Troubadors (rhythm and line)

Look, I’m just a working stiff poet in a manner of speaking and all this theory that’s been bandied about concerning avant garde and formalism really bores me to tears. I’m sorry. I tried. So, yes, it’s easy to write a bad poem in form. Congratulations. I’m not sure what it proves, but when I figure it out I’ll get back to you. And I even proved it’s easy to write an avant garde line. Thanks Tim. I’m not sure what I proved in that childish exercise except it’s fun to be a kid every now and then.

Now, from the most unlikely of places I have come upon the most remarkable analysis of what’s been going down with Mike and Jonathan and Kasey and god knows what other poetics majors. Ron Silliman today goes back to the troubador. (Please play Van Morrison’s tune in the background as soundtrack if you know it.)

Now I’m going to cut and paste here some of his comments mostly for my future reference. This isn’t masturbation as the lovely Chatelaine practices but it does feel really good, but more significantly helps me locate important items in the future.

For example, today, a friend at work asked rhetorically why do people suck, and I went and found very quickly the Philip Larkin poem I quoted several days ago. Now this individual probably read his last poem in junior college, but he asked me to email him that one he liked it so much. Anyways I wander. Let me cut and paste instead:

Trobar leu or trobar plan, literally light or plain trobar, trobar meaning to invent or compose verse, appears to have been a populist art, immediately comprehensible to a listener with an untrained ear

Trobar clus, meaning secret or closed, represented the other extreme, writing that was principally intended for one’s fellow poets. Trobar clus is sometimes characterized as being the most difficult & obscure

Between leu & clus, there was a middle path, trobar ric, or rich trobar, which carried many of the surface features of trobar clus, but without the inner density. One can read this as intended to create a buffer literature, something for those beyond one’s immediate peers, but close enough to create a sense of something more than the plain modes for the masses.

Trobar clus was – I would argue still is – the poetics of complete engagement. It is the medium in which the poet demands the very utmost of him- or herself. And of the reader as well. It’s the mode of poetry that continually seeks to renew & expand the field of what is possible.

Often enough we hear the phrase “a poet’s poet,” as if that were a sign of a certain marginality, yet if we follow the rather concentric model posed by the troubadours, we arrive at a different reading. Trobar clus – the poetry of total engagement – represents the elements of poetry that, by definition, cannot be bled off into other genres. It really is a kind of bindu point, an evolving center out which poetry itself evolves.

Now I find it interesting that Ron has gone back to the troubadors to base his argument. because that happens to be my starting point also. But the troubador I call upon is a more contemporary one, in particular, Bob Dylan. And the issue I always confront is rhythm and line. Troubadors were concerned with that same thing. Formalists of all stripes are too. I’m sure we could list the plain and the rich and the clueless amongst them as well.

For example, I know that Richard Wilbur is loved by formalists. But like I said I’m a working stiff and prefer a Sam Adams and pistachios. But hey, they like Wilbur. I don’t. But to get back to rhythm and line, I just don’t see it. But I'm open to instruction. Really.

But here's more cut and paste from "An Overview: Why the Troubadours?" by Paul Zumthor
From A Handbook of the Troubadors, ed. Akehurst (1999) :

The melody, normally composed at the same time as the text, is the overarching form: it gives unity to the song, guarantees its originality, and makes it into a single whole.

...everything suggests that the earliest troubadours (or the unknown poets who were their immediate predecessors) created an original form from various elements presented to them by the practices and customs of their time, which they were able to transform into a homogeneous discourse with a particular purpose. The question of "origins" comes back to an inventory of these elements, of which some are to be defined in terms of rhythms, melodies, and verse patterns, and others in terms of imagination and sensitivity, without their being entirely separable.

The only certainties concern the music and a few rhythmic forms.