tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-786207835641480928.post2893190504135661317..comments2024-03-28T12:59:41.910-04:00Comments on NeverEnding Story: To the Lighthouse: The Art of TitlingChen-ou Liu, 劉鎮歐http://www.blogger.com/profile/06235248170011255532noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-786207835641480928.post-41004203055955048222013-07-30T19:59:19.450-04:002013-07-30T19:59:19.450-04:00Regarding Titology 101:
By taking a line from th...Regarding Titology 101:<br /><br />By taking a line from the poem text to use as a title, the poet runs the risk of weakening the power of the line. <br /><br />One exception: Effective use of repetition. For more information, see "To the Lighthouse: Repetition, Repetition, Repetition," which can be accessed at http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.ca/2013/04/to-lighthouse-repetition-repetition.html <br /><br />Two examples:<br /><br /><br />The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow<br /><br />The tide rises, the tide falls,<br />The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;<br />Along the sea-sands damp and brown<br />The traveller hastens toward the town,<br /> And the tide rises, the tide falls.<br /><br />Darkness settles on roofs and walls,<br />But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;<br />The little waves, with their soft, white hands,<br />Efface the footprints in the sands,<br /> And the tide rises, the tide falls.<br /><br />The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls<br />Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;<br />The day returns, but nevermore<br />Returns the traveller to the shore,<br /> And the tide rises, the tide falls. <br /><br />"The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls" is repeated four times in the poem. The repeating ebb-and-flow action of the title gives a strong visual feel to the poem, guiding the rhythmic pace.<br /><br />Nothing in That Drawer by Ron Padgett <br /><br />Nothing in that drawer.<br />Nothing in that drawer.<br />Nothing in that drawer.<br />Nothing in that drawer.<br />Nothing in that drawer.<br />Nothing in that drawer.<br />Nothing in that drawer.<br />Nothing in that drawer.<br />Nothing in that drawer.<br />Nothing in that drawer.<br />Nothing in that drawer.<br />Nothing in that drawer.<br />Nothing in that drawer.<br />Nothing in that drawer.<br /><br />In his “postmodernist sonnet,” Ron Padgett tinkers with form “irreverently.” <br /><br />The following is an excerpt from Clay Matthews' essay, "On Ron Padgett, " which can be accessed at http://www.h-ngm-n.com/h_ngm_n-6/clay-matthews-on-ron-padgett.html<br /><br />Similarly, in “Nothing in That Drawer,” another of Padgett’s poems in form, and one of his most anthologized, we find a sublime revelry in the sonnet and by extension poetry at large. In this poem, each of the fourteen lines that make up the sonnet is the same: “Nothing in that drawer.” The repetition becomes comedic, as we visually imagine a speaker looking in one drawer after another, or perhaps the same drawer over and over. And yet the move to search in this poem is also reminiscent of the postmodern sublime, as it constantly points to the failure of language and form to achieve an absolute unity—with themselves and with the Idea. We have in this sonnet the constant search, constantly postponed or deferred. We’re never sure what the speaker is even searching for, or if the movement of the poem is simply language, or boredom, even. We’re left with a sort of constant opening and disappointment, which in many ways is what poetry as postmodern sublime is—an opening on a thought or structure accompanied by a delight in the failure of the opening. And in the case of “Nothing in That Drawer,” because we’re never sure of the action, or even the context, it seems the poem is less about a nostalgia for the unpresentable and more about the loss as bliss, the sublime itself.<br /><br />Instead of lamenting the gap between form and content, word and concept, Padgett places them in conversation with one another, allowing the form to speak to the content and vice versa. The sonnet form in this poem is wrapped in a contemporary humor, much like the Gehry house Jameson discusses in Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. And like the Gehry house, which features an older, traditional home renovated by postmodern architecture, Padgett’s poem allows the inside and the outside to converge. Thus, the form of the sonnet, the sonnet as move from proposition to resolution, offers a narrative to the very language that also works to deny that narrative and/or resolution. Chen-ou Liu, 劉鎮歐https://www.blogger.com/profile/06235248170011255532noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-786207835641480928.post-52318911812756950702013-07-30T14:12:47.874-04:002013-07-30T14:12:47.874-04:00Regarding the first literary joke about titling:
...Regarding the first literary joke about titling:<br /><br />While logicians might observe that there is a confusion of use and mention in the last case (the song, after all, can be only what it is, and cannot be said to be its name or even one of them) I should like to point out that Lewis Carroll selected his four successive titles from four quite different conventions of naming shorter poems. The first of these (“what the name of the song is called”) is “Haddocks’ Eyes,” or what we might call an essential title. From the long list of the old man’s improbable modes of self-employment one item is taken to stand for the whole, and the Haddocks’ Eyes are a symbol of his endeavors:<br /><br />He said, “I hunt for haddocks, eyes<br />Among the heather bright,<br />And work them into waistcoat-buttons<br />In the silent night.<br />And these I do not sell for gold<br />Or coin of silvery shine,<br />But for a copper halfpenny<br />And that will purchase nine.<br /><br />This first mode of titling reflects the modern convention of plucking from a fiction—usually a short story or a Broadway drama—either the name of a symbol patently at work in it, or of a passing utterance, lit up in momentary epiphany simply by being so used, in order to entitle the work, it will be noticed that such an act of displacing can both seem to underline the significance of the name or phrase and to create some initial suspense about how and why the work was so entitled—in fact, about what the title convention indeed has been.<br /><br />Let's proceed to the others. "The name of the song" itself, "The Aged, Aged Man," identifies its subject and calls more attention than do the others to the poem's narrative frame... "Ways and Means" ("what the song is called") underlies a topic and moralizes upon the whole confrontation in a stolidly pragmatic manner... Finally, "A-Sitting on a Gate" picks out the repeated short line that ends the poem and treats it as a kind of refrain, entitling the poem with it. It suggests that the poem is a simple, old song, so well known that it has become folklore." (Hollander, pp. 216-7)<br />Chen-ou Liu, 劉鎮歐https://www.blogger.com/profile/06235248170011255532noreply@blogger.com