Writings on Music, Poetry, and the Arts

Thoughts on Synesthesia

This poem, written by the poet Baudelaire in the year 1857, stimulates in its readers such a sense of richness and tactility of experience as to leave one with the sensation of complete immersion in the world of the poet.  This is due, in part, to Baudelaire’s inherent skill in the art of writing: his poems and translations influenced and represent much of 19th century French poetry.  However, the power of the poem rests more heavily on the fact that it employs four of the five senses (the sense of touch being the only unrepresented sense).  The poem is a dizzying and virtuosic sweep of impacted metaphors, from the extended metaphor of nature as a temple, to the smaller jumps between senses of sight, smell, and sound—in fact, the third and fourth stanzas are made up entirely of simile after simile, closing the poem in a whirl of intense sensations.  What Baudelaire had tapped into with this poem, and part of the reason why it enjoyed so much success during the late 1800s, is the popular fixation with the concept of synesthesia which engrossed much the eras of Romanticism and Symbolism, and which, in fact, still resonates in much of today’s art and science worlds. 

Synesthesia comes from the Greek words syn, union, and aesthesis, sensation, which together literally mean “joined sensation” (Cytowic 2).  Contrary to popular belief, there are two forms of synesthesia:  the first I will refer to as perceptual synesthesia, which is a rare neurological condition which manifests itself in varying degrees and to multitudinous (and fascinating) effects on the perception of the synesthetic’s world.  The other is a form of metaphor, employed often as a literary device (as in Baudelaire’s Correspondences), but revealing itself, also regularly, in various forms of artistic endeavors in a kind of cross-sensory or multi-sensory contrived experience.  What I would like to do with this paper, then, is to explore and delineate the dichotomy between the two definitions of synesthesia that I have offered, as well as investigate some artists whom, over the past couple centuries, have either claimed synesthesia (whether or not they were actually perceptual synesthestes) or have been generally regarded as synesthetic, and look at its effects on their works.

The medical and psychological worlds have known about synesthesia, as a condition which affects the synesthetic’s perceptions of the world, for over 200 years; the first reference to it appears in medical records from around 1710, in the case of a man who experienced colored visions from sound (Cytowic xxiii).  Ever since then, synesthesia has remained a condition which has both fascinated over the centuries, as well as caused much inspiration and controversy.  As Richard E. Cytowic, M.D., one of the leading researchers of synesthesia in the field of neurology, says of the phenomenon in his book titled Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses (2nd ed.), “The idea that the senses can short-circuit and that we can see sounds and taste shapes is inherently fascinating, strains our common sense, and appeals to our belief in magic” (xxiii). 

To be a true synesthete involves, basically, a combination in the mind of any of the five senses.  This means that a synesthete may experience anything from sound, touch, taste, or smell-induced visualizations of photisms (the word for the swirls of color that a synesthete may experience in their view), to taste-induced smells or visions, and to smell-induced touch sensations—keeping in mind that any conceivable combination of the senses is possible, and that 40% of synesthetic individuals have multiple synesthesias (Cytowic 17).  However, each manifestation of synesthesia is usually a one-way street; that is to say that though a synesthete may experience an olfactory sensation upon listening to music, the reverse scenario of the same music then inducing the same smells is not commonly part of the experience. 

There are and have been many people throughout synesthesia’s known history who have claimed to be synesthetic.  However, to be truly synesthete, according to both Dr. Cytowic and Kevin T. Dann, the author of Bright Colors Falsely Seen:  Synaesthesia and the Search for Transcendental Knowledge, demands the following criteria:  first, the experience of synesthesia must be involuntary and insuppressible; that is to say that the sensation must reveal itself without the will of the patient.  Second, the images or the experience must be perceived in a spatially expanded space, meaning that the perceptions are projected externally from the patient’s mind, but exist in a space not in their plain of view.  Third, the percepts of each synesthete must be proven consistent and discrete, with stability of experience remaining constant over the synesthete’s entire lifetime. Fourth, that synesthesia is memorable in such a way that the percepts remain more closely memorable to the synesthete than the sensations that triggered them (for example, a synesthetic who experiences taste upon hearing spoken words, may not remember first a person’s name, but upon remembering the taste of the person’s name—such as buttery toast or angel-food cake— prompts the memory of the person’s name).  It is because of this phenomenon of acute and amazingly accurate memory that synesthetes are often considered as having eideticism, the designation of mental images that are unusually vivid and almost photographically exact.  The fifth criterion for synesthesia, according to Cytowic and Dann, is that synesthesia is emotional.  This refers to the distinct emotions that the synesthete feels toward their sensations.  They generally, it appears, feel much attachment to their “sixth sense,” feeling it to be as real and valid as any of their other senses, and thus feeling with strong conviction that they live with a special, even enhanced, outlook of the world.  Take, for instance, one of the synesthetic’s studied by Dr. Cytowic, whose synesthesia reveals itself as letters and numbers which each have their own color, smell, gender, and personality, and where auditory and visual stimuli create a sense of touch, shape, taste, and color.  CLF, as Dr. Cytowic refers to him, accounts his experiences thus:

Dann takes the list of criteria even further, by stating also that the sixth criterion for synesthesia is that it is inherently nonlinguistic, i.e. that the experiences of the synesthete cannot be described sufficiently in words, because how can one explain a sense to another person who has always lacked that sense?  As Cytowic states, this lack of possible communication about the experience of synesthesia has caused some problems in its study.  He writes, “An abiding criticism against synesthesia is that it is subjective, knowable only through the experiential reports of the subjects themselves, a psychophysical phenomenon without measurable objective manifestations.  Such criticism is empty.  Many established medical conditions are entirely subjective, such as headaches and all pain syndromes, dizzy spells, and TLE [temporal lobe epilepsy]” (63).  Furthermore, Dann goes on to state the seventh criterion of synesthesia as appearing in people who, almost always, appear, and in fact are, normal in every other way.  He and Cytowic both agree that the average synesthete is of normal or above average intelligence, and that their brains generally tend to be otherwise completely healthy, with no other psychological phenomena.

There are a few theories that attempt to explain the reasons behind synesthetic experience.  The theories are rather too complex for the scope of this paper (and perhaps, for the scope of the paper’s writer), but attempts at representation are nonetheless necessary.  The first theory is that synesthesia is caused by an immature nervous system, where the synesthete’s experience is similar to that of an undeveloped child’s experience.  The reason that synesthesia would appear in adults, then, would be due to a failure to develop concrete separation between particular senses somewhere in the child’s development.  About this theory, Cytowic states that there is no empirical evidence to support this conjecture and that it is not seriously argued in modern times (72). The second set of theories is built on the idea that there is a difference in the circuitry of synesthetic brains versus the circuity of non-synesthetic ones.  This is the theory that rests heavily on the idea of crossed wires, short circuits, and crosstalk.  The third set of theories is referred to as Abstractions theories, and they have to do with “a filtering out of specific sense elements until one is left with either abstract emotional or an abstract perceptual residue that serves as a synesthetic mediator (Cytowic 74).  What Cytowic seems to stress as his theory is that “the limbic system [a primitive part of the brain near the brain stem thought to control emotions, behavior, smells, etc.] may act as a bridge to bind the various cortical areas involved in the experience of synesthesia” (xiv).

One of the theories of synesthesia that perhaps explain its “cross-over success” from a neurological phenomenon to a cultural obsession and artistic technique is the idea that synesthesia may actual be a universal trait, even inborn in humans.  This assumption is based on a few observations:  one, that synesthesia is more common in children than adults, suggesting perhaps a “growing out” of it.  Second, that “synesthesia consists largely (though not exclusively) of regular congruencies between specific aspects of experience in different modalities.  That is, synesthetes show systematic relations among dimensions of given modalities” (Cytowic 276).  This means, then, that across the board, synesthetes tend to agree on their correlations; for example, Cytowic states that they concur largely over how soft, low-pitched sounds are dim or dark in color.  The third reason why synesthesia may be a universal trait is that the use of psychotropic drugs, such as mescaline or LSD, will produce synesthetic experiences similar to those experienced by a natural synesthete.  Fourth, Cytowic quotes Lawrence Marks, another researcher in the field, as saying, “Many of the very same rules that govern the perception of the synesthetic minority also govern the perceptual and verbal behavior of the non-synesthetic majority” (277). 

While the idea of synesthesia to a non-synesthete can seem obviously strange and unimaginable, it can also seem also scary.  For instance, if a person is running around viewing, hearing, touching, and smelling things that aren’t there to the rest of the world, is not the possibility of distraction or even harm towards others probable, even likely?  The answer is, almost entirely, no.  For the synesthete, the experience manifests itself on a plain of view of sense of spatial area that the non-synesthete either does not have or is not aware of.  This means that the phenomena occur, it seems, in an “out of context” place in their experience, which is then superimposed on the synesthete’s consciousness.  For example, some synesthete’s see ticker-tape type devices running through this space, where others view whole light shows and geometric shapes in this area.  It does not, generally, get in the way of seeing or experiencing any of their other, what non-synesthetes might refer to as, normal senses.  That is, a person who sees photisms when listening to music, is still able to see clearly everything else in their view (though Cytowic does discuss the case of a woman who is sometimes slightly distracted when driving and experiencing visions from loud sounds on the radio [45]). 

Across the board, the most common experience of synesthesia is the combination of sound and sight.  This is technically called chromesthesia, but referred to often as colored hearing (Cytowic 16).  For instance, Cytowic documents the case of a woman who had restricted vision as a child, and was completely blind by the time she reached college age.  She says of her experience:
Violins and similar stringed instruments evoke a nice medium shade of green. 
Piano music is white, and a piano concerto with lot of strings in the orchestral
accompaniment evokes a green background with white in the foreground.  Mozart’s
clarinet concert is a wonderfully deep shade of blue, and the music of a flute is red. (27)

            So, what is it about synesthesia, if it is such a rare and untranslatable experience known only to a few, that has captured the fascination of so many scholars, artist, scientists, and others throughout its known history?  As Kevin T. Dann writes in Bright Colors Falsely Seen,

It may appear, then, as if the synesthete has a power, perhaps almost magical, to see further and with more insight into the workings of the world than a non-synesthete.  The synesthete would therefore hold a position in the world to be desired.  Also, that a synesthete generally has photographic-like memory, whether it is actually produced from remembered images or from other remembered senses, is a skill many people would most likely appreciate having.  This is why there have been many artists (writers, musicians, composers, visual artists) who have claimed synesthesia for their own.  For the record, let me state that by saying they have “claimed’ synesthesia, I do not mean that it is through actions of deceit or maliciousness that such artists have utilized to the concepts of synesthesia, but that it is through the combination of the senses that many artists have found ways to express feelings, emotions, etc., that transcend non-synesthetic experience.

Perhaps one bridge that connects the neurological phenomenon of synesthesia and the artistic life of the concept, is the use of language.  As I mentioned earlier, there is no way to express to a non-synesthete what having the “extra” sense can feel like.  Therefore, the synesthete must resort to using verbal imagery to explain the sensations; that is to say, the synesthete must use the device of metaphor in order to convey his or her experience.  This is where the dichotomy between perceptual synesthesia and metaphoric synesthesia has been blurred.  As Cytowic suggests, “This [the confusion between metaphor, analogy, and actual perception] is how the uncritical mind may erroneously conclude that the parallel sense is a ‘mere association.’” (24).  Because all language is rooted in the senses, claims Dann (13), artists then have grasped onto the metaphoric descriptions of synesthesia in order to attempt to reproduce the perceptual experience.  This explains the parallel growth of interest in both the scientific explorations of the phenomenon of perceptual synesthesia as well as the development of metaphoric synesthesia that manifested itself during the late 19th century and is still experimented with today.

By the mid-19th century, a little after the time that Baudelaire’s poem was written, an art movement began to form which sought complete sensory fusion.  This movement, which found a hey-day in the Romantic and Symbolist movements, though is still relevant today, attempted to transcend the senses by mixing them together.  They considered synesthetes to have a unique ability to perceive higher states of being, in that a combining of the senses seemed to represent perfectly ideas of unity, or a sense that “all is one,” a concept which preoccupied many thinkers of the era.  In fact, synesthesia had a pull over the Romantics because it represented, to them, a primacy of the imagination: a ratification of “the original wholeness, continuity, and interfusion of immediate experience before its division into atomistic sensations” (Dann ix).  The synesthete, therefore, represented to the Romantics the original unity of the mind with the higher spiritual planes of being. 

It is because of the synesthetic experience’s aforementioned ties to the higher levels of thought, that artists, who exhibited aspects of synesthesia in their work, were often heavily followed and lauded during their eras as translating experiences of a higher understanding towards the average layperson.  That is to say that artists such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Scriabin, and Kandinsky, though none of them probably synesthetes themselves, by means of exploring cross-sensory techniques in their works (metaphoric synesthesia), became popularly considered as synesthetes with special gifts unavailable to the non-synesthete.  For instance, let us look at Aleksandr Scriabin (1872-1915), a Russian composer and pianist who is considered almost across the board as being a chromestete.  However, Dann argues that Scriabin did not in fact have colored hearing (the visual synesthetic response to sound) but only that he developed an intricate technique of applying color to sound.  His method was to arrange, in a wheel formation, the circle of fifths, and then ascribe to them the colors of the Newtonian rainbow; for example, red = C, orange = G, yellow = D, green = A, blue = E, indigo = B and violet = F# (Dann 71).  However, Dann argues further that a true synesthete has never followed such a neatly organized system of color assignments, nor do synesthetes ever use conventional color terms, but are much more exact in their choice of color hues.  Also, he argues that Scriabin altered his color arrangements to fit his artistic needs in his famous Prometheus: The Poem of Fire.  Interestingly, Dann also states that a true synesthete oftentimes has either perfect pitch or something relating to it due to the remembrance of colors associated with the particular pitches, whereas Scriabin did not have perfect pitch (71-72).  However, because proponents of color music (the popular technique of applying color to musical performances) so strongly desired for there to be some higher consciousness to legitimize an analogy between sound and sight, that Scriabin was declared a synesthete and has remained considered so throughout history.

Another artist that is popularly considered a synesthete, and who thus furthered the perception of synesthesia as signifying a higher consciousness (and who additionally blurred the dichotomy between perceptual and metaphoric synesthesia) is Wassili Kandinsky (1866-1944), a Russian painter who lived in both Germany and France.   Kandinsky, throughout his career, sought a system of colors that, like sound, would communicate directly through symbolic conventions with the soul.  For instance, Kandinsky considered the color red to signify a spiritual vibration like a flame, because a flame is red (Dann 55).  In his writing, Kandinsky often discussed theories of synesthesia.  He wrote in his book Concerning the Spirituality in Art: " . . . in the case of such highly developed people the paths leading to the soul are so direct and the impressions it receives are so quickly produced, that an effect immediately communicated to the soul via the medium of taste sets up vibrations along the corresponding paths leading away from the soul to the other sensory organs (in this case, the eye).  The effect would be a sort of echo or resonance, as in the case of musical instruments, which without themselves being touched, vibrate in sympathy with another instrument being played.  Such highly sensitive people are like good, much-played violins, which vibrate in all their parts and fibers at every touch of the bow."

Due to such discussions in his theoretical writings, and because of Kandinsky’s association with Schoenberg (both the artist and the composer used the same color scheme in their works for the stage, which therefore led many to believe in the ultimate authority of their associations as well as their higher consciousnesses [Dann 68]), many thought, and still think, of Kandinsky as a synesthete.  However, he writes about seeking the colors which would inevitably resonate most with the soul, whereby he could simply apply the correct colors to evoke the correct emotional response from his viewers; thus he ignored the varying experiences of each synesthete’s personal chromesthesia (Dann 56).  This, therefore, may prove that Kandinsky applied, to nonetheless powerful results, the concept of synesthesia, yet he was not, himself, synesthetic.

There are, however, cases where truly synesthetic artists were able to apply their perception of the world toward creating tremendous works of art.  One, for instance, is Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), a French composer.  Messiaen is famous for his unique use of, what he calls, his “modes of limited transposition.”  The theories behind his modes, being rather intricate and mathematical, are beyond the scope of this paper, but nonetheless it is important to point out that the modes in which he wrote invoke a sense of tonality and colors completely his own, even to the non-synesthetic ear, making his music easily recognizable.  Messiaen once explained his synesthesia as thus:  “Colors are very important to me because I have a gift—it’s not my fault, it’s just how I am—whenever I hear music or even read music, I see colors” (Cytowic 308).  In this one sentence, Messiaen covers at least two of the criteria listed earlier: that the synesthesia is involuntary and insuppressable, and that it is emotional (Messian calls it a gift, and exclaims how important it is to him).  Furthermore, Messiaen’s synesthesia appears to work, uniquely, in two directions; that is to say that, for him, sound inspires color, as well as color inspiring sound.  This explains how, in many of his compositions, he speaks of translating colored landscapes into music (For instance his Aux canyons des etoiles was written in sounds to him that he saw as orange and red, the color of the cliffs that inspired the piece) (Cytowic 309).  Messiaen’s brilliance lies in how he had managed to turn his consistent synesthesia into the aforementioned sets of modes so that he could essentially paint his perception of the world with sound. 
Another artist, this one a British painter named David Hockney (b. 1937), was examined by Dr. Cytowic personally.  His synesthesia manifests itself as connecting the senses of sound, color, and shape.  What is fascinating to note is how he has turned his ability—which was unknown to him until later in his career—into a career creating sets for the ballet and the opera.  He says, of his experiences with set design that he finds that “visual equivalents for music reveal themselves.  In Ravel, certain passages seem to me all blue and green, and certain shapes begin to suggest themselves almost naturally.  It’s the music that attracts me to doing the set designs rather than the plot” (312). 

Thus, it can be seen that there are in actuality, two forms of synesthesia, though many are not aware of the neurological condition of being a perceptual synesthete.  For instance, I was made conscious of the concept of synesthesia when, while enrolled in a writing course at Northwestern University, I was informed that my poems were highly synesthetic.  One particular poem included a description of the smell of room with the sense of taste (“to taste a sweetened room”), as well as a description of the orange of a blooming lily as being tart.  Such use of metaphoric synesthesia seems entirely harmless to me, though I got the feeling that some scientific circles may hold a slight grudge against the metaphoric development as a kind of guise which misinforms the general public about such a potentially informative and factual state of being.  To me, to consider the naming of cross-sensory artistic experience as a synesthetic experience as being degenerate, is silly.  The artistic work that has stemmed from synesthesia, whether perceptual or metaphoric, has been groundbreaking throughout history.  Where would the visual arts be were it not for Kandinsky, whom some consider to be the original abstract painter?  Kandinsky’s work has certainly been as influential, when regarded in hind-sight, as Messiaen’s musical compositions, though the former employed metaphoric synesthesia while one actually experienced the perceptual condition.  To choose the validity of one artist’s work over another because one is contrived through meticulous theories and philosophies, while the other’s is a transcription of a state of perception, when both work to such great results, would be a lenghty, and in my opinion, needless endeavor.  It is best, simply, to appreciate the influence of the scientific studies of synesthesia, both for the possibilities of what further neurological research can yield into the workings of the human brain, and also because of the richness of experience that the non-synesthetic world has experienced as a result of the metaphoric crossing of the senses, and what such insight can further yield into the experience of living as well.

Thoughts on Electronic Music

When one thinks of electronic music, one is likely to imagine the soundtrack to a Nintendo game or the music of a child’s toy.  However, through technological developments and a high cultural demand developed over the last 5 or so decades, electronic music has become vital to the growth of modern music, becoming almost inseparable from every day American life.  This journey, from early minimalist investigations to almost complete cultural musical immersion, is a fascinating one, full of radically experimental composers who wrote truly original music.   The development of electronic music can be seen best if one examines the works of artists at three different time periods: Steve Reich, Alvin Lucier, and DJ Shadow.

The first piece was conceived of by Steve Reich, an American Minimalist, in the summer of 1968 when he was living in New Mexico.  I use the word “conceive” because the piece is such that it cannot be dictated through a score to produce the same fixed musical idea every time.  Titled Pendulum Music, the piece consists of a series of “whoops,” as Reich himself describes them (furious.com).  These “whoops” are the result of feedback caused by at least three microphones held like pendulums over loudspeakers.  Since the oscillations of the pendulum cannot be controlled within the parameters of meter and harmony, the result is an irreproducible performance.   Reich conceived of this piece when he was working on another piece with the painter William Wylie.  Reich was simply fooling around with an old Wollensack tape recorder and microphone when he came upon the discovery.  He writes, “Being out West, I let it [the microphone] swim back and forth like a lasso.  As is passed by the speaker of the machine, it went ‘whoop!’ and then it went away.  We were all laughing at this and the idea popped into my mind that if you had two or three of these machines, you would have this audible sculpture phase piece” (furious.com).   When listening to a recording of this piece, I at first thought I was listening to a group of recorders squeaking, supported by a deep flute-sounding instrument; such is the timbre of the microphone feedback sounds.  However, the final drone, when all the microphones come to rest above the speaker, sounds clearly like electronic music.  This piece was written at a time when Reich was composing works along with visual artists, intending them to be performed in art galleries and museums.  However, Reich himself said that Pendulum Music is “not a piece that needs to be done very often.  I was not interested in recording [it]” (furious.com). 

The next piece, on the other hand, was described by its composer as “an essential piece, describing most of the work that I’ve done” (furious.com).  Written by Alvin Lucier in 1977, Music on a Long Thin Wire is made up of an 80 foot length of taut wire which passes through the poles of a large magnet.  If an audio current flows through the wire, the magnetic field will cause it to move and vibrate in time with the music.  What it ends up sounding like is the beats that one hears when two notes are slightly out of tune.  Lucier came up with the concept in a physics lab at Wesleyan College.  Lucier had first intended it as a performance piece but found this unsatisfactory, so he “chose a tuning with a single oscillator and then just let it go by itself” (furious.com).  Lucier now installs the wire and lets it perform itself; the wire has been installed in galleries and even churches.          

The youngest of the three composers is a hip-hop artist named DJ Shadow.  Released in 1996, Shadow’s first complete solo record Entroducing was hailed as the beginning of a new era for deejaying and hip-hop.  His track titled Stem/Long Stem is an ethereal combination of audio samples and synthesized electronic sounds.  It is written in two parts, the first one defined by the harp and ambiguous string instrument (viola? cello?) samples.  Underneath these lies the drone of a synthesized string orchestra and a slow beat, reminiscent of boxing punch sound.  Part way through the first section, the music abruptly stop and a sample of a man’s voice is heard saying, “retroactive advance decide.”  This audio ties in with the later “Hitchcock-ian” sample of a man describing his parking violation trial (inkblotmagazine.com).  The first section closes with a high pulsing strings tone, then there’s a long space until the second part begins, this time introducing a guitar sample and some synthesized brass sounds.  The beats underneath the harmonies are what cause most of the tension in the piece, as they increase slowly into more dance-like rhythms.  The whole piece ends on a quiet cluster of orchestral notes, resembling overtones.  Shadow, in an interview with Techno Online, said that many people have compared his music with cinematic music, a source of inspiration for him.  Stem/Long Stem would be best performed either with visual art, cinema, dance, or alone.  This would make neither good club music nor good dance music, however, a commonly-held stereotype about hip-hop music in general. 

Connections between the aforementioned three pieces are difficult to make, considering their drastic differences.  On the surface they all seem to contrast entirely, from a piece based on microphone feedback, to a wire’s song, to the smooth sampling of a hip-hop DJ.  Yet they are connected more deeply than one first presumes, for without the experimentation of the early artists, the birth of many of today’s most popular genres – rap, hip-hop, techno, pop music – would simply not exist; for they all rely on the use of electronics to create their definitive sounds. 

Thoughts on The Duality of Subject in “Dragonfly”

When first reading Louise Bogan’s poem, “Dragonfly,” from her collection of poetry titled The Blue Estuaries, the piece can appear to be simply a delicate and wonderfully descriptive poem about this large flying insect.  One is moved through the poem first by a stanza describing the features of a dragonfly, then one about how the world reflects on the dragonfly (“Earth repels you. / Light touches you” in lines nine and ten), followed by the movement of the dragonfly and then the ceasing of this movement, and ending with a short two line close.  This straightforward organization and free verse style (uncharacteristic of Bogan) reflect the ostensibly uncomplicated subject matter of the poem – the life of a dragonfly – and serves to move the reader through the poem as quickly and easily as a dragonfly moves through the air.  However, once one has read through the poem there is a feeling of having had an experience greater than merely reading about an insect: one finds oneself sympathizing greatly with the dragonfly’s ungrounded existence and its loss of life.  Yet, what is the basis for this intense empathy?  What in the poem causes such an emotional and human response to the brief, photographic glimpses of the insect that the poem contains? 

While it is true that the beginning of the poem really starts with its title, the answer to what causes such a human response to this poem lies in what the reader experiences if this title is to be overlooked for the moment.  For instance, when the title is temporarily overlooked, the power of the first line (“You are made of almost nothing”) is dramatically increased.  The reader is now left to question to whom the poem is being addressed, and, as human nature is essentially self-focused, will inevitably, if not immediately, take this line as a personal judgment.  Also, by itself, this line becomes incredibly evocative due to the word “almost,” which compels readers to look further to find out what it is that separates them from nothingness, a universal and ancient concern. 

Bogan cements this ambiguous duality of subject in the poem by ending the first stanza with the undeniably human word “love” (line seven).  Even if one were to be reading the poem up to this point as just a description of a dragonfly, this word, in one powerful syllable, projects one of the most widespread and potentially destructive human emotions into what was before simply an insect.  There is no way to deny, at this point, that this poem is about more than just a dragonfly.  The reason why “love,” at this point, can be defined as potentially destructive is because Bogan has chosen to describe the dragonfly as containing an “Unending hunger / Grappling love” (lines six and seven).  All three words which precede “love” evoke desperate and harmful images and set an ominous tone to what could have been a rather light piece.

This practice of inserting portentous words into the poem escalates in the second and third stanzas, as one reads “the earth repels you” in line nine (again, who is truly the “you” in this line?) and as one sees that light cannot settle on the dragonfly, but is absorbed and transformed by the scales of the insect into “iridescence / upon your body and wings” (lines ten and eleven).  Then, in the third stanza, Bogan describes the dragonfly/reader as “Twice-born,” which reflects both the double life between water and air of the dragonfly, as well as implying some sort of double life of the human subject. Perhaps Bogan is making a comment on human hypocrisy, or, as the following line suggests, the human inclination to “split” under pressure (“heat”).  Bogan then gets right to the point by calling the dragonfly/reader a “predator,” though she leaves the prey undefined.  Perhaps the prey is the animal matter on which dragonflies feed (dragonflies have voracious appetites), or perhaps the prey is love, as implied by the opening stanza.  Bogan then goes further with the negative connotations by describing how the dragonfly/reader willfully “darts into the shadow / Which consumes you” (lines 15 and 16).  What this shadow specifically implies is left up to personal interpretation, though it cannot be something good.  The point is that the dragonfly goes purposefully into this dark place which has at least as much appetite for negative consumption as itself. 
However, the beginning of the following stanza offers a moment of hope, where the dragonfly energetically, perhaps overzealously, “rockets” back into the light of day.  What is interesting about this line is the finality to it.  Every other opening line in the stanzas in this poem ends with nothing stronger than a comma, which lead always to what follows.  However, Bogan has chosen to end this rocket line with the finality of a period.  However, this period leaves one not with a sense of hope as the finality of such an optimistic line might suggest, but instead with a sense of the detachment that such a positive moment has to the rest of the action in the piece; for in such a dark and fast-paced poem, this one isolated line of hope and the termination of action as a result or the period illustrates how out of place it is in the poem, as well as how out of character the almost violent, perhaps desperate, surge into the sunlight is for the dragonfly/reader.  This is then followed with a description of the diminishment of the dragonfly’s will to exist out in the open sun once adversity, in the form of wind, becomes too strong to fly.  Bogan ends this hopeless stanza with the word “stop” followed by a period, and then begins a new two line stanza.  The importance of this moment is to realize what happens between these last two stanzas, for in this space much occurs.  After one reads the word “stop,” one then reads the words “And you fall”.  What has happened here, in this space, is the death of the dragonfly.  However, the will, passion, and energy of the dragonfly has diminished so much that its passing into death is so nonviolent that it is completely silent and imperceptible.  Bogan closes the poem darkly by suggesting that there are many others who have fallen just the same way – unnoticed and isolated, a concept that is strong enough to balance the opening statement of “You are made of almost nothing.”  It is as if Bogan is saying, “You are nothing, and you will die like nothing.”

Thoughts on Ambiguity in Elizabeth Bishop's "Filling Station"

On first reading Elizabeth Bishop’s “Filling Station,” from her 1965 volume of poetry Questions of Travel, it is easy for one to walk away from the initial experience with a “warm, fuzzy” feeling.  One may leave the poem sensing that, for once, Bishop has emerged briefly from the darkness inhabiting much of her poetry, to write an optimistic piece describing one woman’s successful search for beauty and love in what she first found reviling and distasteful.  However, there is an underlying sense of ambiguity that leaves one feeling, after the comfort of the poem has ceased, more haunted than consoled.

The superficial reassurance in the poem is constructed through the opening voice’s journey to understanding, as she moves, stanza by stanza, through a period of observation, then of questioning, and finally of hopeful acceptance.  To create this character, Bishop begins the poem with an undeniably female voice written in a dialogue or propriety.  The first stanza consists of two off-hand exclamations by a rather prim lady, enveloping a depiction of the filling station through her eyes.  One can easily visualize her standing at the station with a worried look on her face, telling whoever it is (her escort? her chauffeur? the gas-station workers?) to be careful as they light their cigarettes.  Notice the abundance of hard consonants which reflect the manliness of the surroundings and the aggressiveness of the observation, for while the woman’s voice may be finicky and delicate, there is a sharp intellect and knowledge-seeking mind behind the ladylike pretense.  There is no other way to explain how she continues to vehemently observe and assess her surroundings, moving on in the second stanza to an examination of the men of the family that run the gas station.  In fact, with every new stanza, it is as if her careless musings take another turn deeper into the life of the filling station, drawing her into this foreign and dirty world.  For instance, the third stanza introduces the first question, “Do they [the family] live in the station?”  The fourth stanza takes another turn when she notices, for the first time, colors, in the form of comic books, which then draw her eye to the subtle female nesting signs on the porch: the taboret, the begonia.  It is then that, in a moment of disorientation, the questions begin to pour out of her: why the feminine touches amidst all the grime?  And most poignantly, why is it so easy to turn the “oily” filling station into a suitable place for a “doily”?  By adding just one letter, Bishop illustrates herself just how easy it is to move from the dirty station to a home atmosphere if one is looking for it.\

Everything up until this point in the poem has been fairly straight-forward:  the structure reflects every developing revolution of thought in the woman’s mind, and the language moves from the rapid use of hard consonants to a less demanding soft-consonant sound.  However, the structure and language do much more than reflect her thought-process.  They also reflect the woman’s difficulty with the paradox of the grime and the female presence; for the spaces between the stanzas force the reader to stop and breathe, portraying a stop in her thoughts.  If her thoughts were allowed to run freely, a rapid and easy stream of consciousness would have been the result, and Bishop wants one to feel the struggle between each new development.  The softening of the language – the wh sounds of the fifth stanza and the ss sounds of the last – also parallels the woman’s softening as she finds comfort in familiarity and as she begins to lull herself with the soothing female presence which has put her back in her element. 

And yet, when one is finished reading the poem, there is a hollowness to it that is anything but comfortable.  It is true that the final stanza lulls and soothes the reader by its repetition of the word “somebody,” with its relaxing Sicilian rhythm and soft, round sound.  The stanza also nullifies the desperation underneath the questions of the penultimate stanza, simply with the addition of the word, “maybe,” which shows a shift in the woman’s attitude from insisting on the reconciliation of the feminine and masculine worlds in front of her, to a nonchalant musing on her observations (“Somebody waters the plant,/ or oils it, maybe.”).   What is to explain this dramatic shift in position which took place in the space between the fifth and sixth stanzas?  It is nothing but the addition of another sense into the poem:  the auditory aspect.  Until now, we have been able to see the grease and the begonias, to touch the oil-soaked monkey suit, and probably even smell the gasoline in the air.  But the sound that is made by the oil cans, so neatly lined up by the absent mother, is an entirely new and completely pure sensation.  Even more, while it soothes the woman with its quiet, and displaced, lullaby, it also signals the first sense of true movement in the poem.  While one may visualize a slight gesture to accompany the woman’s interjections in the opening stanza, and the sons are said to be “quick and saucy,” one never sees, or in this case hears, any movement.  So when the woman’s thoughts are interrupted by this sound, this triggers memories of sounds from a time when somebody, in her life, loved her as well. 

So, then, why are we not soothed when we read the closing line?  Why do we not simply smile, believing that Bishop includes us in her final statement, and turn the page?  Because we have forgotten something – there are questions that have yet to be answered.  Yes, we know now that “somebody” is the matriarch of the family, and we know that it is she who has placed the objects on the porch.  However, we still do not know “Why, oh why, the doily?”  Perhaps the doily was placed there out of love, but this seems a rather simplistic idea.  Bishop offers no other explanation, however.  Furthermore, after one has acquiesced to leave the question unanswered, there is still something else that plagues the reader.  Why is it that we never get to see this loving character, the benevolent mother of the family?  Where is she, and more importantly, who is loving her? 

It is in this ambiguous close that Bishop’s “Filling Station” becomes its most evocative and emotional.  There are ways to interpret the last stanza, such as assigning symbolic meaning to the mother as God, and extending the metaphor to include the filling station as earth, etc.  However, I believe the most powerful interpretation is to leave it as an ambiguity, and to leave the questions unanswered, for that is more truthful to the poem, and inevitably more truthful to reality as well.

Fixity and Flux in Gwendolyn Brooks "Big Bessie throws her son into the street"

Much of the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks speaks with a deep respect and mastery of traditional poetic forms.  For instance, the five sections of “the children of the poor” from “The Womanhood” poems are all written in sonnet form.  Brooks also makes wonderful use of the ballad form, employing its rich history to play off of certain “ballad expectations,” such as death, the common man, and the simplicity of language, as Thom Gunn explains in his article “Hardy and the Ballads,”  (81-83).  While poems such as “The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till” and “the ballad of chocolate Mabbie” make eloquent and deeply affecting use of traditional forms, Brooks also moves away from such forms in many of her poems, employing a technique of suggesting and then removing the words from a regular meter and rhyme-scheme.  Such is the case with “Big Bessie throws her son into the street” from “A Catch of Shy Fish,” in which Brooks simultaneously draws from tetrameter meter as well as closed heroic couplets.

To begin with, Brooks’ titles the poem with a pentameter line, signaling the prevalence of this meter in the poem to follow.  What is surprising, then, is the tetrameter opening line (“A day of sunny face and temper.”).  However, this can be explained by the two dimeter lines which follow: note that the second and third lines are separated by no punctuation (the second line being the only non-end-stopped line in the poem), which creates, then, a broken tetrameter line.  The line break signals perhaps a musical pause which parallels the content of the words (“The winter trees / Are musical.”).  The significance of writing these opening lines in tetrameter form, then, is the simplistic singing nature of such a meter; for it is the meter of children’s songs and ballad form.  This, of course, corresponds to the content of the lines and creates a portrait of a contented woman (unexpectedly juxtaposed with the ostensibly dark title of the poem).  While the scene is set cheerfully, there still remains an ominous undercurrent, for though the day is “sunny” and “musical,” it is still a winter day – and knowing Chicago winters, which is where one may assume this poem to be set, this is not an inviting location. 

The poem, in the fourth line, takes a serious turn as Brooks moves into iambic pentameter signaling when “Big Bessie” begins to address her son.  In the first line, she refers to herself, and then in line five she addresses him.  Because these two lines are tied together by the rhyming words at their ends, the destiny of the mother and son are also tied together, and this bond is tightened by the comma between the lines (all other pentameter lines in the poem close with a period); the comma acts as a pivot between the mother’s experience, and the son’s future.  The fact that these lines fit perfectly into the heroic couplet mold implies, from the couplet’s history, that these lines are dealing with matters of high achievement and of great public importance.  How perfect a form is this to encapsulate such subjects as a family legacy and the departure from home (suggesting of a hero’s journey). 

However, as soon as one begins to feel comfortable due to the familiarity of the isolated heroic couplet, Brooks writes, in line six, the dimeter “Be precise.”  Due to the initial shock of such a short line, with the finality in the tone due to the end-stop and the blunt length, one can see that “Big Bessie” does not intend to wax emotional over the bond between her and her son.  Instead, she is there to tell him what he needs to know, and then kick him out the door.  But first, she will explain how to be precise first, by rhyming “Be precise,” with “With something better than candles in the eyes” (l. seven).  It is now that one can begin to see another use of the pentameter line, as representing explanations of why she is throwing her son out, and directions of how he will need to be (for example, as opposed to just simply telling him to “Be precise,” she tells him in iambic pentameter how to be precise).  The reason why such explanations should be in iambic pentameter is because it is considered to be the most speech-like English meter, and therefore adds a naturalness and familiarity to those lines. 

The next two lines in the poem reveal a couplet straddling a stanza break.  However, this is not another heroic couple due to the shortened “(Candles are not enough.)”  One is expecting another pentameter line here, so the trimeter line forces the reader to stop, as well as the stanza break, while the rhyme serves to keep the metaphor of the candles-to-inflammable stuff going.  Why have the inflammable line all by itself, then?  This is to drive home the point that when the will is exposed down to the root and left by itself, it must endure with its only “wild” fire. 

What follows is another heroic couplet, which serves the same purpose as the first couplet; that is to say it compares the mother’s older generation of the son’s, though this time the separation is made more permanent by a period between the lines, mirroring the call for the son to “make your own alone” (l. eleven).  The purpose of having these two heroic couplets is that they serve the purpose of enveloping the mother’s advice to the son and build a sense of closure once she has finished providing guidance.  The poem then closes with another dimeter, hence potent and hard-lined, order to “Go down the street.”  At first confusing perhaps, this line seems to undermine the aggressive nature of the mother in trying to make her son leave home which the rest of the poem has set forth.  Why only tell him to go such a short distance?  However, she tells him this as a way to remind him to not forget those who have gone before him, and to not move to far away from them, perhaps in practice, or theory, etc. 

Because of the constant variation between meters and rhyme in this poem, there is a vitality and energy behind what is being spoken; for, as Eliot says, “It is this contrast between fixity and flux, this unperceived evasion of monotony, which is the very life of verse” (185).  However, this fluctuation also takes full advantage of the history of each tradition it draws from, and builds on it respectfully and intelligently, which is profoundly exactly what Big Bessie wishes her son to do with her own generation’s traditions.

Thoughts on Brahms' Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op 120 No. 2

When compared to his contemporaries, such Berlioz and Liszt, Johannes Brahms was a very conservative composer.  He preferred to write in classical forms, for instance the theme and variations form, and he rejected the popular Romantic idea of writing descriptive titles for his pieces.  This conservatism seemed to hold true for Brahms’ way of life as well, for the man was a true creature of habit, evidenced by how he would eat his same meal every night in the same restaurant.  However, though his life might appear on the surface to have been fairly unadventurous, further research into his friendships and love affairs proves this to be false.  The same can be said for Brahms’ music as well.  While superficially it seems to be very classical in nature and inspiration, it is truly Romantic in content and practice.  One example of this deep Romanticism is Brahms’ Sonata No. 2, Op. 120 for clarinet/viola – written among the last works of his life – for though this piece appears fairly traditional in content due to simple ideas, the rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic developments of these ideas are anything but conventional for the Romantic period. 

One of the ways that Brahms develops his simple melodic ideas in the Allegro Amabile into more complex and Romantic music is through the use of metric variation.  This occurs many times throughout the piece, one prominent time being the beginning of the second theme in measure 22.  The viola has a simple sotto voce melody based on the outlining of various chords.  However, ambiguity is added to this section by the fact that the piano echoes the viola one beat later.  This creates a wash of harmonies as opposed to strictly changing chords, for the resolutions in the piano are always off those in the viola.  This four-bar opening phrase is followed by two even more ambiguous measures (mm. 26-27) that, while still off one beat, also modulate to D flat in the first bar, then back to B flat.  This creates even more tension for the listener who has lost the sense of downbeat and tonic.  Therefore, when the downbeat comes in measure 28 with the piano this time accompanying in the same meter as the viola, there is a sense of comfort, reinforced by the dolce pianissimo.  This comfort is short-lived, however, when Brahms again has the piano shift forward metrically in measure 34, making the second beat sound like a first beat.  Because the variation occurs this time with only one voice playing, it is stronger, making the viola entrance two bars later even more unsettling to the ear.  This conflict between the viola and piano climaxes following a sixteenth note climb to measure 39.   Measure 39 is an incredibly illuminating measure for the listener because up until this point the second theme has been in an ambiguous 2/4 with the harmonies changing twice a measure.  Therefore, when measure 39 changes harmonies 4 times and there is no longer any metric shift, the listener can finally recognize the time signature.  Brahms uses this technique many times in the piece, for instance in measures 99-102 leading to the recapitulation, to create an ambiguity that makes the ultimate resolution very satisfying. The metric variations sections in this piece, however, are not to be confused with the call-and-response sections that are abundant in the piece, for instance in measures 146-149.

Another way in which Brahms creates ambiguity and tension using common Romantic practices is through melodic linear motion.   When one hears the piece, one gets the feeling of a smooth spun-out line, especially in the primary theme.  This is due to the chromaticism that Brahms employs to move between diatonic whole steps.  For instance, measure 7 uses chromatic pitches to move from re to do.  Another time when Brahms uses chromaticism in the melody is in the climax of the development, in measures 89-96.  Here Brahms exercises chromaticism to move the pitches up linearly – from sol to do each time – to dramatically increase the tension and ambiguity.   

While this melodic linear motion happens only so often in the viola part, the piano part is constantly moving step-wise throughout the scale.  In fact, the idea of linear harmonies is what the primary theme of the piece is based on.  For example, the opening chord progression is I-vii°6-I6-ii6-V7.  This is occurring at the same time that the viola is outlining chords that also go up in diatonic steps.   Another prominent example of the harmonies outlining broad linear movement happens in measures 44-51.  Here the harmonies move downward, from I-vii°6-vi6-V6, after which, through tonicizations of IV and III, the linear motion continues down chromatically.  The music finally finds rest in the tonic of III (D major), though it quickly modulates through Ger+6, back to the original key of B flat major.  These linear lines, however, are very graceful and go by without much disruption in the piece, adding to the fluid texture.

There are times, however, when this linear motion is created using non-functional harmony.  For instance, in measures 56-60, the harmonies move from I in E flat major to vii°6, then vii°6/5 in F major, followed by a vii°6/5 in G minor, after which there’s a tonic in the new key of G.  So here, besides from the bass notes moving linearly upwards, the tonicized keys also move upwards, creating the ambiguity that begins the development section.  This is, therefore, not such a smooth transition.  This spot in fact feel like a musical ellipsis. 

All of this rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic instability may give off the impression that this is a turbulent piece.  However, it is in fact quite the opposite.  The piece was written with the marking Allegro Amabile, which at first may sound contrasting.  However, if the piece is supposed to be “loving,” then what more appropriate marking can be given?  Brahms’ Sonata No. 2 op. 120 is a piece about the different forms love can take, from calm gentleness to passionate anger and joy.  The fact that the music can move so seamlessly between these two seemingly polar opposites is the comment that Brahms is trying to make about love:  that to love someone or something, one cannot expect for everything to remain as one fixed emotion.  The whole breadth of feeling must, and is, explored.

On the surface level, performance of this piece will never be the same for me again.  For instance, the subtle interplay between viola and piano has been brought to my conscious attention, where before I had only an instinctual understanding of its presence.  Also, I will seek to bring out the chromaticism involved in the melody, though with the knowledge that it was meant to move smoothly between tones.  On a deeper level, however, I will try to express the contrast between the tenderness and the passion, though this will be something I’ll have to feel instead of meticulously map out.  Perhaps most importantly, however, is that if I teach this piece some day, I would like to share this knowledge of the piece with that student, explaining how the tender melody can transcend over such harmonic and rhythmic shifts or the way the violist “gives” the melody to the pianist either to close or accelerate the idea.  I would stress that a sonata is a kind of chamber music and not written as a solo with accompaniment, as evidenced by how the piano fights the viola and vice versa at many points in this piece.  Mostly, however, I would like to reach the level of playing where I can express all of these things clearly in a non-scholarly way, but by being technically capable of conveying them to an audience.  Though the music was written to be listened to, not lectured about, it would be a shame to skim over the intricacies that Brahms intended all to hear.

Reading Between the Lines: The Impact of Stanza Breaks in Elizabeth Bishop and Louise Bogan's Poetry

            It is often that the structure of a poem seems self-evident – is there a poetic form that appears to be a great deal more basic and straightforward than the ballad form or than sets of heroic couplets?  And yet, what significance can such historical and ubiquitous forms add to a poem when the extensive familiarity of their organization renders their meanings and uses virtually invisible to modern readers?  However, a skillful poet will always choose a form which sometimes responds to, and sometimes shapes, the direction of a poem in a continual push and pull of meaning, tension, and relief.  It is then the careful reader’s task to discover and interpret such subtle interplay between the words and their organization on the page. 
So, then, what is one to make of a poem written without any traditional arrangement of the words into fixed meters and rhyme schemes?  Such poetry must carry an equal, if not greater, burden of justifying its structure in relationship to the content of the poem than the aforementioned fixed forms.  As T. S. Eliot wrote in his book To Criticize the Critic, “The rejection of rhyme is not a leap at facility; on the contrary, it imposes a much severer strain upon the language.  When the comforting echo of rhyme is removed, success or failure in the choice of words, in the sentence structure, in the order, is at once more apparent” (p. 188).  It is safe to say that Eliot’s argument can be applied not only to the removal of rhyme, as in blank verse, but also to the removal of a consistent meter and stanzaic organization.  When such influential factors as rhyme and meter have been removed, the burden of structure then falls heavily on other factors such as diction, internal rhyme, and line and stanzaic breaks.  One of the most influential, and yet often overlooked aspects of these elements is the white space between the stanzas; for any separation, whether it be between words, lines, or stanzas, has significance in a poem, much more so when the fixed forms are removed.  As Paul Fussel writes in his book Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, “If nothing is conceived to be taking place within [the white spaces between stanzas], if no kind of silent pressure or advance or reconsiderations or illumination or perception seems to be going on in that white space, the reader has a legitimate question to ask: Why is that white space there, and what am I supposed to do with it?” (p. 155).  Two writers, who have taken full advantage of this space in their writing with brilliance and to a thrilling affect, are Elizabeth Bishop and Louise Bogan.  In their works, embodying a profound technical mastery as well as emotional depth, one gets the feeling that their poems employ not the only the printed words, but the entire page; for every line ending and every stanza break yields new meaning. 

There are two important, though easily overlooked, techniques that these writers utilize when determining stanza breaks in their free verse poems:  one method is to have the white spaces in poems of multiple stanzas of unequal length and with no rhyme scheme act as turning points, both in action and thought, with the final space between the two last stanzas representing an important, though silenced action in the poem – such is the case with Bishop’s “Filling Station” and Bogan’s “The Dragonfly.”  The other technique is to have the white spaces act as silent climaxes in the middle of a bipartite experience – the powerful pivot point between the antecedent and its consequent.  It is in Bishop’s “The Wit” and Bogan’s “A Baroque Comment” that the writers make use of a climactic silence in the middle of the poem to great dramatic and significant effect.
It is true that in Elizabeth Bishop’s “Filling Station” and Louise Bogan’s “The Dragonfly,” the poems seem at first glance to be considerably different in form, structure, and the movement of content.  While the lines in Bishop’s poem are predominantly trimeter with tetrameter deviations, Bogan’s poem runs the gamut from dimeter to pentameter and hexameter (l. 18 and 10).  Also, the stanzas in Bishop’s poem vary only from six to eight lines, while Bogan’s stanzas vary between two and seven lines.  Furthermore, in terms of the narrative movement throughout the stanzas, Bishop’s poem seems to tunnel down stanza by stanza as the observations of the scene deepen, while Bogan’s poem heads rapidly into new directions and new aspects of the dragonfly with every new stanza.  Admittedly, these differences are rather fundamental and create very dissimilar impressions on a reader.  However, the disparities represent only what is written on the page; when the spaces between the stanzas are analyzed, both poems have a strikingly similar movement. 

In “The Filling Station,” Bishop writes in the voice of an upper-class woman of significant propriety as she first encounters a filling station, and then moves through a journey to understanding that is deepened stanza by stanza, through a period of observation, questioning, and finally of hopeful acceptance.  The first stanza consists of two off-hand exclamations enveloping a depiction of the filling station through her eyes.  One can easily visualize her standing at the station with a worried look on her face, telling whoever it is (her escort? her chauffeur? the gas-station workers?) to be careful as they light their cigarettes.  Yet, while the woman’s voice may be finicky and delicate, there is a sharp intellect and knowledge-seeking mind behind the ladylike pretense;  for there is no other way to explain how she continues to vehemently observe and assess her surroundings, moving on in the second stanza to an examination of the men of the family that run the gas station.  In fact, with every new stanza, it is as if her careless musings take another turn deeper into the life of the filling station, drawing her into this foreign and dirty world.  For instance, the third stanza introduces the first question, “Do they [the family] live in the station?”  The fourth stanza takes another turn when she notices, for the first time, colors, in the form of comic books, which then draw her eye to the subtle female nesting signs on the porch: the taboret, the begonia.  It is then that, in a moment of disorientation, the questions begin to pour out of her: why the feminine touches amidst all the grime?  And most poignantly, why is it so easy to turn the “oily” filling station into a suitable place for a “doily”?    One can see, then, how with every new stanza, the woman is working her way down toward the series of questions, and ultimately their resolution in the final stanza.
In these first four stanza breaks, there are various movements happening.  For one, the breaks signal and compartmentalize new thoughts on the various aspects of the station.  Interestingly, the spaces work also to separate the themes of the gas station family (stanza two), from themes of home (in stanza three, the porch, the wickerwork, and the sofa), which is then separated form feminine themes (the “taboret, the “big hirsute begonia” of the fourth stanza).  It is as if the woman’s mind cannot place such paradoxical themes next to each other, for in her mind the grime of the filling station cannot logically be placed next to home and femininity. Also, the spaces between the stanzas force the reader to stop and breathe, portraying a stop in her thoughts.  If her thoughts were allowed to run freely, a rapid and easy stream of consciousness would have been the result, and Bishop wants one to feel the struggle between each new development.    The white spaces are, therefore, durations of time between each new reflection, giving the impression of each thought as a casual but troubled musing which escalates between the fourth and fifth stanzas as the woman begins to seek answers as to how such oxymoronic themes of dirt and oil versus femininity and softness can exist together. 

It is between the fifth and sixth stanzas that Bishop adds a new dimension to the poem.  Everything up until this point in the poem has been fairly straight-forward with the structure reflecting every developing revolution of thought in the woman’s mind.  However, how is one to explain the movement from the desperation of the probing questions in the penultimate stanza to the lulled, complacent acceptance in the final stanza?  What is to explain this dramatic shift in position which took place in the space between the fifth and sixth stanzas?  It is nothing but the addition of another sense into the poem:  the auditory aspect.  Until now, we have been able to see the grease and the begonias, to touch the oil-soaked monkey suit, and probably even smell the gasoline in the air.  But the sound that is made by the oil cans, so neatly lined up by the absent mother, is an entirely new and completely pure sensation.  The rows of cans are described as speaking softly the peaceful sounds “ESSO—SO—SO—SO” (l. 39), which are so quiet as to not be perceptible in the din of the filling station until after careful inspection, which is why Bishop chose to have this moment occur in the quiet moment between the two last stanzas. 
In the same fashion, the stanzas in Bogan’s “The Dragonfly” – a delicate and wonderfully descriptive poem about this large flying insect – are also separated by logical thought.  One is moved through the poem first by a stanza describing the features of a dragonfly, then one about how the world reflects on the dragonfly (“Earth repels you. / Light touches you” in lines nine and ten), followed by the movement of the dragonfly and then the ceasing of this movement, and ending with a short two line close.  This straightforward organization and free verse style (uncharacteristic of Bogan) reflect the ostensibly uncomplicated subject matter of the poem – the life of a dragonfly – and serves to move the reader through the poem as quickly and easily as a dragonfly moves through the air.  However, the stanza breaks do more than neatly organize the content of the poem.  Like “Filling Station,” the breaks force the reader to stop and breathe; however, where in Bishop’s poem the pauses signaled a pause in the woman’s thoughts, the pauses in Bogan’s poem mimics the dragonflies own movement.  In other words, because the poem utilizes much rapid dimeter as well as short stanzas, the movement of each stanza is quick and flitting, just as a dragonfly’s movement.  It is as if one can see the dragonfly just long enough, perhaps while it is hovering in the air, to describe one aspect of it; this would mean that the space in the poem represents when the dragonfly is flying quickly to somewhere else, the destination of which is imperceptible to our eyes, just as is the movement of the poem.  This is evidenced by how each stanza begins with a word and thought unconnected to the stanza before it (there are no transitional words or expressions, as the stanzas begin with such words as “Link,” and “Twice-born”), but introduces the reader to a new aspect of the dragonfly, similar to how each stanza in “Filling Station” introduced a new level of the woman’s contemplation.  The lack of transitional words is also true on the sentence level, for each complete sentence begins with nothing to link it logically or chronologically to what has come before.

Fascinatingly, the only time that Bogan deviates from completely separating the stanzas in thought and movement is in the final two stanzas.  First, the sentence beginning in line 18 starts with the words “But at last,” which suggests that all along there has been an inevitability to the final ceasing of movement which follows these words.  Similarly, once the dragonfly’s motion ends with the word “stop,” a dramatic period and a stanza break follow.  The next stanza and sentence begin with the word “And you fall” (l. 20), which suggests, just as the words “But at last,” that there is an inevitability to this fall.  More importantly, however, is the extremely important event that occurs in this space between the stanzas, after one reads the word “stop” and then reads “And you fall.”  What has happened here, in this space, is the death of the dragonfly.  However, the will, passion, and energy of the dragonfly has diminished so much that its passing into death is so nonviolent that it is completely silent and imperceptible, almost a non-event, just as the sound of the oil cans in “Filling Station” were imperceptible enough at first as to be silent, but noticed by the woman’s subconscious just the same.

There is another way in which Elizabeth Bishop and Louise Bogan take full advantage of the spaces between their stanzas to great dramatic and emotional effect, and they employ it with extraordinary similarity in their poems “The Wit,” by Bishop, and “A Baroque Comment,” by Bogan.  When reading “The Wit,” one feels at first suspended in time – a time full of tension and activity – and then one experiences a sudden release of this tension due the reestablishment of ordered and forward-moving time.  There are many factors that contribute to this dramatic sense of tension and relief.  For one, the poem opens up with the command “Wait.”  Already, the reader has been told to remain still and passive awaiting the outcome of something as of yet undetermined.  Further more, the command “Wait,” is followed by, “Let me think a minute,” spoken by an undefined “you” (who one can only assume to be “The Wit”).  What all this creates in the very first line is a sense of dominance by the “you” over every aspect of the poem, as well as anyone who may read it; for the “you” has taken control of the future minute of passing time while all everything else must wait.  What occurs next is that Bishop takes this allocated minute of time, and transforms it from a duration of equal seconds passing one after another in a chronological order, to a set block of time in which events occur randomly and out of sequence.  Bishop is able to transform time like this because she begins to list, in that allocated “minute,” various historical figures of which the “wit” subject is making use in order to develop a pun.  By juxtaposing Eve with Newton in one line, followed by references to Moses and Socrates, Bishop moves from the microcosmic “minute” of present time (ll. one and two), to spanning a huge expanse of time, history, philosophy, and theology.  All of these references, listed out of succession, serve to build a tremendous tension between the microscopic nature of the “minute” and the large spread of time.  They also function to develop an objective correlative of knowledge and history that adds a weighty and legitimate feeling to the poem as well as to the wit’s intelligence.  This build-up culminates in the epigrammatic couplet in which all the historical figures are said to come “hurrying up to now” (ll. seven and eight), the now representing the entire space in conversation where the “wit” is thinking, in a moment of magical conjuration.

Due to the immense build-up of the first stanza, the word “But,” with its power to reverse, acts as a valve releasing the torrent of pent-up pressure.  In this moment, the “wit,” who is responsible for assembling all of the historical figures in the first place, dispels them by closing the minute of waiting and supposed silence with a “brilliant pun” (l. nine).  What follows, then, is a further release of the tension, as line by line the people listening to the pun give “a thunderclap of laughter,” then the historical “helpers” vanish “one by one,” and the conversation continues. 

What is it that makes this exchange of tension and relief so powerful?  It is because Bishop describes, in the first stanza, a compelling moment (one witty mind’s ability to employ all of history in a minute’s time and to one purpose), but a moment which occurred in silence.  She then takes this moment further by actually writing in that exact moment of silence as the space between the two stanzas; the space is made larger by the end-stopped line and the concluding nature of a heroic couplet.  A reader is then forced to wait and take a significant break before the beginning of the second stanza – a moment in which time all of history passes – and is now compelled take an active part in the action of the poem as well.  Surely this moment of silence, the pregnant pause between the expectations created by the first stanza and the resolution of the second, is the climax of the poem; for the opening line of the second stanza has a pointedly anticlimactic feel, where one might have expected the actual making of the pun to be the high point of the poem.  Were there not a space between the couplet in which the “now” point is fixed and the making of the actual pun, then the action of the making of the pun would become the climactic moment in which all of the characters in the list of references are put to use.  However, such as it is, the build-up of the first stanza makes the sudden space of the stanza break extremely glaring.  Therefore, this space acts as a climactic pivot between the antecedent of the poem in which all the tension is set up, and the consequent where it is all dispersed.  Furthermore, Bishop references this pivotal moment again in the second stanza of the poem, when she writes in the final three lines “and through the conversational spaces, after, / we caught, – back, back, far, far – / the glinting birthday of a fractious star.” Bishop mentions this moment of silence once again – the pause between the flow of the conversation, and this time she writes of the flashes of an unruly but brilliant intellect that can be witnessed at work during such periods of rest.  What one has experienced, then, after reading this poem, is first the set-up of such an active moment, its actual experience, and then the reference back to it.  One is also left with the knowledge that one has experienced only the first of such moments, and that they will continue and grow stronger with time; for such instances are described as signaling only the “birthday” (l. 14) of the wit’s impressive but as of yet unruly intelligence. 

In a similar fashion, Louise Bogan’s poem “Baroque Comment” is also built around a bipartite experience.  Besides this, however, the poems appear to be extremely different upon first comparison. For one, Bishop’s poem has a narrative line running through it with a traceable flow of time and action from the beginning to the end.  Bogan’s poem, on the other hand, is written in almost photographic glimpses of happenings and impressions that do not seem to appear in any distinct chronological order.  Bishop’s poem is also organized partially by rhyme (though not in any fixed arrangement) and her sentences are average in length and not too complex, whereas Bogan’s poem, though it makes use of assonance and near rhymes at her line ends as well as internally, is not defined by any consistent rhyme.  Bogan’s poem is also written as one long and complex sentence (in “Baroque Comment,” there are no less than 18 semi-colons and two colons, as well as numerous commas).  Furthermore, the subject matter of the two poems are as night and day, with Bishop’s poem describing an intense, though conversationally casual, moment occurring within a group of people in discussion, while Bogan’s poem moves beyond space and time in a sometimes cosmic, sometimes miniscule view of various aspects of the universe. 
And yet, the similarities between these two poems lie much deeper than just the number of stanzas in which each is written.  For instance, “Baroque Comment” begins with a single powerful word that will dictate the motion of the rest of the poem, just as the word “Wait” seized immediate control over “The Wit.”  Bogan’s poem begins with the word “From,” and then follows with a list of things from which something as of yet undetermined will follow.  By beginning with “From,” Bogan is implying that everything that will follow this word has already happened or is already a concrete thing and is unchangeable; for one cannot take from something unless it already exists and has its own space in time or memory.  Therefore, under such influence of the word “From,” Bogan begins to list happenings in time, just as Bishop listed people in history.  First Bogan makes reference to what can be assumed to be a description of the “big bang” when she writes “From loud sound and still chance.”  Because this is the first line of the poem, it mimics the beginning of the world itself by coming out of nothing on the page.  Bogan then lists various happenings, with no effort to connect between them or to place them in any order (the “mindless earth,” “the forest, the empty desert,” and “the kelp-disordered beaches”).  With each new phrase, Bogan describes another period in the development of the world, and it is through this naming of spaces and eras that Bogan builds an objective correlative, just as in the Bishop poem.  However, this time the emotion evoked is one of fear and awe of the huge time expanses that reach beyond human recollection and which are given a frightening quality due to the addition of words such as “mindless,” “empty,” “tearing,” and “disordered.”  Therefore, a sense of tension and anxiety is built up as the lines progress and the photographic images of the violent and chaotic earth manifest themselves.  This crescendo of tension is only escalated in line five when Bogan moves beyond listing happenings in the past with the addition of the word “Coincident.”  Whatever it is that is coming from the aforementioned places, it shares the same space in time as “the lie, anger, lust, oppression, and death in many forms” of this line.  To be linked in time with such powerfully evocative words as these creates an enormous sense of tension, just as the listing of the figures created tension in Bishop’s poem. 

Furthermore, in the same fashion as Bishop’s poem, once Bogan has successfully created a powerful amount of tension in the poem, she cuts off all activity by breaking the stanza.  After all the intense pressure that Bogan has built up, this white space is tremendously glaring.  It is also striking because of the colon that ends the first stanza.  For one, such punctuation naturally invites the reader to move forward, and if one is forced to stop when one wants to move forward, general frustration and anxiety is produced.  Also, the colon guarantees that the thing which will come from all of the happenings in the first stanza shall be revealed directly following its use, and the delay of this revelation is similarly frustrating.  Therefore, this white space is perceived as the final, culminating element in the progressively increasing series of happenings through which the reader has been moved. 

The motion of the poem then turns decisively and surprisingly with the words “Ornamental structures,” opening the second stanza.  This is wonderful moment in the poem, in which the juxtaposition of the “lie, anger, lust, oppression, and death of many forms” in the preceding line is paradoxically placed in time with something human-built and constructed within the parameters of controlled human aesthetics.  Furthermore, these structures exist not just in one place in the world, but they are “continents apart, separated by seas” (l. six). By moving in this direction, Bogan moves outward from what had been in the first stanza brief flashing images of places, emotions, and events, to a listing of concepts which have been created similarly across the face of the earth.  Interestingly, where Bishop chose the second part of her poem to unwind the tension created in the first stanza, Bogan takes the climactic stanza break as a moment to pivot the poem in a new direction.  The energy of the poem does not unwind, then, as it does in Bishop’s, because the listing technique of the first stanza continues.  This time, however, the listing funnels in from the man-made but emotionless structures of the sixth line, through human knowledge of the universe (“The named constellations” in line ten), kingdoms, sports, literature, war, music, art, agriculture, and the domination of the seas, until finally the emotion of love is unearthed. 

Through the example of these poems, one can see how ingeniously and with what technical virtuosity a great poet can make the most of every aspect of his or her poem;  for to have the ability to gauge when no words are better than any possible words is surely a great gift.  Furthermore, the emotional response which can be attained by giving the words room to breathe and allowing the reader’s own responses to the poem to climax naturally is intense and often overlooked.  Therefore, one must always remember to let the music of the poem speak to the ear, and not simply the sounds of the notes, but also the profound moments of silence between them.