The Longing Soul in “Vespers” (#3) by Louise Glück

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

THE LONGING SOUL IN “VESPERS” (#3) BY LOUISE GLÜCK

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters

By MUHAMMAD DIRGANTARA ESA VALENTINO AM

Student Number: 134214148

ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2017 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

THE LONGING SOUL IN “VESPERS” (#3) BY LOUISE GLÜCK

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters

By MUHAMMAD DIRGANTARA ESA VALENTINO AM

Student Number: 134214148

ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2017

ii PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

iii PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

iv PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS

Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma Nama : Muhammad Dirgantara Esa Valentino AM Nomor Mahasiswa : 134214148 Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul THE LONGING SOUL IN “VESPERS” (#3) BY LOUISE GLÜCK beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan dalam bentuk media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikan secara terbatas, dan mempublikasinnya di internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin kepada saya maupun memberikan royalti kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis. Demikian pernyataan ini saya buat dengan sebenarnya.

Dibuat di Yogyakarta Pada tanggal 24 Agustus 2017

Yang menyatakan,

Muhammad Dirgantara Esa Valentino AM

v PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

I certify that this undergraduate thesis contains no material which has been previously submitted for the award of any degree at any university, and that, to the best of my knowledge, this undergraduate thesis contains no material previously written by any other person except where due reference is made in the text of the undergraduate thesis.

Yogyakarta, August 24, 2017

Muhammad Dirgantara Esa Valentino AM

vi PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

“The obligation of a critic [is] to mediate, through an informed subjectivity, the totality of the artwork as he [or she] intuits its reasons for being as it is.” Helen Vendler

vii PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

To Dra. Sumarni Tahir

viii PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This journey is a lengthy and laborious one. That finally I made it through is not solely the fruit of my own labor and power. On this instance, thus, I would like to express my gratitude to several pairs of helping hands. My advisor, E. Arti

Wulandari, who guides, argument by argument, the writing of this thesis. My co- advisor, A. B. Sri Mulyani, who reads the draft in its entirety and gives corrections and suggestions. My previous advisor, F. X. Siswadi, to whom I owe the insight to “Vespers” (#3) connection with “Job”. And my examiner, G. Fajar

Sasmita Aji for his praise and critique during the viva voce. Next, I want to thank too Helen Vendler of Harvard University for her generosity in granting my request of her article. Also to Van Deventer Maas-Stitching for the generous monthly grants I had received during most of my study. Likewise, I thank the

Library of Sanata Dharma University for providing such an enormous resource.

(This is the best part of the university, in my opinion.) Finally, I want to thank my family, who support me financially; and my friends (Stella Noviani, Laura

Sianturi, Sapphira Wardani, Adenda Astriningtyas, Galih Priambodo and Niko

Ginting) and—especially—my companion, M. Agus Hardiansyah, who support me emotionally. They had been, indirectly, an important part in every step of this journey.

M. D.

ix PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE ...... ii APPROVAL PAGE ...... iii ACCEPTANCE PAGE ...... iv LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH .. v STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY ...... vi EPIGRAPH ...... vii DEDICATION PAGE ...... viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... ix TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... x ABSTRACT ...... xi ABSTRAK ...... xii

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 A. Background of the Study ...... 1 B. Problem Formulation ...... 6 C. Objectives of the Study ...... 7 CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE ...... 8 A. Review of Related Studies ...... 8 B. Review of Related Theories ...... 14 C. Theoretical Framework ...... 44 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY ...... 45 A. Object of the Study...... 45 B. Approach of the Study ...... 47 C. Method of the Study ...... 47 CHAPTER IV: ANALYSIS ...... 49 A. The Content of “Vespers” (#3) ...... 49 B. The Forms of “Vespers” (#3) ...... 51 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION ...... 113 A. Conclusion ...... 113 B. Suggestions ...... 115 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 117 APPENDIX: “Vespers” (#3) ...... 122

x PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

ABSTRACT

AM, MUHAMMAD DIRGANTARA ESA VALENTINO. The Longing Soul in “Vespers” (#3) by Louise Glück. Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University, 2017. Until now, the bulk of studies on The Wild Iris has been overwhelmingly focused on general topics, moving across poems without paying enough attention to the details of each. This study, in general, fills this critical gap as the book is a major poetical work by a major contemporary American poet, Louise Glück. In specific, it studies, both in content and forms, “Vespers” (#3), one of the poems occupying a central thematic and structural position in the book. This study has two problems. In the first one, it deals with the content aspects of “Vespers” (#3). In the second, it grapples with the poem’s various forms and its contribution to the content. The content, to clarify, is put first in the order as the particular poem demands it to be such. As a library research, employing the scalpel of New Critical approach advocated by Helen Vendler, this study primary source is Glück’s “Vespers” (#3). Its secondary sources, meanwhile, are relevant books, audio-visual media, and articles. In the meantime, there are three general steps completed to arrive at the study’s present shape. First, the poem was paraphrased to formulate its content- related aspects: subject matter and theme. Next, the poem’s various forms are identified and seen in connection to the content. Finally, the findings are reported in the written form. This study argues that the poem is an expression of longing. Specifically, it shows a human speaker longing to know the reason for her suffering. Together with the paraphrase, this is the content-related aspect of the poem. The various forms and its contribution to the content, meanwhile, are as follows. The diction, imageries, rhetorical devices, syntax, rhythm, rhyme, stanza form, and intertextuality emphasize the content of the poem. On the other hand, together with the tenses, the diction and rhetorical devices also extend the content of the poem.

xi PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

ABSTRAK

AM, MUHAMMAD DIRGANTARA ESA VALENTINO. The Longing Soul in “Vespers” (#3) by Louise Glück. Yogyakarta: Program Studi Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Sanata Dharma, 2017. Sampai saat ini, studi-studi mengenai The Wild Iris, sebuah buku penting dari salah satu penyair terpenting kontemporer Amerika, terlalu fokus pada isu umum. Hal ini seakan membuat kritikus-kritikus kurang memperhatikan detail- detail setiap puisi. Studi ini secara umum mengisi kekosongan ini. Lebih spesifik lagi, studi ini meneliti secara mendetail “Vespers” (#3), baik dari segi isi maupun bentuk. Sebabnya, puisi ini merupakan bagian penting The Wild Iris, baik secara tema maupun struktur. Studi ini menjawab dua masalah. Di masalah pertama, isi “Vespers” (#3) diungkapkan. Sementara itu, di masalah kedua, bentuk dan hubungan bentuk ke isi puisi diuraikan. Isi dibahas lebih dahulu daripada bentuk karena puisi bersangkutan menuntut demikian. Sebagai studi pustaka yang menggunakan pisau bedah New Criticism Helen Vendler, sumber textual utama studi ini adalah “Vespers (#3). Sementara itu, sumber kedua studi ini adalah buku-buku, media-media audio-visual, dan artikel- artikel yang bersangkut-paut. Guna sampai pada bentuknya yang sekarang, ada tiga langkah yang ditempuh. Pertama, puisi yang menjadi objek studi diuraikan secara literal. Selanjutnya, macam-macam bentuk puisi diidentifikasi untuk kemudian dihubungkan dengan isi tersebut. Akhirnya, penemun-penemuan dari studi ini dilaporkan dalam bentuk tertulis ini. Studi ini membuktikan bahwa “Vespers (#3) adalah sebuah ekspresi merindu. Lebih spesifiknya, puisi ini menunjukkan seseorang yang begitu rindu mengetahui jawaban mengapa dia menderita. Ini adalah aspek isi dari puisi ini. Di lain sisi, aspek bentuknya adalah sebagai berikut. Diksi, citraan, majas, sintaksis, ritme, rima, bentuk bait, dan intertextualitasnya menekankan isi puisi. Sementara itu, bersama dengan penanda waktu, diksi dan majas juga memperluas isi puisi.

xii

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

This is a New Critical study on “Vespers” (#3) from The Wild Iris (1993), a book of poetic-sequence by Louise Glück. Specifically subscribing to Helen

Vendler’s critical methods and principles, this study accounts fully the poem’s details in representing the feeling of longing through its content and forms. As such, this is an original contribution to the oeuvres of criticism on Glück’s works in the critical vein of Vendler’s The Art of Shakespeare Sonnets (1997) and

Dickinson (2010a).

Glück is a highly acclaimed poet of contemporary American literature.

Aside from having won visibly all the major awards a poet can dream to win in the US, she has also been praised by a group of diverse critics and fellow poets.

Vendler (1995a: 16) praises her as “a poet of strong and haunting presence”, whereas Daniel Morris (2006: 1) labels her as poet who is “considered among

America’s foremost contemporary lyric poets”. Don Chiasson (2012), meanwhile, commenting on his summary of Glück’s Collected Poems, pronounces “none of this would matter if Glück were not among the most moving poets of our era, even while remaining the most [aesthetically] disabusing”. These praises, along with the many awards she has won, are a testament to the high regards of contemporary American literati to Glück’s works.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

In a spawn of six decades (1968-2012), Glück has published eleven books of poems, among which is the aforementioned The Wild Iris. To this date, according to many critics, it is among her most accomplished books (“Louise

Glück”). Comprised of 54 individual poems, this poetic-sequence presents a trio of voices addressing one another, expressing—among others—their believes, disappointments, and longings in a variety of tone, ranging from sympathetic to condescending, from disdainful to elegiac. Manifested in 14 poems, the first of the voice is god speaking to human, mostly through ephemeral natural phenomena

(e.g. clarity of morning, spring snow, end of winter, and so on). The second voice, with total of 22 poems, is that of the human speaker either addressing god in the prayer poems (7 “Matins” and 10 “Vespers”); addressing no one in “Love in

Moonlight”, “Song”, “Heaven and Earth”, and “The Doorway”; or addressing another person as in “Presque Isle”. As for the last voice, it is a group of vegetation addressing the human speaker. The titles of the 18 poems under this heading indicates the speakers, which are mostly flowers (e.g. “The Wild Iris”,

“Lamium”, “Trilium”, and so on).

The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1993, this slender book has been studied and reviewed in a bulk of literary journals, newspapers, and post- graduate theses. Linda Gregerson (in Bloom, 2010: 109-121) and Bobbie Nadal

(1993: 178-179) have characterized the nature and effect of the tripartite voices in the book, a topic many others also have dealt with. Meanwhile, Morris (2006:

191-230), in his book-length study on Glück’s poetic-sequences, foregrounds the nature of the interacting voices, the intertextuality of the poems, and also the

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

emotional/thought development the praying human speaker undergoes as the poems progress. Similar to Morris, Cyril Mun (2008: 37-48) in her master thesis also traces the ‘plot’ of the speaker’s thought development. Together with the other studies not mentioned here, The Wild Iris has indeed gain much critical attentions.

There is a lacunae, however, among these various topic-centered studies, wherein the critics pick up a general topic from the book and argue for it by snippets of illustrating sections: each individual poems discussed never fully get its due as complete single whole. More concretely, the content and the forms of the poems do not get the critical attention they deserve. Even Morris, who claims that his book is the first close-reading of Glück’s poetic-sequences, in fact does not provide a detailed poem by poem analysis of The Wild Iris in the way Vendler does when dealing with Dickinson’s lyrics or Shakespeare’s sonnets. Not only does Morris reading inadequate in details, his is also more content-focused most of the time, giving the impression that the poems could have been written in prose.

Sacrificing the details of each poem needs not be the case: studying the general does not necessarily mean the particular have to be glossed over. Vendler

(1995a: 16-22) has demonstrated exactly this point when in noting about the working of the tripartite voices like Gregerson and Nadal, showing how one speaker’s belief on a specific issue is juxtaposed to the other speakers’ believes, she provides a zoomed-in explication of the poems she chooses to discuss.

Though her review is also topic-centered, she is very meticulous in her analysis of

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

the poems. On “Scilla” for example, although brief from the demand of the medium, is very specific as it goes in to the minute internal structure of the poem:

[It] is arranged on a few strings: one is the necklace of –ings (thing, nothing, standing, planning, things, looking, seeing, hearing, singing)—nine of them in seventeen short lines. The four successive questions comprise another string, and yet another is linked by water: “waves of sky blue,” “some image of water,” “waves,” “waves.” (1995a: 19).

The latent priority connoted by the decision of these studies (except

Vendler’s), that the general is more important than the particular, is antagonistic to my own standpoint. Vendler has implied in her book on William Shakespeare

(1997) and Emily Dickinson (2010a) that the particular is as important as the general: after providing a general comment on the poems as whole, she proceeds to do a detailed poem by poem analysis, demonstrating the possible coexistence of topic-centered and poem-centered criticism.

The piling up of topic-centered criticism on the one side, and the thinness of poem-centered criticism on the other is regrettable. The problem is not that topic- centered criticism is wrong, after all it helps our broadening our understanding of the generality of the book; but that it is all there is. Since Vendler’s preliminary finding, there has not been any study on the poems in The Wild Iris which analyzes poems’ details one by one. This study aspires to fill this gap.

As a tool to make that possible this study uses the scalpel of New Criticism, specifically that of Vendler. Not only does it lends itself perfectly to the study of specificity in individual poem, but also it accounts fully for the two components which makes a poem a poem: the content and the forms. The pieces in The Wild

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Iris are poems and, therefore, needs to receive its due as such: not only its content, but also its forms must be considered.

Let me, here, however, temper down my high aspiration. It is true that a thorough study in the mode of Vendler to The Wild Iris must account for every poem in the book. However, realizing the limitation of time on my part to conduct this research, it is improbable to deal with the entire 54 poems while still holding fast to my words to pay attention to every detail in each poem. Therefore, this study discusses only “Vespers” (#3). As has been noted by Vendler (1995a: 16) and Morris (2006: 201), the back bone of the book is that of the prayer poems.

The other poems, in the meantime, rotate around this backbone, giving it flesh.

Hence, the narrowing down to either “Matins” or “Vespers” to be selected. As to the further narrowing down to the specific prayer poem is “Vespers” (#3) thematic centrality. The poems in The Wild Iris mostly deals with the theme of human’s mortality, human’s relation with god and nature, and human’s suffering.

“Vespers” (#3), while part of the book’s backbone, also contributes to the manifestation of one of aforementioned themes: human suffering, specifically human’s longing for an explanation on his/her suffering, as I hope to show in

Chapter IV. These are the rationales for only studying “Vespers” (#3).

There are of course other possible selections from The Wild Iris with similarly strong rationales. To give an example: selecting a group of poems by different speakers dealing with a similar theme. Poems such as “The Wild Iris”,

“Trillium”, “Matins” (#3), “Field Flowers”, and “The White Rose” are all dealing with the theme of mortality with different perspective but nevertheless meaningful

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

interactions. A selection on this basis would have been able to show how the voices in the book interact with each other, a subject that this study’s selection probably cannot show. Another possibility is to study the development of the speaker as the prayer poems progress, selecting either Matins (#1-#7) or Vespers

(#1-#10) to focus on. Again, this subject is also underrepresented here. However, choosing both of these possibilities would only extend other researches findings:

Gregerson and Vendler for the former; Morris and Wun for the later. In the face of either extending the researches of other or making an original contribution to the criticism of The Wild Iris, I choose the later one.

This study, admittedly, is very limited in scope. However, in is concentrated scope, it hopes to provides a full account of the interrelatedness of “Vespers”

(#3)-‘s content (the matter expressed) and forms (the contribution of the formal features to that matter). In such a small slice in the wide field-like expanse of The

Wild Iris, this study aspires—borrowing Levinson’s comment (in Scott, 1991) on

Vendler—to “leaves no rift unfilled.” In doing so, I hope to present the packed richness of the poem.

B. Problem Formulation

As noted, this is a New Critical reading of “Vespers” (#3) with the guiding of Vendler’s theory. As such, it examines both the content and forms of the poem with the analytical steps of Vendler. Transposing this into questions, this study asks:

1. What is the content of “Vespers” (#3)?

2. What is the forms’ contribution to the content of “Vespers” (#3)?

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

C. Objectives of the Study

This study has two objectives. One is to articulate the content “Vespers”

(#3). The other is to details the contribution of the poem’s forms to that content..

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

A. Review of Related Studies

Representative of other related studies, the following two are reviewed to complement this research. The first one is “Errand in the Spiritual Wilderness”, a section in Daniel Morris’ pioneering book, The Poetry of Louise Glück (2006).

Morris presents the generality of The Wild Iris—an important one to note as the present study tends to overlook this particular aspect—as well as a one-by-one close reading of the prayer poems, including “Vespers” (#3). The second related study is “Flower Power” (1993) by Helen Vendler, originally a review on The

New Republic but later anthologized in Soul Says (1995a). Vendler similarly discusses the generality of the book, but also provides some remarks on some poem’s specific features.

1. Morris’ “Errand in the Spiritual Wilderness”

Morris (2006) reads The Wild Iris twice. At first reading (2006: 191-192), he presents a general reading in which he attempts to contextualize The Wild Iris in Glück’s creative oeuvre, concluding that the book “recall[s] the nature lyrics in

The House on Marshland as well as the mourning of a daughter for her father in

Ararat while also anticipating the ‘high-low’ experiment of Meadowland” and that the book “coordinates an eclectic grab bag of multicultural resources” and then combines it into “a series of meditative religious poems in which the speaker experiences intimation of immortality.” At the same time, he reads it also with a

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Bloomian perspective, concluding that the book shows Glück in agon with the voice of Yahweh of The Old Testament. In other words, Glück is revising the writing of her strong precursor, in this case the author(s) of the Hebrew Bible, through her poems in The Wild Iris.

At his second reading, Morris ‘close-reads’ the prayer sequence (“Matins”

& “Vespers”) and some of the flower and god’s poems, finding the narrative as well as the lyrical interest of the sequence. Encapsulating both interests, Morris writes

[Through Vespers and Matins,] Glück can focus on the gardener-poet’s unfulfilled spiritual desires, her yearning for affection, as her moods shift during the day, and in the gardener’s different seasons of cultivation, fruition, aftermath, and desire for renewal after her withering garden has, metaphorically, suggested the limits to any human endeavor. (2006: 202) The first syntactical part of the extract summarizes the lyrical interest of the sequence according to Morris, whereas the second one the narrative interest (“as her moods shift […]”).

Specifically on “Vespers” (#3), Morris (2006: 205-206) finds, in its elegiac description of “a late point in the gardening season, as well as, by analogy, lateness in the sequence of lyric mediations”, both an expression of suffering similar to Job of the Old Testament and also an encoded act of skeptical self- commentary on the overall project Glück has done in The Wild Iris. Furthermore,

Morris also notes that “Vespers” (#3) recalls “Matins” (#6) in its similar portrayal of the human speaker as worse off than the other creations.

Needless to say, Morris’ study is relevant to my research as it studies the same objects of study. More than that, the relevance is increased as he also

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

expresses several points I find true. For example, his contention that “Vespers”

(#3) has a content similarity to “Job” and that it echoes the sentiment of “Matins”

(#6) are correct in my opinion. To these points of agreement, my research is then a modification and elaboration of his rather brief discussion. There also are points of disagreement, however. Most vital of all, I find his implicit assumption of the triviality of forms unacceptable. It is very apparent through his reading that he overlooks, or takes for granted, the formal features of the poem. In either case, that he provides very scant analysis of the significance of the formal features to the content is unsatisfying. Here, my reading supplies what Morris fails to do.

One last point. Stemming from our different focus, Morris and I assign a different role for the poem’s speaker in our reading. Morris gives the human speaker, which he identifies as Glück, a twofold role: one is as the speaker of the prayer poems; two is as the speaker of also the god and flower poems. In the book, according to Morris, Glück is indulging herself in an imaginative ventriloquism; asking and responding to her own questions through the self-made persona of flowers and god. This assumption is not wrong: of course the poet is the one behind all those various characters, but for the purpose of the present research which aspires only to explain what the book does as oppose to what the poet does through the book, such assumption is unnecessary. My own position thus is to assume that in the book, the speaker is a fictional character who speaks only through the prayer poems. The other poems, in the meantime, instead of spoken by the persona of Glück herself, assuming the masks of flowers and god, are really spoken by talking flowers and a responding god. However, I follow

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Morris in considering that the speaker can strongly be identified as Glück’s own persona as the textual evidence from the prayer sequence, elaborated in Chapter

IV, clearly shows.

2. Vendler’s “Flower Power”

Preceding Morris by 13 years, in the second related study, Vendler points out several points of interest in The Wild Iris. Unlike Morris’, her study does not directly touch on “Vespers” (#3). Her study is still relevant, nonetheless, as it outlines not only the generalities—complementing what Morris has also observed, but also the specificity of the poems it discusses, opening a path for subsequent specific close-reading of the poems. In a nutshell, Vendler’s review (1995a: 21) can be summarized as aiming to “show [The Wild Iris’s] didactic and dialectical nature, its dimensions, its mythical means”.

Agreed on by the majority of commentators, Vendler (1995a: 18-22) illustrates dialectical nature of the poems in book by taking as an example a group of three poems: “Scilla” spoken by a flower, “Retreating Wind” by god, and

“Love in Moonlight” by the human speaker. In “Scilla”, the bed of flowers contends that individual uniqueness of the soul is unimportant. Accordingly, what the individual soul has had, such as erotic life, is also unimportant. Rather than mourning for it, human being, on the contrary should live communally like plants,

“undifferentiated”. In “Retreating Wind”, god corrects scilla point of view by saying that human being cannot live like plants for the linearity of human life is entirely different from the cyclic life of plants. Finally, the human speakers in

“Love in Moonlight” contributes to this dialectic by embodying “all that the erotic

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

life has meant, could mean, did mean” in a beautiful image of the world showered with moonlight, a metaphor for the memory of the now lost erotic life. Still closely related to this dialectic is the didactic nature of the poems, which rises out the speakers’ different contentions: each of the argument forwarded by the speakers persuades the reader to take each single view. For instance, the didactic nature of scilla is their proposition that human being should, as Vendler (1995a:

20) puts it, “live like plants”.

Next, Vendler alludes to what she calls the dimensions of the poem. There are two ways to see this. The first one is dimensions as the specific structure and features of each poems she chooses to exemplify. For example, in “Scilla”, she sees linking chain of ‘–ings’—happening nine times in seventeen short lines—as the specific structure of the poem. In addition, she also sees as specific structures the chains of question constructions and water-related words (“waves of sky blue”, “some image of water”, “waves”, “waves”, “waves”). In “April”, meanwhile, Vendler sees the significance of the formal features of rhyme (i.e. alliteration, assonance) in “the wild scilla, white/ the wood violet”, which functions to act out its content. As for the second way to see dimensions is as the poem intertextual aspect. In the flower poems, Vendler (1995a: 17) sees Glück joining the tradition of poets “using flowers as the image of the soul”. The pioneer, Vendler implies, is George Herbert who first identify the soul with a flower. After him is Emily Dickinson who in “Through the Dark Sod –as

Education –“ does the same. Only after that comes Glück of the flower poems.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

The last point from the review is the mythical means by which the The Wild

Iris conveys its content. As Vendler (1995a: 17) notes, Glück is here revisiting again the myth of the Eden which she has rewritten in an earlier sequence called

“The Garden”. Still assuming in this earlier poem that Eden is still intact, in The

Wild Iris, Eden has collapsed. The garden of the book, therefore, is a different garden situated on earth but pretty much the same in physical appearance with the now lost Eden. The function of this mythical element is to constitute the setting in which the lyrical expressions and narrative elements takes place.

Having written thus, it is clear that my study benefits from her—as well as

Morris’—outlining of the generality of The Wild Iris as my study tends to overlook this aspect. Furthermore, her pioneering close-reading of the specific formal features of two of the poems, “Scilla” and “April”, opens the path for subsequent similar study. In the midst of overwhelming number of topic-centered criticism on The Wild Iris, one would have to be so daring to start a poem- centered criticism if there were none doing a similar thing. Path-opening as it is,

Vendler’s discussion of the specific structure of “Scilla”, nevertheless, is not yet satisfying. Contrary to her usually practice, she does not elaborate what significance is there in the poem’s overlapping structures; she stops at pointing out each of them. It is matter of regret for me, therefore, that she does not do what she could have done convincingly had she chosen to. As response to this, my study seeks to go into more details in its analysis of content and forms as well as their interrelatedness. Finally, my study also differs from Vendler’s in terms of its specific object of study as she nowhere mentions “Vespers” (#3).

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

B. Review of Related Theories

In this section I discuss the theoretical backbone and practical guiding-step underlying my study. The first sub-section elaborates the key critical terms used in this study, namely content and forms. Not less important, on the second sub- section, Vendler’s relevant critical assumptions and her interpretive methodology are discussed. My discussion on Chapter VI relies its premises on Vendler’s assumptions and follows her analytical steps.

1. Content and Forms a. What is content; What are forms?

Edward Quinn (2006: 97) has implied that content and forms are the two fundamental concepts of modern literary criticism. As expected from such position, they have been defined by various scholars with also various expressions. Even the mere terms also come with similarly various alternatives: matter & manner, meaning & matter, body and meaning, subject matter & style, and thematic & formal elements. Yet, among the various definitions, there is a red line to be pulled out: generally speaking, content is the abstract ideas expressed; form is the concrete expression of that ideas. In M. H. Abrams (2012) terms, for example, forms are “the material body”, whereas content is “the immaterial meaning”. Content, to put bluntly, is beyond the page; forms are all there are on the page.

Selecting from various scholars making a similar point—either explicitly or implicitly—to the above general differentiation of content and form (e.g. Childs and Fowler, 2006: 91; Vendler, 1997: 4 & 12; Quinn, 2006: 170, Brooks and

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Warren, 1960: 76, X. J. Tyson (2011: 41)), here are two representatives: Michael

Ryan (2012: 2) defines content as “the things stories are about” & “what a work of art is about” (3) and form as the arrangement of that content (1). In Ryan’s definition, “things” and “what” are put in the place of ideas; and “arrangement” is put in place of how the ideas are expressed. Similarly, Cuddon and Habib (2013:

285) write that content is “the substance or what it is about”; whereas forms are

“the manner in which [an artwork] is made”. What they mean is that the former is the abstract substance of an artwork; whereas the form is the particular manner in which that substance are expressed. Different though in their expressions, Ryan’s and Cuddon–Habib definitions—as well as those of the other scholars mentioned—nevertheless express the same idea with the above general definition: content is what is expressed and forms are the expression of content.

Now, this definition that’s just passed stays at the general and abstract plane. As such, it is not readily applicable to a practical criticism such as this one.

Therefore, in the following I focus on a more precise and practically viable definition of content and forms which nevertheless falls under the umbrella of the previously discussed general definition. In her book on Shakespeare’s sonnets, making a point on what a poem should do, Vendler (1997: 4) writes: “the theme must be freshly imagined, the genre must be renewed, and the words must surprise and satisfy from the point of view of proportion, musicality, and lexical vivacity”. Here, she implies that the content of a poem amounts to the theme; the forms, on the other hand, amount to genre (intertextuality, syntax, rhythm, rhyme, stanza form), proportion (structure), musicality (rhyme, rhythm), and word

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

(diction). More from Vendler: on different page of the same book she provides a further look at content and forms, saying that content also consists of subject matter (“paraphrasable statements” (14); “propositional statements” (40)); whereas forms additionally consist of imagery and rhetorical devices (13). Still more, in her two other books, Vendler adds that tenses (2010b: 127; 1995b: 71) and syntax (word order/ lineation) (1995b: 71) are also included in forms. To end with, adding to Vendler are Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson (2009: 640), who, aside from specifying that the content of poetry must be materials of life (events, feeling, ideas), complement another element of forms, and that is, intertextuality

(“allusion”).

Vendler, Arp, and Johnson are not alone in saying thus. In agreement with them on what constitutes content and forms with various degree of similarity on details are scholars such as Abrams & Harpham (on content = subject matter)

(2009: 125), Quinn (on content = subject matter & theme) (2006: 97), Edgar V.

Roberts & Henry E. Jacobs (on content = subject matter (“summary”) & theme

(“subject, topic, idea”) (1986: 318-319), Diana Gioa & X. J. Kennedy (on content

= theme & subject matter) (2002: 8), Katie Wales (on content = subject matter; forms = rhyme, rhythm, lineation, rhetorical devices) (2004: 169), Childs &

Fowler (on content = subject matter; on forms = structure (“temporal form”), rhyme & rhythm (“musical” quality), and diction & rhetorical devices (“lexical”

& “syntactic” quality)) (2006: 93), Frank Madden (on forms = structure, rhyme, and rhythm) (2002: 60), John Hollander (on forms = syntax (word order/ lineation) (2014: 3), and Shira Wolosky (on forms = diction, syntax

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

(lineation/word order), imagery, rhetorical devices, stanza form, intertextuality, rhythm, and rhyme)) (2001: vii). With these many scholars in a relatively unanimous opinion, it can be said with a fairly firm ground that content consists of subject matter—roughly the paraphrase of the poem—and theme—the general idea implied by that subject matter; and that forms consist of diction, structure, tenses, imagery, rhetorical devices, syntax, rhythm, rhyme, stanza form, and intertextuality. b. Forms

Having come to the conclusion at this point of what constitutes content and forms, the second one, is still need further elaboration. In the following, thus, I provide short description for each of the various forms relevant to this study.

i. Diction

Diction is word selection with a significant selection’s reason(s). Wolosky writes (2001: 200): diction is a “selection of individual words according to their level of formality, ordinary context, and so on”. Here, she points to the notion that it is motivated by a purpose, two examples of which are either to imply formality or banality. Barnet, Burto, and Cain (2008: 652) provide another reason by pointing out that diction may serve to identify a particular aspect of identity a speaker has. They also add, diction may serves to reveal the tone of a poem, that is, both the abstract attitude of the speaker to what s/he talks about or to whom s/he talks to; and the concrete method of elucidation had an ideal reader recite the poem. For example, in my discussion on “Vespers” (#3), I argue that the reason why in the second part of the poem the word ‘lambs’ is used instead of ‘sheep’ to

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

refer to the same entity, is because the speaker has changed her attitude toward the subject of her speech from feeling superior to inferior. Accordingly, the imagined method of recitation the ideal reader of the poem should have is that which expresses first superior protestation and then inferior desperation. Finally, as some word carries with them not only denotative meanings, but also connotative meanings, added and carried along as culture progresses, in discussing diction, these two meanings are both taken into consideration. The previous example of

‘lambs’-‘sheep’ can serve as an example: the former unmistakably carries a different added meaning compared with the later, explained in details on Chapter

IV. ii. Structure

In A. R. Ammons’ poem of finding moral lesson in nature (in Vendler,

2010b: 372), “The City Limits”, there apparent the logical When This – Then That pattern which organizes the whole poem. Put differently, when seen in its light, nothing in the poem is left out. It is this kind of organizing pattern that this study called the structure of a poem. Vendler (2010b: 86) offer the only definition I know of this concept, writing that it is “the intellectual or logical shapes into which its thoughts are dynamically organized”. Adding several dozen pages later—calling it this time as “Inner Structural Form”—that it is the “dynamic shapes, which derives from the curve traced by the emotions of the poem as they change over its duration” (123). With such definition, Vendler implies that structure gives shapes to an amoebic thought; that as an effect, it can be intellectually perceived; and that it reflects the modulation of feeling in the poem.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Finally, perceiving the structure of a poem is of major importance. One, a poem is easier to deal with when it is broke-down into smaller parts and noticing the structure is the way to do this (131). Two, structure is the foremost door to enter a poem’s meaning as it is the skeletal backbone. iii. Tenses

Coming from the Old French ‘tens’, meaning ‘time’, or more relevantly

"tense of a verb" (“Tenses”), tenses are functional elements of language giving information of the time an action happens or a state exists. Wales (2011: 418) put as “a category in grammar of the verb phrase expressing relations of time”. In traditional English grammar book such as Understanding and Using English

Grammar (1998), there are three kinds of tenses in English: past, present, and future tenses; which are further divided into four sub-kind for each: simple, progressive, perfect, and perfect progressive. For reason of space, description of the specific function of all sixteen disparate tenses are not given here. Instead, only those that are directly relevant to this study are inserted in the discussion on

Chapter VI. iv. Imagery

Imagery is a word—or a group of words—producing a mental image, the kind people daily gets from sensual experiences. Madden (2002: 62) defines imagery as words prompting mental picture. Vendler (2010b: 92), meanwhile, has it as nouns or phrases referring to something that an artist could represent by graphic means. Still more, Abrams and Harpham (2009: 151) write, “imagery is used […] to signify only specific descriptions of visible objects and scenes,

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

especially if the description is vivid and particularized”. Different though in form, these three scholars basically express the same point as mine. In addition, Abrams and Harpham’s makes a very important point as it further differentiates between what is imagery and what is not, since all concrete nouns are actually image- projecting words.

Yet, these definitions, in its face, are too limited. Rather than keeping in line with the original sense of ‘image’, imagery can produce not merely visual images.

Elaborating the subject further, Abrams and Harpham (151) detail seven categories of image which this study also assumes: visual, corresponding to the sensual experience of seeing; auditory to hearing; tactile to touch; olfactory to smell; gustatory to taste; kinesthetic to movement; and thermal to heat/cold.

Finally, the function of imagery are not merely for illustrative or decorative purposes, but further—generally speaking—to contribute significantly to content of the poem (Brooks and Warren, 1960: 269). As an example is my discussion on

“Vespers” (#3) wherein the imagery serves to reinforce what the diction has revealed: the change of the speaker’s attitude—a central thematic aspect. v. Rhetorical Devices

Alternatively called as ‘figures of speech’, ‘rhetoric’, or ‘figurative language’, disregarding the quarrel between theorists on the further division between tropes and scheme, rhetorical devices are instances of prescribed language use which defies everyday use of language. Explaining Heinrich Plett’s definition, Wales (2011: 162) defines it as a practice of language departing “from the linguistic ‘norms’ of everyday language in some way, whether semantically,

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

or syntactically”, including both “rule-breaking” and “over-regular” practice of language. To the same point, Cuddon and Habib (2013: 279) delineate it as that which departs from everyday language: “’He hared down the street’ or ‘He ran like a hare down the street’ are figurative. ‘He ran very quickly down the street’ is literal”. Used mostly for its organizing possibility or its persuasive impact, there are countless instances of rhetorical device. For the purpose of this study, however, only the relevant one is defined when used in Chapter IV. vi. Syntax

In the study of language, syntax claims sentence structure and its formation as its focus of inquiry (Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams, 2011: 78; Yule, 2010: 96).

In the study of poetry, however, it covers related but nevertheless different issues.

First, syntax refers to the way syntactically recognized units (a phrase, a clause, a sentence) are put to use in a poem. For example, in Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death —“, the use of repeated parallel clauses in the third stanza reflects the tranquil optimism of the speaker as her journey to the supposed after- life proceeds; however, when suddenly in the fourth stanza the clause structure changes, the reader knows that the speaker has realized that she is going nowhere but to a limitless eternity; that what was a tranquil optimism has changed into a state of panic apprehension (Vendler, 2010a: 227).

Secondly, syntax in poetics refers to one principle of poetic line-breaking

(Wolosky, 2002: 17). In poetry—to put it differently—a line becomes as it is because of syntactical principle. One telling example is an illustrative verse in the vein of Alexander Pope by Hollander:

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

One form—this one—makes each line a grammatical unit. This can be a clause Which has a subject and a predicate, Or a phrase. (2014: 26, line 6-10). Here, like the verse itself says, the organizing principle is syntactical units. In other words, every line consist of a unit recognized in the field of syntax: a sentence (line 1), a clause (line 2), a relative clause (line 3), and a phrase (line 4).

The purpose of which, notes Hollander, is to create a visual music on the page.

But syntax is not the sole organizer of poetic line, it can also be determined by its rhythm, which is discussed further below; and in the case of free verse, by an imitative principle, which is discussed right after this period. The imitative principle is a principle of line organization arising from the tendency of form to imitate the content in free verse. Vendler (2010b: 667) contends, “free verse must justify its reasons for breaking a line here rather than there”. The justification in this case is that the line breaking imitates the content of the poem. As an example,

Vendler (2010b: 668) discusses William Carlos William’s “The Red

Wheelbarrow”, saying that the current lineation of the poem gives symmetry as the second line of each stanza consist of a two-syllable words; and, acts out the content of the line of “something depending on something else”. In stanza one, the word “upon” literary depends on “depends”, and so is the rest (wheel – barrow, rain – water), building a pattern of expectation that the entity described are all inanimate (wheelbarrow, rainwater). But, in last stanza, continuing the pattern still, it surprisingly pairs “white” with an animate entity: chicken, making a case that “if the eyes didn’t see something inviting in the landscape there would be nothing to write about”. Here then, the lineation follows neither syntactical nor

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

rhythmical principle, but an imitative principle to emphasize its content, so often occurs in free verse. vii. Rhythm

The rising and falling pattern of stressed and unstressed syllable in English is called rhythm. Wales (2004: 372) writes, “rhythm is generally described as the perceptual pattern of accented or stressed and unaccented or unstressed syllables in a language”. In agreement with Wales, Madden (2002: 71), alternatively calling it as “meter”, describes rhythm as “the pattern of stressed ([/]) and unstressed syllable ([X]) in a line”.

There are many different systems of rhythm. Of the relevant systems to

English poetry, Hollander (2014: 4-5) provides a comprehensive classification.

However, out of five systems pointed out by Hollander, one, the quantitative system of Greek and Latin, is arguably negligible (as he himself notes). Hence, actually only four are really relevant to English poetry: pure accentual (counting the beats – disregarding the syllable of a line) like Samuel Coleridge’s “Christabel

I” (Hollander, 2014: 88), accentual-syllabic (counting both the syllable and the beat of a line) like Shakespeare sonnets, pure syllabic (the opposite of pure accentual) like John Hollander’s English haiku “A Bright Line Shines in the

West”, and free verse system (following no received system, but inventing one in accordance to the need at hand). Marjorie Perloff (2004: 253) provides a good example of this last system in her analysis of Jorie Graham’s “Evolution”. In that poem, the irregularity of much of the poem flows into the metrical regularity of

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

the last two lines, which are the conclusive conclusion to the question being asked at the beginning.

Determining the rhythm of a line of poetry is a tricky matter, especially for those coming from a different language system with the poem discussed as myself. Luckily, several scholars provides a ready-made rules to do so. First of all, Wolosky:

1. A single syllable word that carries weight, that is, that takes emphasis, usually has the accent. Single syllable nouns are such a case. 2. Words that do not carry weight or significant emphasis, such as articles and prepositions, usually are not accented. 3. Parts of words such as prefixes and suffixes usually do not take the accent. 4. The more accents there are, the slower the pace of the line. (2002: 140).

Next comes Hollander (2014: 5) who contends that syllable usually keep their word accent—the accent they would have in phrases in normal speech; and that because very often every line would not follow a metrical scheme strictly, in order to know its overall rhythm, a line can only be scanned in relation to the surrounding lines. In agreement with him on his second point is Vendler (2010b:

81-82) who say that there is the so called “undersong”—the overall rhythm, and the oversong—the actual spoken rhythm of a line. In relation to this, implicitly assumed by both Hollander and Vendler, is the notion that the general rhythm is the quantitatively dominant one. All in all, these rules are followed in analyzing the rhythm of “Vespers” (#3) in Chapter IV.

Most basic of all, to give musical pleasure is function of rhythm. Vendler

(2010b: 78) writes, “[T]he first and most elementary pleasure in all poetry is rhythm”. More than this, moreover, rhythm is also used as a device for emphasis.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

As Brooks and Warren (1960: 126) puts it when talking about rhythm: “The skillful poet finds in a verse a most subtle instrument for regulating emphasis, for underlining the connection between ideas, for pointing up contrast.”. Vendler

(2010b: 79) also, in the context of free verse, contends the same point by writing

“good free verse always matches its rhythms to the emotional content of its utterances”. In fact, in other place Vendler contends that the discussion of rhythm must always consider how it is related to the content of the poem, an opinion she shares with Wolosky (2002: 136). (A purely formal discussion of rhythm, Vendler

(1996) says acerbically, is “hardly useful […], as unintelligible as Iroquois”.) For example, as noted by Vendler (2010b: 78), in T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J.

Alfred Prufrock”, where the theme is the feeling of paradoxical attitude to experience (specifically sexual experience), the rhythm is that of initial stress skip

(XX/) followed right after with the normal iambic meter (X/). Here, the first reflects the excitement of the speaker to experience as it skipped hurriedly the stressed syllable, whereas the second rhythm reflects the dying out of the excitement as it return to its normal pace. In short, the rhythm enacts the theme and hence emphasizing it. viii. Rhyme

Rhyme is generally understood as only limited to end rhyme, that is, “the repetition, in the rhyming words, of the stressed vowel and of all the speech sounds following that vowel” (Abrams and Harpham, 2009: 316). Around this common knowledge, there are various clustering notions. There is, first of all, the further differentiation of its components degree of identicality into perfect (full,

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

true) rhyme and imperfect (partial, near, slant, para-) rhyme. When the stressed vowel and the following sounds matches identically in kind and number, it is the former; but when it matches only approximately, it is the later. There is also the differentiation focusing only on the number of sound. When the rhyming words consist of single stressed syllable, it is called masculine rhyme; otherwise, it is called feminine rhyme. Meanwhile, aside from end rhyme, there is also the so called internal rhyme, which differs in definition from end rhyme by its position only: if end rhymes occurred at the end of lines, internal rhyme occurs inside a line. To illustrate the application of some these concepts, here is an extract from

“Anecdote of the Jar” by Wallace Stevens, a poem of comic provocation to the

“European’s scorn of American skills”, as Vendler (2007) ingenuously reveals:

I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it, And sprawled around, no longer wild. The jar was round upon the ground And tall and of a port in air. (1971: 76, stanza 1-2, lines 1-8).

Here, in the first stanza, we see a masculine and perfect end rhyme (hill (/ˈhɪl/) – hill (/ˈhɪl/)) and an imperfect internal rhyme (round (/ˈraʊnd/) – upon (/əˈpɑːn/)).

In the second stanza, there is the perfect and masculine internal rhyme (round

(/ˈraʊnd/) – ground (/ˈgraʊnd/)). Also, beside the already noted round – upon, there is the imperfect internal rhyme of upon (/əˈpɑːn/) – ground (/ˈgraʊnd/).

Furthermore, contrary to the familiar notion of rhyme that just passed, much less understood is the inclusion of other forms of sound repetition under the same

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

umbrella term. But as Brooks and Warren (1960: 565) notes, other forms of sound repetition can also be considered as rhyme. To avoid making an extra section on sound devices, this study follows these scholars’ view. The first of these forms are assonance, or the repetition of vowel sounds within a line, especially in the stressed syllable of a line’s accented words. The example, as provided by Abrams and Harpham (2012: 11), is the beginning of “Ode to Grecian Urn” by Keats:

“Thou still unravished bride of quietness,/ Thou foster child of silence and slow time”. The assonances here come from the diphthong /aɪ/, which is repeated twice in the first line (/ˈbraɪd/, /ˈkwaɪt/) and thrice in the second one (/ˈtʃaɪld/,

/ˈsaɪ.lənts/, and /ˈtaɪm/). The other form is alliteration, or the repetition of a consonant sound in the initial stressed syllable of a line’s accented words. A good example of which is a line from Stevens: “Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail” (in Wolosky, 2002: 152), wherein the /b/ sound is repeated in the initial position of the accented words to make rich the musical quality of the poem.

There are some scholars who further differentiates between alliteration and consonance, but for the purpose of this study such differentiation is unnecessary as “Vespers” (#3) itself is a poem of scant sounds play.

All these forms of rhyme discussed function first of all musically as rhythm function first of all musically: it gives distinctive musical pleasure (Vendler,

2010b: 83; Brooks and Warren, 1960: 566). More than that, it can also function as foregrounding device to point meaning-connection between its components by binding them in a noticeable phonetic connection (Vendler, 2010b: 153; Brooks and Warren, 1960: 566). This binding, too, serves to give a sense of belong-ness

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

between the components (Vendler, 2010b: 153) and thus giving a sense choice inevitability to the poem. It too, as Wales (2004: 15) notes, serves to ease the reader’s memorization of the poem, ultimately helping reader to internalize the meaning of a poem. ix. Stanza Form

Stanza form is the rhythmic and rhyme pattern of a poem which shapes both its visual and musical aspects. In general, there are two kinds of stanza form. One is imposed form, which has been used for so long by various poets with various subject matters. The examples of this one are sonnets, villanelle, terza rima, and haiku, all of which has their own specific regulations and restrictions. The other stanza form is the free verse. Vendler defines it as “verse in which the lines are of different widths, and which does not rhyme in any regular way” (2010b: 667). As such, it covers a multiplicity of forms usually used for only a particular poem by a particular poet.

Regarding free verse, Vendler (2010b: 667) has noted several crucial matters. First, every free verse, contrary to its name, is not entirely free or formless. As such, she sides herself with many poets and critics voicing similar view, for example Winters and Eliot. Instead, Vendler says, “it must justify its reasons for breaking a line here rather than there”. It is such justification which is the form of free verse. Secondly, this relatively recent invention in the panoply of poetic history

admits an element of chance; it offers a model not of a teleological or providential universe but of an aleatory one, where the casual, rather than the fated, holds way. (667).

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

The underlying logic is because in an imposed form the pattern is predetermined, it reflects the view of predetermined universe where fate/divine providence rules.

In contrast, in free verse the form is unexpected and as such it reflects the view that Vendler explains. x. Intertextuality

Intertextuality is an umbrella term for the many ways a text can refer to another text. To this point, Abrams and Harpham (2012: 401) write that it is “the multiple ways in which any one literary text is in fact made up of other texts”. In

“Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams” by Kenneth Koch (in

Vendler, 2010b: 510), it cannot escapes the reader that the poem is a quadruple parody of Williams’ famous poem, “This Is Just to Say” (in Vendler, 2010b: 634-

635). A parody, for the record, is a form of imitation by one text to another by ironically displaced the other texts characteristic features into a lowly or comic subjects (Abrams and Harpham, 2012: 38). This is one example of a way one text can refer to another text. But, as scholars have pointed out (Abrams and Harpham,

2012: 401; Lodge, 1993: 98), there are still many other ways a text can refer to another text, among which are pastiche (the pasting of different styles to make a text (Quinn, 2006: 315)), direct quotation (a reference with the highest degree of certainty), allusion (a reference with a middle degree of certainty, has major effect on the interpretation of the alluding text), echo (a reference with the least degree of certainty, has minor effect on the interpretation of the echoing text (Hylen,

2005: 52), and structural parallelism.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

The function of intertextuality, as David Lodge (1993: 98) notes, is “to shape, or add resonance” to a text. This structuring function can be seen in

Glück’s loose borrowing of “Job”-‘s poetic structure in The Wild Iris. Another function of intertextuality, as noted by Wales (2014: 236), is to act as a frame of reference which helps reader to understand a text more clearly. Without knowing what significance the allusions to Austerlitz, Waterloo, Gettysburg, Ypres, and

Verdun has, for example, the anti-war quality of Carl Sandburg’s “Grass” (in

Vendler, 2010b: 119-120) is likely be lost. Correspondingly, from the perspective of the writer, intertextuality acts as a short-cut device so that s/he can convey meaning more spatially succinct and aesthetically powerful.

A final point on intertextuality, a specific one to this study. In Chapter IV, intertextuality takes two faces. In one face, intertextuality is unmistakably a formal feature: a poem is connected to preceding texts by striking resemblance of formal features. For example, the diction “beasts of the field” in “Vespers” (#3) connects it to the myth of the garden from the Old Testament where that phrase first occurs in Western literature. In its other face, intertextuality is more of content-related than formal issues, which means a poem is connected to preceding texts by a similar subject matter and/or theme. For example, the use of liturgical prayer discourse in the poem connects it to several preceding poems using also the same discourse. Moreover, tough sometimes the two faces can be clearly delineated, in some other times the two can collide and interspersed. In such interspersion, the discussion of it accordingly mixes consideration of content and forms.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

2. Vendler and Poetry Criticism a. Vendler’s Critical Assumptions

As many have noted (e.g. Richard D. Jordan (1978), Marilyn Butler (1984), and T. Gardner (2012: 269)), Vendler is a contemporary heir of the now waning but once powerful New Criticism. Like the previous New Critics who continues a line of thought from Aristotle, she assumes the coexistence of content (the matter) and form (the manner) in a poem. Such assertion proves to be true by considering closely two extracts juxtaposed as follows. On talking about Seamus Heaney’s breaking of style—only partially remarked on by other critics—Vendler writes

“[t]he macrostories of content are already familiar, the microstories of style

[forms] less so” (1995b: 60). With this, aside from implying that content is the more general aspect of a poem, she also implies that a poem consists of the pair content and forms. Now, here is Brooks and Warren implying this duality of a poem:

In treating the poems in earlier sections of this book we have continually referred to the idea, the meaning, [and] the theme. It could not be otherwise, for we cannot long consider rhythm, imagery, or tone in isolation. […] The theme is as inevitable to poetry as are words. (1960: 340). Idea, meaning, and theme are all content-related features and sometimes used synonymously. Meanwhile, rhythm, imagery’s arrangement, tone, words are formal features. That they should mention only these two aspects in discussing about poetry in general connotes their view of the dualistic nature of a poem.

More than this, the extract also illustrates Brooks and Warren’s belief of the almost inextricable interconnectedness of content and forms, a view also shared by Vendler. That she holds this view is most memorably expressed in the

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

introduction to her study of Shakespeare’s sonnets: “Form is content-as-arranged; content is form-as deployed” (1997: 14), emphasizing through this almost tautological definition the closely knit relation of content and from.

A logical extension of this stance is the assumption that when one is studying a poem, its two aspects must be taken into account. In an exchange in

The New York Review of Books (Gubar, Gilbert, Bonaparte, Paglia, and Vendler,

1990), Vendler dismisses Camille Paglia’s reading of several English poets in

Sexual Personae as “not a poetry criticism”, as she is—according to Vendler—

“always silent on the ways in which a poem is not assimilable to its bare content”.

This judgment reflects Vendler’s view that any study of poetry which only account for one of its two aspects is not yet a poetry criticism. In the case of

Paglia, since she only accounts for the content of the poem, she has not written a poetry criticism. And it is not only once does Vendler express this view of her in similar tone of dismissal:

But any respectable account of a poem ought to have considered closely its chief formal features. A set of remarks on a poem which would be equally true of a prose paraphrase of that poem is not, by my standards, interpretation at all. Commentary on the prepositional content of the poem is something entirely different from the interpretation of a poem, which must take into account the poem’s linguistic strategies as well as its propositional statements. (1997: 40). Aside from expressing the need for poetry criticism to account for both content and forms because of its interconnectedness, this quotation also confirms again

Vendler’s view on the dual aspect of a poem discussed previously. Still more, the quotation also touches on Vendler’s attitude on criticism mainly dealing with the content-related aspects of a poem. She is particularly unflinching in expressing

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

that the paraphrase of a poem is not equal to the poem itself, a view she shares with Brooks (1947: 192-214) who coined the term “the heresy of paraphrase”.

Vendler is also similar to Brooks and Warren (1960: 84) in believing that every poem has a guiding principle of totality. Contra Deconstruction, she believes that a poem has a center. In acknowledging the massive contribution of

Booth to the study of the Sonnets, Vendler (1997: 13) expresses her reserve to what she sees as Stephen Booth’s “too ready surrender to hermeneutic suspicion”; that is, his failing to decide which of the many overlapping structures he has found on the Sonnets is its most “fundamental gestalt”:

Yet in stressing the richness of implication of Shakespeare’s language over the firmness of implied authorial instruction, Booth gives up on the possibility of reliable internal guides for interpretation. […] Any account of a poem ought to contemplate […] implicit authorial instructions. […] Even in the richness of Shakespeare’s language, we are not left afloat on an uninterpretable set of “ideational static,” not when the formal features of the Sonnets are there to guide us. (1997: 40).

This illustrates her view of the inevitable presence a total principle in a poem.

More than this, of course, it also displays her firm believe in the self-revealing nature of a poem, that every poem reveals implicitly through its formal features its principle of totality.

Also in agreement with Brooks and Warren (1960: 78), Vendler believes that the every choice implicitly made in the poem is a motivated one, and thus begs the critic to interpret its import. It is in fact the foremost job of a critic to reveal, though conjectural to some degree, the reason(s) of the each choice. In response to Andrew Butterfield’s review on Leo Steinberg’s Last Supper, Vendler

(2012) writes that “the obligation of a critic [is] to mediate, through an informed

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

subjectivity, the totality of the artwork as [s/he] intuits its reasons for being as it is”. Making the same point in different context, she also writes:

All the answer to such questions must be conjectural, but the analyst’s aim is to make the conjectural answers as plausible as possible, so that they “account for” those patterns in which the composing poet, and the responsive reader, take pleasure. (2010b: 90). That a study on a poem might be conjectural to some degree and that it is the job of a critic to explain each choice manifested into a pattern are clear from this extract. In this context, what she means is that the critic will never know that what s/he says about a certain feature of the poem is the final word, the interpretation. It is nevertheless her/his job to explain the significance of a feature, of why an artwork be as it is, as convincingly as possible.

Nonetheless, Vendler is not in total agreement with the New Critics.

Vendler differs from Yvor Winters, another figure of New Critics, on the matter of verbal mimesis. Winters (1947: 61-62) thinks that assuming the forms imitate the content—musically or visually—is a fallacy, coining the term “fallacy of expressive or imitative form” to encapsulate his view. Vendler, on the contrary, totally assumes this position, invoking it again and again in her criticism. For example, in Poets. Poems. Poetry. (2010b), she sees on “Hours Continuing Long” by Walt Whitman a visual verbal mimesis by the seven long line beginning with

“Hours”. In her own words:

Certainly the successive long weary lines […] act out the theme of the poem. […] we can say that the first seven lines of the poem make us see and feel, by series of statements exhaustedly resembling one another, the inertia of the weary hours. (2010b: 41-42).

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

To her, the visual aspect of the lines mimics the theme of the poem, which is

“how long the hours seem to the one forsaken [by love]”. This assumption of

Vendler joins her to the side of critics (e.g. Brooks and Warren (1960: 24)) who believe that forms are not a mere embellishment or container of content, but rather an essential, equally significant aspect, as content is essential and significant.

Emphasizing that the forms and content are mutually dependent and equally important, that forms are capable of enacting the content poignantly; conclusion must not come, however, to the idea that every formal features bear the same weight of contribution to the content, and each, thus, must be elaborated in an equal length of exposition. It must not be thought that every formal aspects of

“Hours Continuing Long” has the same degree of significance to the content as the verbal mimesis of the lineation is. Put differently, it is going to make sense to study the grammatical form and asserts that it is equal to the lineation significance. Yet, it is a complete non-sense to demand that the rhyme of the poem—which is non-existent—be explained too. Let alone demanding that the explanation demonstrates how it is as significant as the lineation or grammatical form is. The most fitting stance on this matter is then, as Vendler (1997: xiv) herself puts it, to let each poem “dictates what seemed most essential to discuss”.

This is why, in addition, Vendler entreats her reader thus:

To be accustomed to looking, in any poem, at several levels—the sound, the rhythms and rhymes, the grammar, the images, the sentences, the allusions, the self-contradictions. (2010b: 91).

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

This confirms again her view that not all features of the poem bear the similar amount of significance and thus critic must be receptive to dwell on features having the most weight of import to the poem.

The following final point on Vendler’s assumption, though seemingly in opposition to the general conception on New Criticism, is in fact not. The frequent characterization of New Criticism, especially on critical theory-text book, has invariably been that it disregards context, be it historical, intertextual, or biographical. However, this is a gross mischaracterization of New Criticism. On the contrary, New Critics believes on the possible importance of context in understanding a poem. Brooks (1984: 43) writes: “a study of the biographical and historical background may do much to clarify interpretation”. What the New

Critics disagrees is to give the context too much importance as to make the critic actually put it in the place of the poem. Brooks (1984: 43) continues: “But these things should be considered as means and not as ends”. The context, he means, is only a mean to arrive at an interpretation of a poem, and not the other way around.

The poem itself, in every step, must stays as the main focus: it conditions, shapes, and limits the interpretive perspective of the critic. To a similar end, John Crowe

Ransom (1937), who coins the term New Criticism, also writes: “The critic may well inform himself to these materials [the context outside the poem] as possessed by the artist, but his business as critic is to discuss the literary assimilation of them”. Ostensible in her critical writings, Vendler sides with these New Critics.

She draws, when necessary, from biographical, intertextual, or historical context to support her reading of a poem. For example, in her reading of Adrianne Rich’s

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

“Mother-in-Law”, Vendler (2010b: 214-217) draws from Rich’s biographical facts (a woman, a lesbian, a daughter-in-law, a widow, a younger generation, a mother, a person living alone) to strengthen her identification of the speaker of the poem as Rich herself. Furthermore, she also notes the repeated double-address peculiarly used in the poem as coming from the famous ballad “Edward, Edward”.

With these, therefore, Vendler has drawn from both the biographical and intertextual context of the poem in her analysis, confirming my assertion of her critical stance on this matter. As to her drawing from historical context of the poem can be found, among others, in her study on Heaney’s (1998) and Herman

Melville’s poetry (2015: 144-159).

By now, I have gathered all of Vendler’s relevant critical assumptions.

Since this study announces itself to be subscribing to Vendler’s New Critical approach, what she assumes, I also assume. In trying to unfold the longing soul in the “Vespers” (#3), in other words, all of Vendler critical assumptions are considered to be true. However, abstract assumptions without concrete steps is never enough. Thus, I continue the discussion with Vendler’s critical method in studying a poem. b. Vendler’s Critical Methods

Vendler is not a theoretical critic. Outside of disparate general conclusions about the nature of poetry she inserts here and there in her criticism, she is not a critic who inductively distills the nature of literature, synthetizing it into a systematic whole, and formulated in details the method of studying literature. She is, instead, a practical critic who by-passes the spelling out of her critical method

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

and jumps right to studying the specificity of a poem or a poet one after another.

Therefore, her whole methodology is never completely and systematically formulated. This is not a big barrier, however, for anyone who wants to follow her paths, because her critical method is clearly implied in her practical criticisms.

But before unearthing her critical method, possible objection to the assertion that Vendler never spells out her critical method is better cleared away here. In

Poems. Poets. Poetry (2010b), an undergraduate introductory text-book for reading poetry, Vendler provides a clear cut methodology to study poetry. The things to notice in a poems in chronological order—according to her— is as follows:

1. Meaning 2. Antecedent scenario 3. Division into parts 4. The climax 5. The other parts 6. Find the skeleton 7. Games with the skeleton 8. Language 9. Tone 10. Agency and its speech acts 11. Roads not taken 12. Genres 13. The imagination (2010b: 138).

It is true, as she herself has shown when applying the steps to John Keats’ “On

First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (Vendler, 2010b: 130-137), that this method can be practically employed. However, specific to the present study, the method, when followed strictly, is practically not feasible as this study is constricted by a departmental formatting. Here is to illustrate the incompatibly of

Vendler’s method and the formatting: Vendler’s introductory method entails that

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

the problem formulation consist of thirteen points; whereas the formatting requires that the problem formulations range from one to three. The incompatibly is beyond question.

Moreover, it can be said that the above is Vendler’s, but it is not the whole of her. Vendler does not always follow this method her criticism. This is apparent from the absence of similar sectioning in her other—indeed more ‘serious’— works of criticism. It is closer to the truth, instead, to say that the main points is a checklist of elements in the poem which helps the path of studying a poem. In the written manifestation, however, the thirteen points do not have to manifest themselves with section on their own.

To return to issue of unearthing Vendler’s critical method, I take as my samples her critical essay on “Because I could not stop for Death —“from

Dickinson (2010a) and “Sonnet 19” from The Art of Shakespeare Sonnets (1997).

In the following, I discuss the implied critical methodology within those essay. In the process, there are both conjectural and definitive aspects of my discussion. It is definitive in its categorization of elements in the poem studied by Vendler, namely content and forms. It easy to see what aspect she is studying because she writes very clearly. The conjectural aspect, on the other hand, is in its sequential ordering of Vendler’s analytical steps. Vendler’s essays are written with no demand of formatting. She, thus, writes very freely, oscillating between features of the text. My only justification for the ordering is the rule of thumb that in analyzing a work of literature, the critic must start from the general pictures before going into the details. Vendler, moreover, seems to be not in any

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

contradiction with this. As apparent, in her method from Poem. Poets. Poetry.

(2010b) mentioned above, she puts the general first before the particular (meaning

> division into parts (structure) > language features). Therefore, to my ordering of

Vendler critical method, I extrapolate this general-to-specific rule.

The first essay, after pointing out in brief the most striking and telling formal features of the poem, continues by establishing the content-related elements of the poem:

The point of the poem is to describe the moment when the concept of personal “Immortality” was shocked into disappearing from the speaker’s consciousness—although, at the outset, it had been comfortably ensconced with her in the Carriage of Death. […] Nothing could be more misleading with respect to Dickinson’s poem, which is about the apprehension of real death, offering no rescue. […] Until that stanza, Dickinson has pretended—in her assumed naïve voice—that she had no objection to her journey in Death’s Carriage. Death “kindly stopped,” and his passenger had willingly put aside all her occupations—whether of labor or of leisure—for His “Civility.” (2010a: 225-226). The extracts displays her version the theme (“The apprehension of real death”), the paraphrase summary (“Until that stanza […]”), and the pragmatic purpose of the poem (“The point of the poem is […]”). Though in the previous section I have mentions Vendler distastes for criticism dealing with the paraphrase of a poem, it must be kept in mind that it is not the paraphrase per se that Vendler hates. In fact, like Brooks and Warren (1960: 343), Vendler (2010b: 130) considers paraphrasing as an essential first step to understand a poem. It is rather the absence of any other consideration of a poem aside from the paraphrase that

Vendler is against.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Next, to validate her view while also demonstrating how forms contribute to the content, Vendler provides analysis of the poem’s formal features. However, before going into details, she formulates what she believes to be the general structure of the poem. Vendler usually uses diagram to chart a general structure, but in this essay she does not. Instead, she conflates it with her paraphrase summary of the poem:

In the fiction of the poem, the naïve speaker of the poem had been, till this event, youthfully interested in the concept of Death, without making any personal application of it to her own life. After the first stanza, the separate pronouns “I” and “He” have fused in the untroubled mutuality of “We,” the pronoun presumably including the third passenger in the Carriage, “Immortality.” Only the shock “We” of the penultimate stanza frightens the speaker out of the comfortably spoken “We” back into an appalled “I.” (2010a: 226-227). Only after the content-related elements and general structure does she commence to study the diction (“The substitution of “Eternity” for “Immortality”

[…] the other closing it.”) (225), intertextuality (“The last kiss is given to the void,” Yeats wrote […] That I might look on Thee?’”) (229), rhetorical figures

(“She has described her clothing in a telling alliterative semantic chiasmus”)

(229), imagery (“The Carriage rides replicated the stages of life”) (227), rhyme

(“Finally, Dickinson’s deliberately rhyming of […] body but the earth.”) (229), rhythm and stanza form (“It is the only one which is not arranged as ballad stanza

[…] He passed Us —“.) (226), syntax (“The poet chronicles the journey with a series of parallel clauses”) (227) and (“This sustained conclusion with every line enjambed […] journey to death.”) (228). She further supports her position by incorporating the poem’s history of textual revision (“When this poem was first published […] ‘The Chariot.’”) (226). Having done all these, here and there

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Vendler express her value judgment on the merits of the poem (“single most striking invention”) (225). The analysis, then, ends; it does not go on to relate the poem to any issues of power-relation in gender, race, or class context.

Providing yet another substantiation to my analysis of Vendler’s critical method, I turn now to analyze her essay (1997: 124-126) on Shakespeare’s

“Sonnet 19”. Similar to the first essay, the second, after pointing out an issue it will dealt on later, formulated a brief paraphrase of the work and outlines its general structure. Unlike the previous essay wherein a graphic is not used, here

Vendler charts the structure—together with the paraphrase—with the following:

Do not carve my love’s brow. That is the most heinous crime I can imagine you committing.

What would be the hierarchical order of Time’s crimes?

Ordinary crimes 1. to make sorry seasons (we always want only glad of Time’s ones) Swiftness 2. to make the world’s sweets fade 3. to erode the world itself (But these acts are tame, and fall within the laws of nature. We know these crimes. What even worse transgressions can we imag-ine Time undertaking?) Well, Time could act contra Naturam: it could undo nature’s laws:

Crimes 1. blunt the lion’s paws Contra 2. make the earth devour her own brood Naturam 3. defang the tiger 4. kill the phoenix

(But though these are acts directed against the “noblest” species [lion, tiger, phoenix, earth’s sweet children], there is a yet nobler creature, the young man, who is a member of no species but rather the Platonic pattern for a species—mankind.)

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Crime against form by So the highest crime is pattern-destruction. Devouring Time (1997: 124-125). Also similar to the first essay is the next step taken. After the paraphrase and the general structure, the essay moves to the formal features of the poem. Those are diction (“The second quatrain attempt to do Shakespearean justice [...] glad as well sorry seasons.”) (126), intertextuality (“To begin with the proverbial and

Ovidian topos of devouring Time”) (125), rhythm (“with the frequent trochaic and spondaic emphasis”) (126), rhyme (“untainted—resembling antique in some phonetic respects—also suggests”) (126), and rhetorical devices (“But here

[Time] does, in the first quatrain, exclusively unnatural things”) (125). Note that some of the features present on the first essay are not discussed on the second essay. But that is not a problem, as the point I want to make here the continuing general thread between the first and second essay: both deals with the content first; only after that, they deal with the forms.

At this point, I have analyzed two critical essays by Vendler in order to unearth her critical method. The finding is that in analyzing a poem, the content

(the general aspect) is studied first, only after this is the forms (the specific aspect) studied. Adopting this method, this study focus its attention first to the content of the “Vespers” (#3), making the first part of Chapter IV. Only after that, in the second part of the analysis, the forms, which make a poem a poem, is also given similar—if not greater—amount of attention.

The analytical steps of Vendler, it has to be made clear, is not similar to what is usually considered as a New Critical methodology. In Vendler’s, the New

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Critical concept of ambiguity, tension, paradox, or irony is not used. In other words, she does not proceed, like Brooks (1947), from identifying any conflicting part of a poem and then unify or resolve it meaningfully in the end while also incorporating all the formal elements of the poem along the way. That being said, it is nonetheless the case that Vendler’s assumptions and steps are still New

Critical in nature, as many have observed (Richard D. Jordan (1978), Marilyn

Butler (1984), and T. Gardner (2012: 269)). Most of her assumptions are similar to the New Critics for one thing. Her steps, connecting meaningfully the forms and content of a poem, is also basically New Critical in nature.

C. Theoretical Framework

The present study is titled “The Longing Soul in ‘Vespers’ (#3) by Louise

Glück”. Stressing the explication of the poem’s details, it aims at examining the poem’s content and forms contribution to it.

To attain this this aim, I subscribe to the New Critical methodology of

Vendler. In other words, I assumes Vendler’s critical assumptions and method: the assumptions underlie all my arguments; the method guides my reading and structures its written manifestation. Such method is used as it lends itself easily to the study of both content and forms. Meanwhile, the other studies reviewed are used to complement where this study lacks and to lay the ground from which it develops.

The preliminary finding of the study is that “Vespers” (#3) is about the speaker’s longing to know god’s reason to give her suffering. This is apparently embodied in its diction, rhetorical device, and imagery.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

A. Object of the Study

The Wild Iris is a collection of poems written by Louise Glück and published in 1992 by ecco, a New York-based imprint of HarperCollins Publisher

Inc. It is arguably Glück’s most popular and critically-acclaimed work. In 1992 and 1993, for instance, the 64-page book is awarded—respectively—a William

Carlos William Award and a Pulitzer Prize for poetry, seconding John Ashbery’s

Hotel Lautreamont and James Merril’s Selected Poems 1946-1985 for the second prize.

Unlike the more common poetry collection, The Wild Iris, consisting of 54 free-verse poems and dealing with such perennial themes as human’s mortality, suffering, and longing, is a poetic sequence spoken intermittently by a human speaker, various vegetation, and an anthropomorphic god. Although each poem can stand as a totality on its own (some of the poems are published independently before the book saw publication), it is best read in the light of the surrounding poems as the poem interacts with each other in a ‘dialectics’. For example, whereas one poem shows a human speaker desperately not wanting to die

(“Matins” (#4)), another poem, in contrast, shows a flower explaining its cyclic, therefore, immortal life in a fervent manner (“The Wild Iris”). This dialectic, in fact, involves not only two, but the three speakers, which brings us to the major organizing principle of The Wild Iris: the speaking voices.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Other than The Wild Iris, Glück has also published eleven books of poems and a book of essay. Typical in Glück’s works are the recurrent themes of mortality, family dynamic, & love; and her assimilation of various “backstories” from such wide-ranging genres as Homeric epics, Biblical myths, Grimmian fairytales, and Arthurian legend. In addition to these, she is also known for her consistent endeavor, from Triumph of Achilles on, to write a book of poetic sequence.

Glück’s lifetime works has rewarded her with various awards. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize and William Carlos William Award, Glück has won visibly all other major awards for poetry in the United States. The National Book Critic

Circle Award (for The Triumph of Achilles), Bobbit National Prize for Poetry (for

Ararat, shared with Mark Strand’s The Continuous Life), Yale’s Bollingen Prize

(for Vita Nova), Wallace Steven’s Award (for a lifetime achievement), and the

National Book Award (for Faithful and Virtuous Night) are some of her notable triumphs. Additionally, she has also been awarded the National Humanities

Award in 2015 for her poetry. The citation reads: Glück “giv[es] lyrical expression to our inner conflicts. [Her] use of verse connects us to the myths of the ancients, the magic of the natural world, and the essence of who we are”

(“President Obama to Award”).

Selecting from the poems of the first paperback edition of The Wild Iris, I take as my specific object of study “Vespers” (#3). The rationales, as have been mentioned in Chapter I, is the poem’s thematic and structural centrality, as well as my own time consideration. The poem itself is one of the evening prayer poems,

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

spoken from the first-person perspective addressing god. In its single stanza body, the poem consists of twenty dominantly unrhymed lines with varying length and rhythm. The bracketed number after the poems’ title, originally non-existent in the book, is added for ease of reference as many of the poems in the book have identical title. “Vespers” (#3), for example, is the third poem called “Vespers” out of the total ten in the book.

B. Approach of the Study

In exploring the content and forms of “Vespers” (#3), I use the New Critical approach of Helen Vendler. Her approach to poetry, a continuation of the New

Critics before her, is used as it considers as paramount the interrelatedness of content and forms. The approach, thus, lends itself fittingly to a study aspiring to foreground the specificity of a poem such as this one. It is true that Vendler’s approach is not exactly identical with the commonly known New Critical approach. Nevertheless, despite such differences as have been noted in Chapter II, she is still a New Critic. In using her approach, however, I do not follow the clear- cut methodology from her poetry textbook. Instead, I use the implicit methodology found, among others, in her study of Shakespeare and Dickinson, previously elaborated in Chapter II. Furthermore, on the matter of Vendler’s assumptions, only the relevant ones are adopted in my study.

C. Method of the Study

This is a library research. Its primary text is “Vespers” (#3) from Glück’s

The Wild Iris. The secondary texts, meanwhile, are mostly critical books by

Vendler, specifically Dickinson (2010a), The Art of Shakespeare Sonnets (1999),

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

and Poems. Poets. Poetry. (2010b). Other than these, also used are numerous books and articles, both printed and published online, by various authors.

The analysis itself was done in three steps. The first was to paraphrase the poem, resulting in the abstract content both in the poem’s paraphrase as well as its theme. The next step was to switch focus to the forms of the poem and analyze how each features contributes to the already established content. After this, the findings were elaborated in the present written form.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

CHAPTER IV

ANALYSIS

Parallel to the formulated problems in Chapter I, this chapter is divided into two sections. In the first one, I seek to establish the content of

“Vespers” (#3) by paraphrasing. In the second one, meanwhile, I identify the formal features of the poem and interpret their contribution to the poem’s content.

As such, the sub-section of the second one would have been divided in parallel number with the formal features. However, to satisfy the demand of coherence and clarity in my elaboration, there are some variations on the division, both in order as well as in number.

A. The Content of “Vespers” (#3)

“Vespers” (#3) is a speech distributed into four sentences, marked, respectively with a period, period, question mark, and period again. The human speaker of this speech is a female one. Vendler (2010: 123-214 & 129) has implied that when the speaker of a poem does not overtly indicate otherwise, it can be assumed that the speaker is a persona of the poet itself. In “Vespers” (#3)’s case, the rationale is even stronger as the prayer sequence to which the poem belongs indicates overtly that the poem is spoken by a female supplicant, specifically Glück’s persona herself. In “Vespers” (#1), the speaker says:

Once I believed in you; I planted a fig tree. Here, in Vermont, country of no summer. It was a test: if the tree lived, it would mean you existed.

[…]

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

[H]ere, we barely see the hem of your garment. I have to discipline myself to share with John and Noah the tomato crop. (Glück, 1992: 36, stanza 1 and 2).

Here, two similarities between the speaker and Glück can clearly be seen. Both the speaker and Glück have lived in Vermont. Also, Glück’s husband (now ex- husband) and son is called John and Noah respectively, which is the case with the speaker too. Furthermore, in another poem spoken by a human being from The

Wild Iris, “Heaven and Earth”, the speaker overtly says:

John stands at the horizon: he wants both at once, he wants everything at once. […] How can I leave my husband standing in the garden dreaming this sort of thing, (Glück, 1992: 32, stanza 2 and 5).

Here, “John”, the speaker’s husband, unites the speaker of the prayer poems with the speaker of this poem. Building on this, it is then clear that John is the speaker’s husband, which means that the speaker is Glück’s own persona. It is then justifiable to say that the speaker is a human being and a ‘she’,

In the first sentence, the human speaker starts with a statement of her knowledge that god loves the other creations more than her. After that, it continues to the second one with a case-making by the speaker for her questioning god’s act: she believes that she is better than the other creations, but still, god loves her less. Next, in the third sentence, comes the questioning: “Why/ torment me?” (Glück, 1992: 38, line 9-10). Finally, in the fourth—the major part of the poem—the speaker imparts her on-going activity: restudying the other creations

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

(first, new kinds of vegetation—hawkweed and buttercup—and then, those she already studied—sheep, chicory, aster). As results of these, the speaker comes up with two possibilities on god’s unfathomable reason for giving torment and pain to her: one, god gives suffering to make her realize that she needs god, even though she does not think it is necessary; the other, her suffering comes because god has abandoned her in favor of the other creations. On this mere paraphrasing level, the theme of the poem emerges which is the speaker’s longing. Two indications of the speaker’s longing can be noted. The question in the third sentence is a crystal clear expression of longing from the speaker. Coupled to that is the unresolved splitting possibilities of why god torments her on the last sentence. To the end, the speaker is unable to intimate why god torments her. Her longing, thus, remains.

B. The Forms of “Vespers” (#3)

1. Diction: Title

The word ‘vespers’ comes from the PIE word ‘wes-pero’ (evening, night) which descends to the Greek’s ‘hespero’ and Latin’s ‘vespera’ (evening).

Through Old French ’vesper’ (evening, nightfall) it comes into English at first in the 14th century, carrying the meaning of “the evening star”. Later at 17th century, the sense “evening” and “evening prayer” cater itself to the word (“Vespers”).

This second sense, furthermore, is closely related to the tradition of Catholicism as vespers (or evensong) is one of the seven canonical hours (horae canonicae) for the Catholic daily mass prayer, the other being prime, terce, sext, nones, compline, lauds/matins.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

In the poem, both of these latest senses are relevant. The first indicates that evening is the time background when the poem is uttered, which the poem itself testifies when the word “twilight” appears (Glück, 1992: 38, line 18). The second one, on the other hand, points to the fact that the poem speaker is a human being and that the one being spoken to is god. The additional association of this second sense, furthermore, reveals that the human speaker specifically comes from the religious tradition of Catholicism. It is true that in itself, the title does not contribute directly to the representation of longing. However, the title perfectly locates the stage for poem with its three significances: the first locates its time setting; the second identify its ‘dramatist personae’; the third its cultural setting.

2. Tenses

There is a lot to the expression of longing in the poem than what’s first meets the eyes. By reconstructing the antecedent scenarios, which Vendler

(2010b: 130) defines as that which “has been happening before the poem starts

[and] has disturbed the status quo and set the poem in motion”, the longing becomes more apparent. Shedding its clue through the tenses, the first of the events is the state in which god still cares about the human speaker. This is seen when the human speaker concludes the poem: “or have you abandoned me”

(Glück, 1992: 38, line 16). The present perfect (have + past participle) confirms that there was a time when the human speaker, at the least, was not abandoned.

The function of present perfect is to “express the idea that something happened before now in an indefinite time in the past” (Azar, 1999: 36). In the quotation, that which happens before now is god’s abandonment. It follows from this that

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

earlier before the abandonment there was the state of not being abandoned. The contrast of abandon/favor and the speaker/other creations might further suggest that the present state might very well be the reverse of the past one: once, god favors the human speaker. However, final words on this cannot be decided for there is no other supporting evidence. In any case nonetheless, that there was a time when the speaker feels not abandoned, and thus can be said to be contented with her state, still holds water.

Then the status quo is disturbed: torment comes for her. The human speaker’s utterance, using simple present tense, points to this:

Then why torment me? […] is pain your gift to make me conscious in my need of you (Glück, 1992: 38, line 9-14). The tense does not only show that the torment happens now, but also, in accordance to the nature of simple present tense, indicates that it has been there before the present state. In addition, since every poem arises out of a disturbed status quo, as Vendler observes (2010b: 130), and since in the context of this poem contentment is the status quo; therefore, the state after it has been disturbed is the opposite of that. Had the human speaker’s contentment lasted, there is no reason for her saying what she says in the poem.

In the meantime, after the discontentment starts, events under this state also occur. First of all, the human speaker starts to ask god for an explanation. This is the earliest questioning and likely similar to the one she says in present state:

“Why/ torment me?” (Glück, 1992: 38, line 9-10). To support this point, a

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

consideration of the next event is needed; thus, I will proceed and go back to this point soon.

After the initial question, presumably after many such question, the human speaker, understandably, looks for the answer on her own. The manner, as it is, is by comparing herself to the other creations:

I have compared myself to those flowers, their range of feeling so much smaller and without issue; also to white sheep, actually gray: I am uniquely suited to praise you. […] (Glück, 1992: 38, line 5-9). That the answer she actually finds from the comparison, instead of satisfying her, baffles her the more is beside the point; the point is that she looks for the answer on her own. And to return to the previous point: the act of looking for an answer entails the initial act of asking a question. In addition, the act of self-answering implies that god does not provide answer for the human speaker’s question.

Therefore, it can be concluded that before the speaker compares herself to the other creations, she has asked question and has not got an answer.

After the state of contentment, the start of discontentment, the act of asking question, and the act of looking for answer, the poem begins. To give a clear picture of the scenarios here is the timeline graphic:

Contentment Discontentment

Asking god  Looking on her own  “Vespers” (#3)

This antecedent scenarios articulates the longing of the human speaker by implying that she has been so desperate in waiting for the answer so that finally

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

she looks for it on her own. Considered solely from this poem, god never comes to answer her.

3. Diction: Denotation

Meanwhile, the longing also manifests in the present time; when the speaker utters the poem. The first sentence encapsulates what the rest reinforces: the human speaker’s indeterminate conviction to the answer she has found for her own question. She is in doubt while at the same time seemingly certain.

Answering the question of why god torments her, she says, reporting to god:

More than you love me, very possibly you love the beasts of the field, even, possibly, the field itself, in August dotted with wild chicory and aster: I know. […] (Glück, 1992: 38, line 1-5).

On the doubt’s side, she uses the double adverbs “possibly,” which is a clear expression of doubt. Meanwhile, on the certainty’s side, the dose of doubt from the first “possibly” is counterbalanced by the intensifier adverb “very.” As for the second “possibly”, the specifying adverb “even” is the counterbalance. The human speaker here seems to be convinced that what she just said is true that she dares to be more exact about it (from “beasts of the field” to “field itself”).

Additionally, the certainty’s side also has the strong assertion of “I know.” Further reinforced by the use of colon (“:”), indicating not only that what comes before is what the human speaker “know[s]”, but also that what comes after this punctuation gets the more emphasis; the certainty’s side seems to have the laurel wreath.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

This seems to be case when in the next sentence the element of doubt completely disappears; the human speaker’s certainty appears to reign. Making clear whence her question in the third sentence comes, she says:

Concluding from the comparison she has done, she firmly believes her observation that the other creations (the “flowers” and the “sheep”) are much more inferior to her. The use of the adverb “uniquely”, coming from the adjective

‘unique’, points to this conviction. And since colon “is like a sign on the highway, announcing that something important is coming” (“Semicolons, Colons, and

Dashes”), similar to the case in the first sentence, the use of colon (“:”) also give more emphasis to what follows it; hence, a bolder mark of conviction.

However, when the question of the third sentence comes, reappearing alongside conviction is doubt. Logically connected with the second sentence

(indicated by the adverb “then”), the uttering of the question on the one hand reinforces the human speaker’s conviction of her superiority already clear in the previous sentence. This is strong when noting that she builds her question above the premise of the second sentence; hence, affirming it. On the other hand, paradoxically, the question also indicates her doubt. This is especially obvious when the next sentence comes. Again, I will proceed first and return to this shortly.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

After the total conviction of sentence two and affirmation by the question in sentence three, it is this question which also triggers the human speaker to doubt her own conviction in sentence four. Getting no answer and so returning to her observation, the human speaker expresses the result:

[…] is pain your gift to make me conscious in my need of you […] or have you abandoned me in favor of the field, […] (Glück, 1992: 38, line 12-20).

This part of the longest sentence in the poem is permeated with uncertainty. The two independent clauses making up the part (“is pain […]” and “have you […]”), expressing the possible reasons god torments her, are joined with the conjunction

“or.”, pointing to the distinct possibilities, and thus uncertainty, faced by the human speaker as answers to her question. Discussed further on my section on syntax, the question forms, in addition, also adds to reveal the human speaker’s element of doubt.

In the meantime, to return to the previous point: though logicians warns us again post hoc fallacy, this warn must not prevent us from concluding that the human speaker’s doubt is the very consequence of her ‘concluding’ question: the question, getting no answer from the one being asked, catapults the speaker back into doubt which manifests itself in the fourth sentence just elaborated above.

Besides, though in reality a ball falling to the floor just before an earth quake cannot be concluded as the cause of the earth quake, in art, the rules of reality cannot be applied directly. The fact that an author chooses to the put the scene of the ball falling before the earth quake must have a significance.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Back to the point: the last sentence has its element of conviction, too. It reveals itself from the use of the anomalous period (“.”) at the end of the sentence.

The clauses construction preceding that is in question form (“is pain […]” and

“have you […]”); therefore it is expected that the punctuation used would be a question mark. This is not the case, however. What comes through this anomaly is the element of conviction on the speaker. The question form shows her doubt, while the period her conviction. She is questioning, but not really questioning; she is in doubt, but also quite sure.

As the poem proceeds, as explicated above, the back and forth movement between doubt mingling with conviction and total conviction on the human speaker’s part emerges. Following is the visualization:

Doubt-Conviction (Sentence 1) Conviction (Sentence 2) Doubt-Conviction (Sentence 3)

Doubt-Conviction (Sentence 4)

This pattern embodies the longing of the speaker to know the reason for her suffering in that it poignantly mimics the freewheeling, fleeting, slipping oscillation between doubt and conviction on the speaker’s part because the absence of a center. And that center is the incontestable answer of god. To the speaker of “Vespers” (#3), finite answer has not yet come, and until then, doubt and conviction mingle in a painful longing.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

4. The Structure

After the paraphrase summary, antecedent and present scenarios are elaborated, the major structure of the poem emerges: the poem is structured on the comparisons the speaker has done. As noted, before the poem starts the speaker has done at least one comparison to the other creations. The conclusion she draws is that she is better than them. Hence, god loves them irrationally, which also means she suffers because of god’s irrational decision. However, immediately doubting about her own conclusion, she starts one set of comparisons: the first half to new kind of creations (buttercup and hawkweed), the second half to those she already studied earlier (aster, chicory, and sheep). The result of the first half is that she suffers because god wants to make her realize that she needs him, whereas the result of the other one is that she suffers because god has abandoned her in favor of the other creation (aster, chicory, and sheep). This overarching structure can be best charted as follows:

First Comparison to sheep, aster, and god irrationally loves the other chicory (Implied). creations (line 1-9).

Second Comparison (Line 10-20) first half to buttercup and hawkweed god gives pain to make her aware (line 10 12). in her need of god (line 12-15). second half to sheep, chicory, aster pain comes from god’s (implied). abandonment, favoring the other creations. God’s love is rational after all (line 16-20).

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

This pointing out of the major structure of the poem is necessary to provide the basis against which the other parts of the poem are explained. Therefore, I will refer to this structure continually in the rest of my analysis.

5. Diction: Connotation

There is a suggestive pattern of lexical contrast emerging as “Vespers” (#3) progresses, corresponding to the changes of sentiment on the speaker’s part. In the beginning of the poem, undoubtedly as a result of the first comparison the speaker has done to look for the answer on her suffering, she labels the other creations with pejorative terms and concludes with how far better she is in being god supplicant:

the beasts of the field, even, possibly, the field itself, in August dotted with wild chicory and aster: I know. I have compared myself to those flowers, their range of feeling so much smaller and without issue; also to white sheep, actually gray: I am uniquely suited to praise you. (Glück, 1992: 38, line 2-9). For the animals, first she uses the word “beasts” (line 2). Literally meaning “a four-footed mammal as distinguished from a human being” (“Beast”), the word nevertheless has negative connotations attached to it. It can mean “a contemptible person”, which is clearly carries negative value; it can also mean “something formidably difficult to control or deal with”, which in this context of supplicant- god relation is also negative (“Beast”).

Specifying what type of beasts they are and also foreshadowing the speaker’s positive final attitude to them, the speaker then narrows down the term to “sheep” (line 7). This word, aside from literally meaning “any of various

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

hollow-horned typically gregarious ruminant mammals related to goats but stockier and lacking a beard in the male”, carries negative connotations also, though not as negative as the previous one. It can mean “a timid defenseless creature” or “one easily influenced or led” (“Sheep”). The first one is clearly negative. As for the second, it is negative in that it shows the communal mindset of the sheep; whereas god, according to the speaker, values individuality. This is seen when the speaker ‘reminds’ god that the other creation’s “range of feeling/

[is] so much smaller and without issue” (line 6-7). Whether or not god really do values individuality is beside the point, since it is the speaker’s sentiment that matters here.

In addition to the word “sheep” itself, the speaker also shows how far worse the animal in her view by correcting its adjectival modifier from one carrying positive value to one carrying a clearly negative one. Whereas “white” (line 7) can mean “marked by upright fairness” and “free from moral impurity” (“White”);

“gray” (line 8), in contrast, carries the meanings of “lacking cheer or brightness in mood, outlook, style, or flavor” and “uninteresting” (“Gray”). It is ostensible from these pejorative words that the speaker deems the animals to be worse than herself.

But the speaker’s negative labelling does not stop at the animals; the field and its vegetation also get a share. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker uses the verb “dotted” (line 3) to link the “field” (line 3) with “chicory”/“aster” (line

4), which carries not only the neutral meaning of marked by “small round marks”, but also the negative meaning of marred by “speck” (“Dot”). In other words, the

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

speaker is saying that “chicory” and “aster” are specks, which is negative. In addition, “chicory” and “aster” are also modified by the adjectives “wild” (line 4) which neutrally means “living in a state of nature and not ordinarily tame or domesticated”, but can also mean “not subject to restraint or regulation”, “marked with turbulent agitation”, “uncivilized”, and “barbaric” (“Wild”). Aside from these, of course, the speaker expresses her sentiment directly. Those “flowers”, according to the speaker, is worse than her because they do not have much “range of feeling” and “issue” from those feeling (line 6-7).

As with the animal, the speaker places the field together with its vegetation lower than herself. At this point, one interrelatedness of content and forms emerges: not only does the speaker’s sentiment is clearly articulated in line 8-9: “I am uniquely/ suited to praise you”, it is also embodied in her use of pejorative words denoting the animal and vegetation of the field. This embodiment emphasizes what is said clearly on the surface. In relation to the findings on the speaker mixes of doubt and conviction previously discussed on study of denotation and punctuation, this findings from the study of connotation reinforces the conviction aspect of the speaker as it reflects her firm believe on her superiority. As can be concluded from the paraphrase and the denotation and punctuation, the speaker does not only express through the content of her speech her self-proclaimed superiority, but also through the formal feature of denotation and punctuation. It turns out, along with these former formal features, the connotation also reinforces her conviction. This interaction between the content and this specific form in “Vespers” (#3) can be illustrated as follows:

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Doubt-Conviction (Sentence 1) Conviction (Sentence 2) Doubt-Conviction (Sentence 3)

Doubt-Conviction (Sentence 4) Diction from the First Comparison

Meanwhile, believing now that she is better than the other creations, it is baffling for the speaker to know that it she that god torments. When she asks

“Why/ torment me?” (Glück, 1992: 38, line 9-10), the speaker is adamant that god decision to torment her is completely irrational. But it is not for long that the speaker holds this view. When the speaker enters the second comparison, the diction she uses to denote the same entities labelled pejoratively in the first comparison, changes completely:

the field, the stoic lambs turning silver in twilight; waves of wild aster and chicory shining pale blue and deep blue, since you already know how like your raiment it is. (Glück, 1992: 38, line 16-20). At first labelling the animal as “beasts” and then “white sheep,/ actually gray,” the speaker finally labels it as silvery “stoic lambs” (line 16-17). Most conspicuous of all in representing the change in the speaker sentiment is the alteration from

“beasts” to “sheep” to “lambs.” Strikingly contrasted to the earlier versions, the final one does not only carry the meanings of “youth”, “dear”, “gentle” (“Lamb”) and “innocence” (Ferber, 200: 191), but also a highly religious association as

Jesus Christ himself is referred to as The Lamb of God (Cambridge Advance

Learner’s Dictionary 3rd Edition, “lamb”). Given the poem’s context of god- human relation, these attributes are definitely positive.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

In addition, the modifier is also transmuted. At first described as “actually gray” (line 8), suggesting dullness, in the final version the animals are then described as lustrous “silver” (line 18), which is much related with beauty and high value (“Silver”). What's more to these transmutations is that the speaker also observes quality in the lambs which have not any counterpart on her first observation: stoicism. This too is a positive quality. It is not seldom we hear people praise individuals for their stoicism, encompassing endurance, patient, and perseverance. The animals, in short, are elevated in the speaker’s eyes from pit to the crucifix.

The vegetation too are elevated. At first considered as specks without much variety of feeling, in the second comparison the flowers are described as

“shinning” (line 18) and resembling god’s “raiment” (line 20). The first modifier does not only gives the attributes of “emitting of reflecting light” but also the connotative “bright and often splendid in appearance” and “possessing a distinguished quality” (“Shining”). As for the second, it does not only means

“clothing” (“Raiment”), but also, when traced to its untrimmed form “arrayment”, carries the more specific association of “rich or beautiful apparel” (“Array”). It might be objected that in contrast, ‘raiment’ suggests dispensability or inessentiality instead: it is basically a clothing, the one who wears it—god in this case—is still essentially the same with or without it. However, in the face of this overlapping connotation, the first one is favored as the poem provides an internal interpretive guide. The comparison between the beautiful apparel and the flowers suggests the beauty of the flowers. The two qualities, being similar to god

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

clothing and being full of light, are then positive in that it present the flowers as beautiful. At the end of the poem, the speaker has elevated the position of not only the animal, but also the vegetation. In doing so, she has also elevated the field itself.

The contribution of the connotation to the content on the second comparison is similar to the first as it also emphasizes the conviction of the speaker. It differs, however, from the first comparison in two ways. Instead of emphasizing the conviction of the speaker on her superiority, the diction emphasizes her conviction on her inferiority: the undesirable one is now herself. By extension, whereas in the first she believes that god is irrational, by now she believes that god is completely rational in making his choice: god favors his other creations because they are more beautiful than the speaker. This is the first difference. The second is that the speaker does not express directly on the surface her sentiment to the other creations now. She does not say anything like: “They are uniquely suited to praise you” or “They are prettier than I am.” Therefore, the connotation is the single access to this sentiment, making the contribution of forms to content more obvious. Here is to illustrate this important contribution:

Doubt-Conviction (Sentence 1) Conviction (Sentence 2) Doubt-Conviction (Sentence 3)

Doubt-Conviction (Sentence 4) Diction from the Second Comparison

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

It has to be noted here, however, that the adjectival modifier “wild” (line

18), carrying negative connotation, is still present in the second comparison. Does this means that the speaker still thinks in the end that the flowers has negative qualities? Likely not. In addition to the beauty-infusing modifier noted above, the oceanic visual imagery attributed to the flower in the second comparison also adds to naturalize the possible nullifying effect of the word “wild”. (A fuller discussion on this image can be found my section on imagery.) Moreover, the speaker’s use of chiasmus-like structure in line 7-8 and 18: “white sheep,/ actually gray […] wild aster and chicory shining” (Positive : Negative :: Negative : Positive) to foreground her change of attitude also makes this claim stronger. (A fuller discussion on this device can be found in the section on rhetorical devices.) The speaker indeed undergoes a change. To show this, following is the most concise and clear demonstration of the change.

Animal Vegetation the beasts of the field (line 2) dotted/ with wild chicory and aster (line 3-4) white sheep,/ actually gray wild aster and chicory shining/ […] (line 7-8) raiment (line 18-20) the stoic lambs (line 17)

However, there are still other creations not included in this discussion of lexical contrast: the hawkweed and buttercup. The reason for excluding them in this discussion is obvious: they are absent in the first comparison thus cannot be said to have altered in the second. Unlike the aster and chicory, they are new

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

vegetation introduced by the speaker only in the second comparison. However, there are still other creations not included in this discussion of lexical contrast: the hawkweed and buttercup. The reason for excluding them in this discussion is obvious: they are absent at the first comparison thus cannot be said to have altered at the second. Unlike the aster and chicory, they are new vegetation introduced by the speaker only in the second comparison. What is, then, their significance to the poem? What contribution, to put the question another way, these two specific names of flower give to the content of the poem? The answer has nothing to do with their connotation.

Instead, it has to do with the fact that they propels the speaker to her first optional conclusion. This conclusion cannot be derived from just any types of flowers; it must possess the quality of being independent of pain. Since the buttercup and hawkweed are poisonous and thus not edible, it seems, for the speaker, to be not pained. (The speaker’s logic here is that being eaten by herds is painful.) Therefore, it is logically sound that these flowers propel the speaker to conclude:

is pain your gift to make me conscious in my need of you (Glück, 1992: 38, line 12-14). In relation to the general topic of this research, the diction of hawkweed and buttercup contributes to stress the conviction of thef speaker in the second comparison. After all, it is by comparing herself to these flowers that the speaker derives her conclusion. It is thus similar in function to the other dictions (lambs, chicory, and aster) of the second comparison.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

In the above discussion of connotation, it is clear that the choice of words describing the other creations contributes to my earlier discussion on the speaker’s wavering feeling of doubt and conviction. Both the contrast of the first & second comparisons and also the specific flowers chosen (hawkweed and buttercup) contribute to the aspect of conviction on the speaker’s part. In addition, it also demonstrates the speaker’s sentiment change, not only on the other creations

(from worse to better), but also on her own self (from better to worse). Even though in the first comparison the speaker spells it out unmistakably, in the second, she only embodies it—among others—through her diction. Ironically, her conviction on the second part of the comparison about her inferiority is more likely to make her longing more intense. All these demonstrate obviously how forms contribute to the content.

A final point to make: these seems to be a handful of new aspects emphasizing the aspect of conviction on the speaker. However, bringing the diction into discussion does not neutralize the doubt aspect of the speaker. Indeed, it is still there in her use of the ostensible conjunction “or” and question form construction. She, to the end of the poem, is still longing for a definite answer.

6. Diction: Animals and Vegetation

In “Vespers” (#3), there are mentioned several kinds of specific animals and vegetation with their own selection rationale. Therefore, the question that is being asked in this section, one that has been accounted fully in the previous discussion on diction, is why these specific words, denoting the animal and vegetation groups, are put to use? Here are both groups:

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Animals Vegetation the beasts of the field (line 2) dotted/ with wild chicory and aster (line 3-4) white sheep,/ actually gray I study the hawkweed, (line 7-8) the buttercup (line 10-11)

the stoic lambs (line 17) wild aster and chicory shining/ […] (line 18)

It is true that much of the answer to the question is already implied. In my section on connotation, I have mentioned that the string of animal group (beasts, sheep, lambs) are used to marked the change of the speaker’s attitude as they provide different words with different connotations to refer to the same entity. In the case of the last two, it is even more marked as the two words are synonymous in denotative meaning but antonymous in connotative meaning. Similarly, regarding the vegetation group, the reason of choosing hawkweed and buttercup has also been discussed: they are poisonous and thus become a perfect fit for a conclusion showing the speaker’s observation about being independent or dependent from pain as poison is seen by the speaker as a gift of protective shield.

However, the reason for choosing the other flowers, namely chicory and aster, has not been accounted for. It is this that I am dealing with in this section.

Chicory and aster are both composite herbs with blue-colored flowers found easily living in wild state near domestic life or in home garden cultivation in Europe and

U.S. The flowers are chosen first of all for to satisfy the demand of realism; they

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

are easily encountered in North America, where the garden of the poem sequence is set:

Once I believed in you; I planted a fig tree. Here, in Vermont, country of no summer. (Glück, 1992: 36, stanza 1 and 2).

To put it another way, it would be too much for the poem to ask from the reader’s negative capability if the flowers were hard to encounter in U.S. or endemic to other countries. Moreover, with regards to its color, the flower are chosen as the symbolic association of blue color fits the scheme of imagery employed in the second comparison. It would not do if the flowers were red, or black, or grey.

(This point is discussed fully in the next section.) Added to these is the fact that both flowers are ‘lowly’ herbs, found mostly in wild state or—when they are cultivated—in a garden planted directly in the dirt. They are not in the same prestige, in other words, like orchid or roses which are not commonly found living in wild state near from domestic life. The significance of the fact that they are

‘lowly’ herbs made the speaker change of attitude in the first and in the second comparison believable. In the first, the speaker, intimating from her everyday encounter with the flowers the mundane quality of the flower, disregarding its

‘hidden beauty’, thought that she is far more superior to them. On the contrary, after conducting her second comparison, which implies a more sustained observation, the speaker finally realize that they are beautiful in their blueness.

(This conclusion is discussed more fully in my section on connotation and imagery). In short, the flowers were chosen as they contribute to the content of the poem.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

7. Imagery

I have intimated earlier that the imagery on the second part of the comparison nullifies the negative aspect of the word “wild” in the context of god- supplicant relationship, so that it can be said that the flowers are not seen as undesirable anymore. Returning later to this, first I want to map out the imageries and deal with each chronologically. There are three imageries in the poem, all visual. The first image occurs in the first part: “the field itself, in August dotted/ with wild chicory and aster” (Glück, 1992: 38, line 3-4). As I have discussed earlier under a different focus, on this part the speaker deems the other creations to be inferior to herself. Looking it now through the focus of imagery, the speaker is implying the same point: the image of the field full of thriving chicory and aster, making it look like specks on an otherwise spotless expanse, is an image of the undesirable.

On the contrary, the imageries in the second part of the poem are making the opposite point. The two images are both mesmerizing visual imageries presenting the vegetation and animal as desirable. One is on the animal: “the stoic lambs turning/ silver in twilight” (Glück, 1992: 38, line 17-18). The silvery glittering color of the animal from the light of the evening gives them lustrous beauty. And this assertion becomes stronger when it is noted that in another poem from The

Wild Iris, “Love in Moonlight”, a similar evening light-related imagery is also employed to give the quality of beauty. Only here, it is moonlight—twilight’s kin—which gives beauty:

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Outside, a summer evening, a whole world thrown away on the moon: groups of silver forms which might be building or trees, the narrow garden where the cat hides, rolling on its back in the dust, the rose, the coreopsis, and in the dark, the gold dome of the capitol converted to an alloy of moonlight (Glück, 1992: 19, line 5-11).

Here, moonlight, which since the ancient time has been said as a symbol of beauty, beautifies the objects it shines upon. The twilight in “Vespers” (#3) too serves such function. The second image is the one I have put aside earlier on the vegetation. Similar to the one on the animal, this too serves to beautify its object of description: “waves of wild aster and chicory shinning/ pale blue and deep blue” (Glück, 1992: 38, line 3-4). Here, two images: that of the ocean waves and that of the bed of flowers, are conflated into an oceanic bed of flowers. Visually, this suggests an image of beauty; kinesthetically, it is the same: the flowers become a symphonic bluish waves intermittently exhibiting their colors.

Moreover, the color chosen—or the blue flowers chosen for that matter—also adds to intensify this quality. Long has been fixed in literary convention—among other things—as the symbol of heaven (Farber, 2007: 31), blue in this context signifies heavenly qualities, one of which is beauty. One “blue” is sufficient, but the repetition of the word twice, further intensify the beauty of the other creations.

Thus, at the end of the poem, the speaker has changed her belief on who is more superior in terms of beauty.

Arriving here, it is clear that the imagery works in the same way as the diction: at first presenting the other creations as undesirable, it then elevates them to the position of the beautiful. As such, the imagery can be said to contribute to

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

the conviction of the speaker: first at the other creations’ inferiority, second at their superiority.

8. Rhetorical Devices

There are six individual rhetorical devices in “Vespers” (#3. The first one is a correctio, or the “correction of a word or a phrase used previously” (Lanham,

1991: 42). This figure occurs when the speaker is describing the animals in a state of full conviction: “also to white sheep/ actually gray” (Glück, 1992: 38, line 7-8).

The telling correction from “white” to “gray” bridged by the word ”actually” expresses the speaker’s intense level of conviction on her superiority. In relation to the overall design of the poem, this figure marks the moment when the speaker is placing herself in an ivory tower above the animal. Yet, it very soon becomes her bane that she feels thus as in the later part of the poem the speaker experiences a moment of painful realization: in terms of beauty, she is in fact inferior to them.

Surely, the downfall is far agonizing when it is from an ivory tower straight to that muddy bottom. Had the speaker never thought of herself as supreme, the pain would have not been much.

More than that, this figure implies that the speaker views god as incompetent judge of his own creation: she is indicating that god cannot even see the true color of the sheep. To follow this to conclusion, it must be kept in mind that (1) sheep seem to be white in color when looked at from a far-away distance, and gray when looked at a close distance; and that (2) in the cosmos of the poem, god exists but is far away; and finally that (3) the speaker is addressing god in the poem. When at first she says “white sheep”, she is consenting to her own

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

imagining of god’s perception. She thinks because god is far away, he can only see that the sheep is white. Accordingly, when she says “actually gray”, she is correcting god. This sardonic condescension of the speaker reflects her view that god is incapable of judging his own creation; that he is incapable of differentiating which of the two (the speaker and the sheep) is the better creation. The speaker at this point, of course, believes wholeheartedly that she is the better one.

The second figure is another correctio. It is, however, the polar opposite of the first one. Used to describe the vegetation now, it first negatively modifies it first only to elevate it immediately: “wild aster and chicory shining” (Glück, 1992:

38, line 18). “Wild”—as I have noted in my discussion on diction—is a negative attribute in this particular context. However, it is followed immediately by the elevation of “shining”. It works, therefore, to highlight the highly superior position the vegetation has now in the speaker’s eyes.

The third figure is actually the last one to occur on the poem, but because it is highly related to the above one, its discussion is moved here. On the last two lines of the poem: “since you already know/ how like your raiment it is” (Glück,

1992: 38, line 19-20), occurs a simile, or an explicit comparison using preposition such as “like” (Lanham, 1991: 140). What is compared to what is that of the oceanic bed of flowers to the clothing of god. God here, the speaker implies, wears a garment similar to that of the bed of flowers: bluish and moves as the wind moves. Decidedly similar in effect to the correctio on the vegetation, this simile suggests that the vegetation has been elevated by the speaker at the ending

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

of the poem to such a high position as to be comparable to god’s attribute itself, corroborating one of the conclusions from my discussion on the poem’s imagery.

Meanwhile, going back to the first and second figure, there is a suggestive possibility of a chiasmus-like device. A chiasmus usually occurs within a single sentence, such as when Samuel Johnson remarks on a young author’s manuscript:

"[Yours] is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good" (Good : Original :: Original : Good) (in Lanham,

1991: 33). In the poem, however, not only does the chiasmus is of the attributes’ value (i.e. whether it is negative or positive modification of the creations), its two components are also put so far apart: whereas the first component occurs in line 7-

8: “White sheep,/ actually gray”, the second occurs only ten lines later in line 18:

“wild aster and chicory shining”. Already noted before, the X-ing of the attributes’ values (Positive : Negative :: Negative : Positive) on the animal and vegetation serves to foreground clearly the change of attitude on the speaker’s part.

Paradoxically, the completion of this chiasmus-like pattern seems to sit uneasily with the incompletion of another seemingly similar one. I will return to this after I present the following necessary explanation on the fourth and fifth rhetorical devices. In the beginning of the poem, occurs another chiasmus-like device, differing in nature from the one just discussed. This time, the X-ed components are not the attribute values of vegetation and animal, but the words denoting them. Consider the following:

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

you love the beasts of the field, even, possibly, the field itself, in August dotted with wild chicory and aster: I know. I have compared myself to those flowers, their range of feeling so much smaller and without issue; also to white sheep, actually gray: (Glück, 1992: 38, line 2-8).

Here, consisting of “beasts”, “field” (associated closely with vegetation, both in general, and also in poem), “flowers”, and “sheep”, the chiasmus-like device is (Animal: Vegetation :: Vegetation : Animal). Note that neither the word “field” (line 2) nor the words “wild chicory and aster” (line 4) are considered to be in the device as they are not similar in syntactic nature to the four words considered relevant: whereas the relevant words are all the heads of their respective noun phrases, these two are not. “[F]ield” (line 2) is attached to the word “beasts” (line 2) and “wild chicory and aster” (line 4) is attached to the word “field” (line 3). In itself, this chiasmus-like device has not much of significance other than binding the lines and justifying the first sentence syntactical order, discussed fully on my section on syntactical ordering. But it does not stand on itself.

At the end of the poem, there occurs the fifth rhetorical device: another chiasmus-like device similar in nature with the fourth device. Unlike the fourth, however, it is incomplete:

or have you abandoned me in favor of the field, the stoic lambs turning silver in twilight; waves of wild aster and chicory shining (Glück, 1992: 23, line 16-18).

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

The device, involving “field”, “lambs”, and “aster and chicory”, is supposed to be this way: (Vegetation: Animal :: Animal : Vegetation). In the actual, however, the second animal component is missing: (Vegetation: Animal ::

[Missing] : Vegetation), so that the device is incomplete. Now, more than the previous one, this device is insignificant—even useless—on its own. But when it is combined with that previous one, they form an internal foregrounding pattern: an expectation is built only to be broken later for a certain purpose.

Here, the expectation is the complete chiasmus-like device of the poem’s beginning; whereas the breaking of expectation is the occurrence of the incomplete one in the poem’s ending.

All these, to what purpose? It is used in the poem to signify the speaker’s distraught as she intimated the painful possible answer to her own question. In the second part of the poem, the speaker intimates two possible answers for her question. The first possibility is that god gives her suffering so that the speaker realizes her need for him, which the speaker thinks unnecessary as she already realizes completely her need of god. The second possibility, meanwhile, is that god gives suffering because he has abandoned the speaker for his other more beautiful creations. When compared, through the perspective of the speaker, the second one is worse than the first. The first does not only put the blame on god (unnecessarily, suffering is given to make her conscious), but it also gives speaker the chance to make up for it (she can make it more clear to god that she realizes she need him). The second one, on the contrary, leaves the speaker in a hopeless situation (if god finds the other

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

creations more beautiful, there is no way she can change god’s opinion).

Unfortunately for the speaker, it is this second possibility that rings a louder bell in her. By showing, at the end of the poem, the speaker’s inability to make another chiasmus—an elaborate device she successfully created in the poem’s beginning—the poem demonstrates how the speaker has been affected tremendously by her own answer. In other words, she is far too disturbed mentally to make another chiasmus. (This observation is reinforced by a similar inner logic in the matter of syntax: sentence construction and lineation).

Now, returning to what I have called the paradoxical relation between the two chiasmus-like devices making up the internal foregrounding and the other chiasmus-like device discussed as the third rhetorical device, it is now clear that they seem to be at odd with each other. If the internal foregrounding depends upon incompletion to signify a significance, doesn’t it contradictory that another chiasmus is proven to be complete at the vicinity of the incomplete one? It is true that they are all chiasmus-like, but they are different still. Their components are different: whereas the two chiasmus-like devices making up the internal foregrounding consist of words denoting the other creations (e.g. “field” and “beasts”), the other one consists of words denoting the attribute values of those creations (e.g. “white” and “gray”). Their components distributions too are different: whereas the components of former cluster around a part (e.g. at the beginning or at the end), the components of the later are distributed in both direction (i.e. both at the beginning and at the

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

end). Because of this categorical dissimilarity, therefore, it is not possible that one contradicts the other.

Finally, as the last sixth device comes a verbal irony, or a figure of meaning quite another from what is said (Lanham, 1991: 92). This common figure of poetry takes place in the setting of line 11-14:

is pain your gift to make me conscious in my need of you, as though I must need you to worship you (Glück, 1992: 38).

The irony here centers on the word “gift”. When read without considering its complexities, it is very clear from the extract what logic the speaker attaches to god: god gives pain so that the speaker would inevitably turn to him; also, god thinks she would not worship him if she does not need him to soothe her pain.

However, “gift” in this context is a complex case, complicating this first level of reading. The word first of all means an incredible present. Of all imaginable variety of such thing, “pain” is certainly not included. A gift too is given without any expectation of compensation on the giver’s part. The speaker, however, thinks that the gift is for a purpose. There is then a twofold discrepancy of meanings packed into this single verbal irony. In accordance to these discrepancies, the verbal irony of the poem reveals two significances. One, the speaker thinks that god is a kind of usurer who gives to get something in return. Two, that god might err in his judgment about “pain”. God, the speaker seem seems to think, might wrongly considers that pain is a pleasant thing for human being. The implication of this, of course, is that god—probably because of his distance as in the case of

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

the sheep’s color—has committed a misjudgment at the expense of the speaker.

Taken together, these two significances reveals that in the eyes of the speaker god is an imperfect creator: one who might err in judgment and who craves to be worshipped. The verbal irony, to repeat, serves to reveal how the speaker characterizes god. It is not at all unexpected for the poem to make such gesture.

On the whole, this is the general gesture found in the other prayer poems, such as

“Matins” (#2), “Matins” (#3), “Matins” (#5).

This characterization finally point to one last thing. It is possible that the speaker at last comes up with that notion as result of her suffering and god’s unwillingness to answer her. At first, the speaker might think that god is an embodiment of all goodness, immune to the error of human being. After some time, though, she experiences a disillusionment and realizes that god is very similar to human being. This assertion is highly conjectural as the text does not give a hinge to unmistakably support it: in the text, what we encounter is the present characteristics of god with no hint to the earlier one. But neither do the text contradicts this. What’s more: the text provides a parallel scenario to make it seems a plausible assertion to make. As noted on my discussion on antecedent scenario, at first the speaker optimistically hopes that the god will answer her question, but when the answer never comes, she looks for it herself. She changes from a person who waits to the person who acts. This parallel plot of disillusionment makes this purely conjectural conclusion justifiable to be noted, suggesting that such is the longing of the speaker that it changes her view of god.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

9. Syntax: Sentence Construction and Lineation

There are four sentences in “Vespers” (#3)—as I have noted, distributed into twenty lines. In all four sentence, the clauses are all in active construction, except for the stative case in sentence two:

Active Passive

1st sentence [Y]ou love […]

I know […]

2nd sentence I have compared […]

I am uniquely suited […] 3rd sentence […] Why [do you] torment me?

4th sentence I study […]

[I]s pain your gift to make me […]

[H]ave you abandoned […]

These dominant active constructions points to the fact that the poem wants, through this specific device, to emphasize the subject’s agency in each clause. As

I discuss also in the following section, it wants to stress the fact that ‘god loves’ more than that ‘who is loved’ as it wants to stress that the ‘speaker know’ more that ‘what she knows’. Similarly, it wants the fact that “she has compared” and that it is god “who torment her” get the emphasis instead of the alternatives “a comparison has been carried out” and “I am tormented”. And the same is true for the rest. Meanwhile, the sole passive construction is by no means disfiguring this pattern as it is not an ordinary passive case. Semantically speaking, the

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

construction has no emphasis for agency as there is no agent/doer in a stative construction.

Having dwell on the active-passive construction of the poem, I am moving to the sentence distribution. In “Vespers (#3), this aspect is by no means a regular one, but is purposeful nonetheless in its irregularity. The first and second sentence can be fairly said to be similar in length: the first one consist of 29 words, while the second 30 words, and each occupying more or less five lines. This similarity made them structurally inconspicuous. The third and the second, on the other hand, is the opposite case. They branch off into two ‘extreme’ directions: one is a simple sentence occupying only two lines with only four words, whereas the other is a complex sentence stretching for eleven lines with a cluster of 75 words. This make them structurally conspicuous in the vicinity of the moderate previous sentences. The two sentences, thus, are internally foregrounded, giving their content a formal emphasis. This move is especially reasonable when noting that the third sentence marks the pivotal moment between the first and the second comparison the speaker does in the poem. In that moment, the speaker doubts all over again the result of her previous observation and begins in a moment another one. As for the fourth one, it is similarly sensible as it is at this point that the speaker undergoes an epiphanic moment of faux understanding on the answer of her own question. That this is the case is supported by the fact that a similar technique of foregrounding occurs in one of the flower poems criticizing the human speaker for her tendency to blame others for her own bad fortune,

“Witchgrass” (Glück, 1992: 22), in which the last sentence of confident

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

declaration is emphasized by writing it in the fewest words (five) and distributing it to the shortest line (one) of the poem.

In addition, in “Witchgrass” (Glück, 1992: 22), the last line also received an emphasis from its line construction: not only it is the only line making up a whole stanza of its own, it is also the only line consisting of solely an independent clause. In “Vespers” (#3) too, such aspect of syntactical emphasis is put to use. In almost every line of the poem, an independent syntactic unit is either enjambed in the middle or put side to side with another syntactic structure, making each line is almost never occupied by an independent syntactical unit. Take, for example, line

1 to 5:

More than you love me, very possibly [Dependent clause] [Independent Clause]

you love the beasts of the field, even, [Independent Clause cont.] [Conjoined Phrase]

possibly, the field itself, in August dotted [Conjoined Phrase cont.] [Modifying Phrase]

with wild chicory and aster: [Modifying Phrase cont.]

I know. I have compared myself [Independent Clause] [Independent Clause] (Glück, 1992: 38). This principle is followed almost completely, except in line 16 where the clause

“or have abandoned me” (Glück, 1992: 38) occupies a line of its own, suggesting that this momentary lapse is purposeful. The purpose of which course—as with the foregrounding in “Withcgrass” (Glück, 1992: 22)—is to stress more emphasis on the content of that line: the speaker’s second alternative to the cause of her suffering. Furthermore, the lapse similarly suggests that the speaker is distraught

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

as she intimates the second alternative, which is far worse than the first, as I have noted in my discussion on rhetorical devices. That is why it is reasonable to construe that after this point, the speaker starts her downward escalation into despair as she details in the next lines the superior favored beauty of the other creations. At the same time as these significances, finally, this principle of lineation justifies “Vespers” (#3) demand to be read as a poem. In other words, it could not have written as a prose without losing its present significances.

It must not be forgotten, however, that in the final analysis, the speaker is by no means thoroughly sure of the first or even the second alternatives. Noted briefly my section on denotation, the sentence construction of the clauses in sentence four indicates the element of doubt in the speaker. Rather than using statement form (S + V), which would indicates certainty; it contends itself to the use of the question form (V + S), suggesting uncertainty. It is from here I can conclude the speaker has not made up her mind on why god torments her. Her longing to know the cause of her suffering, thus, until the poem ends, remains.

And as at the last moment her tentative conclusion is anchored at the second alternative, receiving the more syntactical emphasis, her longing thus is complicated with the desperation of being inferior and abandoned.

10. Syntax: Ordering

One element in the discussion of poetic syntax is the ordering of syntactical elements in a poem: in such discussion, the question of how significance the present ordering of the poem to its content is being asked. Often time, in supporting this significance, the alternative ordering of the poem which the poet

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

could have chosen without changing much of the basic content is also provided.

Here, therefore, I discuss the present ordering of “Vespers” (#3) while incorporating the other possible ordering to support my argument.

Since “Vespers” (#3) is a temporal poem (then, now, later), not a spatial one such as George Herbert’s “Prayer” (1907: 51) (is A, is B, is C), there can be no alternative ordering of “Vespers” (#3) in the level of sentence without a significant change in the level of its basic content. Note for example, if the poem’s sentences were inverted: Sentence 1, Sentence 2, Sentence 3, Sentence 4 

Sentence 4, Sentence 3, Sentence 2, Sentence 1, the poem would have transformed altogether. Instead of two comparisons, there would have been only one left as the implied first is now lost after being put in second. As for longing, though still there, it would have been resolved at the end of the poem with a definitive conviction by the speaker. Sentence ordering, therefore, is not discussed in my study.

Next comes clause ordering. In the first sentence of the poem, there are three clauses: two independent one connected with a colon standing for ‘it is this that’ and one dependent one connected to its subordinator with the conjunction

‘more than’. Let me begin with the independent clauses, whose alternative ordering is as follows:

I know: more than you love me, very possibly [Independent Clause] [Dependent Clause] [Independent Clause]

you love the beasts of the field, even, [Independent Clause cont.]

possibly, the field itself, in August dotted [Independent Clause cont.]

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

with wild chicory and aster. [Independent Clause cont.] (Glück, 1992: 38, line 1-4). Though still retaining the basic content of the lines, this ordering is not chosen nonetheless. The most likely reason for this is because it would have eliminated the emphasis received by the dependent clause, both in placement and rhythm, making the information that there is other entities god loves more than the speaker less prioritized. Instead, the clause receiving emphasis is the first (“I know”) and the third (“Very possibly”). For the second clause, this annulling effect chiefly comes from the fact the subordinated clause is put in the middle of two independent clauses, to the effect that, following its name, it is subordinated.

Furthermore, the unmistakable emphasis put on the first clause by its short form and opening position, leaves no emphasis for the second clause as it stands rightly next to it.

On the contrary, with the present ordering, not only the dependent clause receives emphasis from its heady opening rhythm (discussed in its corresponding section), but also from its opening position which compensates for its subordinate syntactical status. Meanwhile, “I know”, whose emphasis comes from the sudden change from the long and winding previous independent clause to its short and sudden two-syllable clause gives this later an emphatic effect, can similarly retain its emphasis without sacrificing the emphasis of the dependent clause as it is put not side by side. In short, with the present ordering, that she knows and what it is that she knows are made important.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Another alternative ordering of the first sentence is when the dependent clause attached to the first independent one is changed as follows:

Very possibly you love the beasts of the field, even, [Independent Clause]

possibly, the field itself, in August dotted [Independent Clause cont.]

with wild chicory and aster [Independent Clause cont.]

more than you love me. [Dependent Clause] (Glück, 1992: 38, line 1-4). Here, it is clear that the emphasis shifts from that-god-loves-something-more- than-the-speaker to what-god-loves as the independent clause is given the privileging position of an opening. The dependent clause, meanwhile, is given no emphasis whatsoever.

The poem’s insistence to put emphasis on the fact that god loves something more than the speaker and that the speaker knows this, seen in the above discussion, begs the question of why it must be so. The answer, it turns out, comes from the fact the poem needs a credible springboard to leap to the second sentence wherein the speaker challenges god decision to love the other creations.

Emphasizing the speaker knows god loves something more than her provides such a credible springboard.

In the second sentence, there are two independent clauses—as in the first sentence—connected with a colon, in this case meaning ‘from this I conclude’.

The alternative ordering is as follows:

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

I am uniquely suited [Independent Clause]

to praise you: I have compared myself [Independent Clause cont.] [Independent Clause]

to those flowers, their range of feeling […] [Independent Clause cont.] (Glück, 1992: 38, line 5-9). By contrasting this alternative ordering with the present one, it is clear that the effect of the later is the enactment of inductive thinking process with its placement of the individual details before the taking of a conclusion. On the contrary, the alternative one enacts deductive thinking, in which the general theory comes before the particular details. This choice perfectly suits the poem as inductive thinking emphasizing the self-discovery nature of the conclusion. In a poem which shows that god never answer a the speaker question though she yearns for it, so that finally she conducts her own answer-seeking, it is only true to the poem spirit that the independent nature of the process of the discovery is foregrounded.

In the third sentence, which is a simple sentence, there can be no alternative ordering to be postulated in the level of clause. But nor can be any alternative ordering in the level of phrase as it contains not a single multi-component phrase.

Therefore, I am moving directly to the last sentence. This most complex sentence of all in the poem consists of three clauses. Two of which—as in the first and second sentence—are connected with a colon, here roughly stands for ‘from this I can ask’. Meanwhile, the other clause is in conjunction with one of these two, using “or”. Let us look at these one by one.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

On its most obvious level, the fourth sentence is divided into two main components: the independent clause beginning with “I study” and the independent clause beginning with “[I]s pain”, ending as the poem ends. This is the original ordering. The alternative, in the meantime, is the inverted version:

[I]s pain [Independent Clause]

your gift to make me […] [Independent Clause cont.]

I study the hawkweed, [Independent Clause]

the buttercup protected from the grazing herd [Independent Clause cont.] (Glück, 1992: 38, line 10-12). Contrasting the two, the effect present in the present ordering but absent in the alternative one is similar to the second sentence’s inductive thinking enactment: the first one is the observation, the second the conclusion. In contrast, in the alternative ordering, this logical flow is absent. Instead, there is—at the least— disjunction by putting two causally unrelated matter side by side, foreshadowing a post-poem scenarios, or—at the most—incomprehensibility. With the present ordering, therefore, the poem stresses the individual effort the speaker has done to satisfy her own longing. This is only fitting as in the fourth sentence the speaker is re-observing again the other creations when her answer from the previous observation has not satisfied her.

The two clauses joined with the conjunction “or” also has an alternative ordering, and that is the inversion of the present one:

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

[H]ave you abandoned me [Independent Clause]

in favor of the field, the stoic lambs turning [Independent Clause cont.]

[…] or is pain [Independent Clause]

your gift to make me [Independent Clause cont.] (Glück, 1992: 38, line 12-17). Looking at this alternative ordering it is clear that what has changed is the emphasis on the most likely answer. Spatially, the conjunction “or” distributes the same emphasis on the two clauses: it is either this or that. Temporally, however, the one after the conjunction receives the emphasis as the most likely answer: if it is not that, then it is likely this. As Vendler (2010b: 92) has pointed out in the context of imagery, among alternative choices, the latest one receives the temporal emphasis. Here, then, between pain as a gift and god rational abandonment, the speaker is more prone to believe that the latter is the cause of her suffering. This is exactly similar to the emphasis it gets from sentence construction internal foregrounding discussed in the previous section. As such, it shows the speaker’s distraught at realizing that the probable reason for her suffering is god’s abandonment in favor of the other, more beautiful, creations.

Now, comes ordering at phrasal level. In “Vespers” (#3), most alternative ordering on this level have to do with other poetic features, both already passed

(rhetorical devices) or still to come (rhythm and rhyme). In relation to this, when such cases happen, I discuss only the inevitable syntactical ordering which makes that other features possible. For example, when a particular ordering makes a

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

particular rhyme possible, it is only that ordering which is discussed fully and not the significance of the rhyme as this is discussed on its respective section.

The first of such case occurs in first clause of the first sentence. As noted, in my section on rhetorical devices, the first sentence already initiates a chiasmus- like device, binding the other creation with which the speaker compares herself to in the beginning and at the end of the poem. Starting from the beasts and the field with its chicory & aster, half of the structure is formed, waiting for completion:

(Animal : Vegetation :). However, if the ordering of the phrases were changed, it would have mangled with this structure. Consider the following:

very possibly you love the field […], in August dotted [Noun Phrase]

with wild chicory and aster, even, possibly, the beasts of the field: [Noun Phrase] (Glück, 1992: 38, line 1-4). In such alternative ordering, the vegetation comes first, followed by the animals, initiating a pattern of (Vegetation : Animal :). Per se, there is no problem with this. Yet, when the next sentence is considered, it is obvious that the poem intends to make a chiasmus-like device, which the alternative ordering would have distorted.

Accordingly, the reason the phrases in the second sentence are ordered as they are, is because they complete the structure initiated in the first sentence.

Adding again the flower component (“flower”) and then the animal component

(“white sheep”), the chiasmus-like device is finished in the second sentence:

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

(Animal : Vegetation :: Vegetation : Animal :). As in the first sentence, had the second sentence were ordered differently as this:

I have compared myself to [the] white sheep, actually gray; [Noun Phrase]

also to those flowers, their range of feeling [Noun Phrase] (Glück, 1992: 38, line 5-8). the chiasmus like device would similarly be mangled. Here, an objection might be raised on why the structure must be an ABBA, instead of a parallel ABAB. To such objection the internal foregrounding purpose of the paired chiasmus-like devices discussed in my section on rhetorical devices, of which this one is the first half, is an adequate response. In relation to this, in the fourth sentence, comes another chiasmus-like device. However, because it is used as an internal foregrounding device by purposefully deviates the complete chiasmus in beginning of the poem, the present chiasmus does not only reorder but also erase one of its components. It is, in other words, an incomplete chiasmus: (Vegetation:

Animal :: [Missing] : Vegetation).

Yet, this chiasmus-like device is not the only ordering factor of this part.

The other one, an ordering feature important in itself, is needed by the poem to show the escalating realization of the speaker on the beauty of the other creations

(the animal, the field and its vegetation) as she, paradoxically, experiences a down escalation into despair, as I have noted in the significance of the lineation in the previous section. The “field”, with no beautifying modifier, is the least beautiful of the three. After this comes the “stoic lambs” with its radiant modifier, already

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

beautiful. But this is less compared with the richest of them, actually a revision to the barren “field”: waves of flowers with its lustrous and oceanic beauty. In summary, the present ordering comes into being as the poem needs the incomplete chiasmus and the realization of the escalating beauty to be noticed.

Finally, there is another ordering important in itself in addition to the one above. Occurring in the second sentence, it serves to shows the speaker’s conviction on her superiority above the other creations by a subtle yet proud intensification. The ordering of the phrases modifying “range of feeling” can be alternatively put thus: “their range of feeling / [is] without issue and so much smaller”. However, the ordering is not thus because it wouldn’t have the present ordering’s intensification from “smaller” to “without”, signifying conviction of superiority on the speaker. In other words, it has exactly the same logic and effect as the correctio of “white” to “gray” discussed rhetorical devices section. To further support this, a passage from Camille Paglia negative criticism on Marjorie

Garber’s book, in which she makes a point about Garber’s lack of substation can serve as a corroborator:

The remarks about Madonna, attributed to another academic, are fragmentary and distorted; the description of Michael Jackson doesn’t move us beyond Entertainment Tonight; the passing sentences about Prince, about whom Garber clearly knows nothing, are quotes from published sources. The female illusionist Jim Bailey is barely mentioned, and the brilliant Jimmy James not at all. (1992: 99). The movement from “fragmentary and distorted” to “doesn’t move us beyond” to

“the passing sentences” to “published sources” to “barely mentioned” and finally to “not at all” points to the use of a similar technique of intensification. It is this kind of technique which the above alternative ordering lacks. In fact, it gives an

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

altogether the polar opposite effect as it inverts the order, starting from nothing to small. That is, instead of showing the speaker conviction, it would have altogether suggested that the speaker is in doubt about her superiority at a point where it weren’t supposed to. The present ordering, in short, is the poem’s best ordering.

11. The Rhythm of “Vespers” (#3)

“Vespers” (#3) is not written in any received rhythmic system. Its lines’ width vary irregularly so that both accentual-syllabic and purely-syllabic are not possible:

More than you love me, ver y poss i bly / X | X / X || / X | / X X you love the beasts of the field, e ven, X / | X / | X X / || / X poss i bly, the field it self, in Au gust dott ed / X X || X / | X / | X / X | / X with wild chi co ry and as ter: X / | / X X | X / X I know. I have com pared my self X / || X / | X / | X / (Glück, 1992: 38, line 1-5).

In the excerpt, the first line is of one width (ten-syllable), the second is of another

(nine-syllable), and the next is yet of other (twelve-, eight-, and eight-syllable).

Nor does the poem written in purely accentual system as it varies in beats from line to line. Consider the irregular beats of the above excerpt:

1st line 4 beats 2nd line 4 beats 3rd line 5 beats 4th line 3 beats 5th line 4 beats What is left, then, is that “Vespers” (#3) is written in a free rhythmic system. In Chapter II, I mention that Marjorie Perloff sees “Evolution”-‘s rhythm as moving from a 25 lines of irregularity to two regular iambic hexameters lines

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

as its moves from problem-solving process to a fixed conclusion. Here, as the highly wrought patterning clearly suggest, the irregularity of the lines mimics the not yet fixed answer on the speaker’s part, the thread not yet unloosened, as the regularity enacts the fixed answer, the thread loosened. “Vespers” (#3) too has a parallel, though quite different, rhythmical inner logic. Similar to “Evolution”, this logic is visible when the poem is scanned in accentual-syllabic perspective.

Consider the following summary of the poem’s scansion:

1st line trochee, amphibrach, trochee, dactyl

2nd line iamb, iamb, anapest, trochee

3rd line dactyl, iamb, iamb, amphimacer

4th line iamb, dactyl, amphibrach

5th line iamb, iamb, iamb, iamb.

6th line pyric, trochee, iamb, amphibrach

7th line pyric, trochee, anapest, trochee, trochee, anapest

8th line choriamb, pyric, amphibrach

9th line trochee, amphibrach, iamb

10th line dactyl, amphibrach, amphibrach

11th line iamb, pyric, amphibrach, pyric, amphimacer

12th line amphibrach, dactyl, iamb

13th line iamb, amphibrach

14th line trochee, anapest, iamb, iamb

15th line pyric, choriamb, pyric

16th line amphimacer, iamb, pyric

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

17th line amphibrach, anapest, anapest, trochee

18th line trochee, amphibrach, trochee, amphibrach, iamb, pyric,

trochee

19th line iamb, anapest, trochee, iamb, iamb

20th line iamb, amphibrach, pyric

As can clearly be seen, nineteen out of twenty lines of the poem are written very irregularly, but line 5 stands out in its iambic tetrameter rhythmical regularity.

What, then, happens in line 5 so as to make it necessary for the poem to call attention to it with its regular rhythm? It is in line for that the speaker starts suspending her doubt, and begins the process of entering a state of full conviction.

As I have discussed in my treatment of the poem’s denotation, it is on this part

(second sentence) that the conviction is such so as manage to keep doubt away.

Like Graham’s “Evolution”, regular rhythm mimics this stability so as to make the reader aware of the speaker’s inner state as well as to make a credible presentation of that feeling.

Yet, unlike “Evolution”, in “Vespers” (#3) the stability is destabilized.

Immediately after, in line 6, the rhythm returns to its irregularity, signaling that the speaker is now doubting her conviction again. That is, the irregularity, the very indeterminacy of the rhythm can be seen as dramatizing a vital core of the poem: the speaker’s indeterminacy on which of the possible reasons she has comes up with is the actual reason for her suffering. Again, the rhythm contributes greatly to makes the speaker’s feeling of longing to know very credibly and powerfully presented.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

The use of a major device such as rhythm to emphasis this element of doubt is not without reason. I note in my discussion of connotation, imagery, and syntax, that in sentence four, where the speaker comes up with two alternatives, she seems to be quite sure of the second one. Anticipating this, lest the reader concludes that the speaker has finally resolved her mind at the end, the poem shows through its irregular rhythm, that it is not so. On the contrary, until the end of the poem, the speaker is never really sure about the answer. Of course this is not surprising since only god can actually answer the speaker’s question. Had he done so, the poem would have been ended up with a closing regular rhythm similar to “Evolution”.

Returning for a moment to the point on the rhythmic stability of line 5, there is consequently is a contradiction between the contribution of denotation and rhythm. The denotation reveals that in all part of the second sentence the speaker is in full conviction. The rhythm, on the other hand, reveals that it is not the whole sentence, but only on when the speaker’s uttered “I have compared” as the next part is immediately irregular again. To put it differently, in the former, the conviction has a larger portion. What significance, then, to be gained from here?

Foremost of all, it modifies the portion of conviction on the speaker’s part. Instead of half-to-half proportion, it is closer to the truth to say that it is one-third to two- third proportion, so to speak. It also demonstrates how important it is to see the totality of the poem’s formal feature as one type of form can modify, reinforces, or contradicts meaningfully the contribution of another one.

To end the discussion on rhythm, there are two last things to note. One is the musicality of such irregular rhythm as “Vespers” (#3). As is expected from a

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

poem with little rhythmic regularity, there is little to no pleasure offered to reader in terms of rhythm. In other words, “Vespers” (#3) is not a particularly musical poem. The second one is the rhythmic significances of the opening. The poem starts headily with the thoracic “[m]ore than” (a falling-rhythm), a gesture which gives a strong rhythmical emphasis when it is put in the beginning of a poem.

Now, a falling rhythm does not by itself gives emphasis: after all, in “Vespers”

(#3) there are other occurrences of falling rhythm which does not serve any emphatic purpose, for instance in the trochaic “conscious”. However, when a falling rhythm is put in the beginning of a poem, it gives a strong emphasis on the content of that part. Consider the beginning of John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 10”:

Batt er my heart, three-per soned God; for You / X | X / | X / | X / | X / As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend X / | X / | / / | X / | X / That I may rise and stand, o’er throw me^and bend X / | X / | X / | X / | X / Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. X / | X / | / / | X / | X / (2010: 554, line 1-4).

This unconventional Renaissance sonnet, written in an underlying iambic pentameter basis, starts with a trochaic bang (/ X). The use of this device plunges its reader into a bang right away as it mimics the sound a battering ram produces when it is put to use on a castle gate, specifically on a midnight incursion. Thus, the heady start rhythmically emphasizes the corresponding content. Similarly in

“Vespers” (#3), the trochaic beginning emphasizes its content, and that is the fact that god loves another creation more, an emphasis already reinforced by the poem’s syntax discussed in the previous section.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

12. Rhyme

It is true that rhyme sometimes is the point of a poem, as in Stevens’

“Anecdote of the Jar”, noted in Chapter II; it is also true that sometimes it serves a powerfully dramatic function, as in George Herbert’s “Denial”, noted by Wolosky

(2001: 158). Nevertheless, it is equally true that in some other times, rhyme serves only its elemental functions as a musical and binding device, giving musical pleasure, sense of choice inevitability, and a tool to ease reader’s memorization.

This, with different degree of validity for each rhyme type, is mostly the case in

“Vespers” (#3).

Consider first the ending rhymes of the poem. Occurring only two times: as a full masculine rhyme in lines 13 & 16 and as a half rhyme in lines 17 & 18, the ending rhymes of the poem is very slight. It gives, therefore, not much of a musical pleasure. However, as a binding device it gives a significant sense of

‘belong-ness’ to the part it binds. In the full rhyme, the word “me” binds the following line:

your gift to make me […] or have you abandoned me (Glück, 1992: 38, line 13-16). Line 13—joined with the bits from line 12 (“Is pain”)—is the beginning of the first alternative answers the speaker presents herself with. Line 16, predictably, is the beginning of the second of the two answers. Hence, by binding the two lines with a rhyme, the poem points to the parallel position the two line serves. The two lines and what they are about, in short, belong together. This effect is similar to the spatial one given by the conjunction “or” which points to the hierarchically

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

100

similar position between the first and the second alternative answers. It is, however, the polar opposite to the effect given by the poem’s imagery, rhetorical devices, and syntax which point to the fact that the speaker leans more to the second answer. Again, the existence of these two forces in which one is more visibly strong than the other does not merely point to the comingling of doubt and conviction on the speaker’s part as expected, but also to the fact that it is the second answer that the speaker believes more. In addition, the rhyme also serves to help readers memorize this part of the poem as s/he will remember that there occurs two similar words at the end of line 13 and 16.

Similar to the previous one, the half rhyme occurring in line 17 and 18 also binds two similar entities: [I]n favor of the field, the stoic lambs turning/ silver in twilight; waves of wild aster and chicory shining” (Glück, 1992: 38). This time, however, the entities are not lines, but only the half-rhyming words themselves, which is similar in nature to Dickinson’s perfect rhyming of “ground” and

“ground” noted in Chapter II. “[t]urning” in line 17—together with is complement

“silver”—is the verb signifying the beautiful quality of the other creations. This exactly the case of the verb “shining” in the next line. If the full rhyme and half rhyme are similar in nature, the effects are also similar: in the half rhyme, the binding gives the two beautifying acts a sense of belong-ness, which in turn contributes to the sense of poem’s inevitability in the relevant parts—it cannot be written in any other way. Too, the recurrence of the sound /nɪŋ/ also acts to ease reader’s memorization of these lines. In all cases of ending rhyme, therefore, the

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

101

functions served are to give musical pleasure as well as a sense of belong-ness, point connection by linking two components, and to aid reader’s memorization.

In the case of internal rhyme too such functions are observable, even though only to a lesser degree. In the poem, there are three cases of internal rhyme: one legible, while the other two meaningful. The former one occurs in the second line:

“you love the beasts of the field, even,” (Glück, 1992: 38). Here, the word “love”

(/lʌv/) internally half-rhymes with the preposition “of” (/əv/). However, as I said, this is negligible: it gives what is at best a very slight cadence, and nor is the words linked have a significant connection. Compare this to a case of musically significant internal rhyming such as this line from Hart Crane: “My word I poured. But was it cognate, scored” (1946: 136, stanza 6, line 21), in which the word “word” (/wɝːd/) internally half-rhymes with “poured” (/pɔːrd/) and “scored”

(/skɔːrd/), which in turn in a full internal rhyme with each other; and the negligibility becomes quite obvious. All that can be said about “love” and “of” is that their relationship is most likely incidental.

This is not the case with the later internal half rhyme of “silver” (/sɪl.vɚ/) and “aster” (/æs.tɚ/) occurring in line 18: “silver in twilight; waves of wild aster and chicory shining” (Glück, 1992: 38). Because this rhyme occurs in the line accented words—similar to Crane’s line—their cadence is still noticeable even though they are separated by a caesura or middle pause. Moreover, the line significance also lies in its linking phonetically two already closely related words

(one being the part of the animal, whereas the other the vegetation), thus,

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

102

reinforcing the belong-ness of the two creations. In addition too, this link aids the reader’s memorization of the line.

Negligibility is also not the case with the internal full rhyme of “blue” /bluː/ with its twin in line 19: “pale blue and deep blue, since you already know”

(Glück, 1992: 38). Nonetheless, it has an additional effect unlike the preceding cases. Although it too gives musical pleasure as well binding effect (aster and chicory linked by their mutual modifier: “blue”), the repetition of the word forces the reader to pronounce—at least silently—the consonant /l/ twice. This physical act gives the reader a direct sensual pleasure. As M. H. Abrams (2012: 1-29) implies, reader derives physical pleasure (“tactile sensation”) in enunciating certain consonants in two occasions: one is when the enunciation dramatizes the content of a poem as the continuant /w/ performs the windy content of Percy B.

Shelly’s “O, wild West Wind” or William Shakespeare’s “Blow, blow, thy winter wind,”; and two, when the consonant itself gives direct sensual pleasure regardless of its word meaning. This later is the case of the /l/ phoneme. Vladimir Nabokov’s

Lolita, as Abrams notes (2012: 1-2), has understood this well when it opens:

“Lolita light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three on the teeth”.

Thus, in pronouncing the word “blue” twice, the reader derives pleasure from the phoneme /l/ as the tip of the tongue touches lightly the mouth’s palate. Add this to the pleasure already given by the image of beauty described in the same part of the poem, the two reinforces each other.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

103

Meanwhile, the cases of alliteration and assonance are not so much different in functions from the rhyme cases. The alliteration manifests three times, all quite significant; whereas the assonance occurs five times, all insignificant. The first of the alliteration occurs in line 6: “to those flowers, their range of feeling” (Glück,

1992: 38): the /f/ of “flowers” and “feeling” alliterates. Seen from its musicality, there is not much to it: set that line side to side with any line from this stanza from

Crane and it is instantly obvious:

O harp and altar, of the fury fused, (How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!) Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge, Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,— (1946: 4, stanza 8, line 32-36). However, the three cases of alliteration does not serve only musical purpose. The

/f/ of “flowers” and “feeling” links the two words phonetically to emphasize their syntactic link: feeling is attributed to the flowers. Vendler (2010b: 153) has noted a parallel case when she points out that Robert Frost‘s line “When I see birches bend to left and right” links the syntactically related “birches” and “bend” by a phonetic mean. The next alliteration occurs in line 12: “by being poisonous: is pain” (Glück, 1992: 38), the /p/ of “poisonous” and “pain” links the two phonetically as they are also links semantically: poison causes pain. The phonetic link, therefore, reinforces this sematic one. Finally, the fourth alliteration in

“Vespers” (#3) occurs in line 17: “in favor of the field, the stoic lambs turning”

(Glück, 1992: 38). Here, the /f/ of “favor” and “field” links the two phonetically, and as in as in the first case of alliteration, reinforcing their syntactic link: among the favored entities is the field together with its vegetation.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

104

In the meantime, the assonances—all negligible—occur in line 2, 3, 7, and

18. In line 3: “possibly, the field itself, in August dotted” (Glück, 1992: 38), the most musical of all, the vowel /ɑː/ is repeated three times in “possibly”, “August” and “dotted”. And for comparison sake, here is also line 18: “silver in twilight; waves of wild aster and chicory shining” (Glück, 1992: 38) wherein the segments

/ɪ/ and /aɪ/ are repeated twice each. At best, what these vowel plays serve is to give a slight cadence to the line, especially in the closely neighboring words of line 3. Slight because when such cases are juxtaposed to the assonance of John

Keats noted in Chapter II, it is obvious that the assonances are insignificant. In

“Vespers” (3), the assonance are—for the most part—not put tightly together. In the line 3 for example, after the word “possibly” there interrupting one irrelevant accented word, resulting on the echo of vowel /ɑː/ dying out before it is later picked up again in the accented “August”. In contrast, in Keats’s line, the assonance are marked due to its tight positioning. In the second line for example, there is no interrupting accented word: right after “child” comes “silence” and then “time”. With such case as this, the reader cannot fail to notice the repeated diphthong /aɪ/. Marked-ness is especially important for sound play because for it to serve other functions, it must be musically noticeable in the first place.

Having arrived here, bearing in my discussion of the poem’s rhythm also, it is arguably fair to say that “Vespers” (#3) is not a particularly musical poem.

Neither the ending nor the internal rhyme; and neither the alliteration nor the assonance give abundant pleasure to the ears. This is not a surprising observation at all: Glück, to speak generally, is not a particularly musical poet. That being

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

105

said, “Vespers” (#3), in its linking both closely related components, in its giving a sense of the inevitability, in its aiding reader’s memorization, shows its effort to employ this form called rhyme nevertheless.

13. Stanza Form: Free Verse

As free verse has become the new convention, it is probable that “Vespers”

(3)—or The Wild Iris, for that matter—might be written in free verse simply because everybody else is writing in this form too. However, several points in

“Vespers” (#3) can be used to argue against such view. First of all, the free verse poem allows the rhythm, as has been discussed in my section on rhythm, to mimic the inconsistency of conviction on the speaker’s part. Having a prescribed form would have to entail a regularity of rhythm so as the poem would lose its rhythmical emphasis. Secondly, as the free verse poem ‘endorses’ the aleatory view of universe, like Vendler (2010b: 667) notes, in which fate or any god distributing predetermined fate to every creature is denied a place, the free verse poem expresses the pessimistic attitude of the speaker towards the existence of god, which is only implicitly found in the content of “Vesper” (#3) when she finally decided to find for the answer herself. As such, the stanza form joins the poem to the other poems in the prayer sequence, many of them are highly skeptical of the god existence. Good examples of this group are “Matins” (#2) are

“Vespers” (1#). Were “Vespers” (#3) written in a received form, the implicit endorsement of predetermined world, and thus god, would have gone against the overall nuance of prayer sequence.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

106

14. Intertextuality: The Wild Iris

The Wild Iris echoes and incorporates various western literary heritages

(Morris, 2006: 198). Most prominent is its borrowing from “Job” the general structuring device. In the poetic section of Job’s story (Book 3 – Book 42), the overarching structure is the debate between Job, the titular character; his four

‘friends’, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, & later, Elihu; and God. Adopting this, The

Wild Iris transposes it into a parallel structure: the human speaker of the prayer poems becomes Job, the friends become the speaking flowers, and the majestic

God becomes the more anthropomorphized god. Furthermore, in Chapter 38 of

“Job”, God speaks through a whirlwind, an ephemeral natural phenomenon.

Adopting this, The Wild Iris has its god speaks, as noted first by David Morris

(2006: 202, n20), through such phenomena as “Clear Morning”, “Spring Snow”,

“End of Winter”, “Retreating Wind”, “Sunset”, and others, making clear the traces of “Job”-‘s influence to the book.

In addition to these formal parallelism, the two also resembles each other in two general content-related matter. The first is of the two is that both in “Job” and in The Wild Iris, the speeches of the second and third interlocutors are full of reprove to the first speaker. In “Job”, the hero, in agreement with the authoritative narrator of the framing prose sections and God himself, believes in his complete innocence prior to his suffering: his suffering is not the result of any wickedness.

On the contrary, the hero’s friends contend that Job’s suffering comes because of his sin. In their deuteronomistic world view of cosmic retributive justice, as

Christina Hayes (2012) has argued, the friends have taken suffering as a proof of

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

107

sin. Believing firmly on this notion, Hayes further explains, the friends grows from delivering only implicit judgment as in Eliphaz the Temanite’s “Remember,

I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off?” (King James Version, Job. 4. 7.) to an ever increasing bluntness and antagonism as in Zophar the Naamathite’s “Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth” (King James Version, Job. 11. 6.).

Furthermore, on a different matter, God too delivers an admonition to Job who has come to the belief that God is an incompetent organizer of the world because

He lets the innocence suffers. In a long-winding series of rhetorical questions

(King James Version, Job. 38-39.), God implies that human understanding cannot possibly measure up to His, and therefore Job should not have the impudence to direct such accusation out of ignorance to Him. Correspondingly, in The Wild Iris, the majority of the flower poems and a great number of the god’s poems are basically reproaches to the human speaker: “Witchgrass” on the human speaker’s tendency to blame others for her haplessness, “Field Flowers” on her desire for immortality, “Daisies” on human being self-denying condescension to the natural world are examples of the flowers critique. Meanwhile, “End of Winter” on the human speaker’s ignorance that her alienation from god is the result of her own choice, “Retreating Wind” on her desire to live a circular life like the plants, and

“April” on her ignorance of human grief’s raison d’etre serve as examples of god’s critique.

The second way The Wild Iris echoes “Job”-‘s content is in its representation of human soul longing to know the reason for his/her suffering. In

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

108

“Job”, triggered by Satan, God lets Job suffers a series of terrible losses: first his livestock and his servants to robbers, then his sons and daughters to natural catastrophe. Added to these, finally, is his “bone and […] flesh” to a ghastly illness (King James Version, Job. 2.). The reader knows why: God wants to test

Job, proving to the Satan how exemplary servant he is; but Job knows not. After a week of silence accompanied by his friends, Job laments his fate in a prolonged series of exhortation, cursing the day he was born, and series rhetorical questions, expressing his dismay at getting the undeserved suffering. After this, as the dialogue between Job and his friends proceeds, the hero’s insistence on his innocence together with his longing to know why he suffers becomes more and more visible. Of which, the later one finally culminates in his direct call to God to answer him: “Oh that one would hear me! behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book” (King James

Version, Job. 31. 35). This is even clearer in the New International Version: “Oh, that I had someone to hear me! I sign now my defense—let the Almighty answer me; let my accuser put his indictment in writing” (New International Version, Job.

31. 35)

15. Intertextuality: “Vespers” (#3)

In The Wild Iris, a similar feeling of longing as discussed in the previous section can be noticed in some of the prayer poems, as Morris has noted (2006:

193). Especially in “Vespers” (#3), the specific object of my research, the resemblance is striking. Though less concrete, in the poem as in “Job”, the speaker is suffering. Moreover, as in Job, the speaker of the poem also longs

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

109

desperately to know why she is suffering. Add these together, the reader knows that they have a very similar bleak longing. However, there is a relevant and no less striking difference between the two. In the “Job”, God finally answers Job directly, whereas in “Vespers” (#3), a speaking whirlwind never comes. What this means is that Job gets the answer he longs for, and that is the fact that in the world there is neither existing, nor supposed to be existing, a retributive justice system, as Hayes (2012) noted. The speaker of the poem, on the contrary, is left in uncertainty. In this sense, then, the speaker of the poem is at a more disadvantage position.

To a lesser degree, not least because the absence of any suffering, “Genesis” is also echoed in content-related respect by “Vespers” (#3). As with Job, the speaker of “Vespers” (#3) longs to know something. A feeling, as Glück (1994:

34) has noted, which resembles hunger in that it cannot be ignored for long until it is satisfied. As it happens, this feeling has frequently been revisited in the western literary tradition. The oldest known work depicting the same feeling is “Genesis

3” (520–515 BCE (Stevenson, 2010: 533)). In that story, God has finished creating the universe, Adam/Eve, and other creatures, including a tree of knowledge of good & evil and a mischievous snake. In addition, He has told

Adam, who later tells Eve, not to eat the one forbidden fruit of the garden. Now, the cunning serpent approaches Eve, who receives the warning only second- handedly, bringing to boil the thought of the forbidden fruit on her mind. For sometimes before the infamous incident, it is probable that Eve has been wondering about the fruit, but does not act on her desire as Adam’s words still has

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

110

a preventive power on her. Only when the snake tempts her cunningly, misquoting

God by intention (“Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden” (King James

Version. Genesis. 3.1), telling her that the fruit will open their eyes and makes them as God who knows good and evil, showing her that “the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes”; that Eve acts on what has become a longing to know what the fruit of the tree tastes like and what will it make her be.

A hunger to know is also a major force in “Genesis 19”, which tells the story of Lot, his wife & children, and the destruction of city of Sodom. God wants to save his servants from the despicable cities, thus he sends a pair of angels to visit Lot’s house in human guise, telling Lot to take his family and leave the city first thing in the morning. Specifically added to this command, is that they are not to look back while hurrying away. “[Yet] his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt” (King James Version. Genesis. 19.26). Many modern poets have complicated the reason for her turning back, but one of the most probable reasons is that she has a hunger to know that which is forbidden: how does the destruction looks like, how is it done. On this respect, Lot’s wife of

“Genesis 19” resembles Eve of “Genesis 3” more than she resembles the speakers of “Vespers” (#3) and “Job”. Having said that, they are, nonetheless, share the same content-related element of depicting the feeling of longing to know.

In addition to this content-related echoes, there is an explicit formal allusion. “Vespers” (#3), aside from taking advantage of the connotation of the word “beasts”, markedly alludes to the diction of “Genesis 2-3” in King James

Version when it uses “the beasts of the field” in line 2 (Glück, 1992: 38) to refer

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

111

to the animals. It has been noted in Chapter II that Vendler sees in The Wild Iris a revisiting of the myth of Eden. Furthermore, Morris also making the same point when he writes “the morning and evening prayer […] resonates with the Jewish

Bible through the Garden story of paradise and explosion in Genesis” (2006: 193).

It is on this matter that the allusion works: together with details from the other poems, “Vespers” (#3) summons up the setting of “Genesis 2-3”, and adapts it as its own setting. Put differently, “Genesis 2-3” and poems from The Wild Iris, including “Vespers” (#3), are two different dramas with a quite similar stage: there are the animals as there are vegetation, the god, and the human. It must be kept in mind, however, that though the poems’ garden resembles Eden, it is only an earthy replica of that mythical garden. In “Matins” (#2), speaking in collective

“we”, the speaker says:

Unreachable father, when we were first exiled from heaven, you made a replica, a place in one sense different from heaven, being designed to teach a lesson: otherwise the same—beauty on either side, beauty without alternative— (Glück, 1992: 38, line 1-7). In this borrowing of setting, “Vespers” (#3)—or for that matter The Wild Iris— achieves resonance within the western culture as it put to use a dominant part of the collective imagination. In other words, it emphasizes the feeling depicted in the poem as not a mere expression of an individual, but gives it a sense of general importance.

Arriving here, I want to stress the fact that my study of “Vespers” (#3) interaction with other literary works is by no means complete. There are probably

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

112

countless literary work in the whole chronology of western literary history that can be read as having interaction with the poem. (An example not discussed in my study is the resemblance of “Vespers” (#3) to the myth of Eros and Psyche in their similar depiction of the hunger to know.) One thing that I hope to achieve here, after all, is not an exhaustive study of western literary tradition in relation to

“Vespers” (#3), but an elaboration of the rather sketchy assertions of Morris and

Vendler, noted in Chapter II, on the poem relation to The Old Testament.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

CHAPTER V CONCLUSION

A. Conclusion

This study starts with the aim of explicating “Vespers” (#3) in all its aspects as a poem: both its content as well as its various forms. In doing so, I hope to account for most its significant details, left covered in dust by previous scholars despite the fact that the poem occupies a quite central position in The Wild Iris, both structurally and thematically.

At this point, I hope that my analysis has convincingly demonstrates—be it in whole or in part—that “Vespers” (#3) is an expression of longing to know the reason for the speaker’s suffering. This central thesis finds it proof first of all in the easily perceivable content of the poem: the paraphrase which implies the theme. As the analysis has demonstrated, moreover, it also finds its vehicle in the complex interconnectedness of the various forms the poem has.

The forms both emphasize and extend the content of the poem. The title locates the poem settings and ‘dramatist personae’. The tenses reveal the past longing of the human speaker through the poem’s antecedent scenarios. The denotation reveals the manifestation the speaker’s present longing in the commingling of doubt and conviction. The poem’s general structure shows in full picture how the poem’s parts fall into its places, making the discussion of the parts more organized. The connotation together with the imagery, meanwhile, show the human speaker’s desperation as she reevaluates her position in the

113

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

114

hierarchic ladder of creations. Additionally, aside from showing the change of attitude on the human speaker, the choice of animals and vegetation also makes that change of attitude believable. The rhetorical devices in several cases work in the same way as the connotation and the imagery, but in some other cases work to reveal how the speaker characterizes god. In addition, the rhetorical devices also shows the speaker distraught at realizing the more likely possibility that god has abandoned as well as pointing out the painful backstory the speaker might have gone through before she arrives at her present condition. Meanwhile, the syntax, covering sentence construction, lineation, and ordering, work mostly as devices of emphasis, foregrounding certain necessary aspects to arrive at the poem’s interpretation. Corollary to this, the discussion of syntax shows how as a free verse poem, “Vespers” (#3) justifies its present ordering. Furthermore, the poem’s rhythm fittingly enacts the instability of conviction on the speaker’s part through its irregular free verse rhythm, aside from being a device of emphasis also in the beginning. The rhythm, however, is not a significant musical device as its irregularity bars any chance of rhythmic cadence. This is similarly the case with the rhyme which is very scant in musicality. The rhyme, nonetheless, works to emphasize connections between words while linking them together phonetically.

Meanwhile, the free verse stanza form of the poem, aside allowing the irregularity of rhythm which reflects the content of the poem, joins it to the larger structure of the prayer sequence as it endorses the aleatory view of the universe which implies skepticism of the god existence. Finally, the discussion on intertextuality reveals how “Vespers” (#3) is a part of a long history of western literary tradition in its

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

115

depiction of the longing to know. Moreover, in its echoing and borrowing from major literary monuments, already deeply embedded in the consciousness of western culture, the intertextuality emphasis the poem’s significance in its private expression of longing.

As with the New Critics before her, Vendler espouses that there are so much more to a poem than the immediately perceivable content. The formal elements, too, are meaning-charged: they can emphasize, extend, or meaningfully contradict the content. Working together, content and forms make an interconnected whole which is the sum of the poem. “Vespers” (#3), with its longing speaker, is no exception.

B. Suggestions

Helen Vendler (2010b: 340) writes, “[t]here may be a part of the poem that you simply can’t fit into your overview. If so, admit it and go on.” Here, then, are several of such parts in “Vespers” (#3). On my discussion of the poem’s phrasal ordering, I have not yet found a convincing argument as to why the following lines must be thus and not otherwise:

I study the hawkweed, the buttercup protected from the grazing herd by being poisonous: (Glück, 1992: 38, line 10-12). Furthermore, my theoretical formulation of sound plays are rather limited.

Consequently, other possible sound effects found in the poems are likely be overlooked. Next, even though I deem satisfactory on global scope, my discussion on the poem’s rhythm in local scope is not yet so. Finally, in my discussion of the poem’s intertextuality, I have not yet incorporated consideration of “Psalm”—one

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

116

of the chief inspirations of liturgical poems, the interaction between “Vespers”

(#3) with other works depicting theme of hunger to know, such as the “Myth of

Eros and Psyche”, as well as its dialogue with other similar evening prayer poems.

In addition to these, I have not been able also to trace the source of several assumptions evident in the poem. For example, the one that of all values, god favors beauty. These being said, I suggest that the subsequent researchers will address these specific details in addition to evaluating details I have dealt with in this study.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abrams, M. H. The Fourth Dimensions of a Poem and Other Essays. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. Abrams, M. H. and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 9th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. ——————————————————. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 10th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010. “Array”. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. 2003. Arp, Thomas R. and Greg Johnson. Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. 10th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. Azar, Betty Schrampfer. Understanding and Using English Grammar. 3rd ed. New York: Pearson Education, 1999. Barnet, Sylvan, William Burto, and William E. Cain. An Introduction to Literature: Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 15th ed. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2008. “Beast”. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. 2003. Brooks, Cleanth. “In Search of New Criticism”. The American Scholar. Vol. 53. No. 1 (Winter, 1984): pp. 41-53. ——————–. The Well-Wrought Urn. New York: A Harvest Book / Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc, 1947. Brooks, Cleanth and Robert Penn Warren. Understanding Poetry. 3rd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960. Butler, Marilyn. “Reconstructing Keats”. The Hudson Review, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Spring, 1984): pp. 143-150. Chatman, Seymour. The Language of Poetry. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1968. Chiasson, Don. “The Body Artist”. The New Yorker. November 12, 2012: n.p. n.a. (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/11/12/the-body-artist). July 16, 2017. Childs, Peter and Roger Fowler. The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxon: Routledge, 2006. Crane, Hart. The Collected Poems. New York: Liveright Publishing Company, 1946.

117

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

118

Cuddon. J. A. and M. H. R. Habib. A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Chichester: A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication, 2013. Donne, John. The Complete Poems. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2010. “Dot”. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. 2003. Ferber, Michael. A Dictionary of Literary Symbols. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams. An Introduction to Language. 9th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cengange Learning, 2011. Gardner, T. “Close Reading”. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. 4th ed. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2012. “Gray”. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. 2003. Gregerson, Linda. “The Sower against Garden” in Contemporary Poets. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2010. Glück, Louise. The Wild Iris. New York: ecco, 1992. ––———–––. Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry. New York: ecco, 1994. Gubar, Susan, Sandra M. Gilbert, Felicia Bonaparte, Camillie Paglia, and Helen Vendler. "Feminism and Literature: An Exchange." New York Review of Books. August 14, 1990: n.p. n.a. (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/08/16/feminism-and-literature-an- exchange/). December 18, 2015. Hayes, Christina. “Lecture 20. Responses to Suffering and Evil: Lamentations and Wisdom Literature”. Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible). Youtube. December 6, 2017. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxENRH-v0Xk). July 18, 2014. Hollander, John. Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse. 4th ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Hylen, Susan. Allusion and Meaning in John 6. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005. Johnson, Samuel in Richard A. Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Jordan, Richard D. “Review”. The Modern Language Review. Vol. 73. No. 4 (October, 1978): pp. 881-883. Kennedy, X. J. and Diana Gioia. An Introduction to Poetry. 10th ed. New York: Longman, 2002. “Lamb”. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. 2003. Lanham, Richard A.. A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

119

Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. “The Critic's Notebook; The 4 Deadly Fallacies, Pathetic and Otherwise.” New York Times. June 9, 1986. Levinson, Marjorie in Grant F. Scott. n.t. Criticism. Vol 33, No. 3 (Summer, 1991): pp. 408-410. Lodge, David. The Art of Fiction. New York: Viking Penguin, 1993. “Louise Glück”. Poetry Foundation. n.d. (http://poetryfoundation.org/poets/louise-gluck) August 10, 2017. Madden, Frank. Exploring Poetry. London: Longman, 2002. Morris, Daniel. The Poetry of Louise Glück: A Thematic Introduction. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006. Mun, Cyril Wong Yit. “From Ararat to Averno: an Analysis of Plot in Louise Glück’s Poetry”. Thesis. Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2008. Nadal, Bobbie Su. “Review”. Harvard Review. No. 3 (Winter, 1993): pp. 178- 179. Paglia, Camillie. Sex, Art, and American Culture. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. Perloff, Marjorie. Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2004. “President Obama to Award 2015 National Humanities Medals”. National Endowment for the Humanities. September 13, 2016. (https://www.neh.gov/news/press-release/2016-09-14). August 17, 2017. Quinn, Edward. A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms. 2nd. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Ransom, John Crowe. “Critcism, Inc.”. Virgina Quarterly Review. Vol. 13. No. 4 (Autumn, 1937): n.p. “Raiment”. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. 2003. Robert, Edgar V and Henry E. Jacobs. Fiction: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1987. Ryan, Michael. An Introduction to Criticism: Film/Literature/Culture. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Schall, Joe. “Semicolons, Colons, and Dashes”. Effective Technical Writing in the Information Age. John A. Dutton E-Education Institute. 2015. (http://www.e-education.psu.edu/styleforstudents/c2_p5.html). April 20, 2017. “Silver”. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. 2003.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

120

“Shining”. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. 2003. “Sheep”. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. 2003. Stevens, Wallace. The Collected Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971. “Tenses”. Online Etymology Dictionary. n.p. n.d. (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=tense). July 16, 2017. The Holy Bible: King James Version. Bible Gateway. Web. July 18, 2017. The Holy Bible: New International Version. Bible Gateway. Web. July 18, 2017. Tyson, Lois. Using Critical Theory: How to Read and Write about Literature. Oxon: Routledge, 2011. Vendler, Helen. Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentary. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010a. ——————. Invisible Listener. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005. ——————. Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010b. ——————. Seamus Heaney. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. ——————. Soul Says. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995a. ——————. The Art of Shakespeare Sonnets. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. ——————. The Breaking of Style. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995b. ——————. The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. ——————. “The Booby Trap”. The New Republic. October 7, 1996. ——————. “Wallace Stevens: The Poet as Painter”. Interpretive Resources. Art Institute of Chicago. October 18, 2007. (http://www.artic.edu/aic/resources/resource/685?search_id=1). May 8, 2014. “Vespers”. Online Etymology Dictionary. . n.p. n.d. (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=vesper). July 16, 2017. Wales, Katie. A Dictionary of Stylistics. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2014. “Wild”. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. 2003. “White”. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. 2003. Winter, Yvor. In Defence of Reason. 3rd ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1947.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

121

Wolosky, Shira. The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poem. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Yule, George. The Study of Language. 4th ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

APPENDIX

“Vespers” (#3)

More than you love me, very possibly you love the beasts of the field, even, possibly, the field itself, in August dotted with wild chicory and aster: I know. I have compared myself to those flowers, their range of feeling so much smaller and without issue; also to white sheep, actually gray: I am uniquely suited to praise you. Then why torment me? I study the hawkweed, the buttercup protected from the grazing herd by being poisonous: is pain your gift to make me conscious in my need of you, as though I must need you to worship you, or have you abandoned me in favor of the field, the stoic lambs turning silver in twilight; waves of wild aster and chicory shining pale blue and deep blue, since you already know how like your raiment it is.

122