Tight Pants

(A Re-stack) by Tony Grooms

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Frank O’Hara wore his pants tight, tight enough that according to some accounts everyone wanted to go to bed with him. This has been an elusive goal of mine as well, thwarted by a wardrobe of pleated dockers. In my case, I am actually referring to pants, but O’Hara’s reference, in his brilliant manifesto on poetry called “Personism,” is about “measure and other technical apparatus.” He is advising that it is only common sense to include formal devices in the writing of a poem.

Of course, this makes sense because poetry, though it is the co-joined sister of brother prose, is different, perhaps even elevated above prose by the intense way it organizes the common elements shared by both. Prose, though it can ofttimes read like poetry, is allowed to be—prosy—as long as isn’t “dull,” or “unimaginative” as Merriam-Webster defines the term. That is to say, it is composed of sentences—simple, complex, compound and logical. More is expected of poetry. If prose is wearing baggy pants, then poetry wears skinny jeans.

Readers familiar with poetry in English before the mid-19th century, will know that poems were expected to adhere to established metrical schemes. Though these schemes, for example, the sonnet, varied (variations added interest and interest delights) the reading public expected these structural patterns as a sign of the mastery of the poet. Then comes our grizzled, gray-bearded all-American great grandfather Walt Whitman to shake things up. But not as much as you might think. Whereas Whitman’s tact on poetry in English steered away from the accentual-syllabic measures, he none-the-less employed a musical scheme in his verse. Drawing on the organization of Italian opera and American political speeches, his prosody emphasized rhetorical cadence and achieved its musicality principally through various kinds of repetition, catalogs, and parallelisms. To best hear Whitman’s music, you will need to shut the door to your study, stand on a chair in the middle of the room and in your loudest and most theatrical voice read his poems. I suggest starting with “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” section 11. The old man’s musicality comes in waves of breath, waves of utterances that crash against the walls of your room and break into rivulets of smaller utterances. It contains multitudes. 

Others, too, deserted the strict musicality of accentual-syllabics for the beat of a different drummer. The early twentieth century brought rich poetic innovation, pulling away from the traditional forms and developing new metrics such as those found in Langston Hughes’s jazz and blues poems, Marianne Moore’s and O’Hara’s conversational rhythms, Margaret Walker’s spiritual and folk rhythms, and later the incantations of Ai. Of course, too, we hear music in contemporary “performance poetry.” I dare say—yes, I dare—that musicians such as Gil Scott Heron, Barry White, and even Bobby Womack draw on poetic phrasing as much as musical phrasing, in the recitative parts of their songs. Keep in mind, that music and poetry have been long married and aren’t likely ever to be divorced! From the  days of the lyre and the chant of ancient ritual to hip-hop, there has been little difference in purpose between the musician and the poet, given differences in modes of expression and presentation. Just as you shake your booty to K.C. and the Sunshine Band, you can shake it to T.S. Eliot, albeit with greater sobriety.

Ezra Pound, the self-proclaimed father of modern poetry, makes the point in one of his manifestos, “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste,” published in Poetry magazine in 1913: “Behave as a musician, a good musician, when dealing with that phase of your art which has exact parallels in music.” In 1918, he would follow up by making this advice one of his three principles: “As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.” He is advising that the poet composes with cadence rhythm, not accentual syllabics—but also, he is inviting personal innovation and expression by breaking the restrictions of any metronomic prosody. Later on in “A Few Don’ts,” he also declares, “It is not necessary that a poem should rely on its music…”.

Now for a little tea. To avoid a trial for treason, Pound was declared legally insane in 1945 and was committed to Saint Elizabeth’s psychiatric hospital until 1958. Not being a fan of either his The Cantos or his Fascism, I don’t have a lot of sympathy, but he wasn’t wrong about poetry and music. Poems may rely on any number of elements—by emphasizing imagery, for instance. But poets must underlie their poems with music—that is, a rhythmic or sonic organization. If the poem doesn’t sing, it at least must hum. Not to do so means that all things else fall flat—no matter how inventive.

Even poems which utilize prose or conversational utterance must exploit the natural cadences, accents and pauses of these rhythms, as well as the various sonics—true rhyme, alliteration, assonance—plosives, liquids—repetitions of all kinds. For a primer on the music of poetry, read Robert Pinsky’s The Sounds of Poetry, then read his poems.

Marianne Moore’s conversational poem, “Poetry” begins, “I, too, dislike it,” a simple and plain declaration, but as the poem develops it becomes a musical treatise:

the immovable critic twinkling his skin like a horse that feels a flea, the base—
   ball fan, the statistician

Momma Marianne was wearing her tri-cornered hat and her cape on this one, but she could also pull on the leggings and show her rump. Read “The Fish” if you want to watch her boogie-woogie.

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Tony Grooms retired after nearly forty years of teaching writing and literature. He immediately reverted to his teen-age nerd self. For more, go to AnthonyGrooms.com.