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Berlin Duration by Carson Richard Butts Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in German and Spanish, University of New Brunswick, 2004 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Graduate Academic Unit of English, Faculty of Arts Supervisors: Demetres Tryphonopoulos, PhD, English Sharon McCartney, MFA, Creative Writing Examining Board: Randall Martin, PhD, English, Chair Ross Leckie, PhD, English External Examiner: Allan Reid, PhD, Culture and Language Studies This thesis is accepted by the Dean of Graduate Studies THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW BRUNSWICK April, 2009 © Carson Richard Butts, 2009 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your We Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-80706-4 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-80706-4 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. •+l Canada ABSTRACT Berlin Duration brings the many photographs of my albums, recollected mental images and collected facts, emails and clippings to my readers so that they might glimpse the city as I lived it and feel it as I felt it. This is an auto-biographical long poem, a "rag-bag" of poetry, prose, image, metaphor, lists and bent truths. It takes the nostalgic bull by the horns. As I move through the city, catalogue cobblestones and experience and relive the love affairs of friendship, I grapple with the heart of nostalgia's disrepute - sentimentality. This is not a complete or even accurate portrait of the city of Berlin; rather, it is my Berlin, 2003 to 2006, my Berlin duration. Influences on this work include Wordsworth's "recollection in tranquility" and the long modernist poem, especially Pound's "rag-bag" and Williams's Paterson. The "found object" in this poem is everything. 11 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my two supervisors on this thesis for their constant support and advice. Thank you, Demetres, for showing me how poetry means and for being the first to tell me that I should consider doing an English Master's. And thank you, Sharon, for putting pressure on my lines and never getting too academic. Thank you also to Ross for putting the fear of sentimentality in me, and to my external examiner, Dr. Allan Reid, for taking the time to read my thesis and for everything he has done throughout my UNB career. Endless thanks, love and smiles to my family. Thank you, Dad, for showing me how to get this poem started; Mom, for listening to me talk all the tough bits out; Carla, for your infinite confidence in me; and, Adrian, for all the breaks and distraction. Finally, I thank my friends, in Canada and in Germany, for taking part in this poem, for enduring and enjoying my countless stories of Berlin. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS I. ABSTRACT ii II. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii III. TABLE OF CONTENTS iv IV. INTRODUCTION 1 V. BERLIN DURATION 19 1. Airplane lands 21 2. Leaving homeland 22 3. First night on Wrangelstrasse 23 5. Oranienburgerstrasse 25 6. A Room Without English 28 6. A Room Without English [English translation] 31 7. Reichenbergerstrasse 59 - meeting Claudia and Christoph 34 8. Claudia I. 38 10. ^4 rippling in the glass 40 11. Marilyn Manson Concert 41 14. Esther 44 17'. Meeting Antje 48 18. Antje I. 50 18a. I woke up in Berlin 53 18a. I woke up in Berlin [English translation] 54 24. Krossenerstrasse 7, Friedrichshain - moving in 55 25. Friedrichshain 58 26. Krossenerstr. 7 to Oranienburgerstr. 61 27. Much dearer things - 1.12.04 69 30. Prenzlauer Berg 72 33. Going Home for Christmas 79 43. Tod 82 47. Krossener 7, Friedrichshain — moving out 83 48.Kreuzberg 84 59. Shades of Blue 97 60. Lovelite courtyard, EuroCup '08 98 68. Berlin exists 99 VI. WORKS CITED AND CONSULTED 101 VII. CURRICULUM VITAE iv 1 INTRODUCTION I have composed a long poem titled Berlin Duration on the city of Berlin, Germany and my experiences while living there from August 2003, to August 2006. The poem contains most of what I know and believe of poetry and, in so doing, demonstrates my own idea of poetry, its form and content, which I will attempt to elucidate in this introduction. Though I cannot fully define, or even outline, my long poem in this short paper, it will be helpful to first summarise my understanding of what poetry is, based primarily on my studies of Modernist poetics and criticism, and some of Modernism's predecessors. William Wordsworth defined poetry in 1802 as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings...from emotion recollected in tranquility" (260). William Carlos Williams said of poetry in a 1957 interview with Mike Wallace, which Williams subsequently grafted into his long poem Paterson, that it is "language charged with emotion. It's words, rhythmically organized... A poem is a complete little universe. It exists separately" (Paterson 221). Pound defines poetry as "language charged with meaning" (Perloff, Poetics 226). In thinking about my poetry and Berlin Duration, I combine these three statements into one: Poetry is a separate little universe built from recollection of powerful feelings and charged with emotion and meaning. Furthermore, everything of our physical and emotional worlds can constitute materials for poetry. Whitman draws "everything" into the universe of Song of Myself early in the poem, Book 3, when he states, "Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul" (24). Of Whitman, Pound writes: "I honour him for he prophesied me while I can only recognize him as a forebear of whom I ought to be 2 proud" (Early Writing 187). Pound expresses this same all-inclusiveness in his prose essay "The Wisdom of Poetry": "Poetry is the expression of imaginative thought...to which end all animate, inanimate and intangible things may assume the properties and attributes of tangible, living, thinking and speaking things, possessing the power of becoming what they seem, or of transfiguration into what they suggest" (Early Writing 190). The universe of poetry constitutes, therefore, an act of discovery, made first by the poet and again by the reader. Accordingly, Whitman's poetry demonstrates American Frontier thinking in which the discovery lies always over the next hill; the poet striving constantly forward and relating everything in his path to his reader in pursuit. Darryl Whetter sees this very tendency in Williams's Paterson, which "acknowledges the placement of ideas in things as a process which, like the writing of a long poem, is necessarily endless" (259). Appropriately, Williams had only begun composing Book VI of Paterson before he died in 1963 (MacGowan, Paterson xii); Pound's Cantos is an incomplete long poem into which the author strove unto death "to make everything fit" (Bacigalupo 25); and Whitman proclaimed in Book 1 of Song of Myself, "I, now thirty- seven years old in perfect health begin, / Hoping to cease not till death" (22). Likewise, Berlin Duration is incomplete, organised loosely according to chronology with many gaps in numbering of its sections. What is presented is a piece of the story, largely auto biographical, pieces of the universe I discovered over three years living in the city and fragments of visits afterward. Berlin Duration is my attempt to bring the many photographs of my albums, collected facts, recollected mental images and "powerful" feelings contemplated after- 3 the-fact, charged with emotion and meaning, to my readers so that they might glimpse my experience of the city as I lived it, and feel it as I felt it. This introduction proceeds in four sections which build on the above explanation of my poetics and influences regarding the content and composition of Berlin Duration. Section one explains how the poem's lists and catalogues become artistic and poetic through the choice and intention of the writer. Section two is a discussion of movement through time and space in my long poem and in a selection of long poems influencing my own. I make note of the inclusion of movement and/or stasis in the catalogues of these poems, as well as the use of epanaphora for cataloguing movement and stasis.