Embodied Cognition

Your browser lacks required capabilities. Please upgrade it or switch to another to continue.

Loading…

Kristin Prevallet in //Trance Poetics//: “Ezra Pound famously described poetry as the [[play of phanopoeia, melopoeia, and logopoeia (image, music, and meaning)|Ezra Pound]]; but there is another ‘poeia,’ the one more difficult to analyze because it’s simply and so obviously present. It’s the consciousness of the observer (reader) that brings the observed form (poem) into being. Or, it’s the body of the reader and of the writer, either absorbing or repelling, understanding or rejecting, the forms created by other living bodies in a work of art" (11). [[continue|Kristin Prevallet 2]]

"''Simultaneously, it’s what happens when a body experiences the play of image, music, and meaning as these things are present in the forms of the world, and in the forms of the art.'' In other words, the inner processes of re-associating and reorganizing, learning or unlearning, based on the information that a body is taking into its molecular design at that particular moment. ... [//Trance Poetics// is] an effort to acknowledge the psychosomatic information network that connects the bodies of writers and artists to the observing bodies of readers and viewers ... to acknowledge the movable consciousness of bodies and the forms that bodies create" (Prevallet 11-12). [[continue|Intro Summary]]

To sum up our introduction: ''Poetry according to Pound'': phanopoeia, melopoeia, and logopoeia (image, music, and meaning) ''According to Prevallet'': (image, music, and meaning) + consciousness of the observer/body of the reader I'd like to take off from here to explore several related ideas, networked and woven around this point of origin <<timed 3s>>[[The Poet's Body]] [[The Semantics of Sound]] [[A Mysterious "Meeting Grounds"]]<</timed>>

“Literature is language charged with meaning" (Pound 28). "The charging of language is done in three principle ways... And the good writer chooses his words for their ''‘meaning,’'' but that meaning is not a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight of pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with <a href="http://etymonline.com" target="_blank">roots</a>, with <a href="https://wordassociations.net/en/" target="_blank">associations</a>, with how and where the word is [[familiarly used]], or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably..." (ibid. 36). "There is no end to the number of qualities which some people can associate with a given word or kind of word, and most of these vary with the individual. You have to go almost exclusively to Dante’s criticism to find a set of OBJECTIVE categories for words. //Dante called words ‘buttered’ and ‘shaggy’ because of the different NOISES they make. [[Or pexa et hirsuta]], combed and hairy.// He also divided them by their different associations. NEVERTHELESS you still charge words with meaning mainly in three ways, called [[phanopoeia]], [[melopoeia]], [[logopoeia]]. You use a word to throw a visual image on to the reader’s imagination, or you charge it by sound, or you use groups of words to do this” (ibid.). [[Back to Trance Poetics|Kristin Prevallet 1]]

<img src="https://poeia.neocities.org/WickedUD.png" width="700px"> <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=WICKED" target="_blank">Source</a> [[back|Ezra Pound]]

"Throwing the image (fixed on moving) on the visual imagination" (Pound, 63). <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/380927944" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen></iframe> [[back|Ezra Pound]]

<u>Melopoeia:</u> "inducing emotional correlations by the sound and rhythm of the speech" (Pound, 63). a kind of poetry "wherein the words are charged, over and above their plain meaning, with some musical property, which directs the bearing or trend of that meaning" ("How to Read" qtd <a href="https://allenginsberg.org/2015/04/meditation-and-poetics-78-phanopoeia-logopoeia-and-melopoeia/" target="_blank">here</a>) [[back|Ezra Pound]] <<cacheaudio "Sonnet73" "https://poeia.neocities.org/Sonnet%2073%204%20(online-audio-converter.com).mp3">> <<audio "Sonnet73" play>> *(audio clip text source: Shakespeare's "Sonnet 73")

Meaning or "inducing both of the effects by stimulating the associations (intellectual or emotional) that have remained in the receiver’s consciousness in relation to ''the actual words or word groups employed''" (Pound 63). or "'the dance of the intellect among words', that is to say, it employs words not only for their direct meaning, but it takes count in a special way of habits of usage, of the context we //expect// to find with the word, its usual concomitants, of its known acceptances, and of ironical play. It holds the aesthetic content which is peculiarly the domain of verbal manifestation, and cannot possibly be contained in plastic or in music. It is the latest come, and perhaps most tricky and undependable mode" ("How to Read" qtd. <a href="https://allenginsberg.org/2015/04/meditation-and-poetics-78-phanopoeia-logopoeia-and-melopoeia/" target="_blank">here</a>) [[back|Ezra Pound]]

"We call hairy all words other than these*, which are either necessary or ornamental to the illustrious vernacular. And we call necessary those we cannot do without, such as certain monosyllables like //si, no, me, te, se, a, e, i, o, u,// interjections, and many others. Ornamental are all polysyllables which, when mixed with combed words, produce a lovely harmony throughout the whole structure, although they may possess a harshness of aspiration or accent or double consonants or geminated liquids or prolixity, such as //terra, honore, speranza, gravitate, alleviato, impossibilita, impossibilitate, benaventuratissimo, inanimatissimamente, disaventuratissimamente,// or //sovramagnificentissimamente,// which is a hedecasyllable..." —Dante, //De Vulgari Eloquentia// trans. Marianne Shapiro *//amore, donna, disio, vertute, donare, letitia, salute, securtate, defesa.// <<cacheaudio "Hair" https://poeia.neocities.org/New%20Recording%2022%20(online-audio-converter.com).mp3>> <<audio "Hair" play>> [[back|Ezra Pound]]

"the HEAD, by way of the EAR, to the SYLLABLE the HEART, by way of the [[BREATH]], to the LINE" — Charles Olson, <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69406/projective-verse" target="_blank">"Projective Verse"</a> [[This Living Hand]] [[back|Intro Summary]]

As a starting point for our discussion of the music of language in poetry, we can return to Pound's definition of ''melopoeia'' as a kind of poetry, "wherein the words are charged, over and above their plain meaning, with some musical property, which directs the bearing or trend of that meaning" ("How to Read" qtd. <a href="https://allenginsberg.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Pound.jpg" target="_blank">here</a>). Therefore, the poem's sonic qualities are distinguished from ''image'' and ''meaning'', belonging to a separate element that may be employed //alongside// the meaning, in order to "direct," lead, or inflect its semantic content. However, more than mere enhancement, I will argue, these sonic qualities form a vital connection between body and text. They may operate independently or in tandem with the words' denotations, organizing themselves in a network of sonic associations, often within the text itself, but also within the mind and body of the reader. If logopoeia is the artful use of //meaning// (especially of multiple meanings, usages, connotations, etc.), or what Pound called "the dance of the intellect among words" (<a href="https://allenginsberg.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Pound.jpg" target="_blank">ibid.</a>), we might think of the music of poetry as //the dance of feeling among words//. The semantics of sound //mean// on a level of existence that is embodied and outside of the intellect. [[Clarification]]

<u>Mysterious & Extraordinary "Meeting Grounds"</u> "In the course of various experiments conceived as 'parlor games' whhose value as entertainment, or even as recreation, does not to my mind in any way affect their importance: Surrealist texts obtained simultaneously by several people writing from such to tsuch a time in the same room, collaborative efforts intended to result in the creation of a unique sentence or drawing, only one of whose elements (subject, verb, or predicate adjective-head, belly, or legs) was supplied by each person, in the definition of something not given, in the forecasting of events which would bring about some completely unsuspected situation, etc., we think we have brought out into the open a strange possibility of thought, which is that of its //pooling//. The fact remains that very striking relationships are established inn this manner, that remarkable analogies appear, that an inexplicable factor of irrefutability most often intervenes, and that, in a nutshell this is one of the most extraordinary //meeting grounds//." —Andre Breton, <a href="http://new-territories.com/blog/2013GSAPP-UPENN/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Pages-de-manisfesto2.pdf" target="_blank">//Second Manifesto of Surrealism//</a> + "The desire to surrender to another person's imagination is incredibly satisfying... Reununciation, submission, take me away. ... A conduit takes you 'outside' what you know (supposedly). ... In James Wright's much anthologized poem <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46481/a-blessing" target="_blank">'A Blessing,'</a> an epiphany creates a total bodily transformation. The breaking of his body into blossom breaks the meaning of the poem open in an instant of clarity, the kind that imposes form onto chaos. It might be said that to have an experience like this is to teleport into privileged airspace. The poet has had an expereince and the reader is elevated through the tremors crafted through his command of metaphor. But as a mental event, the horses do not appear 'out of the blue.' The blue is not 'out there.' The blue is a convergence of patterns in Wright's brain that cause movements in his mind; and in the mind of the reader." —Kristin Prevallet, //Trance Poetics//, 27-28. [[continue|Meeting Grounds 2]]

To be clear, I am ''not'' arguing that: -there is an essential connection between a word's denotation and its sonic qualities in any given language. //The type of meaning I am referring to belongs to a realm of experience separate from denotation and the intellect. It is murkier, subtler, and more aligned with feeling and intuition.// -the intellects of the poet and reader play no role in crafting and perceiving the sonic effects of the work. //While the poet may manipulate the sounds of the poem to certain effect, there are qualities that may be carried to the poem// through //the sound from more mysterious sources: chance, the writer's unconscious, etc.// [[Sound & Embodiment]]

<u>Rhythm in Poetry</u> One creates and responds to ''rhythm'' not because one studied iambs, trochees, and anapests, but because one's embodied existence is organized by rhythms. Our hearts and lungs, digestive systems, circadian rhythms. Our bodies are accustomed to finding pattern and regularity, and noticing breaks in the pattern. [[Rhythms One Grows Up With]] <u>Tone & Melody</u> The sounds we create are shaped by our own embodiment. Through our bodies, we give body to words, thoughts, feelings, sensations. <a href="https://dood.al/pinktrombone/" target="_blank">The shape we give them</a> is particular to the type of beings we are, the bodies we have. <u>Homophones</u> Words that sound the same but have different meanings are felt on the level of sound and //lean// toward what Pound calls logopoeia. While Pound asserts that logopoeia "holds the aesthetic content which is peculiarly the domain of verbal manifestation, and cannot possibly be contained in plastic or in music," and privileges the "dance of the intellect," I find it may be more helpful to consider these elements of poetry outside of this hierarchy, acknowledging that ''meaning'' is made much more profoundly on the levels beyond the intellect through the simultaneous use image, sound, and intellectual meaning. Pound's trio of poeias attempts to disentangle a web that is more than the sum of its parts, and asserts that one thread, the word (intellectual meaning) can contain what, in fact, cannot be contained by a single element. ''Meaning'' is engaged at the level of the body; it is not intellectual, but it is no less rational. [["an audible web"]]

The poet, Robert Pinsky writes about what he calls "an audible web": the poem's "web of likeness and difference in sound" (Pinsky 94). He explains that this likeness and difference is "a matter of degree," and he [[demonstrates]] the way in which these sonic qualities can work along with and against each other within a poem. As poet Jenny Johnson puts it, it's "that invisible texture that hovers over poems that are especially sonically resonant" (<a href="https://lithub.com/poet-jenny-johnson-on-writing-her-own-escape-routes/" target="_blank">Jenny Johnson</a>). Both Pinsky and Johnson claim that the sonic pleasures of the poem can lead a reader to trust the meaning before fully grasping it. Johnson also uses this as a way //into// writing about difficult or "unsayable" subjects. Kristin Prevallet also suggests this technique in //Trance Poetics//: "To hear the music of the language instead of the incessant chatter, so often negative, that reverberates through our thoughts. This just might allow knee-jerk reaction such as, 'I don't understand this therefore I hate it,' to be suspended... And writing into the music of language in brand new ways that may surprise you, and your mirror neurons" (Prevallet 44-5). The ''word'' can be a vehicle for the sound and [[''sound'']] a vehicle for the words.

To demonstrate my relationship to this topic in my own creative practice, I present two poems in which I [[surrendered to sound]], letting it guide me through the writing. Following sound typically plays a considerable role in my writing practice, but these two poems in particular demonstrate the ways in which their expression was driven primarily by engaging with the "audible web." [["People Fall All the Time"]] [["Contrition"]] [[Now What?|Intro Summary]]

People Fall All the Time On the farm there was a low music to it. The goats bleated, the cows bawled and bellowed, and below were the flats where the flames caught the neighbor boy’s Carhartts and he learned every note; he howled and lowed. Accident happens casually. A branch breaks and the body lands the wrong way. Snapping is easy. Find the beat. The body is what it was to be. Dad said, Hay is for horses. Dad said, Hey kiddo. Dad said, Whoa now. He didn’t buy a phone so he could lay low. He said, Manual labor. He said, The fall as something you can take. He suffered a break in a lonely way. Lo hello high hay, the words in the marrow, the sow and the mare, Oh— what stays are the song and the crash of the tractor, the trash compactor, the machines full of love and the fields full of breaking, the fields where the light slips out. <<cacheaudio "PeopleFall" "https://poeia.neocities.org/New%20Recording%2020%20(online-audio-converter.com).mp3">> <<audio "PeopleFall" play>> [[back|''sound'']]

"This living hand, now warm and capable" by <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50375/this-living-hand-now-warm-and-capable" target="_blank">John Keats</a> This living hand, now warm and capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood So in my veins red life might stream again, And thou be conscience-calm’d–see here it is– I hold it towards you. <img src="https://poeia.neocities.org/hand.gif"> [See the projection of the living hand into a posthumous presence in the future.] [[back|The Poet's Body]]

I think of the rhythms I grew up with going to [[Catholic mass|"Contrition"]] with my grandmother and great-grandmother, the sounds and rhythms of the prayers made up of words I didn't yet know, spoken to me by my grandmother who pronounced them strangely (to my ear). In a way, they sound kind of like a non-sense poem. [Our Father, who art in heaven, ''hallowed'' be thy name Thy kingdom come, ''thy-will'' be done, on Earth as it is in heaven Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our ''truspuhsses'' as we forgive those who ''truhspuhss'' against us And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil] [Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of ''thy-womb'' Jesus...] The bouncy nature in which we recited them made "thy will" and "thy womb" sound like they were each one, mysterious unit. Before they made any intellectual sense to me, these prayers hung around my childhood as sonic webs of meaning. [[Prayer & Rhythm]] [[back|Sound & Embodiment]]

six apologies, lord by <a href=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/2003/10/19/olena-kalytiak-daviss-two-co/15841ea8-585b-4899-89d9-21f7f0530df0/" targe="_blank">Olena Kalytiak Davis</a> I Have Loved My Horrible Self, Lord. I Rose, Lord, And I Rose, Lord, And I Dropt. Your Requirements, Lord. 'Spite Your Requirements, Lord, I Have Loved the Low Voltage Of The Moon, Lord, Until There Was No Moon Intensity Left, Lord, No Moon Intensity Left For You, Lord. I Have Loved The Frivolous, The Fleeting, The Frightful Clouds, Lord. I Have Loved Clouds! Do Not Forgive Me, Do Not Forgive Me LordandLover, HarborandMaster, GuardianandBread, Do Not. Hold Me, Lord, O, Hold Me. Accountable, Lord. I Am Accountable. Lord. Lord It Over Me, Lord It Over Me, Lord. Feed Me Hope, Lord. Feed Me Hope, Lord, Or Break My Teeth. Break My Teeth, Sir, In This My Mouth. [[Sound & Embodiment]]

The two [[quoted passages|A Mysterious "Meeting Grounds"]] both describe the power of art and writing to serve as a point of contact between individuals. For Breton, it is the act of creating separately together that creates this place of thought's "pooling." For Prevallet, it is the transmission through metaphor of patterns in the mind (body) of the poet to the mind (body) of the reader. In both cases, discrete bodies are able to share thought, sensation, feeling, image. In Breton's example, these discrete bodies act with one another, pooling their thought into this externalized, communal "space." In Prevallet's, the reader surrenders to the poet, inviting the outside in. [[continue|Eros]]

"A thinking mind is not swallowed up by what it comes to know. It reaches out to grasp something related to itself and to its present knowledge (and so knowable in some degree) but also separate from itself and from its present knowledge (not identical with these). In any act of thinking, the mind must reach across this space between known and unknown, linking one to the other but also keeping visible to difference. It is an erotic space.” —Anne Carson, //Eros the Bittersweet// In these acts of creation and communication, the poet, artist, reader, observer take part in this imperfect transaction of reaching across "this space between known and unknown." The reader of the Wright poem that Prevallet uses as an example will undergo the changes she invites into herself through reading, but she remains herself, separate from the poet and the poem. The poets joining each other in a game of Exquisite Corpse may recognize some level of permeability in their boundaries through the similarities or general unity of their product, but they remain distinct bodies. What Carson describes is the thrilling and incompletable task, the erotic drive, that drives the poet, artist, reader, observer on. [[What Now?|Intro Summary]]

I'd like to share some fragments, thoughts, sounds, text, and images with you about poetry and embodied cognition. Topics to be covered: -Introduction : Starting Point : Image, Sound, Meaning, + -The Poet's Body -The Semantics of Sound -A Mysterious "Meeting Grounds" -A Few Detours ? [[Continue|Kristin Prevallet 1]] ([[non-linked sources]])

Pinsky, Robert. The Sounds of Poetry. New York: FSG Adult, 1999. Pound, Ezra. ABC of Writing. New York: George Routledge Limited, 1934. Prevallet, Kristin. Trance Poetics. New York: Wide Reality Books, 2013.