Entry 1086 — “To a Poor Old Woman”
At New-Poetry a thread has been going on for a few days about lineation. A post to it by Jim Finnegan particularly appealing to me quoted the following “‘chestnut’ of most teaching/textbooks, particularly that second stanza….” It’s by William Carlos Williams:
To a Poor Old Woman
munching a plum on
the street a paper bag
of them in her handThey taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to herYou can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her handComforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her
My reply:
Hey, thanks, James–that’s a chestnut
I was unfamiliar with. Terrific, I think it does things I don't see how any formal poem could, valuable things. (Don't take my line-breaks seriously--just foolin' around.)
Surely one could write a book about lineation using the above as one’s sole example of what it can do–conventionally–i.e., without the use of Cummingesque devices like infra-syllabic flow-breaks. I’m too busy right now to say much about it here, except to direct myself here to do at least a few pages on it for my final statement on poetics, and to note how effective the last of Williams’s stanzas is . . . because its line-breaks are absolutely where the reader will expect them to be. A kind of lineational resolution.
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