Comments on: Senses and Lilies

By: Alicia (AE)

Alicia (AE) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:05:20 +0000

Hmmm. I think for one would benefit from a definition of ambiguity versus indeterminacy…
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By: Jeffery Bahr

Jeffery Bahr — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 23:11:36 +0000

I’m still trying to envision Simon’s oblique plane and where it intersects and what it might mean. That Simon.
After considerable thought, I think I prefer indeterminacy. Ambiguity (particularly in poetry) strikes me (in practice) as the kind of conscious obfuscation that admits of indecision, or perhaps worse. Or a lack of willingness to commit (which somehow reminds me that three-fourths of the recent BAP contributors are male). Indeterminacy seems more natural (both in life, quantum mechanics and poetic expression) in that it demonstrates the underlying absence of final meaning until we engage. Not that I have a lot of aesthetic resonance with LangPo and its successors. So what the hell am I talking about? If the worst of poetry is stale and predictable (not that it doesn’t adorn many a litmag), much of the best is wondrously incomplete. Reader Response? The Effect of the Observer on the Experiment? My general preference is that this indeterminacy take the form of metaphorical strata (onions have layers, ogres have layers), each increasingly improbable and important.
Ms. Vendler, no doubt, has other ideas.
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By: Ange

Ange — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:48:37 +0000

I quite like that gauge transformation idea, Simon.
I also feel I should clarify that I didn’t put Helen Vendler’s name out there to invite attacks on her. I’m not trying to be snarky. I’m really trying to get a sense of what ambiguity means to people now.
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By: Simon DeDeo

Simon DeDeo — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 07:13:47 +0000

Reading the Vendler tea-leaves is an endlessly enjoyable game. Especially since she’s not usually given to gnomicisms.
North and Monet have something in common, which is what (in my working life) I’d call an unexpected gauge choice of gauge.
Think of various realities painted on canvasses. Stack the canvasses (horizontally, say), and take a plane oblique to the surface.
That’s (one kind of) a gauge transformation, and it’s a powerful technique. Those more versed in the arcane arts of rhetorical taxonomy might have a clever Greek word for it.
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By: Ange

Ange — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 01:21:24 +0000

The North poem hails from the book _The Nearness of the Way You Look Tonight_ (Adventures in Poetry).
Thanks for the Husserl. I suppose one could make the argument that art is precisely that which counters the obscurity and contingency of our lives; that is, it’s the poet’s job not to mimic life, but to provide its antidote. But, like you, I think obscurity (mystery? the ineffable?) is essential to us. And I wouldn’t pursue poetry if I thought it were merely the well-wrought urn, “The Shield of Achilles,” and so on. I want Crane’s “The Broken Tower.” I want Ashbery’s “Clepsydra.” I want _Moby Dick_ and Robert Walser. I’m afraid if we were to throw out all the ambiguous works, I would have to finally admit my father was right and I should have gone to law school.
(Oh – and as to whether art pulls the wool over our eyes? Even that – or that especially – is ambiguous.)
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By: Michael Gushue

Michael Gushue — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:39:26 +0000

1. Thank you for the thoughtful and thought-provoking post(s). This one especially had me thinking.
2. I have solved the first problem by adhering to the principle: Everything Helen Vendler says is ambiguous.
3. Hence when she says lyric poems are not ambiguous she is being…etc.
4. Thanks for the amazing Charles North poem—I don’t know him much, but am now hot on his trail.
5. Liminal experiences are dear to other than art too, and essential to a lot of 20th century thinking.. For instance, Husserl—is that sound in my head or is it the air-conditioner—wasn’t going to eliminate obscurity by clarifying it. His intention was to clearly show that obscurity cannot be eliminated, it is in fact essential to us. And this is important for thinking about art, too. But are you saying that art provides us with a beautiful mirage? One where there’s nothing absolute about death, and we can pretend we don’t know we are each headed for annihilation? Is art palliative? The wool over our eyes?
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By: Ange

Ange — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:32:20 +0000

Don, yes, that was the occasion. I’m reticent to say more on ambiguity until I hear more about the conversation around that remark.
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:04:18 +0000

At the recent Empson symposium at Harvard, Helen did say, about Seven Types of Ambiguity, that she didn’t believe in the idea of ambiguity in lyric poems. She used a Stevens poem as an example, demonstrating that good lyric poets have enough control and precision to avoid or overcome ambiguity.
Steve was there, so I’m hoping he can correct or add to the foregoing!
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By: Alicia (A. E.)

Alicia (A. E.) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 07:56:04 +0000

It seems bizarre to me that Helen Vendler would say such a thing–though maybe in context it made some kind of sense? Where would one place the Aeneid then? I suspect Steve will be able to enlighten us.
I am fascinated with the subject of ambiguity, Though I only teach a few weeks in the summer, I am often struck by how students obfuscate when they do not mean to, and keep hidden (as though it were a precious secret not to be revealed) what they really want to say. When I teach, I point out the utter clarity (on a grammatical level) of successful poems that are nevertheless thematically or narratively “ambiguous” (whether Yeats or Ashbery), and I love your distinction here between ambiguity (which seems to me a fruitful kind of vibration or dissonance, two doors open at once) and indeterminacy. I didn’t know the North poem before, and I like how you describe its clarity and precision on the level of language–that the ambiguity is on a deeper (or higher) level. It reminds me of the Pound dictum that poetry should be “at least as well-written as prose.” For me that would include that any murkiness on the level of language is deliberate and generative rather than accidental and sloppy, a quality that applies to bad poems across the spectrum, from the infra red to the ultra violet.
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