stars And a l l elements. Therefore the Great World Is closed So nothing can leave i t .

"You cannot take out of the c i r c l e — w h a t was i n i t , /

that i s and w i l l be....an assemblage of a l l possible positions" 129

127. "We begin early And go on with a theme Hanging and draping The same Texture". "A"-12, p. 245.

c f . Conrad Aiken's "The Walk i n The Garden" IV: "the numberless becomes one, the b r i e f becomes everlasting". Poet's Choice, ed. Paul Engle, Joseph Langland (New York, 1966) p.19.

128. "A"-12, p.177.

129. Ibid., p.180.

Once the c i r c l e i s conceived (or conceived o f ) , imag- ined, i t

contains everything; i t i s closed, but i t i s i n f i n i t e .

I n f i n i t e i s a meaningless word: e x c e p t — i t states The mind i s capable of performing

an endless process of addition. 1"^ 0

When Zukofsky states that h i s poetics i s the i n t e g r a l

whose lower l i m i t i s speech and whose upper l i m i t i s music,

he i s r e f e r r i n g to t h i s endless or i n f i n i t e additive pro-131

cess which i s contained within s p e c i f i e d l i m i t s . In the

function of the integral, the summation process can be pro­

gressively and i n f i n i t e l y f i n e r and more precise. The i n ­

tegral measures the area bounded by some s p e c i f i c curve (as,

perhaps a "degree" of the " c i r c l e " ) , and allows for poten­

t i a l l y i n f i n i t e p r e c i s i o n i n the taking of that measure. The

analogy of the i n t e g r a l suggests that poetry i s the summation

of a l l that l i e s between speech and music, with the p o s s i b i l ­

i t y of i n f i n i t e refinement i n defining the contents of that

130. "A"-8, p.52. Cf. Williams' reference (in Pater son) to "a complex sum".

131. Keeping i n mind that m u l t i p l i c a t i o n d i f f e r s from ad­d i t i o n e s s e n t i a l l y i n that i t i s a d i f f e r e n t route to the same r e s u l t : an amassing; the Unity (1 or 0) i s conceptually the same for addition and m u l t i p l i ­cation.

span. Thus there i s the pr e c i s i o n i m p l i c i t i n an image

l y i n g somewhere, but somewhere pr e c i s e l y selected, between

music and speech. There are i n f i n i t e p o s s i b i l i t i e s between

the l i m i t s , but each of those p o s s i b i l i t i e s can be charted,

noted, measured.

Poetry can, then, be the means by which are measured

(ordered) the c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of that universe which l i e s

between music (the "heavenly songs") and speech (the "noise

i n the clouds/ An echo from earth"). A measuring: a rhyth­

mic, harmonic ordering. Degrees of order: moving around

the c i r c l e ; "degrees" also the in t e r v a l s between notes of

132. The i n t e g r a l i s a general form or frame (an expression, perhaps) i n which an i n f i n i t e number of p a r t i c u l a r s are possible (or, can be located). There are c e r t a i n fixed values and one or more variables i n such a form. In the equation for a c i r c l e T T r®v T T i s the fixed value; the variable i s the radius (r) of the c i r c l e . Zukof­sky's mapping of an i n t e g r a l for h i s poetics i s anala-gous to the function of the equation for the c i r c l e :

music

speech

music T T =

speech

The variable (s) i n the poem are the words, the h i s t o r y :

r = h i s t o r y ( o b j e c t i f i e d p a r t i c u l a r s whose values are determined by the context—the words "more variable than v a r i a b l e s " ) .

music. To order, from the Latin o r d - i r i , the s p e c i f i c

usage meaning to weave, to lay a warp. The making of a 134

pattern, a joining; f i t t i n g together: harmony.

"Measure" as mode, as metre, musically and mathematically;

also, mechanically (as i n "bright p r i n c i p l e " ) and c r e a t i v e l y ;

(as i n "uniting the degrees"). Measure derived from the In-

dogermanic root me, an i n t r i g u i n g homonym for the objective

form of the f i r s t person pronoun, the objective form of the

I-experience. (I measure me; I measure the uni-verse : the

unique verse, the one c y c l e : one song—or another).

The melody! The rest i s accessory:

My one voice. My other: i s An objective 1 3 5

133. OED. The i n t e r v a l s of not-sound are also part of the orchestration, part of the t o t a l meaning. In "Songs of Degrees", parts One and Two, for instance, twelve words are arranged variously upon the page so that each measure of twelve (there are 6 such measures, f i v e of them i n part Two; part One i s presumably the over­ture) expresses d i f f e r e n t degrees of relationships between (and among) the words. The six movements 'travel' through v i r t u a l l y a l l possible variations of context available amond those twelve words. The sig­n i f i cance (or meaning) of the words i n each of the s i x songs or movements i s governed i n part by the typographical layout, and i n part by the punctuation, (cf. the dog stopped by commas i n "Poetry", Prepo­ s i t i o n s , p.18.) These are measures beyond mere ciphering.

134. Etym. Diet.

135. A"-6, p.30.

The poetics, or "A" :1-12 i t self , are one mode of

observing and p a r t i c i p a t i n g i n the Great World. 136 That

world includes, as Zukofsky says, a l l that l i e s between

being and non-being. The mechanical framework of a graph

i s used i n "A"-12 to suggest the range of the Great World, but

the analogy i s offered with a warning of the l i m i t a t i o n s in­

herent i n the mechanical process :

Shall I graph a course, Say look at but l e t not t h i s take you:

MAN EARTH ^ WORLDS

His more or less body

Waters crust and what's within

Radiance heat dispersion

Speaking cutti n g his story

Look at animated things

Beneath and beyond color

At h i s cr a f t s , a- t h i s 1 s — inanimate

Their place and places

or heady and souled

I AM THAT I AM

and — or — Euhius Euan

136. c f . Henry James' dilemma: how to observe and pa r t i c i p a t e ?

for tenure of "history" (his story) and characters and -J

character and 0

1 being

commerce non-being

Texts: Axiom:

Things He composed — or hunted, sowed and made things — with hand or bent --i s matter and thinks

Man" : possibly connected with the Sanskrit,

"to think". It i s therefore linked to "mind" (under­

standing), for which the root-word i s men. "Earth", the

s o i l ; the "ground" which i s turned over i n prose and verse,

perhaps. "Worlds" i s a composite word, coming from the

Germanic were, "man", and aid (sic), meaning "age": hence

age or l i f e of man. It refers also to "the material

universe as an ordered system" of created things, implying

137. "A"-12, pp.169-170. In saying "look at but l e t not th i s take you", Zukofsky i s affirming the li m i t a t i o n s of an abstract rendering of the concrete. Cf. p.174:

-- If a dog hunted fleas on mathematical p r i n c i p l e s

He would never catch a f l e a except by accident.

the concepts of the macrocosm and the microcosm.

"Substance", e n c i r c l i n g "being" and "non-being" i n

the graph, i s appropriately paradoxical i n i t s s i g n i f i c a n c e .

It refers i n one context to material, corporeal and s o l i d

matter; that which gives weight and texture. Conversely,

however, i t can also connote a l l that which i s incorporeal

(especially i n philosophical or theological contexts). It

i s defined as "essential nature": the very substance of a thing

or idea. And i t can be used as not only the content or subject

matter, but also as that which "contrasts with form or ex­

pression". Moreover, substance i s described as that which

139

gives character": and therein there i s an echoing of the

use of "character" i n the left-hand column. There i s a

double (iterative?) use of the word; i n one context implying

the sense of those people who "inhabit" a story, or a h i s t o r y 138. OED. c f . also the Gothic, man- seth, l i t e r a l l y "man-seed",

and meaning "the world"; a similar root to the o r i g i n of the word "seed", s i g n i f y i n g the concept of o r i g i n a l or p r i n c i p a l (Etym. Di e t . ) . Hence the concept of the world as contained within the seed (the Fern-dot Song, "A"-12, p.232). Or, perhaps, the world contained within the word; or Aiken's " s y l l a b l e which i s the seed of the worlds" ("Time and the Rock", Preludes, p.113).

139. OED.

("his story"); i n another, r e f e r r i n g to the portrayal i t s e l f ,

l i t e r a l l y , the engraving (or "cutting/ h i s / story"). The

characters may well be the l e t t e r s themselves. "Commerce"

bears here the sense of communication: a hi s t o r y experience.

The root of the word, "substance", i s the Latin 140

substare, to "stand under": or perhaps, i n the reversal

of the words, "understanding", knowing, seeing. Thus the

whole graph cycles back upon i t s e l f to Man-Mind (understand­

ing) and "radiance", l i g h t , illumination.

The graph functions simply as an analogy for an ex­

perience of the universe. It i s not intended to be a t o t a l

representation (" Look at but l e t not t h i s take you"). The

graph remains only a mechanical process, and does not answer

for the creative v i t a l i t y of understanding and ordering i n

multiple frames of reference simultaneously.

A key-word i n the graph analogy i s "texts", which

comes from the Latin textum, meaning "that which i s woven, 141

a fabric, also the st y l e of an author; hence a text".

The relationships between the "columns" of the graph form

an i n t r i c a t e web of meaning, the chain of simple-complex-140. Ibid.

141. Etym. Diet, (cf. "Hanging and draping/ The same texture").

simple again. The page can be read from l e f t to r i g h t

(sequentially, l i n e a f t e r l i n e ) , or i t can be read i n

"columns" from top to bottom from "MAN" to "EARTH"

to "WORLDS". It i s impossible to i s o l a t e one v e r t i c a l

chain from the other (s), however, because of the hori­

zontal v i s u a l connection established by the arrows i n the

f i r s t l i n e , the man's body i s composed of the same elements

and serves the same function as the earth's crust and

contents: protection, procreation, etc. Radiance and heat

dispersion are functions of those v i t a l processes : l i g h t

from the "sky", and heat attained from both within and

without the earth i t s e l f .

What we eat.acutally i s rad i a t i o n Of various wave-lengths: The rays of lightening of the shortest

wave-length Synthesize the nitrogen f r a c t i o n of food; The sun's rays of the longer wave-lengths, The carbon f r a c t i o n s ;

Heat and c a l o r i e s ^ Lime, phosphorus and vitamin "A".

142. "A"-8, pp. 69-70.

The interwoven interdependence of l i v e s and things.

From "texts" come "textures", "tissues" and " t e x t i l e s " (that

which can be woven); also, "technical" which has the sense of

a r t i f i c i a l , "pertaining to the a r t s " . "Art" i t s e l f i s from

the root, a_r meaning "to f i t " ; from which we have " a r t i c u l a t e " : 143

jointed, f i t t e d ; also " d i s t i n c t , c l e a r " (the concept of

illumination, c l a r i t y again). The graph depicts a world where

there i s an inherent concordance of functions and parts, mechani-144

c a l and technical (or a r t i s t i c ) . Man, as a r t i f i c e r , com­

poses, or makes things, but only within the existent structure.

He can impose orders out of his own perceptions, but he can­

not work with other than what i s already contained within the

Great, World. I AM THAT I AM

a n d — o r ~

Euhius Euan

Euhius and Euan are both L a t i n synonyms for the name

Bacchus, which i s derived from the Greek, iacheiv "to shout",

a verb apparently formed by onomatopoeia, to express, an inter-

143. Etym. Diet. The carpentry; the "necessary craftsmanship" "Technic was everything. Personnel is everything. Having learned technic i s everything, And not to be mired i n the next step." "A"-8', p.73.

144. a r t i f i c e i s derived from both "art" and "fact", a r e a l i t y , a deed ("Do": to perform") Etym. Diet.

jection.- iach.

The Etymological Dictionary suggests a connection

between the Greek exclamation and the use of the word,

"echo", to mean a repeated sound, a ringing i n the ears,

or a noise. "I am that I am": a re p e t i t i o n , an i t e r a t i o n

of the e x i s t e n t i a l l y obvious. But also, "I am (exist) so

that I can e x i s t " ; or perhaps "I am that which I am, and

nothing more, or l e s s " . "I am, I am", "Bacchus, Bacchus":

an echo, a turning of the words back upon themselves: a re­

versal or turning again within the same c i r c u i t ; a working

again with that which already e x i s t s . ° The name of

Bacchus derived from a shout of exultation which could well

be interpreted as the affirmation of Being. (The use of the

Am r e c a l l s "A"-7 so v i v i d l y that Bacchus immediately becomes

suggestive of a pun on J.S. Bach, who, afte r a l l , had twenty-

two c h i l d r e n ) .

145. iach bears the sense of throwing: as, to throw the voice (in shouting). Etym. Diet. The OED i n ­dicates that the bacchanalian celebrations-were accompanied by much shouting celebration. Hence Euan c a r r i e s the meaning both of Bacchus and ba­cchante, as well as the sense of the a c t i v i t i e s of the bacchanal.

146. "two legs stand A, four together M" = AM (In Old English, "am", "art" and "are" were a l i k e ; there i s then the in­ter-connection of homonyms: art (to be), or thing created; and the connection (in Zukofsky's graph) be­tween Man and Worlds: Am and Are. (Etym. Diet.)

The r e p e t i t i o n of words and the implied connection

with "echo" r e c a l l the discussion of the Great World, where

the "heavenly songs" are "a noise i n the clouds/ An echo from

earth". A ringing i n the ears. Perhaps a melody, a harmony,

ringing (encircling, "rounding") i n the ear ("ear" i t s e l f

derived from the same root as "art", a_r, and connoting not

only "hearing", but also more s p e c i f i c a l l y , "ploughing":

r e c a l l i n g Duncan's discussion of prose and verse).

The echo i s a re-versing, much l i k e the man i s the

r e i t e r a t i o n (as the L i t t l e World) of the Great World:

Close to i t there i s the L i t t l e World, That i s to say, man, Enclosed i n h i s skin That bounds h i s body, And with i t he sees Two worlds that must not mingle (As the Sun shines — but i t s e l f Does not pass thru glass --Divested of a l l but l i g h t — So the stars l i g h t one another inside him) Earth — seen and touched Heavens --unseen and untouched: Together l i f e . As herder sees each people, A l i v i n g mirror of the stars, Each with i t s l o t — a guide Never to be copied exactly, Teaching never to repeat: The body at t r a c t s a heaven That imprints nothing on us Endowed as we are with complexions, Qualities, habits, endowed As we are with l i f e . The c h i l d ' s mother i s i t s star and planet Man i s the L i t t l e World, but woman the L i t t l e s t . And Great, L i t t l e , L i t t l e s t has each Its own way but a l l three are borne.

One single number should determine our l i f e : 1. , 147 Greater has no peace or r e s t . . . .

Again there i s the uni t i n g of the degrees: Great,

L i t t l e , L i t t l e s t ; a l l i n t e g r a l functions of the universe,

'or the uni-verse, the one song.

CHAPTER SIX

148 IN THE COILING

Each World i s inherently i n harmony with the others,

and i s a r e f l e c t i o n of others. The Great World r e f l e c t s a l l

possible things, events and perspectives. The L i t t l e World,

man, mirrors i n hi s form and function the workings of the

Great World. He i s composed of the same elements, and i s

activated by the same p r i n c i p l e s of heat and l i g h t : energy.

He perceives the Great World through the f i l t e r s of his

senses and r e f l e c t s what he does perceive i n his works ("He

composed—or/ hunted, sowed and/ made things — / with hand

or b e n t — / i s matter and thinks"). Man makes models of

aspects of the Great World. He cannot perceive a l l of i t

simultaneously.

148. From Conrad Aiken's "Time i n the Rock (or Preludes to D e f i n i t i o n ) " :

and thus beneath the web of mind I saw under the west and east o f web I saw under the bloodshot spawn of stars I saw under the water and the i n a r t i c u l a t e laughter the c o i l i n g down the c o i l i n g i n the c o i l i n g .

(Preludes, p. 81.) The Etym. Diet, notes that " c o i l " means a gathering together,

a c o l l e c t i o n , as well as bearing the sense of i t s doublet, " c u l l " , or harvest. Its use i n s i g n i f y i n g noise or con- . fusion i s derived from these preceding usages.

If what r o l l s between My eyelashes Could receive a l l of the world It should indeed,

149 Be struck b l i n d .

When Zukofsky talks of being struck blind, the ref­

erence extends beyond the physical loss of v i s i o n ; i t moves

into the metaphor of " l i g h t " as understanding, and "seeing"

as knowing, being illuminated. As i n Plato's parable of

the cave, complete exposure to (and i n Zukofsky's metaphor,

awareness of) the l i g h t paralyzes perception. The function

of the f i l t e r s i s incapacitated,

150

Man receives the universe i n fragments; m b i t s ;

i n minutes (bits or degrees) of the Great World, the i n f i n ­

i t e c i r c l e . The poet, through order and harmony, unites

degrees to provide a facsimile of the Great World. Zukofsky

uses mordents and rounds to recreate or r e i t e r a t e an emo­

t i o n a l and melodic compound which, i n i t s c y c l i c movement,

i s also a part of the substance of the Great World. "A" :1-12

has been shown to be a non-sequential, non-thematic cycle.

149. "A"-12, p.213.

150. Subsequent to the discussion of the use of 0 and 1 i n "A" :1-12, i t i s relevant to note that those two f i g ­ures represent the range of most computer " b i t s " .

I t s movements from one area o f r e l e v a n c e to another are not

p r o g r e s s i v e l y developmental i n a semantic or s t r u c t u r a l sense.

They are, r a t h e r a c o l l a g e o f the I-experience, a synchronous

m a t r i x o f events, as the r a d i a t e s o f the flower are concur­

r e n t and interdependent i n the t o t a l p a t t e r n o f "flower".

The events o f the poem are an " a r r a y " o f experience, an i r -

151

r a d i a t i n g o f events. "Radiates i n words". The poem i s

thereby an arrangement ( i n the sense o f "ordered", but a l s o

i n the m u s i c a l sense) o f items i n c i r c u l a r or r a d i a t i n g

form. There i s no i m p l i c i t c o n t r a d i c t i o n o f terminology,

however. The t o t a l s t r u c t u r e i s c i r c u l a r (the round); move­

ment w i t h i n the s t r u c t u r e i s a t times c i r c u l a r ( c r e a t i n g a

c o n c e n t r i c i t y of c i r c l e s w i t h i n the t o t a l framework (micro­

cosms i n the c o n t e x t of the Great World analogy); a t o t h e r

times i t i s r a d i a t e , or r a d i a n t , i n the sense t h a t the i n ­

d i v i d u a l items c a s t l i g h t , i l l u m i n a t i o n from w i t h i n them­

s e l v e s as p a r t i c u l a r events, and evoke understanding i n

s t i l l o t h e r frames o f r e f e r e n c e .

The analogy o f the web a t t h i s p o i n t must be aban­

doned, f o r i t i m p l i e s a two-dimensional c h a r a c t e r t h a t no

151. "A"-12, p.137. c f . "And the v e i n s o f the e a r t h and the v e i n s

o f a l e a f , And the r i b s o f the human body are l i k e

each other — N o t i c e the f l u o r o s c o p e ! "

"A"- 8, p. 66.

longer s u f f i c e s as a way of observing the poem. The process

of constructing and subsequently abandoning a structure of

relevance i s one used by Zukofsky himself ("Look at, but l e t

not t h i s take you"): i t i s a way into the structure; a means

of i n i t i a l ordering. Once the order i s established, i t must

be abandoned so that those events and p a r t i c u l a r s made ex­

traneous by the ordering can be assimilated into the pattern.

Thus the analogy of the web can be replaced by one of

a sphere. The c i r c l e extended into more than two planes. The

sphere a compound of c i r c l e s ; a surface, "every point of which 152

i s equidistant from the centre." The sphere, i n fact, com­

prises an i n f i n i t e number of c i r c l e s : those whose r a d i i d i ­

verge from the centre point of the sphere, and those which

are revealed when the sphere i s cut i n any plane which does

not pass through the centre point.

In terms of "A" :1-12, the sphere accounts for a l l

that material which does not seem to radiate from a central

source, as well as a l l the in t e r s e c t i n g l i n e s of expertise

which do seem to emanate from a ce n t r a l core. Those "peri­

pheral" contexts are the c i r c l e s formed by cutti n g through

the sphere of the poem without passing through the centre-

point. The ce n t r a l locus i s a matrix of core-ideas; the

source-point within which the central vocabularies o r i g i n -

152. Standard College Dictionary.

ate. What the reader finds relevant i n the poem are the dy-"

namic relationships between the vocabularies; those q u a l i t i e s 153

which for the reader unify the c i r c u i t s of the sphere.

It would seem feasi b l e to suggest, then, that the

sphere of the Great World i s language. As already noted, a

derivation of the word "world" i s the Gothic, "man-seed":

the concept of the world o r i g i n a t i n g from man ( r e c a l l i n g

here the etymological connection between "man" and "mind").

Moreover, the word, "sphere", connoting the popular concept­

u a l i z a t i o n of the world and the universe as globular i n struc-

ture, stems from weid, "to see". (from the Greek, eidos, 155

"form, shape, appearance"). To see i s to understand.

Radiance, illumination. In terms of perceiving the universe

as a concurrent, and at times concentric, interweaving of

events, the mind locates c i r c u i t s of relevance. To recognize

i s to give speech to. Speech i s the formulation of a vocab­

ulary, an abstraction which may take any one (or more) of

several forms: music, dance, poetry, things written, etc.

153. "I believe that desirable teaching assumes i n t e l l i g e n c e that i s free to be attracted from any consideration of every day l i v i n g to always another phase of existence. Poetry, as other object matter, i s a f t e r a l l for i n ­terested people. Zukofsky, "Preface", A Test of Poetry, p . v i i .

154. Here bearing min mind the complex of spheres which we i d e n t i f y i n the universe: the ionosphere, strato­sphere, atmosphere, biosphere, etc.

155. Etym. Diet.

The c h a r a c t e r i s t i c common to a l l the forms i s the harmonic 156

ordering of the parts contained within t h e i r expression.

"Language" i s discussed i n the OED as being a mode of

expression; i t s form may be verbal, v i s u a l , auditory, etc.

(the "language of flowers" i s one example c i t e d ) . The word

i t s e l f i s derived from langue, or "tongue", and "languid"

(from lancruet, " l i t t l e tongue": s i g n i f i c a n t l y , the name given

to a portion of the pipe i n a pipe organ). Essentially, the

word refers to the faculty of speech, without a s p e c i f i c

connotation of v e r b a l i z a t i o n (ie. not exclusive of other

forms of expression).

"Speech", i t s e l f has a p a r t i c u l a r l y i n t e r e s t i n g his­

tory, being derived from the Teutonic base, sprek, meaning

156. "In the map of stars we began to map our selves. Our projection of what we are was also a f i r s t poetry. A f i r s t making of a thing or image that projected a s p i r i t u a l form. Well...there must have been another projected s p i r i t u a l form, not only t h i s but also t h i s , where the adam named the i r things and kinds of the earth, another network of sti c k s and stones and names that never hurt one. In our ' l i t e r a r y ' l i s t e n i n g s and groupings we are doing a l l of that, nothing more. We make constellations of the works of poetry that are, i f they be anything, linked by gender, works of our selves, drawings of our s p i r i t u a l kinship, of when -and where what we are i s happening." Duncan, "The Day-Book", pp.3-4.

c f . Zukofsky's concept of hi s t o r y as an o b j e c t i f i c a t i o n of p a r t i c u l a r s , the "records of other men's l i v e s " , and his comment that i n poetry ideas present "themselves sensuously and i n t e l l i g e n t l y and are of no predatory intention". "An Objective", Prepositions, p.26.

"to speak", but i n the sense of making a noise; s p e c i f i c a l l y ,

c r a c k l i n g or bursting. The word, "spark" i s connected to

the same baseword, and also designates a state of being talk-157

ative, crackling, noisy. The word "speech", then has the

connotations of bursting, crackling, sparkling i m p l i c i t i n

i t s o v e r a l l sense of utterance or expression. The OED i n d i ­

cates that "speech" also relates by connection to the word

logos, which arises from the Latin legere, "to gather,

c o l l e c t , select, t e l l , speak" (as i n the e a r l i e r discussion

of history, i n which the root of "story" was seen to be

"legend", legere).

An o l d English variant form of "speech" was "spoke",

from which we get our past p a r t i c i p l e , "spoken". With the

introduction of "spoke" as a variant of "speech", an entire

fabric of interconnections becomes evident i n "A" :1-12. The

spoke i s the radius of a c i r c u l a r object (a wheel, a spider-

web, a c i r c l e ) . It i s also a ray, or beam, of l i g h t . That

which i s spokeless i s said to be without rays, without sup­

port, without l i g h t . That which i s spoked i s that which i s

arranged r a d i a l l y : the petals of the sunflower ( r a d i a t e s ) —

or the sunflower i t s e l f , radiant (in the sense of glowing,

as well as i n the sense of s t r u c t u r a l r a d i a t i o n ) . "To

spoke" i s to provide rays for (an object....or an idea).

That which i s spoken i s "pertaining to or connected with

spokes". 1-' 8 The spoke as a radiate: speech as bursting, I C Q

sparking; an i r r a d i a t i n g of l i g h t and sound. Once again

the a l l u s i o n s to s i g h t / l i g h t as understanding become relevant

(to know, weid, to see). A diverging of communication from

the man-mind i n which has converged i r r a d i a t i o n s of the uni­

verse he perceives.

Spoke: words, words, we are words, horses, manes,

words. 1 6 0

"Words": the thing spoken; that which originates i n

the mind and radiates i n speech. "Rays of the object brought

to a focus". The text of a song. Written c h a r a c t e r s . 1 6 1

("For tenure/of/'history'/ (his story)/and characters/and/

character/and/commerce"). The words as instruments (melodic

and mechanical) through which the "character" (the I-expereince

i s communicated (commerce). The sense i s close to that of word

characters, as ideograms. Words are cuttings, engravings;

shapings or orderings. "We are words, horses, manes...." 162

(The word, "cut" at one time meant "common horse"). 158, 159. OED. "Speech" also refers to the sound produced by

a musical instrument (cf. "languet", the tongue of the organ pipe).

160. "A"-7, p.48.

161, 162. OED.

Thus the words are horses, are a l i v e , have s p i r i t (manes), 163

and are songs. Voice a voice blown: p r i n t Must not overlap, but the notes of the voices would.

164

In song, the notes of the voices blend with one

another to produce a texture of sound which i s t o t a l l y other

than that made by i n d i v i d u a l voices singing separately. So

with "A":1-12. On the page, the words l i e s t i l l (from "dis­

t i l l e d " , refined, rarefied, abstracted). The printed characters

cannot overlap one another without destroying t h e i r p a r t i c u l a r

d i s t i n c t i o n s (and man i s a p a r t i c u l a r animal):

163. c f . Zukofsky's statement that "there probably i s no such absolute dictum as the 'non-poetic' word; any word may be poetic i f used i n the r i g h t order, with the r i g h t cadence, with a d e f i n i t e aim i n view: whether i t be music (i.e. lyricism) of statement; suggestion of an accompanying tune; image; r e l a t i o n of concepts or ideas; or a context which i s a l l of these things at once. Thus i t would be r i d i c u l o u s to say Herrick's words, larder, fat, veals, pla t t e r , as used i n t h e i r context, are ' non-poetic'. A Test of Poetry, p.81.

In View of Zukofsky's comments, i t i s i n t e r e s t i n g to note not only Aiken's description of poetic language, but also his 'poetic' use of seemingly 'unpoetic' (tuneless) words: grammar, syntax and morphology.

What language, t h i s ? - The painter's, which i s the lover's,

which i s the poet 1s : whose black numbers note the i n f i n i t e s i m a l t i c k , the monstrous cry. Grammar and syntax must a l i k e belong not to the song but to morphology, the shape that cannot die. (from "The Cicada", c i t e d i n Poet's Choice, p.19)

164. "A"-8, pp.58-59.

The l i m i t e d body-Can form i n i t s e l f Only a c e r t a i n number of images, If more are formed The images begin to be confused, If exceeded, they become e n t i r e l y confused. The mind then imagines Without any d i s t i n c t i o n . . . . 1 6 ^

When the characters overlap, there are too many images pos­

s i b l e ; too many p o t e n t i a l l y relevant contexts for the mind

to be able to deal with them c l e a r l y . When Zukofsky des-166

cribes Plato as writing "on double palimpsest", or speaks

of h i s own notes: "Much of i t i n p e n c i l — blurred — other/

notes written over i t / I can't read back through the years",

he i s affirming the l i m i t a t i o n s of the words trapped i n . . 167 prxnt.

In song, i n "A" :1-12, however, the voices do over­

lap. It i s the very substance of the song, the inherent

harmony, that the interweaving of voices e x i s t . The various

voices of mathematics, industry, music, r e l i g i o n , etc., are

e s s e n t i a l to the movement of the poem. They are a gathering-

together, a legend, a hi s t o r y ; and they are ultimately inter­

dependent and synchronous.

165. "A"-12, p.208. See Appendix II.

166. Ibid., p.176.

167. Ibid., p.257. Also the l i m i t a t i o n s of poetry which i s read, but not heard. " P r i n t / must not overlap but notes of the voices would".

"Voice": utterance, language; to speak. Radiant

and r a d i a t i n g . The word, "epic", i s a l l i e d to "voice"

through the Latin, vox, a voice; "epic" i t s e l f s i g n i f i e s 169

a song, a narrative, or a word. "Voice a voice": speak

(radiate) a song (word, language). "Blown", then, suggests

the passage of a i r through the throat and l i p s during

speech (or the flow of a i r through an organ pipe). It

also has i t s roots i n the same word (bhlo) as do "bloom",

"blossom", "blood" and "flower". Thus the song i s a radia­

t i n g or flowering of l i f e (blood taken as the symbol of flour­

ishing l i f e ); l i f e , s p i r i t , a i r s , manes.

* * * * * * * * * *•„.-**

The epic, "A" :1-12, for instance, can be con­

sidered as a l i f e s t y l e . It i s a song, a gathering-

together, words, language; i t e n t a i l s v i t a l i t y and harmony,

seeing and knowing. In the making of an epic, the poet

creates a personal mythology: an ordering of p a r t i c u l a r s .

168. Etym. Diet.

169. Ibid.

170. Ibid.

He forms a universe of his own, a L i t t l e World.

Zukofsky uses communication as his mythology. He

thereby encompasses a l l languages, a l l history ("Charac­

ter and commerce"). A "mythology" i s described as a

system or science of legends; a word, saying, or simply

speech. 172 By d e f i n i t i o n there i s a cycle between the

mythology (or Zukofsky) and the poem, then: a legend i s

a gathering-together; the thing spoken i s something

radiated, moved outward. The 'science' l i e s i n the

use of the words.

The need for standards i n poetry i s no less than i n science. The l a t t e r has been a 'subject of poetry' as i n Lucretius. No measure of science i s so accurate as to not allow a margin of error to both observer and instrument. To the poet acting at once as observer and instrument the s c i e n t i f i c standards of phy­s i c a l measurement are only the beginnings of images of poems. Good verse i s deter­mined by the poet's s u s c e p t i b i l i t i e s invol­ving a precise awareness of differences, forms and p o s s i b i l i t i e s of existence words with t h e i r own attractions included. The poet, no less than the s c i e n t i s t , works on the assumption that i n e r t and l i v e things and re l a t i o n s hold enough in t e r e s t to keep him a l i v e as part of nature. The fact that he p e r s i s t s with them confirms him .... (F)or i f poetry can ever be contented

171. Which i s inherently a r e f l e c t i o n of the Great World.

i t w i l l be content through a spec i a l i z e d sense for every unfolding. But poets measure by means of words, whose e f f e c t as an offshoot of nature may (or should) be that t h e i r strength of suggestion can never be accounted for c o m p l e t e l y . 1 7 3

174 Hence, "a poet i s not at a l l surprised by science".

(Cerebral charges? were discovered Some time ago thru poetry Not surprised i n the le a s t By new s c i e n c e ) . . . . x ' J

It i s t h i s logic (or logos) which allows for the

i n c l u s i o n of science, mechanics and technology within

the same boundaries (the poem or the mythos) as r e l i g i o n ,

philosophy and h i s t o r y . The process of ordering i s i n

part a mechanical one of assessing, recognizing, weighing,

balancing; i t i s an additive ( i n f i n i t e ) process. To

that extent i t i s a s c i e n t i f i c approach. Thus science

does not "surprise" ("to take napping" 1^ 0) the poet.

Its processes are the same as h i s own, but more lim i t e d

i n that science seeks s p e c i f i c frames of reference.

173. "Poetry", Prepositions, pp.14-15.

174. "A"-12, p.192.

175. Ibid., p.194.

To think c l e a r l y then about poetry i t i s necessary to point out that i t s aims and those of science are not opposed or mutually exclusive; and that only the more complicated, i f not finer, tolerances of number, measure and weight that de­fine poetry make i t seem imprecise as' compared to science, to quick readers of instruments. It should be said rather that the most complicated stan­dards of science--including d e f i n i t i o n s , laws of nature and theoretic construc­t i o n s — are poetic, l i k e the motion of . Lorentz' single electron and the f i e l d produced by i t that cannot 'make i t s e l f f e l t i n our experiments i n which we are always concerned with immense numbers of p a r t i c l e s , only the resultant e f f e c t s produced by them are perceptible to our senses.' Aware of l i k e tolerances, the poet can r e a l i z e the standards of a s c i e n t i f i c d e f i n i t i o n of poetry. They should embrace at least such action that informs s k i l l s and i n t e l l e c t ordering events at once outside and i n the head or whatever impinges upon i t anatomi­c a l l y . 1 7 7

The technics, the mechanical methods, are the

'way into' the poem; they are the means of creating

preliminary orders (scaffolds for the f i n a l construction

of the whole poem. They are those devices and areas

through which analogies can be derived; analogies by

means of which the leaps between ideas and contexts

can be made available or relevant to the reader.

177. "Poetry", Prepositions, pp.155-56.

The metaphors of mechanics provide a way of

dealing with the Great World. They provide at least the

i l l u s i o n of order or control (in the sense that the naming

of a thing i s a method of c o n t r o l l i n g i t to some extent).

If we consider the Great World to be not only that

universe about which Zukofsky writes, but also the

language i t s e l f , we are returned to Duncan's concept of

the mothering-language, the l i v i n g tongue. The mother-

earth, mother-language: images of a f r u i t f u l n e s s which

i s beyond measure. To conceive even i n part of such

a v i t a l i t y i s frightening, because of the enrgy and

mutability contained within that scope. The technics

are a method for c o n t r o l l i n g that fear. In Zukofsky's

wri t i n g the reader does not sense terror, because there

i s order: order derived through the technics of mathe­

matics, physics, etc. The expertise are not only the

communicative modes for the sensorium, then. They are

also protective. The f i l t e r s , l i n g u i s t i c and physio­

l o g i c a l , prevent us from over-exposure to the environ­

ment.

It i s because the technics are only devices,

and not the poem i t s e l f , that the various metaphors

or analogies of mechanics can (and must) be abandoned

once they are established as perceptual frameworks or

f o c i i .

What can make the d i f f i c u l t d i s p o s i t i o n easier ? Not to be d i f f i c u l t .

Everything should be as simple as i t can be,

Says Einstein, 178

But not simpler.

It i s through the simple that we move to the complex,

which i n turn becomes simple, prompting a further move to the 179

s t i l l more complex, and so on, u n t i l we approach to stay

which Huxley refers to as that of Mind-At-Large. In that 180

state of awareness, there can be an apperception of harmony,

and an understanding of the order of the Great World. That understanding or enlightenment i s communicated

at times i n the form of myth:

Our roots are i n the sky. The Milky Way appears, cross-section of our galaxy.

178. "A"-12, p.149.

179. "the simple i s uncompounded/ or well compounded". Ibid., p.231.

180. "Harmony" i s derived from the same root as that of the word "art" (ar, meaning to f i t or j o i n together)

In the e a r l i e s t news out of heaven, what they said, the mythos, was that i t was the s l a i n body of the dragon, i t was the flow of everlasting mother­ing milk, i t was l i g h t , i t was rhetoric, r i v e r , f l u i d . A stream of suns.

For the Zukofsky, the mythology involves language i t s e l f :

the story (history, legend, gathering-together of) of the

words :

"The poet wonders why so many today have raised up the word 'myth', finding the lack of so-called 'myths' i n our time a c r i s i s the poet must overcome or die from, as i t were, having become too radioactive, when instead a case can be made out for the poet giving some of his l i f e to the use of the words the and a: both of which are weighted with as much epos and h i s t o r i c a l destiny as one man can perhaps resolve. Those who do not believe t h i s are too sure that the l i t t l e words mean nothing among so many other words. , , x ° 2

Thus Zukofsky has a vocabulary for the myth. It i s expressed

through the function of the integral, the melody of the l i n e s

(their cadence), and the resolution of the images:

Writing occurs which i s the d e t a i l , not mirage, of seeing, of thinking with the things as they exist, and of d i r e c t i n g them along a l i n e of melody. Shapes suggest themselves, and the mind senses and receives awareness.

181. Duncan, "The Day-Book", p. 2.

182. "Poetry", Prepositions, p.18. See Appendix II re the use of "a".

This rested t o t a l i t y may be c a l l e d ob­j e c t i f i c a t i o n — the apprehension com­p l e t e l y s a t i s f i e d as to the appearance of the art form as an object. That i s : d i s t i n c t from print, which records ac­t i o n and existence and i n c i t e s the mind to further suggestion, there exists, though i t may not be harboured as s o l i d l y i n the crook of an elbow, w r i t i n g (audi­b i l i t y i n two-dimensional p r i n t ) which i s an object or a f f e c t s the mind as such.

Hence,

The best man learns of himself T o /

To bring rest to others.

"Rest": harmony, polyphony, unity. The sense of a

t o t a l i t y perceived and ordered. The conclusion of the voy­

age through the unknown. A resolution. A pause : hence a

conclusion i s also a commencement. A Round. A return to

the beginning (in which there was/is the word).

Once again the c y c l i c a l movement. A wri t i n g about

Zukofsky's poems must in e v i t a b l y re-turn to the poems them­

selves. Not only i s there a c i r c u l a r motion within and

among movements of "A" :1-12, there i s also a l i k e motion

i n the experience of reading the poem: an as s i m i l a t i o n of

the universe and the Great World as they are perceived

183. "An Objective", Prepositions, p.23.

112 1CT

through the poem. Thus the poem i t s e l f i s a f i l t e r , a focus,

i t s own p a r t i c u l a r mode of resolution, words. Words, a i r s ,

"one song/ of many voices", s p i r i t s (manes):

One horse Walked off, The trees showing sunlight Sunlight trees,

185 Words ranging forms.

185. "A"-5, p.26.

CYCLES OF THE LETTER/WORD "A"

The fact that the l e t t e r "A" i s the f i r s t l e t t e r of

the alphabet, combined with the h i s t o r i c a l information con­

cerning i t s past usages (as well as i t s present ones), make 186

i t well worth ocamiring more c l o s e l y .

"A" the t i t l e of the poem; Zukofsky comments that

one would be wise to consider "a" and "the" as encompassing

a great deal of the h i s t o r i c a l and contemporary.

"A" : the f i r s t l e t t e r of the Roman alphabet, i s also

the f i r s t l e t t e r of the Greek alphabet, there c a l l e d "alpha".

"Alpha" i s used to refer to the f i r s t of a series i n

a s p e c i f i c context. In physics, for instance, the alpha ray

i s the f i r s t ray i n a series of radiations arranged i n order

of increasing frequency. This p a r t i c u l a r a p p l i c a t i o n of the

relates to the discussion of speech and ra d i a t i o n contained

186. A l l h i s t o r i c a l and etymological information i n t h i s appendix are from the OED, which c i t e s some sixty-f i v e usages for the word/letter i n sixteen d i f f e r e n t functions. eg. "A" i s a l e t t e r of the alphabet, but also stands for the l e t t e r s of the alphabet i n p a r t i ­cular circumstances. It once was the name used for the number One. It has been used to denote, i n d i f f ­erent contexts "he", "she", " i t " or "the". It can be used to refer to motion or p o s i t i o n . It i s a note on the musical scale.

i n Chapter Six of the preceding text.

"Alpha" i t s e l f i s derived from the Hebrew "aleph"

(the f i r s t l e t t e r of the Hebraic alphabet). In mathem­

at i c s , "aleph" refers to the one-to-one correspondence

between integers i n a sequence, much the way one might

view Zukofsky's treatment of words as a one-to-one corres­

pondence with the things and events they i d e n t i f y . It i s

p a r t i c u l a r l y i n t e r e s t i n g to note that i n Jonathan Williams' 187

effusive essay on Zukofsky, he refers to Zukofsky's wish

to have aleph on the cover of the f i r s t e d i t i o n of "A" :1-12

(with that i n mind, i t i s i n t e r e s t i n g to note that the dust

jacket of the Cape e d i t i o n of 1966 bears the rough brush­

stroke design of an a s t r a l or o r b i t a l figure which moves

i n many planes about a central core from which i t originates :

a s a t i s f y i n g metaphor for the c y c l i c a l and i n t r i c a t e move­

ments of the poem i t s e l f ) .

The word, "alphabet" i s composed of the f i r s t two

l e t t e r s of the Hebrew alphabet, "aleph" and "beth". "Aleph"

comes from the word meaning "ox", which i t s e l f bore the

sense of that which was moist or f e r t i l e ( a l l i e d to the

Indo-germanic root, wegw, meaning to be vigorous, or awake;

187. Jonathan Williams, "Zoo-cough's Key's Nest of Poultry", Kulchur 4, Spring, 1964, pp. 4-13.

hence, perhaps, the o r i g i n of some of the references to

those unaware, inactive people who are described i n terms

of sleeping, dreaming, or being dead, i n "A":1-12.

"Beth" comes from the word for house, which o r i g i n ­

a l l y meant the place i n which things are concealed, hidden,

protected (thereby a return perhaps to H.D.'s metaphor of

words as l i t t l e boxes containing hidden meanings). Ety-

mologically, "house" bears a significance which i s not un­

l i k e that of "sky", i n the sense that both are a l l i e d to the

root-word, skeu, to cover. Thus there i s an i t e r a t i o n of the

imagery as of the sky as the source of l i g h t , reason, under­

standing; that which covers and reveals simultaneously.

When "aleph" and "beth" are joined to form "alpha­

bet", there i s the sense of an organized sequence or series;

the glyphs from which are composed the words. "Alphabet"

bears the sense of that which i s the rudiments of anything;

as, for instance, a set of characters which represent the

sounds of speech. The rudiments, the basics, the beginnings.

In the beginning the was the word. In the beginning, there

i s "A". There i s "A", sequences one through twelve, and

thir t e e n through twenty-four. One wonders what l i e s i n

the realms of "P", "M" or "W". In the realms of "Z" l i e

the ori g i n s of "A", evidently!

SPHERES OF LANGUAGES

The function of s p e c i a l i z e d usages (particular vo­

cabularies, languages of expertise) as instances which at

once both enrich and delimit the Language, has been dealt

with i n the main text. A p a r t i c u l a r usage i s exclusive

of other contexts, but the word as object i n that usage i s

not confined to that context alone.

It i s worth taking note of two si m i l a r approaches to

the v a r i a b i l i t y of language, both of them using the image of

the sphere (or c i r c l e s ) to v i s u a l i z e the concept they express.

The Oxford English Dictionary comments that:

The vocabulary of a widely-diffused and highly-c u l t i v a t e d l i v i n g language i s not a fixed quantity circumscribed by d e f i n i t e l i m i t s . The vast aggregate of words and phrases which constitutes the Vocabulary of English-speaking men presents, to the mind that endeavours to grasp i t as a d e f i n i t e whole, the aspect of one of those nebulous masses f a m i l i a r to the astrono­mer, i n which a clear and unmistakable nucleus shades o f f on a l l sides, through zones of de­creasing brightness, to a dim marginal f i l m that seems to end nowhere, but to l o s t i t s e l f i n the surrounding darkness.

*..So the English Vocabulary contains a nucleus or central mass of many thousand words...some of them l i t e r a r y , some of them only c o l l o q u i a l , a great majority at once l i t e r a r y and c o l l o q u i a l , — they are the Common Words of the language.

But they are linked on every side with other words...which pertain...more d i s t i n c t l y to the domain of l o c a l d i a l e c t , of the slang and cant of 'sets' and classes, of the peculiar techni­c a l i t i e s of trades and processes, of the s c i e n t i ­f i c terminology common to a l l c i v i l i z e d nations.. ..And there i s absolutely no defining l i n e i n any d i r e c t i o n ; the c i r c l e of the English lan­guage has a well-defined centre but no di s c e r n i -ble circumference. 0 0

This concept of the nebula of the language (or the

Vocabulary, as the OED refers to i t ; d i s t i n c t from the use

of 'vocabulary' as a specia l i z e d usage i n the preceding text)

i s v i s u a l i z e d as a series of radiates diverging from, or

converging in, the cen t r a l core, the Common Language.

l i t e r a r y COMMON

c o l l o q u i a l

op

The diagram i s interpreted as follows:

The centre i s occupied by the 'common' words, i n which l i t e r a r y and c o l l o q u i a l usage meet. ' S c i e n t i f i c ' and 'foreign' words enter the the common language mainly through l i t e r a t u r e ; 'slang' words ascent through c o l l o q u i a l use; the 'technical' terms of c r a f t s and processes, and the 'dialect' words, blend with the common language i n both speech and l i t e r a t u r e . Slang also touches on one side the technical termino­logy of trades and occupations, as i n 'nautical

188. OED. p . x x v i i .

slang 1 ... and on another passes into true d i a l e c t . Dialects s i m i l a r l y pass into foreign languages. S c i e n t i f i c terminology passes on one side into purely foreign words, on another i t blends with the technical vocabulary of art and manufactures. It i s not possible to f i x the point at which the 'English Language1 stops, along any of these d i ­verging l i n e s . 1 8 9

Funk and Wagnall, i n the Standard College Dictionary,

also make use of the coincidence of vocabularies within the

language. They do not apply any r e s t r i c t i v e l a b e l to "those

general purpose words and meanings, usable i n any context,

which make up the bulk of the English language as i t i s

spoken and writen. ..Words or p a r t i c u l a r senses of words,

however, which have' any r e s t r i c t i o n of use are labeled. 1 , 1 9 0

There i s a distinction.made between l e v e l s of usage and

st y l e . Levels, degrees of acceptance of a s p e c i f i c usage,

are regarded as d i s t i n c t from.one another "with a reason-191

able degree of o b j e c t i v i t y " . It i s i n the area of sty l e

that s u b j e c t i v i t y and aesthetics are accounted for. Hence,

the " C i r c l e of Standard English" uses a d i f f e r e n t set of

variables from that of the OED, but the overlapping

189. Ibid.

190. Frederick Cassidy, "Restrictive Labels", Standard College Dictionary, ed. Funk and Wagnall, (Toronto, 1963), p.xix.

191. Ibid., p.xx.

c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of usages i s s t i l l c l e a r l y evident:

FORMAL i Common STYLE ' Core j INFORMAL STYLE

Vocabulary J f

of Ideas, j / Dialect Learning, ' / Localism Literature | s Trade Jargon

THE CIRCLE OF STANDARD ENGLISH

LIST OF WORKS CITED

Aiken, Conrad. "The Cicada" and "The Walk i n the Garden." Poet's Choice. Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York, Time-Life Publications, 1966.

Preludes. New York, 1966.

Clark, Thomas. "Zukofsky's A l l . " Poetry. 107 (October, 1965) :55-59.

Creeley, Robert. "...Paradis / Our / Speech...." Poetry 107 (October, 1965): 52-55

Duncan, Robert. "Ideas of the Meaning of Form." Kulchur 4 (Autumn, 1961): 60-74.

"The Day-Book. " Origin 10 (July, 1963): 1-47.

Fabun, Don, ed. Dynamics of Change. Englewood C l i f f s , N.J., 1968.

You and C r e a t i v i t y . Oakland, 1968.

Fenollosa Ernest. The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. Edited by Ezra Pound. San Francisco, 1964.

Gassner, John. Masters of the Drama. 3d. ed. New York, 1954.

Gothe, Jurgen, R. "Edible Mushrooms of Fur Cluster, Michigan", unpublished c o l l e c t i o n . Vancouver, 1968.

Huxley, Aldous. The Doors of Perception. Middlesex, Penquin Books, 1969.

Jung, Carl G. "Synchronicity as an Acausal Connecting P r i n c i p l e . " Collected Works. Vol. 11. London, 1958.

Koestler, Arthur. Act of Creation. New York, 1964.

Shakespeare, William. Complete Works. Edited by George L. Kittredge. London, 1966.

Stevens, Wallace. "The Idea of Order at Key West." Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. New York, 1964.

Watts, Alan. The Book. Toronto, 1966.

Weaver, Warren. "The Mathematics of Communication." Communi­ cation and Culture. Edited by A l f r e d G. Smith, Toronto, 1966.

Wilder, Thornton. The Bridge of San Luis Rey. New York, Time-Life Publications, 1963.

Williams, Jonathan. "Zoo-cough's Key's Nest of Poultry." Kulchur 4 (Spring, 1964): 4-13.

Zukofsky, Louis. "A" :1-12. Japan, 1959.

"A" :1-12. London, 1966.

" A l l : the Collected Short Poems, 1923-58." New York, 1965.

" A l l : the Collected Short Poems, 1956-64. "

A Test of Poetry. New York, 1964.

. Bottom: On Shakespeare. Vol. 1. Austin, 1964.

Ferdinand. London, 1969.

"Five Statements for Poetry." Kulchur 2 (Autumn, I960): 63-84.

Prepositions: The Collected C r i t i c a l Essays of Louis Zukofsky. London, 1967.

unpublished l e t t e r to Peter Quartermain, October 18, 1968.

LIST OF DICTIONARIES AND REFERENCE BOOKS

Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. New York, 1964.

Lewis, C. and Short, C. L a t i n Dictionary: Founded on Andrew's Edition of Freund's Latin. Oxford, Univ. Press, 1879.

L i d d e l l , H.G. and Scott, R. Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1925.

Mathematics Dictionary. Edited by James and James. 3d. ed. Princeton, N. J., 1968.

Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1961.

Scholes, Percy A. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. Edited by John 0. Ward. London, 1968.

Skeat, Rev. Walter A. An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. Oxfor, Clarendon Press, 1968.

Standard College Dictionary: Canadian Edition. Funk and Wagnall, Toronto, 1963.

Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (Unabridged). Springfield, Mass., 1966.

LIST OF SECONDARY SOURCES

Blaser, Robin, "Bottom's Dream: for Louis Zukofsky." Tish 42 (1968).

Creeley, Robert. "A Note on Louis Zukofsky." Kulchur 4 (Summer, 1964): 2-4.

. "In Conversation with Charles Tomlinson. " Kulchur 4 (Winter, 1964-65): 4-16.

"Louis Z u k o f s k y — A l l : the Collected Short Poems, 1923-58", mimeographed rep r i n t .

Davie, Donald. "After Sedley, After Pound." Nation 201 (November 1, 1965): 311-13.

Levertov, Denise. "A Necessary Poetry." Poetry 97 (November, 1960): 102-09.

Malanga, Gerard. "Bottom and After I's." Poetry 107 (October, 1965) : 60-64.

Rich, Adrienne. "Beyond the Heirlooms of Tradition." Poetry 105 (November, 1964): 128-29.

Williams, William Carlos. "An Extraordinary S e n s i t i v i t y . " Poetry 60 (September, 1942): 338-40.

Winters, Yvor. "The O b j e c t i v i s t s . " The Hound and Horn 1 (Winter, 1931): 158-60.

Zukofsky, Louis. An Unearthing. Harvard, 1965.

"Beginning Again with William Carlos Williams." The Hound and Horn 4 (Winter, 1931): 261-64. With revisions by Zukofsky, A p r i l 10, 1963. In the manuscript c o l l e c t i o n at University of Texas, Austin.

. IYYOB. London, 1965.

"Program: 'Objectivists' 1931." Poetry 37 (February, 1931): 268-72.

"Sincerity and O b j e c t i f i c a t i o n : with Special Reference to the Works of Charles Reznikoff." Poetry 3 7 (February, 1931): 272-85.

"The Best Human Value." Nation 186 (May 31, 1958) : 500-02.