But Those Unheard
The next poem we can’t actually see.
In fact it may not be there at all.
But if it was there it would solve several problems
In the poems that we can see. We infer its existence
From what we believe to be its effects.
It may be a completely new kind of poem
Or something similar, that has leverage
On existing poems, being itself unreadable
And extremely heavy, and moving at a high speed.
Heavy invisible rapid poem-like entities
Which may never be seen or felt, almost certainly underlie
Existing poems, and may outweigh them
As the dead outnumber the living.
And they have an activity, as the dead
Can bend existing poems and hold them together.
But these are not dead poems
(We haven’t got a name for them yet).
They may explain shivering, wrinkles or otherwise unexplained anomalies
In poems we thought we understood. Lacunas,
Leanings, hesitations, small lapses in grammar, odd coinings,
Unexplained dashes or ashes where commas might be expected,
A wandering semicolon. Misspellings we pretended to ignore.
Two instances of hapax legomena in seventeeth century Siamese poems
Could be explained by a heavy unwritten poem-like entity (about the size of
Denmark)
Passing rapidly very close to them or through them.
In fact the whole field of textual criticism
Has become much more exciting
As we study here underground in darkness and close to absolute silence
Poems we thought we remembered.
****
Miles Burrows’s Waiting for the Nightingale is a charming and unusual volume of poetry, largely rhyme-free but elegantly constructed, and wildly funny. Burrows’s subject is often, ostensibly, himself, his procedure to raise self-ridicule to an artform. His specialism is the bizarre but real, rather than the surreal, inlaid with an affectionate but sharp social observation. Sex and schooldays are much revisited, while, as you might guess from the Keats-referencing titles of both the collection and this week’s poem, the art of poetry itself comes in for some tickling and teasing.
The poems in But Those Unheard are mysterious phenomena. Burrows writes about them as if reporting a new planet or particle, using the language of science as usually dispensed by the experts to the marvelling, maths-less masses. He has particular fun with the speculative aspects of science research and language (the “wild surmise”, as Keats might have said). Negatives rule: the not-heard, not-seen, possibly not-there-at-all are heavily present.
In carrying the hypothesising idiom over into a field where it’s not usually found, or, at least, not so directly revealed, Burrows surprises us into amusement. But, alongside the de-familiarisation, a literary theory or two may also be glimpsed. The voice is not so single-mindedly satirical as to advertise that theory, in either discipline, is fake or absurd. In a way, there’s a pact being secured. To understand the poetry cosmos, we need projections and models. We may “see” the invisible, and postulate the unlikely in the search for a good reading.
The influential structures in But Those Unheard are “heavy, invisible rapid poem-like entities”. They may be the archetypal structures of a literary universe. They may be all the poems of the past, somehow pressing in on the present, altering it, and becoming themselves newly mysterious as they do so … “But these are not dead poems / (We haven’t got a name for them yet).”
Or you might prefer to imagine them as Platonic forms. As philosopher Tim Ruggiero writes: “The heart of the theory of Platonic forms is that they are true and beautiful and unchanging.” This leads naturally to Keats, of course, our hovering genius loci as he gazes at the eternal, and eternally inaudible, “happy melodist” depicted on the Grecian Urn.
Burrows’s mock-lecture might be making serious points, for instance that the concept of the poem can become too rigid and heavy for what happens where poetry is made. The poet’s own concept may become restrictive. Burrows doesn’t seem to be making obvious judgements about stereotypes, but when he jokes that “It may be a completely new kind of poem” he definitely captures the imagination.
Individual words as well as poems are determined by these shadowy but increasingly tangible forces: so the cause of the occurrence of the “two instances of hapax legomena” “in seventeenth century Siamese poems” is “a heavy unwritten poem-like entity (about the size of Denmark) / Passing rapidly very close to them or through them.” Chaos theory aside, the transformation here of the speculative to the highly specific is not only funny and bizarre: it suggests that scholarly hubris is the target.
There are moments in the poem where I felt neither poetry, cosmology or philosophy was the topic most fundamentally on its mind, and that, as for Keats in the Odes, the “heavy unwritten” entity was death. One moment is in line 21, where “dashes” mutates to “ashes”. The parataxis of the preceding lines also has a disturbing effect: many of the words (“shivering”, “wrinkles”, “lacunas”, “hesitations”), although placed in fluent succession, actually represent interruptions of succession. Between “Lacunas” and “semicolon” a lapse in grammar does indeed occur. Another intimation of mortality haunts the final two lines: “ … As we study here underground in darkness and close to absolute silence / Poems we thought we remembered.” Darkness and silence may bring to mind the practice of the Celtic bards. That so-called original creation is, or at least involves, forms of recall is an appealing thought. But the poem specifies “textual criticism”, so perhaps it’s the critics who, ultimately, are groping the most blindly.
Owing to severe science and maths deprivation at a girls’ grammar school I can’t prove my hypothesis that this is a brilliant poem. But I’m fairly sure it is. Burrows’s poem-like entities are a delight. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.