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Literary Matters a THE NEWSLETTER OF THE ASSOCIATION OF LITERARY SCHOLARS, CRITICS, AND WRITERS Aut nuntiare aut delectare The Zagajewski-Cavanagh www.bu.edu/literary Broadside Project VOLUME 3.2 SPRING 2010 Thanks to the work of Dan Wuenschel, a member of our Development Committee and Manager of the Grolier Inside this issue Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, and Councilor Rosanna Warren, preparations are underway for a broadside of Adam Zagajewski’s previously unpublished poem “Piano 2 The President’s Column: Lesson” to be produced and sold for the benefit of the Reading for Form without Formalism ALSCW. Zagajewski and his translator, our own Clare Cavanagh, have donated the poem, and designer and 4 News and Announcements: printer Zachary Sifuentes (of Bow and Arrow Press) has Local Meetings & the ALSCW/VSC Fellowship agreed to donate his services to design and produce the Sonnets in NYC & New Publication by Members broadside. 8 Hopkins, Coleridge And Grammar in Middle School (Helaine Smith) In addition to printing several numbered copies of the broadside for his own archives and those of the ALSCW, 9 Secondary School Essay Contest Mr. Sifuentes will print a series of 26 lettered copies for 11 Candidate Profiles for 2010 Election the ALSCW. Ten of these lettered copies will, very soon, 12 The Once and Future Sonnet (Adelaide Russo) (continued on page 5) 13 The Coffin (a poem by Michael Chitwood) 16 Raymond Danowski Has Your Chapbook ALSCW Welcomes 17 Portrait of our Donors Daniel and Joanna Rose a New Officer and 18 2010 Conference in Princeton (Briefly) a New Councilor A report from President Susan Wolfson, on behalf of Council: When our Councilor Mark Bauerlein submitted his resignation at the end of his second year on Council (citing an overload of professional From The Editor and family obligations), Council regretfully accepted this news, In her President’s Column for this issue of Literary and then happily elected, Matters, Susan Wolfson explores how we can read for unanimously, Lee Oser, who “Form without Formalism.” Commenting Coleridge’s teaches literature and religion Biographia Literaria, she writes that for the poet, “form at the College of the Holy Cross, is the means and object of reading.” Form opens up to complete this term, and possibilities in the imagination of the reader, and need happy we were, because Lee Oser took on significant tasks not, as Susan points out, be constrained by the agenda and service to the Association. of an added “ism.” (continued on page 11) (continued on page 3) SPRING 2010 1 The President’s Column: Reading for Form without Formalism By SuSan WolfSon With bitter chill outdoors and the pattering of sharp edition) tells us this is probably is the most famous sleet against window-panes, I tend to open my second- “rhetorical question” in English poetry. But it’s not clear semester Romantics course, which always begins the first that it fits this cast if by this you mean an interrogative week in February, with a poetry of a seasonal promise. forming, to solicit assent, of something not in question. What better comfort than Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind, One impediment to the rhetorical thrust is an off-rhyme, its imperatives rolling through a terza rima sonnet-stanza just where you’d expect a ringing chime: O Wind / . to this stirring, cheering climax? behind. This rhyme emerges, terza-rima style, from the middle endword in the previous stanza: Be through my lips to unawakened earth Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! The question has sensuous appeal to minds of winter: Be through my lips to unawakened earth . merely “rhetorical,” it seems, it sounds a guarantee on The imperative to mankind! lapses into a dissonant Wind, the logic of natural, seasonal succession. before sounding a chime with behind. Why would Shelley Graced by capital letters, moreover, seasonal oscillate at the agency of Wind? logic appeals beyond calendrics: winters of any tenor-- Wind is a sight rhyme--its sound, at best, like a biographical, political, spiritual--may anticipate, gradually memory of music fled. No trumpet blast to the ear, the but inevitably, a spring of rebirth (it is in fall, not winter, undulation from Wind to Winter, then, across another that spring is farthest behind, we recall). This logic sound, be far behind, keeps some appointments while it matters, because in 1819 Shelley conceived this October produces other disappointments. Rhyming only to the eye Ode in the wake of several overtly “political poems.” If its (Wind/behind) issues a prophecy that can be only partly language has no evident reference to the events of 1819 sensed in the present. Mindful of this calculated effect, (say, the Peterloo Massacre of August), it surely images we can return to the other near-kin rhymes and phonemic and enacts a productive commotion, performs with repetitions that accumulate across the final stanza: poetic power, and petitions for a reception some time, somewhere, that could be argued into political hope. Be thou, Spirit fierce, Whether you sense this political poetics, or whether My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! you see this Ode infused with more general desires, what “Spirit fierce / My spirit” is a frame that at once evokes is inescapable is the drive to very high stakes, and the the symbolic reciprocity of a chiasmus but doesn’t clinch risks of such a gamble. What about the question itself? it, even with linking hiss of the s-sound across fierce. This The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (first ghostly enchantment is doubled by a concentric frame, LITERARY MATTERS Editor Literary Matters is published and distributed Leslie Harkema quarterly by the Association of Literary Scholars, The Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Critics, and Writers (ALSCW), 650 Beacon Street, Writers (ALSCW) promotes excellence in literary Production Manager Suite 510, Boston, MA 02215. Tel: 617-358-1990; Katherine Hala fax: 617-358-1995; [email protected]; criticism and scholarship, and works to ensure that www.bu.edu/literary. literature thrives in both scholarly and creative envi- Editorial Assistants Literary Matters is provided to all ALSCW members. ronments. We encourage the reading and writing of Liza Katz Membership dues start at $37 for the first year ($32 literature, criticism, and scholarship, as well as wide- Erin McDonagh for students) and are charged on a graduated scale thereafter. Premium Memberships are also available. ranging discussions among those committed to the reading and study of literary works. No part of this newsletter may be copied or reproduced without permission from ALSCW. 2 LITERARYLITERARY MATTERSMATTERS || VOLUMEVOLUME 3.23.2 which also conjures chiasmus, “Be thou [. / . .] Be From The Editor (continued from page 1) thou me,” this me not only linking to My at the heart of the call (“Be thou, Spirit fierce, / My spirit! Be thou me”), This unlocking of language’s possibilities is, for but also, by a conspicuous, deliberate solecism, to the me, the greatest joy of teaching grammar. I notice it objective me. especially when I get to teach my intermediate Spanish Shelley’s poietics of flirtation with figurally fraught students the subjunctive—a grammatical mood of chiasmus is but one formal event in this terza rima sound whose existence in English most of them are largely chamber: unaware. Yet when they encounter it, they receive a new Drive my dead thoughts over the universe set of linguistic tools that not only aid their personal Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth; expression in Spanish, but their comprehension And, by the incantation of this verse, of the literary texts we read in class. In this issue of LM, Helaine Smith explores this connection between grammar, literature, and pedagogy in her second Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth contribution to our series on teaching literature at the Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! secondary school level. She, too, draws our (and her Be though my lips to unawakend earth . students’) attention to Coleridge, and also to Hopkins, The phonics of fierce, in addition to the s-effect, keynote in a lesson that focuses on grammar in poetry. the turn to universe and then to verse itself, sprung from universe. Counterpointing this chord is a sound-kin, but We hope that this series on teaching will elicit slant-rhymed birth/hearth/earth. It’s not just sound, but further submissions from teachers, and students. a verbal latency that the eye catches better than the ear As an extension of this initiative to engage with high hears: you can see earth literally awakened from hearth, school English and literature classes, we are excited and within hearth see the words heart and hear, and ear within both. Not for nothing has Shelley ended the first to announce our Secondary School Essay Contest three of his five stanza-units,Oh hear! The rhyme scheme (see p. 9). Submissions from students will be reviewed of this stanza works with internal incantation, with verbal by a special committee of ALSCW members, and the latencies that appear to, appeal to, the eye more than the winning essay will be featured in an upcoming issue of ear. Literary Matters. Where does this vision that is not yet an audit leave the summary (if not yet summery) question: “O Wind, / One of the distinguishing characteristics of the If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” In material ALSCW is its attention to the variety of “forms” that the nature (barring geothermal or nuclear catastrophe), spring literary and love of literature takes on in our society.