Quotīdiē

The only map is the map of the bear.
Your best hope is to follow it closely,
Closer than dogs. It's engraved with your spoor,
You wake in the night to find it partly
Charred by the dying fire. The only

Map is the map of the bear. Follow
It closer than dogs. Your best hope is
To read the part engraved below
The surface of the fire. Sleepless,
You move by night. The only map is

The map of the bear. Dogs know,
That's why they follow with no hope
The dying spoor. You're passing through
Fire, you've passed through sleep,
Now the only map is the map

Of the bear. Now hope gives up
Its secrets, now you follow where
Dogs won't go, even in sleep.
Above, the route's engraved on fire.
The only map is the map of the bear.

Tad Richards"The Map of the Bear"

Peter Saint-Andre mentioned the New Poetry discussion list, which he learned about in an earlier Quotīdiē. I'd been living in a bit of a shell regarding contemporary poetry before I joined that list. (Upon arriving in the U.S. in 1989 I looked around, aghast at mainstream verse, and retreated quickly to past classics). The list has been a good way to bring energy back to my study of poetry, and to keep in touch with contemporary work. It turns out that there are some very good poets on that list, though I didn't recognize them by name, because of my ignorance of the contemporary scene. I do recognize the quality of their work, and today's Quotīdiē is a piece by a regular on the list, Tad Richards. In addition to being posted on the list, it was also hosted on The Poets' Corner by Anny Ballardini, another regular. The list is a very rich find. I'll later post links to other good poems posted to the list.

Refrain-like verse forms are very popular in modern poetry, from Villanelle to Pantoum and so on. (I somtimes call these poetic fugues). It seems that in the past couple of decades poets have become especially skilled with the use of partial refrains. "The Map of the Bear" teases out a sense of desultory restlessness with its partial refrains. The meter is accentual, with four accents per line. This is a very versatile framework, but I've always found it easiest to hear gothic tones in it, and in this poem, that feeling is particularly apt. Another poem that struck me immediately because of its partial refrains is Dana Gioia's "The Country Wife".

She makes her way through the dark trees
Down to the lake to be alone.
Following their voices on the breeze,
She makes her way. Through the dark trees
The distant stars are all she sees.
They cannot light the way she's gone.
She makes her way through the dark trees
Down to the lake to be alone.

Dana Gioia—from "The Country Wife"

Peter later followed up on my observations on how poetry slows down perceptions, leading to richer understanding and appreciation.

The other day, Uche argued for the continued relevance -- indeed, the increased importance -- of poetry in today's fast-paced times, since the concentrated and often difficult nature of poetic language forces the reader to slow down. Yet (as Uche knows) it is more than just diction: it is also the meter (or, more broadly, the rhythm) that induces a kind of slow time when one reads a poem. Poetry is a temporal art in much the same way music is -- and in one respect, a poem enforces slow time even more viscerally than a piece of music does because usually you perform the poem (by reading it silently or aloud to yourself) rather than having it performed for you at a poetry reading or by means of a recording. The post-modernists would call this co-creating the work, and for once they would be right!

Peter is right that rhythm is the primary tool for the slowing and enriching effects of poetry. I also agree that meter is the most established form of rhythm, and that it's harder for non-metrical rhythm to bring this richness. Peter is also right to reiterate that Poetry is a mere shadow without its performance (whether it's the reader sounding out the poem in his head, or in public performance). With all that in mind, I quite consider "The Map of the Bear" an example of how a poem can work such slow enrichment outside classical framework. Accentual meter is quite respectably meter for me, and the partial refrain, especially when read aloud, serves to deepen the incantatory mood. "The Country Wife" is also accentual. There is much more of an iambic tetrameter basis, as one would expect from a formalist such as Gioia, but it is still variant enough to be more accentual than accentual- syllabic, and I think this suits that poem well. Interesting, this juxtaposition of accentual meter and partial refrain—It makes me think of fugue, a baroque musical form, not just because of the echoing phrases (to go with the echoing melodies in fugue), but also because of the overstatement (in a positive sense) suggested by the four-stress line. It is an approach I shall have to explore more fully in my own verse.

A final note of interest is that "The Map of the Bear" originated from a misreading of a trite phrase. In Richards' own words:

I do have a poem based on a misread statement that was sorta interesting. Reading an article about a performance artist, I came across the statement that she explored a territory where the only map is the map of the bear.

I thought this was one of the most fascinating ideas I'd ever read. Then I looked again and saw that it actually said she explored a territory where the only map is the map of the heart. This was a territory, I realized, which held no interest whatever for me. But what about that territory where the only map is the map of the bear? I wanted to know more about that...a territory where the wilderness mapped itself. I had been deeply moved by Kurosawa's great movie, Dersu Uzala, where mapmaking becomes a symbol for both exploration and limitation, and I started to feel that I had to know more about the territory mapped only by the bear. This was the poem that came of it.

[Uche Ogbuji]

via Copia
3 responses
Uche - the other formal device that I used here is the "walking enjambment," where the refrain line continues to be enjambed one foot farther back, until finally it once again becomes a full end-stopped line.



I had used this once before, in a sestina, with a walking caesura.
Thanks for pointing that out.  I did notice that there was somewhat of a pattern to the enjambment, but I didn't pay enough attention to nail it.  This is a very clever device, and it works for this poem.  Do you have a link to the sestina you mention?
Here it is. It is, remember, a very youthful poem. So youthful that I didn't exactly understand how a sestina worked, so instead of building subsequent stanzas 6-1-5-2-4-3, I built them 2-3-4-5-6-1. Needless to say, when questioned about this, I say something like "Well, the nature of the subject matter demanded this variation."



But it does have another kind of walking enjambment, this one moving from line to line within the stanza instead of from foot to foot within the line.



IF YOU'S WHITE



"They are developing some very strong feelings about this music??so much so that I have heard some white country blues singers say, `I want to be Negro.'"



John Cohen,
Sing Out!









A young man with dark sweater and a white

Face, in the sidewalk shadows of New York,

Shading his eyes to dim his skin toward black,

A battered (by choice) guitar held in his hands

While in his mind he sees a soulful blues

Moaning along the highways of the South.



There is no earth--it's barren in New York--

He tries to pluck a bass string with a black

Thumb, but the sterile whiteness of his hands

Is not for digging roots and picking blues

That grow along the highways of the South.

He pulls up milkweed, fluffy, dry and white.



The woman that he's living with is black,

He sees the race's character in her hands;

The suffering that goes to breathe the blues

Alive, in the fields and road gangs of the South

Whispers beyond the range of any white--

Although she's never been outside New York.



He'll tell you, "Man, just look at that spade's hands!

They look like they were born to play the blues!

(You know the way they breed 'em in the South.)

There's nothing wrong with him except that white

Soul, from the shallow spirit of New York

That robbed him of his birthright (which was black).



Sometimes a weary voice sings him a blues.

It may have drifted upward from the South,

He scarcely hears it: "Fella, be glad you're white!

You can buy better guitars up in New York

To sing about what happens to a black

Man, with cold iron shackles on his hands--



The kind of thing that happens in the South,

And hate the cops--that's safer if you're white,

Yes, fella, even up here in New York.

This is the time, you're thinking, to be black;

Well, if that's so, you have it on your hands."

"Was that an eight-bar or a twelve-bar blues?"



He sits in a White Castle in New York,

A cup of black coffee warming his cool hands

Too frigid for a blues bred in the South.