The Poem

by Don Paterson

The Poem attempts to answer several questions: what is a poem? In what way is its use of language distinct? What conditions allow it to arise, and what is its cultural purpose? And how, exactly, do poems work ? Part polemic, part technical treatise and part meditation, The Poem is an ambitious contemporary ars poetica. Paterson looks at the writing, transmission and reading of poetry with wit and scholarly flair, drawing together literary analysis, linguistics, metaphysics, psychology and cognitive science in a thorough exploration of how and why poems are composed. The Poem takes the form of three long essays. ‘Lyric’ attends to the music and sound patterns of poetry, and the way in which they work to deepen poetic sense; ‘Sign’ develops a new theory of metaphor, metonym and symbol, and looks at how ideas of ‘meaning’ change under poetic conditions; ‘Metre’ addresses poetry’s relationship to time and to the rhythms of speech, then builds a theory of prosody from the ground up, proposing some radical correctives to existing metrical theory along the way. Through his various professional guises – as major prize-winning poet, as Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews and as Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan – few are better placed to grant this insider’s perspective. For all those intrigued by the inner workings of the art form and its fundamental secrets, The Poem will challenge, intrigue and surprise.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Writing

720 pages, Hardcover

Published April 16, 2019

About the author

Don Paterson (b. 1963) is a Scottish poet and writer. He is the author of sixteen books of poetry, aphorism, criticism, memoir and poetic theory. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, three Forward Prizes, the T.S. Eliot Prize on two occasions, and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of St. Andrews, and for twenty-five years was Poetry Editor at Picador MacMillan. He has long had a parallel career as a jazz guitarist.

He lives in Kirriemuir, Angus.

Reviews

[Anisha Inkspill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m trying to improve my understanding of poetry and so picked up this book. It was the cover that got my attention and then as I flicked through it seemed to fit in with what I was looking for. I was not prepared for what I would find.

This is a really, really a dense coverage into finite detail of poetry and presents it in terms that made my mind spin.

Patterson, doesn’t just give an overview, the overview is his starting point and then without fear he presents his personal view about poetry and the mechanics of how and why it works the way it does, and he does this by providing a generous number of poem examples.

The 700 plus pages starts off easy, or so would I think noticing the finer details Patterson presents each topic. Split into three parts each with a good handful of chapters, the first part, Lyric: The Sound of the Poem, has headings like Poetry and Music, Silence and Rhyme. But it’s the second part, Sign: The Domain of the Poem, where all the technical stuff emerges, where Patterson offers apologies and understanding if chapters need to be skipped by reader for being too long. But I read every page, feeling dazzled and accepting that this first-time round I’m not going to get all of it. It was the third part, Meter: The Rhythm of the Poem, I was most interested in for now but having read the first two parts I should have been prepared for the depths of explanation on stress and meter and foot. I’ve read about these topics before and have gone away with a kind of an understanding, but this was so interesting for me and made me look not just at poetry but at (the workings of) language in a new way.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

This is huge it's a brick a colossus & DP (Don Paterson not Daft Punk, or any other meaning implied) just clobbers one over the head with it, in I think a productive sense- I find it inspiring often & I fully expect a lot of points, explanations, frameworks to plateau to conceptually stick themselves somewhere I won't lose them. It seems to me dangerous for an established poet to write something of this sort - that seems to invite lazy critics to use it as a cipher for the author's poetical works. But good on him for saying fuck them

I entertained myself along the way gauging our author's taste in poets by his use of examples. His disapprovals may be controversial but conceivable - Coleridge, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and not a single reference is made to Percy Shelley in the entire text (Byron is mentioned in a piss-take aside). But these are fine I'm happy there. One of my favourite parts of the whole book was the analysis of Heaney's brilliant poem The Underground & Paterson achieves here is a masterclass of analysis. Possibly Heaney is invoked more than any other poet & I'm quite happy with that because the level of analysis on him is stellar. We also see lots of Muldoon, CK Williams, Michael Donaghy, Derek Mahon. I like the swipes at Craig Raine a lot. Remarkably little to say about the prose poem in general - there's a three page chapter and otherwise it's forgotten. Very odd to me especially since I was looking forward to discussion of that - it seems especially in vogue lately but alas we skate

I'm just... perplexed by the absences, and not of Shelley which, strange as it may be, we can get over. I've checked the bibliography & index and there are, in the entirety of this 700+ page book, two nonwhite poets, one of which is the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges - there is no description of his poetry, it's a quote from an essay. The other is Kanye West. I think Don's breakdown of Gold Digger and it's relationship to old English accentual verse is great & well argued but this seems like an omission-and-a-fuckin-half. I'm not throwing accusations about I'm not interested in that it just seems that for a book published in 2018 one practically has to work to avoid writers of colour (and while we're at it, the word 'queer' doesn't appear in the text at all) in a landscape of phenomenal contemporary writers AND unearthings of covered-over nonwhite & queer poets of the past. I'm reminded of the nonsense Philip Larkin row that's been bubbling over (concerning which I direct you to the splendid article by Jeremy Noel-Tod) which makes the point that as much talk one gets about diversifying the curriculum English-language non-white writers such as Wole Soyinka (a NObel LAUREate) have their poems out of print --

Essentially I'm confused. I'll be mind-numbingly clear and say I do not think this book is a racist construction or that the author cooked up some malicious scheme of erasure etc & so forth. But it does seem to me almost unbelievable that this issue hadn't occurred to DP or an editor or any others he consulted. If somebody has an answer pass it along. I do find it a shame because! it is an incredible piece of writing that is highly informative practical vast in scope - but that scope seems to exclude certain people

Noel-Tod's article: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/...

[Bernal Diaz]

Silence



Is the ground of poetry, Don Paterson tells us. We know it’s a poem because of the white space around it, the textual equivalent of silence. A poem doesn’t fill the page ‘and therefore considers itself rather important.’ And so do we – as soon as we see that space we are primed to dig deeper than the literal sense of the words within it, mining for the hidden meaning.

When we mine beyond the literal, what is there to find in language? Well, imagine you’re an ambassador sent from Earth to the Galactic Council and you’re about to go into a meeting with representatives of two alien civilisations, ‘one beautiful and friendly to humans, the other unfriendly, ugly and mean-spirited … one of these groups is called the Lamonians; the other is called the Grataks. Which is which?’

Researchers have asked a lot of people questions like these, and the overwhelming majority put the grumpy aliens together with the staccato, guttural ‘Gratak’, whereas the aliens that come in peace get lumped with the long-vowelled, labial ‘Lamonian’. This flies in the face of the widely held belief that words are arbitrary – that when we want to name something, we pick a sound at random and simply agree to give it that meaning.

Recent study suggests that words are often in some sense iconic – that their sound, or the shaping of the sound with the mouth, is related to their meaning. ‘Glisten, glare, glow, glower, glint, gleam, glaze, gloss, glance, glitter … glass‘: the theory is that the inclusion of the gl- sound in so many words to do with reflected light is not coincidental. It isn’t that gl- means ‘reflected light’, but that the feel of the sound touches us in a way similar to some aspect of the experience of reflected light. Sounds that are thought to have this meaningful feel are called phonesthemes.

The Poem is full of fascinating detail like this, drawn from linguistics, philosophy of language, neuroscience, semiotics and more – not to mention poetics – adding up to a comprehensive disquisition on the poem in three long essays on it’s sound (Lyric), meaning (Sign) and rhythm (Metre).

Paterson regards ‘poetry as a naturally occurring mode of human speech.’ That mode arises ‘under the dual pressures of emotional urgency and temporal constraint’: when you have only a little time to say something you strongly feel, then you emphasise rhythm and intonation more than usual. Poetry exaggerates these effects, one of which is the lengthened vowel.

In 1781 Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages was posthumously published. In it, he argued that language was first of all a kind of song expressing feeling. Only later was it adapted to convey more literal meanings. Paterson explores a resonant idea: that the vowel carries the emotional sense of speech, and that the chopping up of its steady breath by consonant introduces semantic content.

He suggests repeating only the vowel sounds in a sentence. For instance: Put that in your pocket – [u] [a] [i] [ou] [o e] (Paterson uses the phonetic alphabet, but let’s not get too technical). What you get is a sort of baby-talk, but it is easy to say, and easy to vary the pitch, length, emphasis and timbre of the sounds to suggest different emotional contexts – this is why ‘a great deal of sense can still be made of a conversation heard through a wall.’ To repeat only the consonants is not just more difficult, it seems to give no sense at all.

Whether or not speech itself began with ‘the song of the vowels’, the individual experience of speech certainly does. Incubating in the womb we hear all conversations through its wall and so ‘it seems entirely possible that iconic links between intonational contour and emotion could be forged there and then’. And when the intonational contour of any phrase is is fixed by repetition (as is not uncommon in poetry) the result comes to seem musical, as in the speech-to-song illusion, in which, when a phrase is looped over and over, ‘the speaker appears to be clearly singing the phrase’.

Professor of Psychology, Diana Deutsch, who named the speech-to-song illusion, favours a Rousseauian theory of language: ‘My very strong bet is that western tonal music and English language both evolved from a protolanguage that had components of both music and speech. Then it divided. Music became more for emotion … and speech to convey information’. In the same article, Between Speech and Song, from which that quote is taken, another scientist describes parents’ baby-talk as a kind of ‘musical speech’, adding that infants ‘seem to get the messages in music earlier than meaning in language’

For having learnt all this about the relation of song to speech and sound to meaning, why not treat yourself to a sonorous reading of Poem in October by its author Dylan Thomas?

While there is much that is interesting and accessible to learn from the book The Poem about the context of the art form the poem – why it is what it is – it must be acknowledged that this is also an academic work that delves into the nuts and bolts of how poems do what they do. Paterson is a touch embarrassed at this aspect of his book:

‘Several … theoretical excursions are necessarily and miserably dense.’
‘There’s no doubt that I’ve … indulged myself and backed into unscholarly and unscientific crankery too many times.’
‘The following five sections … can and probably should be skipped by readers more interested in my conclusions on the nature and role of symbol than in the repetitious and agonised means of my arrival at them. There is no way to make this stuff any fun.’
‘The last and longest part, ‘Metre’, is almost entirely technical, and unlikely to be of interest to anyone but specialists and students.’

It’s true that The Poem does contain sentences like this: ‘Extreme metalepsis sometimes looks and even feels as though a domain has been jumped; but it’s a different cognitive operation, and is a form of extended metonym, because it’s ultimately just derived from a peristasis.’

However, Paterson preempts criticism with an endnote titled ‘A brief defence of jargon’, pointing out that it is no more than a professional shorthand which is perfectly clear to those who have learnt it. Once you’ve got your head round how Paterson uses the terms ‘metalepsis’, ‘domain’, ‘metonym’ and ‘peristasis’, the above sentence presents no great difficulty (no, don’t ask me, I’d have to look them up again).

But that makes it sound like Pateron’s no fun, and for those of a literary bent, he very much is. ‘I have done my best to curb my footnote addiction and have completely failed. I like footnotes … I often get distracted by something that interests me, and can see no good reason not to pursue it some small way.’ That’s my kinda guy.

If you’re prepared to put a bit of effort into this book, there’s much reward to be had, and many illuminating nuggets of knowledge. For instance, the typical poetic line (in English at least) constantly varies stressed vowels, so that each stands in contrast to the one before and after. Because otherwise, assonance, the ‘rhyming’ of vowels wouldn’t stand out. Here’s one of his examples:

‘… You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.’

Home is So Sad – Philip Larkin

Not only does poetry tend to vary stressed vowels, it tends to increase their number. As we’ve learned, long vowels are expressive of emotion, and so to make your poem expressive you want plenty of them – and hardly any schwa. I know, me too: didn’t I tell you there’s plenty to learn here? Apparently, schwa means the vowels you slur past when you’re speaking quickly. Paterson explains:

‘Schwa has its roots in the word for “nought” in Hebrew, and its nondescript little grunt can be substituted for any written vowel, if it occurs in an unstressed position: the “a” in “abet” and “petal”; the “e” in “bagel; the “i” in “stencil”; the “o” in “arrogant” or “condition”; the “u” in “crocus” and the “y” in “satyr”, and so on. In rapid speech, their numbers multiply. Schwa by definition can’t be stressed or sustained; it’s no more possible to sing a long schwa than it is to play Gregorian chant on the banjo.’

The curious titbits I’ve shared here are part of longer arguments Paterson presents. Notable among these are his theory that poems generate an emergent symbolic meaning from the interaction of the reader, or listener, with the written, or spoken, poem; and his method of interpreting the rhythm of a poem, which works with the productive tension of the implied metre and the natural stress of the words and phrases used.

But to get a grip on these substantial reasonings you’d really have to read the book, a course of action I heartily recommend.

You can read this review on my website: http://viewsrebooks.info/less-schwa-m...

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don Paterson is a national treasure, and one of Scotland's best bards. He lives up to the hype, and then some. He is a patriotic poet who has done wonders for contemporary Scottish poetry: edited anthologies, public readings, public lectures, podcasts, interviews, a book just of Shakespearean sonnets to prove its relevance, and so forth. He is Scottish poetry's Berry Gordy Jr.

He's also aware of the debt he owes to Scottish bards.* This book is dedicated to those Makars who taught him. It is a culmination of everything he has learnt about poetry, both from others and by himself. It is a goddamn treat. It's like sitting down for several pints with Don Paterson and hearing everything he can possibly think of saying about poetry. God, is that fun. Chapter themes include: Silence, The Phonestheme, Noise, Four Semes/Four Tropes, Deixis, Punctuation, Nuclear Stress, Scanning Tight Metres (Scanning Loose Metres, Scanning Light Metres), and almost 100 pages of Endnotes. Beautiful.

I've waited for a book like this for a very long time, and I'm happy D.P. wrote it; few others could write with his distinct wit. Few others still have this apophenic view of poetry: that each poem is a universe wherein there are rules, and a lack of rules exists because of these rules. Few people would go on footnoted lectures about the Chilean psychoanalyst Ignacio Matte Blanco and the 'operating system upon which the more recently acquired software of perceptual category and language sits' (21). I know that sounds twatty, but Don keeps it grounded with self-awareness and humour.

I don't agree with everything in this book, but I wouldn't begin arguing with it. In an age when Faber & Faber have begun publishing shite like 'Kim Kardashian's Wedding' and the Twitter/Tumblr poets are increasingly deleting the special je ne sais quoi that has always separated poetry from prose, it's a treat to have Don Paterson's book. Many arts these days are under the unfortunate influence of people who think raw talent is innate rather than learnt, or that learning the rules of a craft take away from natural genius. This book is the (correct) antithesis of that.



* Scotland still has bards; England just has poets.

[Robert Reinhard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book to keep as a reference tome on the essential topics. Not for reading cover to cover perhaps. What a mind Paterson has. Sometimes irritating, usually brilliant.

[Edward Ferrari · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read Paterson's work in poetics back in 2008 when I came across his essays "The Lyric Principle," "The Dark Art of Poetry," and "The Empty Image: New Models of the Poetic Trope." They energized my approach to poetry, set up some productive habits in me, and sent me on a couple of wild tangents, and I don't remember having read anything quite as exciting in my life. I was excited for this then - a book that long promised to synthesize his earlier more purely speculative work. And it does do that. I learned a lot of new things that I'll be returning to over the rest of my life - some fairly elementary rules, nuclear stress, alternate stress, etc. I did feel a little disappointed though. Not so much because it's a difficult book to read - it was always going to be, but because it shows little development. Paterson is cracking the same old jokes - and to an extent, sure. These are the jokes. But it's an oddly evasive book in some ways. For instance, I found his tendency to elide politics more difficult to swallow this time around and I can't say as I found his analysis of Kanye West to be more than an afterthought.

[Cooch · Rating 1 out of 5]

What is it? Who is it for? What use is it?

If there could be a philosophy of poetry, this could be it. His book on Donaghy is a must read. His poetry is excellent. Is this twaddle? What is the point of it? Read it at your peril if you love poetry.

[Charlie Swan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book for any writer. So technical and lucid. Never got around to the chapters on meter but the first two sections are incredible.

[Emma Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

very long. but very helpful

[Fay S · Rating 5 out of 5]

didn’t complete it obviously bc it’s so massive and so dense but it’s still great and so rich and good if poetry is ur special interest