Poetry Volume IX – Book I

In the Morning Mist…

Noël Tointon

(1997-98)

An Introductory Essay

	An introduction can present a text, i.e., re-present it, however, it cannot represent it without also mis-representing it! But partial representation by default can be achieved when we come to an understanding of the manner of that failure to represent, once we realise the nature of its mis-representation. In this light a representation can only meet with some success through a depresentation of itself. And in this spirit let me confess that the primary intentions behind this introduction is not so much to introduce this ninth volume of poems but to introduce those poems as yet not written. In writing this ninth volume it has been my desire to create a modern poem, perhaps even a post-modern one, may be even a post-post-modern poem; a set of poems that capture the essence of our times and through such integrity find some trace that might meet with posterity. 	

	Alas, one more time I have failed. In recognition of that failure let me instead compose this manifesto, this attempt to prognosticate the translucent shadows of the future reflected in the entrails of the present trying to escape the past. In the process let me try to briefly explore just what constitutes good poetry at the end of the 20th century and where the art of poetry might be heading in the 21st.

	An art form should never loose its roots. Poetry, for instance, initially arose from the throat that sings. Hence the presence of ‘verse’ and the sense of ‘voice.’ However, it should also be noted, that poetry and song should not be seen as identical as each art form went their separate ways although on occasions joining together to form ‘poems set to music.’

	For some time now the purity of verse and the purity of voice as received have been under attack. But, then, no art form comes about through the fossilisation of what we already possess, nor, the strict preservation of genres through the mere re-creation of instantiations of the same. In what directions, therefore, has poetry been moving in this century? Might I be so bold as to state what I believe is the territory, or the various terrains, upon which this art form has managed to maintain its integrity and therein an outline of the orientations of its possible future manifestations? How, in this day and age of a critical post-modernism, can poetry manage to survive let alone to confidently purport itself not only in coffee shops but even in the very midst of the market place itself?!

	First, verse has headed towards prose. In a dishevelled state it has become rather unbecoming and prosaic. Some of these poems in this volume only succeed as texts when we cease to see them as poems and more as pieces of prose.  However, the modern poem appears to be headed for that dangerous region that is neither verse, in a formal sense, nor quite pieces of prose completely purged of all traces of poetic form. It is into this in between region that I perceive our culture, or some other contemporary culture, must successfully navigate without grounding itself in sterile formality or disappear into the quicksands of the totally informal. An exception to this rule is the strict adoption of recognised forms and their use with some form of a satirical objective in mind. If a classical form is to be adopted, without some form of radical adaptation, it must be down-played, carefully and skilfully weakened lest the voices of our dead ancestors alone, as if in some trance-like seance, speak through us instead!

	Second, voice has become disguised. Either hidden behind some other voice or allowed to split or fracture, or, enter into a text as a chorus that discourses on its own passage and playfulness even though a refined narrative texture has been enhanced by those various artifices. The semblance of a narrative texture simulating itself, by virtue of a collective integrity, that can be discovered and argued for in the overall body of that text or set of texts. Narrative nuances orchestrated through perfected-defects, through processes of default, deconstruction, self-commentary, irony, displacement, virtual resolution, deep levels of harmonisation, etc. The continuation of ‘good’ poetry taking place through ‘its successfulness to be heard’ either by individuals, elites or more larger audiences. The powerful nature of good poetry re-creating both a sense of impact and the desire for its personal appropriation, re-creating simultaneously both a sense of those times and a sense of timelessness, re-creating powerful emotions without being merely sentimental, etc.

	To conclude let me note in passing some of these ‘shifts’ that appear to have taken place or are taking place or about to take place in ‘good poetry.’

	A retreat from poetic formality without embracing the purely prosaic. As a result of this there is an intuitive need for the text to be enriched by various techniques through the importation of various devices, e.g., irony; alliteration; part-rhymes; invocation; revocation through forms of deconstruction, rewriting, etc; meta-level intrusions and commentaries, etc. Let me elaborate on this last category in this non-exhaustive list.

	But, first, let me note that a poem must find a response in the total person, i.e., in terms of the emotional, the physical and perceptual, the intellectual and in the sense of the spiritual with its re-discovery of unity, beauty and truth by what ever means those types of judgment, and others, are entered into, arranged, set up to be experienced, or rather, simulated. 

	In the past, in the more recent past, the center of poetic activity has probably moved from a rhythmic orientation to a more perceptual one via the use of metaphor and a mixing of metaphors with a consequent collision of associated imagery. The poetic qualities of the poem arising though the skilful use of a succession of metaphor and a mixing of some of the same; with a sense of harmonisation, and a sense of resolution, arising from the successful accommodation of this succession and mixing. Recently, however, we can see, I believe, a further shifting, moving from a sense of center embedded in the mixing of metaphors to a mixing of rhetorical gestures. In this there has been a shifting in the meta-status of the poem, a movement beyond the text qua text. An emphasis that is now being placed upon those aspects of the text concerning the rhetorical, gestures, genre, often with a reflexive sense of commentary on the actual  text of the poem itself.  

	In the use and juxtaposition of metaphors the metaphors and their images contribute to the imagery of the poem. The connotation of these metaphorical images giving a sense of emotional tenor to the poem. On the other hand the resolutional-accommodation of these tensions in that poem giving a semblance of resolutional-intent or denotational-meaning, satisfying, to some degree or other, an intellectual interest (to be discovered) in that poem. 

	More recently there has been a shift from the text to the meta-text with an increasing interest in titles, definitions, margins, rhetorical gestures, genre, forms of self-commentary, a sense of self-reflexivity, etc. As a consequence there has been a greater emphasis placed upon misrepresentation, irony, marginalia, aspects of performance, puns, hybridisation of genre, the text commenting on itself, even the text telling you what it is, giving a critique of itself, etc.

	The ‘virtual voice’ of a poem today, I believe, is best induced through the use of what I would like to call its ‘tone’ and ‘timbre.’ Rejecting classical forms of rhythm there is an intuitive need for a subtlety in an overall sense of rhythm or ‘tone’ and its skilful modifications in ‘timbre’ through the use of rhythmic inflexions at appropriate points within the texture of that text. Speech needs to be natural. There is nothing worse that having to get around a very difficult section of text as all poetry needs to be recited even if merely read to oneself. Moreover, this adherence to normal everyday speech patterns needs some overall sense of tonal textual, or emotional tenor. This can be achieved through a sense of intonation, a rhythmic sense of regularity along the lines of a chant in some form or other. Then the use of minimalistic practices can provide a sense of timbre through the use of micro-inflexions in this sense of tone, creating a sense of cadence. A relative emphasis on tone helping to generate a longer poem while a relative emphasis on the use of timbre helping to create and mould the smaller poem. Today, such a poem naturally gravitates towards the use of dialect.

	For a poem to be received as a ‘good poem’ its needs to echo throughout the many levels of the psyche. Today the juxtapositions and tensions, points of dissonance within a poem, are often more meta-textual in orientation. This has made the poem less amenable to the enjoyment of the public at large. However, with skilfulness the poem can overcome this relative rarefaction by either setting the poem up along more traditional lines for a reception by a larger audience, or, accepting the fact that its audience as a consequence would be much reduced. Hence in many art forms today a bifurcation along the lines of a more approachable ‘popular’ versus the ‘avant-garde’ with its relatively more elitist approach. Although, let me note, artists are now carving out new hybrid meta-genres that audiences are beginning to find quite acceptable, indeed, often relishing the frisson when ontological frames of reference collide and comment on each other or what they seem to symbolise….

	The difficulty experienced in the reading of a poem is not necessary a direct measure of its value poetically. Of course an obscure text makes itself more difficult to read and therein our enjoyment might as a result be diminished. On the other hand a difficult poetic text that eventually reveals a richness in its textuality much greater than that invested in its reading, despite its initial difficulty in reading, must be received, potentially, as a ‘good’ poem just as much a poetic text that sets itself up to be read and enjoyed more easily and by a wider audience as in performance. The poet must be resigned to this modern fact of life just as much as their audience! Some riches are stumbled upon beneath our feet while other treasures have to be worked for, dug up after patient toil. Who are we to value more, or less, that gem merely happened upon or hard worked for? Our definitive assay must appeal to the intrinsic properties of that poem even though in the final analysis no poem, no text, can be just reduced to its language, devices and other components that merely constitute its content. In keeping with this analogy we might also conclude that a poem in this light is always in need of polishing in order to reveal itself but that, when the job is done, it is done assuming that there was something poetic there in the first place to polish!

	Hopefully the reader will find at least a few glimmers of light in these exercises, these experiments committed to paper, these sincere attempts to define the contemporary poem, albeit their virtual appearances as muted songs, modest echoes of the spirit ..?    		      Noël Tointon, Sydney, 30.7.98/18.12.99.

	

Index

Book I	In the Morning Mist…

	(A Micro-) Prologue (in the Form of an Epitaph-Haiku)
1.	Memories of Melbourne
2.	A Nominal Triptych
3.	On the Balcony Rails
4.	Old Polly the Paper-Girl
5.	12 Haikus on the Subject of Tea Drinking
6.	Its All About You...
7.	Turn the Music Down and Learn to Dance 
8.	X Marks the Spot
9	Gardenia Grove: A Set of Variations on an Unstated Theme
10	Look for the Message
11	An Ode to an Ancient Chinese Cooking Pot (Ting)
12	Finding Refreshment in the Richness of Reality
13	A Postmodern Menu
14	12 Haikus on the Subject of Winter
15	Urban Haikus: Oxford Street
16	Poems Know Where They Belong
17	Deposits of Dust, Records in Carbon Black
18	A Mountain Poem
19	Shifting Faultlines - Poems of Translocation
20	Drinking Coffee (After the Poem ‘The Tea-Drinker’ by David Ritchie)
21	Gardenia Grove Revisited: A Set of Variations on the Same “Unstated” Theme
22	Eight Poems on the Present Participle of the Verb ‘To Come.’
23	Can Appearances be so Deceptive? A Parable in a Prose-Poem?
24	Andy the Handy-Man is Your Man
	Epilogue (4 Haikus)

A	Appendix A: The Tea-Drinker - Somewhere West of Mukden (by David Ritchie)
		(Hyperlinked  to a document of 1.xK in .bmp format)

Book II	Supplement

Supplement - A Set of Shorter Poems Paired with the Above and Printed in their Chronological 
Order of  Composition but which can be Read  as a Separate Book