Poieses Habitus IV: Form and Freedom
These installments explore poetry not merely as a literary form, but as a way of seeing, shaping, and inhabiting the world. Through close readings of poets such as Mary Oliver (with emphasis on her book “A Poetry Handbook”), Denise Levertov, Marianne Moore, and Robert Frost, among other 20th-Century Poets, the reader can expect reflections on sound, line, imagery, form, and freedom alongside personal meditations on writing habits, aesthetics, faith, and artistic formation. Blending literary criticism with spiritual and philosophical reflection, these short essays consider how poetry cultivates attentiveness to beauty, truth, and human experience while tracing the author’s own evolving understanding of poetic design and creative practice.
Poetry, whether understood or not, exists by design. Oliver even states that “even if a poem is a description of unalleviated chaos, it is a gathering of words and phrases and patterns that have been considered, weighed, and selected.” (58) For many 20th-century poets, their poetry ignores the traditions of form to pursue design by utilizing a distinct set of tools like repetition, expectation, and inevitability (Oliver 66). The two poems I will discuss are Swan in Falling Snow by Denise Levertov and Some Trees by John Ashbery.
The first poem I will analyze is Swan in Falling Snow by Denise Levertov (one of my personal favorite 20th-century American Poets). Levertov begins with “Upon the darkish, thin, half-broken ice” to create a sense of normalcy (220). The narrator observes the swan frozen in the ice (Levertov 220). All at once, Levertov seems to make time stop by using the tools of tone, enjambment, and repetition. Tone is used through the development of short lines composed of words that use low, soft sounds: “an abandoned gesture. Soft / in still air, snowflakes...” (Levertov 220). The gentle S alliteration underscores the hushed, cold feeling produced by this poem. Enjambment, likewise, creates a sense of inevitability to keep the reader reading, setting the feeling that though time has stopped for the narrator and the swan, time presses onward around them (Levertov 220; Oliver 66). Lastly, “Fell and fell. Silence / deepened, deepened the short day” utilizes both repetition and enjambment to provide the feeling of stopping in time (Levertov 220). This expectation is satisfied by the final lines “... the short day / suspended itself, endless.” (Levertov 220)
Some Trees by John Ashbery appears, at first glance, to be a firmly structured poem, but as you begin to read, that notion is quickly dissolved. The poem reads as though a free-verse poem was jammed into short lines that happened to fit an AABB rhyme scheme. The poem consists almost entirely of enjambment: “These are amazing: each / Joining a neighbor, as though speech / Were a still performance.” (Ashbery 253) Ashbery walks the wire of both form and freedom, using enjambment not only to carry the reader from line to line, but also from stanza to stanza (253). Four-line stanzas and a simple rhyme scheme give the illusion of form, but Ashbery takes advantage of slant rhymes like “invented” and “surrounded” in inconsistent meters to emphasize the meaning of his poem (253). It is as if freedom is trying to break out of the constraints of form. If this is the case, then we should see elements of free verse. We already know enjambment is working to continue the reader forward; oftentimes, it is almost painful and jarring, despite the narrator being in awe (Oliver 75). Ashbery also uses subtle alliteration, hinting at one means of repetition found in free verse: “what the trees try / to tell...” (Oliver 66). One final comment regarding the form of this poem, despite its feeling like free verse jammed into a set of stanzas, I cannot help but notice that each of the stanzas build a sort of chiasm, harkening back to form as old as The Epic of Gilgamesh or Lamentations in the Old Testament. The first stanza begins with the narrator in awe; then comes action, followed by the author’s main point: “... That their merely being there / Means something; that soon / We may touch, love, explain.” (Ashbery 253). The fourth stanza returns to action—expressing gladness “not to have invented...”—and finally, the fifth concludes with the narrator once again in awe (Ashbery 253). Ashbery’s use of chiasmic structure bridges 20th-century freedoms with traditional, even ancient, forms, guiding the reader toward a deliberate purpose while preserving the freedom to explore its ambiguity.
Practice with Form and Freedom
Milwaukee Flood (Original: Received Form—Terza Rima)
Formidable were the fast-flowing floods
That swallowed whole the banks of Milwaukee—
Houses reduced to foundations and studs.
Up from her banks, she rose like a banshee
Fleeing her grave, rising in wailing wake,
Cutting through homes and stirring up debris,
Mourning the lives she was ordained to take.
How heartless can a leaping river seem
To steal a life and disregard our ache.
Do we not pray it all is but a dream,
And hope the waves that knock upon our doors
Are nothing more than beats without a theme?
And yet we watch and wait as the sky pours
Out, cleansing earth of all our sins and shame,
With hopes that all our grief, of God, implores
Redemption from the curse this earth proclaims.
We wait as rain, which upheaves sodden loam,
Seeps deep enough to water seeds the same
As calling out the dead, from graves, back home.
My heart, when I see tragedy, it splits.
And yet, I trust that we may know shalom.
Milwaukee Flood (Final Revision)
Formidable was the fast-flowing flood
That swallowed whole the banks of Milwaukee—
Her swelling was the work of God’s hand, gloved.
Up, the prophetess rose like a banshee
Fleeing her grave, rising in wailing wake,
Cutting through homes and consuming debris,
Mourning the lives she was ordained to take.
How heartless can a leaping river seem
To steal a life and disregard our ache.
Do we not pray it all is but a dream,
And hope the waves that knock upon our doors
Are nothing more than beats without a theme?
We watch and wait as the sullen sky pours
Out, cleansing earth of all our sins and shame,
With hopes that all our grief, of God, implores
Redemption from the curse this earth proclaims.
We wait as rain, which upheaves sodden loam,
Seeps deep enough to water seeds the same
As summoning the dead, from graves, back home.
My heart, when I see tragedy, it splits.
And yet, the river rips me toward shalom.
Revision Narrative
When considering Milwaukee Flood for revision, I spend a lot of time debating whether or not I should rewrite the poem in another received form. The challenge I have found is that when there are so many strong and lovely lines, it becomes a grief to throw them all away. Thus, I endeavored to identify the weakest, inactive lines and rework them into something that has left every line to pack a punch. Sometimes the improvements were made through diction; others required the changing of full lines.
Another point of focus for this revision revolved around my initial use of the word ordained. I considered what it would mean for a river to be ordained by God to take a life, and I played with that idea throughout the poem. Two major places I emphasized this idea are the final lines of the first and last stanzas. The first illustrates a picture of the river being like a glove on the hand of God, receiving her ordination from His will, the second implies it is the river who catches me in her current and moves me closer to God. The use of the word prophetess further emphasizes the river’s ordination by implying she is the mouthpiece of God.
Burial (Original, Freedom—Prose)
I ordered a tree online—a sapling of red sequoia. Now it sits, not in a pot of dirt or earth with freedom to grow, but in a tub of fishy water—a propagule of hope. Propped up loosely by a post, to be blown over by the breeze, it may surmise that everything is fragile. And when, into the dirt, his roots someday sprawl out, like stretching limbs after time in a car or coffin, I’ll remind him of the hope I harbored. “Now, with sun-warmed leaves, you’ve grown up, up from the dirt despite your windy, watery youth.”
Burial (Final Revision)
I ordered him online—a tree, a sapling of red sequoia. Poised precariously, not in a pot of dirt or earth with freedom to grow, but in a tub of fishy water—a propagule of clung-to hope. Propped up loosely by a post, blown half-over by the breeze, he may surmise that everything is fragile. But when, into the depths, his roots someday sprawl out, like stretching limbs after spending time in a car or coffin, I’ll remind him of the hope I harbored. “Now, with sun-warmed leaves, you proliferate up, up from the dirt despite your windy, watery youth.”
Revision Narrative
The revision for Burial revolves primarily around two key comments I received. The first feedback I received pointed out that words and phrases such as “grown up” and “now it sits” are boring, drab, and inactive. In their place, I inserted words and phrases that held drama and intrigue—a tree that is poised precariously is much more interesting than a tree that sits. The second piece of feedback came from a peer during a workshop. She stated that the shift from referring to the tree as “it” to “him” was both jarring and confusing. Agreeing, I made the decision to introduce the tree as a “him” and continue the personification throughout. Other changes were made to improve casual readability, such as “spending time in a car or coffin” rather than “time in car or coffin.”
I also worked to play more with the idea of hope—hope for what the tree may someday become, as well as how I harbored it. Early on, I identified the hope as something that must be clung to, and I sought to illustrate the necessity of clinging to that hope by heightening the precariousness of how the tree sat in the fish tank.
While this prose poem has not substantially changed in content, I worked to reimagine the poem’s voice, tone, and underlying theme, heightening the poem to a further sense of completeness. I believe the original was strong, but tweaks to the diction and readability not only help with comprehension but also add to the drama of the tree that has been propagated in my fish tank.
Bibliography
Ashbery, John. "Some Trees." The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, edited by Rita Dove, 1st ed., Penguin Books, 2013, p. 253.
Levertov, Denise. "Swan in Falling Snow." The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, edited by Rita Dove, 1st ed., Penguin Books, 2013, p. 220.
Oliver, Mary. A Poetry Handbook. 1st ed., Mariner, 1994.