Space and Pattern in Linear and Postlinear Poetry

Abstract

This article derives from two interdisciplinary research projects funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, involving the application of psychological experimental techniques to the study of poetic form and reader response. It discusses the semantic and expressive effects of space and pattern in innovative forms of contemporary British and American poetry. After referring to some historical and theoretical contexts for these issues, the article analyses the results of experiments using eye-tracking, manipulations of text, memory tests and readers' recorded responses and interpretations. The first group of poems studied were lineated, with extended spaces within lines and displacement of lines from the left margin. Referring to a poem from Geoffrey Hill's Canaan (1996), the authors show that such use of space may serve to articulate syntactical structures, but may also promote richer interpretation by encouraging cross-linear semantic connections. The second technique studied was the break from linear into postlinear poetry, as an initially lineated sequence shifts to pages of dispersed text. In readings of Susan Howe's Pythagorean Silence (from The Europe of Trusts, 1990), the authors detected more radical effects of space, shape and pattern, with associated consequences for interpretative strategies and aesthetic responses. Finally, the article discusses the potential for both mutual support and heuristic challenge between an empirical study of reader response, and a historical-theoretical approach as exemplified by Jerome McGann's interpretation of Pythagorean Silence.

Keywords:

• psycholinguistics
• postlinear poetry
• space in poetry
• visual form
• eye-tracking
• empirical aesthetics
• reader response
• Susan Howe
• Geoffrey Hill

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) for supporting this research, and in particular the Beyond Text Programme (2007–12), and its Director, Professor Evelyn Welch.

Notes

‘The Effects of Form and Technique on Cognition, Aesthetic Response and Evaluation in Reading Poetry’ (2002–03) was funded by an award from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Board to the Departments of English and Psychology at the University of Dundee. Principal Investigator: Professor Andrew Michael Roberts; Co-Investigators: Professor Martin Fischer, Dr Jane Stabler; Postdoctoral Researcher: Dr Maria Nella Carminati. ‘Poetry Beyond Text: Vision, Text and Cognition’ (2009–11) was funded by an award from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, as part of the Beyond Text Programme, 2009–12, to the Departments of English, Psychology and Fine Art at the University of Dundee, and the Departments of Comparative Literature and Psychology at the University of Kent. Principal Investigator: Professor Andrew Michael Roberts; Co-Investigators: Dr Anna Katharina Schaffner, Professor Martin Fischer, Dr Ulrich Weger, Ms Mary Modeen; Postdoctoral Researchers: Dr Lisa Otty, Dr Kim Knowles. See <http://www.poetrybeyondtext.org>.

The Greek Anthology is ‘a collection of some 6,000 short elegiac poems by more than 300 writers (7th cent. BC–10th cent. AD)’, substantially derived from a MS compiled in the tenth century BC, and rediscovered in Heidelberg in 1607. There was an English translation in 1864 (Drabble, 1985: 32).

Bradford argues that, once rhyme and audible line breaks disappear from poetry, the ‘double pattern’ created by the interaction of lineation with syntax and referential meaning is split between visual and the aural. Our concern here is with forms of free verse that make the semantic importance of the visual apparent by unusual layout, but the implication of Bradford's argument is that such poetry should be seen as only a special and heightened instance of the general importance of the visual for free verse (Bradford, 1993: 17, 22).

Peripheral vision is defined as beyond 5° of visual angle from the fixation, while parafoveal vision is defined as 2°–5° of visual angle around the point of fixation, where 1° of angle is equivalent to three or four letters (Rayner and Sereno, 1994: 58).

The poems used were: Geoffrey Hill, ‘To the Nieuport Scout’, ‘That Man As A Rational Animal Desires The Knowledge Which Is His Perfection’ and poem from ‘Cycle’ (Hill, 1996: 27, 2, 38); Roy Fisher, ‘Emblem: for Basil Bunting’ and ‘The Only Image’ (Fisher, 2005: 199, 166); Tom Raworth, ‘8:00 pm. May 5th. 1970’ and ‘9:30 pm. May 13th. 1970’, from ‘Stag Skull Mounted’ (Raworth, 2003: 75, 76); Geraldine Monk, ‘Where?’ (Tuma, 2001: 825); Jeffrey C. Robinson, ‘Foot With Wing’ (Robinson, 2001: 23); Gustaf Sobin, ‘Eleven Rock Poems’ (1) and (2) (Hoover, 1994: 320); Ted Berrrigan, ‘A Final Sonnet: For Chris’ (Hoover, 1994: 280).

By Susan Howe, from EUROPE OF TRUSTS, copyright © 1990 by Susan Howe. This and subsequent quotations reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

These were: Denise Riley, ‘Song’ (Riley, 2000: 58); Tom Raworth, ‘Eternal Sections’ (part 1) (Raworth, 2003: 400).

McGann lists: ‘the visual structure of Jackson MacLow's chance poems, of John Cage's work, of Clark Coolidge's spatialized texts … poster poems like Robert Grenier's “Cambridge M'ass”, Johanna Drucker's breathtaking books of “words made flesh”, Charles Bernstein and Susan Bee's parodies of the emblem tradition in their witty collaborative collection The Nude Formalist (1989)’ (1993: 98).

For a later development of this research, see Knowles et al. (2012).