Broken English: Poetry and Partiality

by Heather McHugh

A leading American poet reclaims the realm of criticism in distinctive and impassioned readings of poems and other works of art.

"When I call poetry a form of partiality," writes Heather McHugh, "I mean its economies operate by powers of glimmering and glints, rather than exhaustible sums. It is a broken language from the beginning, brimming with all that white welled up to keep the line from surrendering to the margin; all that quiet, to keep the musics marked." In Broken English, McHugh applies her poetic sensibility and formidable critical insight to topics ranging from the poetry of Valéry and Rilke to ancient Greek drama and Yoruba folk songs, offering intense, passionate, highly personal readings that are informed and unified by her concern for the relationships among language, culture, and poetry.

Genres: Poetry, Writing, Essays

170 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1993

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Broken English is a very exciting collection about poems, poets, and poetry by Heather McHugh. My favorites essays included one about fragments as poetry, what we have left of Greek writers and what those fragments mean to us. McHugh writes brilliantly about Agamemnon and the role of the Greek chorus and how as language breaks apart, so does the social order.

She is also insightful in her discussions of some of the more difficult poems of Emily Dickinson, showing how the poems open up into a multiplicity of meanings. And her analyses of several poems of the almost opaque poet, Paul Celan, was impressive and opened up his poems to me in new ways.

These essays are almost breathtaking in their quality and enlightening almost in the literal meaning of the word. The essays set off lights in my brain, helping me to make new connections and bringing me to new understanding of these poets and of poetry more generally. McHugh challenges contemporary poetry to step outside the personal lyric and engage more actively with the world.

[Charis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Broken English is expansive, insightful, thought provoking for readers/writers of Poetry. However, her language is often dense and convoluted while discussing difficult texts, which made the reading experience a challenge. By the end though, I'd say it was worth it.

[Leanne Hoppe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread. McHugh writes and thinks beautifully! Sometimes the writing feels oblong, or not straightforward.

[Kitty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Listening to a McHugh lecture, or reading one of her essays, is to take galactic* steps at tachyonic* speed through linguistic possibilities. Excellent insights into Rilke, Valéry, Greek Drama and thought, Paul Célan, Dickinson which facet a re-reading so that the selected gems of examples shimmer back what McHugh calls “intimations” offered in the frangibility* of line breaks, white space, all the non-verbal cues and dispositions of silence.

I forget who said that one doesn’t have to be a philosopher in order to be a poet, but you end up addressing the concerns of philosophy if you keep at it. This book underscores the tight relationship of language and thought with , considerations offered by Heidigger, Nietzsche, Derrida and Bachelard that heighten the understanding of language at work.

In the introduction, McHugh reminds us that poetry is not “salesman music” or an analgesic in the comforter business” but rather what we need to face the unfathomability of our life. “Imagination isn’t needed, says Valéry, to see what isn’t; it is needed to see what is.

Her definition of partiality addresses the paradox of the poetic frame, which she illustrates in the first essay inspired by Robert Capa’s photographic diptych Tour de France (1939). Each subsequent essay examines in different lights, how poetic language cannot be single-minded – how it means more than it intends. As in the French verb, regarder, the word is both guard, keeping safe what is “in” and a watchman, looking out, She gives multiple examples of words which contain opposite meaning, the nuances of the articles the, and a, a overview of Yoruba poetry which is a refreshing view of the practical relations of the world, and free from self-absorbed or elegiac regret. By the end of the book, the reader has been given copious examples of poems that illustrate the words of Heraclitus : “A man is most remote with what he is most continuously in contact with.”


*for those of you like me who might have to review vocabulary:
enjoy the precisions and multiple layers of 3 words:
1)galactic : immense; of or relating to the galaxy particularly the milky way; of, relating to, causing secretions of milk
2)tachyonic: travels at high velocity; (tachyon: theoretical particle that travels at superluminal (super-liminal?!) speed, faster than the speed of light)
3) frangible: (capable of being broken; breakable)
,

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whew! Finished! I'd definitely recommend this book to just about anyone, but I'd also recommend reading it in smallish doses. I had many "aha" moments but many more "huh?" headscratching ones (in a good way).

Heather McHugh's prose is quicksilver, whipsmart, and enthralling. I'll admit that I felt a little doltish when I was reading these essays, but I could feel my brain working hard and I definitely learned think in new ways about language & poetry.

I mostly read this book on my lunch breaks at work, so the index/notes section has bright orange Cheetos dust in many of the margins. I'd like to think Heather would approve.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a lot to like about this book but be warned, it's dense. Sometimes overly so. McHugh loves to mess with language so often sentences break down a bit and you'll have to retrace, or suspend, or bifurcate your thoughts as you're following the book's arguments. She covers a lot in 136 pages; I especially enjoyed her studies of Yoruba poetry and the work of Paul Celan [though what a depressing end!].

It would be fun to hear McHugh lecture.

[Farren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book sends me back to the shelves for more critical exploratory essays on aesthetics, poetics, history.

[john steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

some damn fine essays up in this. mchugh's a genius, and renders semiotics appealing.