(no subject)
Aug. 11th, 2004 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsycheStephen Dobyns, in his book Best Words, Best Order, says that when the reader comes to the page, he brings with him a store of trust:
The reader will keep reading if his trust is rewarded; this reward usually comes in the form of delight. Wordsworth said that "the end of Poetry is to produce excitement in co-existence with an overbalance of pleasure." Delight often comes from word choice, a vocabulary that is pleasantly unusual. Word order, or the conscious manipulation of syntax, also contributes to this delight. But delight most often can be effected in the reader by implanting a sense of surprise.
Dobyns says that "part of the pleasure of poetry is that it imposes pattern" (p. 140). Elsewhere he says
Dobyns defines surprise as "the sudden occurrence of an unanticipated event that creates tension partly by shaking our good faith in our anticipation and producing uncertainty" (p. 46).
Surprise, it can be said, is brought about by misleading. The reader, by coming to the page, has agreed to (and apparently wants to) be mislead. This misleading is possible, ironically enough, only because the reader comes with that initial store of trust.
Misleading can occur only when the poet is leading. If, via obfuscation and opacity, the poet gives the reader no clear sense of where the poem is going, that reservoir of trust is depleted and the reader looks for a more reliable poem. In order to effect surprise, clarity is vital.
[A] willingness to trust is the one thing the reader may give the writer for free, and it is based on nothing the writer has done but on the reader's whole relationship to literature. (p. 134)
The reader will keep reading if his trust is rewarded; this reward usually comes in the form of delight. Wordsworth said that "the end of Poetry is to produce excitement in co-existence with an overbalance of pleasure." Delight often comes from word choice, a vocabulary that is pleasantly unusual. Word order, or the conscious manipulation of syntax, also contributes to this delight. But delight most often can be effected in the reader by implanting a sense of surprise.
Dobyns says that "part of the pleasure of poetry is that it imposes pattern" (p. 140). Elsewhere he says
A poem works by setting up various patterns that heighten the reader's anticipation. . . . Once a pattern has been established, then any variation creates surprise. (p. 46)
Dobyns defines surprise as "the sudden occurrence of an unanticipated event that creates tension partly by shaking our good faith in our anticipation and producing uncertainty" (p. 46).
Surprise, it can be said, is brought about by misleading. The reader, by coming to the page, has agreed to (and apparently wants to) be mislead. This misleading is possible, ironically enough, only because the reader comes with that initial store of trust.
Misleading can occur only when the poet is leading. If, via obfuscation and opacity, the poet gives the reader no clear sense of where the poem is going, that reservoir of trust is depleted and the reader looks for a more reliable poem. In order to effect surprise, clarity is vital.