A very long Letter to the Editor, becomes a feature article as we attempt to resolve the unresolvable subject of poetry. In our effort to provide a forum for the discussion of poetry and other related subjects, the Boston Poet has printed a letter to the editor that addresses the January's feature article, "The Abstract Paintings of Wallace Stevens," along with Marshall Harvey's reply.
Dear Boston Poet: I read "The Abstract Paintings of Wallace Stevens" (Jan'96) and have been unable to reconcile the concept of abstract poetry with what was described in the article. In short, I developed a bad case of cognitive dissonance, not to reflect on the article which provoked thoughts hidden in (my) sloven slumbers. But let's not jump ahead. First, to enable a common language between us, we have to define what it is we are discussing, the characteristics of the terms we use to define it. At the logical extreme, we have a voice that speaks to communicate. Interpretation of the meaning is limited. Comprehension is well provided for. At the abstract extreme, some form of interpretation, other than logical, is required. The poem abandons the foundation of language; understanding, in order to celebrate it's recessive genes; the mental and emotional associations and sounds so often lost in the confines of organized language. If we are to draw a direct correlation with the visual arts, we must expect an abstract poem to be broken down into units of sense so granular as to prevent the whole from being assigned any specific understanding based upon the meaning of what is written. The article's description appeared to be consistent with this idea; "In abstract art [...] subject matter exerts little or no influence upon the artist. The artist constructs parts of a painting or poem based on how they work together or based on how they work with the idea they themselves suggest. The result is sometimes incomprehensible." "Tattoo" did not seem a very good example of what I imagined an abstract poem to be, but when I read "An Earthy Anecdote" I was shocked by it's absolute clarity. You ask "Why do buck's clatter?". Because bucks have hard bony hooves and anytime things like that go clattering over Oklahoma they'll make a hell of a racket don't you think? And "What is the firecat?". Well for a start it's a cat that leaps and bristles in the way of the clattering bucks persistently forcing them to change course. Then it curls up content to sleep while the bucks clatter off until next time, when like the other times, the firecat will be waiting. The cat can't be anything it chooses, it's a firecat. The poem is explicit. Perhaps it has symbolic meaning, but how could it possibly be called abstract? The article does present an alternative explanation for Wallace Stevens poetry, and in particular for "An Earthly Anecdote". It is this; "...Wallace Stevens selects images that on one level make sense as a part of a poem containing them and on another level refer us to certain areas of abstract art.". This is far more palatable. But isn't this what most poets strive for anyway? To say more than what is actually said? To conjure up fireworks, those "juxtaposition-by-sparks" that explode beneath the surface and provide not so much another distinct view, but rather a greater depth and understanding of the reality? In Stevens case this is influenced by modern art, but in itself is not necessarily abstract. I read the other Stevens poems mentioned and they all follow a similar pattern of embedded and beautiful difficulty. In 'The Dance of the Macabre Mice' we can see Monsieur challenging all evil, a warrior of civilization, on the back of a horse covered with mice! There is little confusion here, only a wealth of depth. In 'Tattoo' we see the light. In 'The Prejudice Against The Past' there are the aquiline pedants (the poets?), hearts and carts, and hats and minds, but beyond that I get a little lost, I am sure, through my own failing to understand and not because of an intentional departure from standard sense. So where does this leave us? Stevens was a self-proclaimed 'abstract' poet (or so we are told). What did he mean by this? The word is loaded with meanings (a bit like the man). There's the verb which doesn't seem to fit. These two adjective definitions focused best for me; (American Heritage) "Difficult to understand; abstruse.", and "Having an intellectual and affective artistic content that depends solely on intrinsic form rather than on narrative content or pictorial representation.". The former does fit, but surely it is too limiting. The latter fits nicely with our definition, but not with Wallace Stevens. Let's turn our attention to what he himself had to say on the subject in "The Ultimate Poem is Abstract." First he makes a case for the lack of appeal of logic, of questions and answers; If the day writhes, it is not with revelations. One goes on asking questions. That, then, is one Of the categories. So said, this placid space Is changed. It is not so blue as we thought." Then he describes the nimble intellect required to follow this 'other' form, his form; "There must be no questions. It is an intellect Of windings round and dodges to and fro, Writhings in wrong obliques and distances, Not an intellect in which we are fleet: present Everywhere in space at once, cloud-pole Of communication. ..." He finishes off the poem by comparing the two types of poem, theirs; It would be enough [...] ... because at the middle, if only in sense, And in that enormous sense, merely enjoy." and his; "... and not as now, Helplessly at the edge ..." This is the subject of the poem. There is no confusion here. You have the proposition; "The Ultimate Poem is Abstract", and the self identification; "...and not as now,...". There's the crux. He considers the poem abstract because it is difficult to follow and comprehend, but it is not over the edge, it is on the edge. His demanding pace of language tests our fortitude and faith in the antithesis of the abstract, the belief that it means what it says, and says more in more ways than can be said. I have been comparing pineapples with planets. He is such a big man, one does not know where to stand. I am lost for words beneath waves too rough to help but cry out for help! Help! --Walter Long.		Dear Mr. Long: I think your letter is a sincere attempt to guess at what I meant and to respond to what was guessed. You were not far off in your guess. In the Stevens' article, I left the topic somewhat inexplicitly expressed, like a poem that tends towards the abstract. All of this is part of my attempt to look for a direct influence of abstract painting upon poetry, with one fact in my favor: there is a heckuva lot of very strange poetry and painting in the last half of the ninettenth century and the twentieth century. I've gone looking for poetry that reminds me of the painting--in to use your words, "poetry that is broken down into units of sense so granular as to prevent the whole from being assigned any specific understanding based upon the meaning of what is written." Like some paintings by Picasso, or any painting by Jackson Pollock, who splays paint onto the canvas randomly, then examines his canvasses for interesting results. I've looked through John Ashbery's work and found many abstract poems, by your definition. The volume Houseboat Days contains a lot of them. The volume Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror contains fewer of them. So poets vary. And you may already have found out how hard it is to tell if a poem really defies understanding. Because the mind imposes understanding where it is to be found (and if you really try to understand) even where it isn't to be found. So if you, as I do, go trying to understand everything, you will start seeing things. The next day you go back and sort out the hallucinations from the instances of true understanding. The result of all this is that (by going back over my earlier efforts) I have identified some truly abstract poems. (For a couple of extended ones, see "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven" and I think possibly also "The Comedian and the Letter C" by Stevens.) I have identified some border-line abstract poems. (See "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" by Stevens.) And I have identified some non-abstract poems. (See "Sunday Morning" by Stevens or almost anything written before the mid-nineteenth century.) (The real thrill behind the effort, of course, is linking poetry with painting--it's like circumnavigating the world--making the lines of the start and return voyage meet up with each other. That sentence was a little abstract.) "Tattoo" is a slightly abstract poem. What I like about it is that it makes perfect sense--a logical argument. But why is that it makes perfect sense--like a non-abstract poem it has a logical structure--a logical argument. But why is the act of perception gothic? Why the spider associations? In short, why is it spooky? Well, maybe Stevens was in a spooky mood. But it doesn't make sense to me. The spookiness comes from something that was in Stevens' mind at the time--something that is not usually in mind when I think about perception. And I don't want it to be. Wouldn't it drive you crazy to think about Bela Lugosi every time you thought about the act of perception? But "Tattoo" is like many abstract paintings. A painter shows an eye--a bloodshot eye. A very large bloodshot eye. A very large bloodshot eye with green striations radiating from it. Why? Because of something that was in the painter's mind. Now here's what the whole matter is about. If a poet writes a poem and he gives it a logical structure it is a non-abstract poem. Keats' odes are that way. You can puzzle out the denotation (what is referred to) and the connotation (what is felt) of every word, and both the denotation and connotation make sense to your logic. But to the extent that a poem fails to make sense to your logic, it is abstract. Now I'm not crazy about the word "abstract" to discuss abstract painting. (I do like the implication of the word "abstract" that a work "expresses a quality apart from an object"--Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. Because what often happens when a work sets off on its own singular voyage by its own singular instincts is that unifying concepts and topic sentences drop out and the reader finds himself or herself focusing on the raw material of art--the texture of the paint, the contrast of the colors, the angular relationship between lines, or in poetry, the image isolated, the metaphor isolated, the symbol isolated. That is, the materials of art become the subject matter of the work. They are the constituent qualitites of non-abstract art suddenly "abstracted" from their works, as opposed to underlying a unified concept or vision that all readers can access and share.) Anyway, the word " abstract" is in common use to mean much like what you suggest--art that cannot be comprehended easily or at all. I'll alter that a bit--art that cannot be comprehended by logic and with reference to objective (shared) notions of reality. (An objective notion of reality would be a notion that you and I would automatically agree on and we would have no trouble hunting up 200 people who would agree with us. "Is that a cat?" Yes, 200 people agree it is a "cat" licking its paws by the doorjamb.) If you ask 200 people if they think perception is gothic, a lot of them will say no. So that's what I'm saying, more or less. It's a lot of fun looking for abstract poems. The mind always tries to impose an order. (See "The Idea of Order at Key West" by Stevens.) So sometimes I see order where it is not, and other times I fail to see order where it is. I try to form an opinion only based on many re-readings of a work. And it's a lot of fun looking for the stuff that really doesn't make a whit of sense in objective terms. The poems that speak of the individuality of the chemicals of a person or the soul of a person. (And for some reason, sometimes speak for a lot of us--for some reason a lot of people think the act of perception reminds them of Bela Lugosi. But I don't know why.) --M.L. Harvey