Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - English Nature in Modern Poetry Nature in Modern Poetry The concept of modernism that dominates the genre of poetry in the Twentieth Century is dedicated to the proposition that experience is the doorway to self-actualization. Experience can be a peculiar thing though. When it is stripped of conventional constraints such as historical reference and structured form, experience becomes organic. In this amorphic shape poetry reveals a paradox. If experience is organic as modern poetry leads us to believe, then how can a poet assign words, man-made constructs, to convey an idea that has no rational bounds? This is the question Jorie Graham address in her “Introduction” to The Best American Poetry 1990. Graham understands that “poetry can… be difficult…because much of it attempts to render aspects of experience that occur outside the provinces of logic and reason, outside the realm of narrative realism.” It is the melding of the “brilliant Irrational” and visceral experience that poetry finds a medium. Graham states, “Poetry describes, enacts, is compelled by those moments of supreme passion, insight or knowledge that are physical yet intuitive, that render us whole, inspired.” Moments that are both “physical yet intuitive” in poetry are composed of two elements; the actual physical construction of words and phrases “which by their nature move horizontally through time, along the lines of cause and affect” and poetry’s intuitive tendency “to leap, to try to move more vertically.” The two elements of “physical yet intuitive” moments can be found in Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Loving you less than life, a little less”, Wallace Steven’s “The Idea of Order in Key West”, and Jorie Graham’s “Noli Me Tangere”. In Millay’s “Loving you a little less than life, a little less”, the speaker opens the poem by trying to quantify the abstract element of love: “Loving you a little less than life, a little less/ Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall/ Or brush-wood smoke in autumn” (1-3). The comparison of love to tangible things is insufficient to the speaker. While the comparison of her love is made with the progressively decaying objects of living organisms, a crumbling wall, and burning dead leaves, the closest the speaker comes to describing her actual state of love is “a little less” than these physical items. Despite how little the speaker loves her companion, she states, “I cannot swear I love you not at all” (4). The speaker then attempts to understand why there is the possibility of love: “For there is that about you in this light-/ A yellow darkness, sinister of rain-/ Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight” (5-7). Once again, the difficulty of verbalizing the intuitive force that recalls the speaker’s “stubborn sight” is apparent. Trying to rationalize the cause “to dwell on [him] and dwell on [him] again” (8), ambiguous examples like “yellow darkness” are used to explain the attraction. These examples become more concrete as the voice of the poem is reminded of “the way [his] brown hair grows about [his] brow and what divine absurdities” (11-12) he says. The existence of these concrete elements lead the speaker to pronounce her love despite her actual feeling of indecision: “Till all the world, and I, and surely you,/ Will know I love you, whether or not I do” (13,14). Millay parallels the paradox of language with the speaker’s paradox of emotion. The speaker cannot find the precise words to describe the intermediate level of love felt for the companion. Similarly, the actions and appearance of her partner cannot equate into the love she declares. In both cases, there is the potential for success. A statement like “My love for you is…” could equate her love with something concrete, just as the qualities of her lover could equate to a true proclamation of love. Except the irrational nature of the situation cannot allow the speaker to come to resolve. The Shakespearean sonnet form Millay uses furthers the speaker’s confining situation. The presence of a “physical yet intuitive” moment is the driving force of indecision in Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Loving you less than life, a little less”. In Wallace Stevens’ “The Idea of Order at Key West”, the “physical yet intuitive” moment is realized by the speaker when a woman’s song is juxtaposed with the sounds of the sea. Stevens’ begins the first stanza with a contrast between man and nature: “She sang beyond the genius of the sea” (1). In the very first line, Stevens delves into a “brilliant Irrational” statement. The contrast between nature and man is extended because “the water never formed a mind or voice, like a body…[and] made constant cry…that was not ours although we understood” (2-6). The second stanza shows the unharmonious relationship between man and nature; “The [woman’s] song and water were not medleyed sound” (8). The reason behind this discord is the presence of language “since what she sang was uttered word for word” (10). Again, poetry is used to describe an experience “outside the provinces of logic and reason.” There is no definitive way to evaluate how out of tune one sings with the sea, but Stevens contends “it was she and not the sea we heard” (14). Once the physical comparison between the woman’s voice and aquatic noise is established in the first two stanza, the poem takes a predominately intuitive tone. The central question posed in the third stanza is “whose spirit is this?” (18). The abstract inquiry of what is the cause of the experience is directly related to the “physical yet intuitive” moment that is described. The fact that “we should ask this often as she sang” (20) reaffirms the correlation between the physical act of singing and the cerebral act of questioning. The fourth stanza searches for an answer to the question posed in the third, but comes to no resolution. The narrator would have a sufficient answer “if it was only the dark voice of the sea that rose, or… only the outer voice of sky” (21-23) because the experience then “would have been deep air…and sound alone” (25,28). Unfortunately, the experience “was more than that, more even than [the woman’s] voice” (28-29). The narrator in “The Idea of Order at Key West” reaches a similar language barrier found in Millay’s “Loving you less than life, a little less”. He is unable to sufficiently describe the experience of nature with words just as the speaker in Millay’s poem cannot describe the amount of love that she experiences. The next stanza shifts the focus from the enigmatic presence of the sea to the definitive presence of the woman’s song. Though her voice and words, the singer affects her entire environment; making “the sky acutest at its vanishing… [and measures] to the hour its solitude” (35-36). The woman is described the “single artificer of the world” (37) and “the maker” (40) because she applies her “idea of order” to her surroundings that is alluded to in the title. Of course, this is not actual order because the narrator states in the prior stanza the woman’s surroundings are “more than her voice” (29). Her song is only the woman’s interpretation of order, just as Stevens’ poem is his interpretation. In the sixth stanza, the narrator asks Ramon Fernandez why people look toward the town “when the singing ended” (45). The town is signified by “the lights in the fishing boats at anchor there” (47). These lights are needed to replace the “idea of order” that the woman’s song offers. Instead of words interpreting the surroundings, the audience turn to a location that mankind has actually physically altered. The physical creation of reality instilled by the lights provided a more permanent “idea of order” for they have “mastered the night and portioned out the sea” (49), successfully “arranging, deepening, enchanting night” (51). The final stanza restates man’s inability to fully capture “physical yet intuitive” moments. “The maker’s rage to order words of the sea” (53) comes to no avail because it attempts to verbalize, “in ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds” (56). In conclusion, Wallace Steven’s “The Idea of Order at Key West” reaffirms Jorie Graham’s belief the “poetry can be difficult…[because it] describes, enacts and is compelled by those moments…that are physical yet intuitive.” This difficulty is experienced by both the woman singing and Stevens as they both try to capture an intuitive experience with physical words. The difficulty of poetry is pushed to the limit in Jorie Graham’s poem, “Noli Me Tangere”. Graham boldly attempts to verbalize the completely abstract act of a spirit ascending to heaven. The poem opens with Bibliography: Word Count: 1417
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