The poetics of complexity and the modern long poem
Abstract
This study examines several long poems from 1850 to the present to
demonstrate why they are properly long poems as opposed to verse narratives or
lyric sequences, the two most common characterizations of texts composed of
many lines of verse. This study redirects attention to the form of the long poem
as well as to several under-read examples of it, which are widely regarded as
their authors’ masterpieces despite their apparent obscurity. The primary texts
are: Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H., Robert Browning’s The Ring
and the Book, T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, James Merrill’s The Changing Light at
Sandover, Derek Walcott’s Omeros, and Lyn Hejinian’s My Life. One of the
hallmarks of the form is its incompleteness in excerpt; as a result, modern long
poems are seldom included in discussions of poetry, which instead focus on lyric
sequences or collections as the primary examples of long forms since they can be
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addressed in small pieces. At the same time, a prevailing interest in narrative
effectively places any attention given to extensive poetry on their plots and
characters; and since many modern long poems do not succeed as literature
solely because of their narrative content, they are not well understood when they
are read at all. To assist readers in making sense of these texts, this study
describes a poetics based on the insights offered by complexity theory. Among
the strengths of complexity theory is its focus on the paradoxes of form as they
appear in communicating systems, which for the purposes of this study means:
readers. Through a critical analysis of the recursive paradoxes inherent in the
study’s primary texts, this study shows how readers can and do make sense of
them as poetic.
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