I’ve made chickpeas for a pasta bake later and put on a couple of washes. Luna, who is something of a ‘L for Luna’ for Bronte, is having her morning nap - as is Bronte who’s been up with her since 5am. Affectionate as she is Luna is definitely not the lap dog our other two are happy to be. She very much reminds me of Buster, my collie/lab cross that my dad got me for company, and security!, when I moved into my first house.
It’s mid-morning and Bandit has joined Luna and Bronte for a snooze and cuddle while Bindi is cosy in front of the fire with me in the other room. It’s a pretty washed out scene outside - not foggy but overcast with a whiteness that mutes the green of the grass, the brickwork of houses, the bark of trees, and firmly places us here in deep winter. People passing by are wearing bobble hats and I can see dog walkers out in the park but fewer than usual. The odd car zooms by and, disturbed, the flock of seagulls swoop and screech. Here inside I’m grappling with structuring a definition of my concept of sound-rich poetry as the musicality of language and structure, and using voice as instrument. I’ve placed the Mina Loy quote that I presented as part of my poetics at our last meeting at the opening of the introductory chapter of my thesis: Poetry is prose bewitched, a music made of visual thoughts, the sound of an idea. I’m sketching around this quote a line which considers musicality of language and structure, and using voice as instrument, to take in Northrop Frye’s charm and riddle (song / the pictorial-conceptual) and Kristeva’s speaking subject as composed of the semiotic, symbolic, semiotic chora. My concept of sound-rich poetry stems from and is rooted in my readings of Geraldine Monk, Bill Griffiths and Maggie O’ Sullivan. ‘Musicality’ is a term central to my definition of sound-rich poetry. I’m approaching musicality not as to do directly with music, as I’m not a musician, rather as a way of choosing and working with materials for the poem and to structure a poem which although foregrounding sound does so in relation to, and not exclusive of, the visual nor is it exclusive of meaning. My thesis argues creatively and critically for a sound-rich poetry that is a contemporary free verse form distinguished by a sonic musicality in the vocal and written versions which, more than any other feature, grabs and holds our attention and which elicits our emotional and intellectual responses. Whether we access the poem through the visual if reading, or through vocal sound if listening, it is through sound first and foremost that we access all other features. I’ll focus today on developing how I’m using the term musicality in relation to the Loy quote. Victor Zuckerkandl then to start with I think.
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October 2017
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