Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version MacKay, Duncan (2017) Speaking Beyond Words: George Oppen's Late Poetry as an Exploration of Cognition. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, University of Kent,. DOI Link to record in KAR http://kar.kent.ac.uk/65150/ Document Version UNSPECIFIED Copyright & reuse Content in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated all content is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of research The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record. Enquiries For any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: [email protected] If you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.html Speaking Beyonp Worps George Oppen's Late Poetry as an Exploration of Cognition DuncanMacKay PhD Poetry: Text, Practice as Research 2017 Abstract The Creative component of this submission is a poem series eutitled [Happenstance ] . Written within the frame of the middle period of the research process at a rate of approximately one per week for a year , each poem focuses on the research preoccupations of the moment as they infiltrate daily life. They have the deliberate intent of mixing literary critical with cognitive scientific language as content, of blending these discourses with the everyday, and of balancing the spontaneity of conversational tone with a deliberation of poetic language, all within an open field format. The focus is on writing as an enactment of cognition, the process made manifest, a practice that parallels the later work of American poet George Oppen. The gripe that Oppen expressed against ‘poems with too much point’ is explored, being both subverted and validated through the speculatively propositional 2 The Analytical component focuses on the poetry of Oppen’s last three collections: Seascape Needle’s Eye (1972), Myth of the Blaze (1975), and Primitive (1978); alongside his published correspondence, his published notes, and the opinions of his principal literary critics. The discussion seeks to identify the evidence for, and consequences of, Oppen’s preoccupation with matters of cognition in the final decade of his writing life. Correlations are sought between Oppen’s own understanding of the relationship between experience , meaning , and language, and the insights gleaned into these processes from the subsequent four decades of research in cognitive linguistics, cognitive psychology, and the neurosciences. Oppen returned to writing in the late 1950s under the influence particularly of ideas gleaned from Jacques Maritain. To these were added the phenomenological influence of Martin Heidegger and Georg W.F. Hegel’s reflections on speculative thinking. Also of significance in initiating Oppen’s inward turn in poetic process was the disruptive emotional impact of his Pulitzer Prize recognition of 1969. Oppen’s experience suggests that where cognitive studies and poetics meet may be ground in which new conceptual and aesthetic possibilities for poetry emerge. At its simplest we may ask whether Oppen’s personal insights as recorded through his poems, notes and correspondence remain valid in the light of modern day cognitive sciences, rather than merely for their historical interest and, if the former, what they might continue to teach a contemporary poet such as myself. 1 Acknowledgements I particularly thank my supervisor, Dr Simon Smith, for the many hours of stimulating discussion. He has offered a fund of knowledge on 20th century poetry which few could match. I also thank Professor David Herd for his initial encouragement and, along with David, those other key members of the School of English and American Studies who have offered ongoing interest and encouragement, particularly those in the Creative Writing and Centre for Modern Poetry groups. I mention especially Nancy Gaffield, Patricia Debney, Scarlett Thomas, David Ayers, David Flusfeder and Ben Hickman. I have also benefited from nblicat- ion of my prose and poetry over the past three years, and I thank those editors concerned: Michael Schmidt at PN Review, Ian Brintonand David Caddy at Tears in the Fence, Dorothy Lehane and Sarah Crewe at Litmus, Kat Peddie and Eleanor Perry at Zone, Amy Sackville at Kent Review; together with contributions to readings at both in-house UKC seminars and Sam Bailey’s Free Range events in Canterbury. I also had the opportunity to contribute to conferences and workshops, including ‘Bridging the Divide: Literature and Science’, a CHASE -AHRC sponsored conference (Kent/Sussex June 2016), the British Society for Literature and Science Annual Conference (Liverpool, April 2015), and a BSLS Symposium (Westminster, November 2014), for which I thank the organisers (notably John Holmes and Martin Willis). 2 Table of Contents Abstract 1 Acknowledgements 2 Table of Contents 3 Abbreviations 5 Part One Selections from [Happenstance:] 6 Acknowledgements 60 Part Two Introduction The Happenstance of Oppen 63 Chapter One ‘At the nail’s point’ 1.1 Old Salt Survivor 70 1.2 Clues To The Labyrinth 71 1.3 First Taste 73 Chapter Two ‘To isolate the words’ 2.1 Awakening 78 2.2 Origin & Function 80 2.3 Mind’s Place 82 2.4 I have Seen My Own Cranium 85 Chapter Three ‘It’s there. It’s true.’ 3.1 Ask The Typewriter 88 3.2 Grounded Cognition & Simulation 89 3.3 The Poetic Proposition 92 3.4 Poetic Singularities 94 3.5 The Cognitive Context 98 Chapter Four ‘On the sea, steering, the sea pulling.’ 4.1 The Moving Edge 104 4.2 The Danger Of The Chess Board 108 4.3 You Could Call It Youthful 112 3 Chapter Five ‘Speaking into a wind’ 5.1 The Instant Of Meaning 117 5.2 Syntax 117 5.3 Enjambment 120 5.4 Intransitive 121 5.5 Masonry 123 5.6 Space For The Mind 124 5.7 Prosody: The pulse of thought 126 Chapter Six ‘Well, nevertheless, nevertheless.’ 6.1 We Make Our Meanings and They Mean 130 6.2 Languages Of Thought 131 6.3 Phenomenal Consciousness 134 6.4 Shall We Say More 136 6.5 Finally: Beyond Oppen 139 Appendices Appendix One Oppen's Crisis Of Confidence A.1 Wounds I Didn’t Know I had 143 A.2 Reasons To Love 147 A.3 ME – A Cornerstone 152 Appendix Two A Cognitic Poetics Perspective: 154 Bibliography Works Cited 164 Other Works Consulted 169 4 Abbreviations NCP Oppen, George. New Collected Poems. Ed. Michael Davidson. Manchester: Carcanet, 2003. UCSD George Oppen Papers, the Mandeville Special Collections, University of California at San Diego, MSS 16. Citations by collection number, followed by box and file numbers. RV Refers to the selection of transcripts from the Oppen papers published as Appendix B ‘The Romantic Virtue’ UCSD 16, 31, 16 (in five sections) in Peter Nicholls George Oppen and the Fate of Modernism, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007. 5 Part One [Happenstance: ] “Too often … reason has been shown to work in profoundly irrational ways, certainties have bred fractious conflict, authority has been revealed as the mask of intolerance & oppression, and directions have been confounded in a maze of dead ends.” Tim Ingold (2007) Lines: A Brief History, 167. [Happenstance:] Nuts & Bolts I’m going to set my timer a talk within talk in Kat’s front room Sam is under the piano with his reverb gizmos as if any of us are really prepared it is (after all) in the timing counter to this everything is up for grabs the separations artificial how dull the intention merely to describe counter to that the details & their imprecisions delight perhaps it is that Gertrude Stein had the secret rather than only (in Skinner’s words) an involuntary reflex the mutterings of an unread and unlearned mind you can imagine her blunt response I achieve by [e]xtra consciousness, [e]xcess a mind unconstrained by a behaviourist’s nightmare as for /mʌɪˈsɛlf/ etymology tells us to read from the Anglo-Saxon rædhan giving-receiving advice or counsel which by way of solving a riddle became explaining something obscure having read that situation having taken due counsel this singular subjective first personal pronoun is ready. 6 [Happenstance:] This One That Point & purpose of course as a collector caught in the British Library with a razor blade poems cannot live alone nor going back keep breathing break a line cut a line ‘make each line cut itself’ Jack’s breath as one measure mid the spurious reference the argument my lemon (‘this one that one’) MNLatex style file v2.2 exploration & retreat lift the discourse out of context (that’s two don’ts for Ben) drop it in some other bucket see what gives one supposes this surrenders preconception bias prejudice back of the mind a Duchamp unto myself pits life against art in the decisive moment while the academic demands its premise inference conclusion in support of a proposition writing is writing boldly stated this script argues its work the etching compliant with the plate if an old grey donkey can arrange three sticks on the ground but let’s get on each interjection a reminder of improvised disobedience simply put upon the page deftly but without [e]xcessive frontal forethought three-quarters of the pleasure far below this cabin window Fiennes at the