Review of How Does a Poem Mean?

1. Did Frost know what he was going to do when he began [Stopping By Woods]? Considering the poem simply as a piece of juggling one cannot fail to respond to the magnificent turn at the end where, with one flip, seven of the simplest words in the language suddenly dazzle [...] pg 674[^3]

2. Or suppose that there existed somewhere a religious order that imposed a vow not only of eternal silence, but against all verbalization even of one's thoughts. Initiaties, suppose further, must pray a certain number of hours each day, but they must dance their prayers. [...] Can there be any doubt that the kinds of postures and the sequences of actions such dancers could fall into could constitute not only a language but a language susceptible of[^4] great refinement? pg 707

3. As soon as one takes into account this picture-behind-the-word, there are simply no synonyms anymore. pg 766-767

4. After a discussion of Milton (itself worth quoting):

   "Poetry, it must be understood, is a made thing. It does not record reality nor even imagination; it selects from them." pg 769-771

5. Discussing Keats' revisions to the original manuscript of "The Eve of St. Agnes":

   The first draft of the manuscript reads not as above in the third line, but "Unclasps her bosom jewels." This reading Keats immediately struck out. One must note in the final version that though Madeline undresses in this stanza, there is not one word that mentions flesh. Certainly there is no reason except the narrowest kind of prurience against mentioning "bosom" as a facet of the world. But the word does not fit the mood Keats is seeking to establish. The flesh remains in the revised line, but it is sublimated and suggested in the richness of "warmed" rather than baldly stated. [Further discussion of revisions to the next line.] Two things seem to emerge clearly from a careful look at Keats' choices and revisions here. First, Keats seems originally to have conceived of Madeline as definitely buxom, but no hint of that original conception survives the revisions. Keats seems to have changed, or at least to have suppressed his original conception of the facts, and to have done so with no hint of unfaithfulness to facts, but rather in a joyous pursuit of something else. Poets seem easily inclined to change the denotations of what they write about in order to control the connotations. pg 772-773

6. Thus, poetry may achieve high effect by the power of suggestion (overtone) rather than rather than by its specific identification (denotation).[^5] John William Burgon, an English poet of the nineteenth century, wrote many poems but survives only as the author of one line describing the Trans-Jordan city of Petra: A rose-red city half as old as time. The "rose-red" is clearly intended to convey the color of the sandstone from which the city is built. In another context it might suggest the sunset stain on white walls. In either case the effect is denotative. But the truly memorable quality of the line certainly rests in "half as old as time," a phrase about as far from denotation as language seems able to go this side of nonsense syllables. pg 790

7. It would be simply silly, however, to argue that "steel" in poetry is anything but strong. The case is even simpler for "hushed calm" and "distant sunset": one need only try to imagine an unhushed calm or a nearby sunset, to ealize that such adjectives must tend above all else to indicate the incompetence of the writer. The least one should expect of poetry, is that it find for itself a language (or a diction) better than the reader could improvise. pg 795

Word list:

• lucent
• argosy
• woofed
• billingsgate
• pismire
• omnium-gatherum
• ousel
• squamous