Poem (As the cat)

We’re just beginning week 6 (the beats!) of the wonderful annual 10 week session on modern experimental US poetry (ModPo).  William Carlos Williams (affectionately known as WCW) is actually covered in  week 3 and though I feel like I have an intimate knowledge of WCW’s work, once again, ModPo has given me a poem to work with that I’ve not read before: “Poem (As the cat)”.  We wrote our second essays in week 4, and critiqued others (a pleasurable activity that always yields new insights) through week 5. The full text of the poem follows:

As the cat
climbed over
the top of


the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot


carefully
then the hind
stepped down


into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot


Here’s my essay :-)

William Carlos Williams’ (WCW) “As the cat” takes the form of a single sentence. The poem follows the progression of a cat as it climbs over a cupboard into an empty flowerpot. The poem uses simple prosaic language, and creates a clear visual. The poem is spare in form, and free of extraneous words, however, this is not a static poem, and there are subtle, but deliberate choices that open the poem to interpretations that belie its apparent simplicity.


“As the cat” is structured to flow in soft, cat-like steps of 3 and 4 syllable lines. This is a cat on the move. The poem opens with the word “As”, which appears to be a conjunction, implying that something additional is happening concurrently with the cat’s descent, though there is nothing provided for comparison. “Then” is the natural companion to “As”, providing the poem’s turn in the moment when the cat changes direction from up to down, almost in a breathlike motion: the stepping up being an inward breath and the stepping down being exhalation.


Many of WCW’s word choices are unusual. This is not any cat but “the cat”. This implies intimacy with the reader. We are meant to know that this is a particular cat, most likely one that belongs to the speaker. It could be a metaphorical or real cat, but it is a cat with agency. It takes the deliberate action of climbing, which involve effort, then it steps down, another act of effort. No human involvement is happening here, other than in the observation, which creates an observer effect, fixing the cat in its motion or arc: deliberately moving over and then down. The jamcloset hints at a similar type of industry, that of jam-making (plum jam perhaps?), though we have no indication whether the closet is full or empty, though we know it must have contained jam because otherwise it would not be called a jamcloset – an unusual word that in assuming the reader will understand, also creates intimacy.


The word “pit” is also unusual here. Flowerpots are normally not excessively deep, and to call their interior a “pit”, particularly in conjunction with “empty” implies a kind of meaninglessness. This is more than just a visual image, but rather it’s an image of desolation that hints at death. There is a sense in the construction of this poem that by fixing the cat in this Sisyphean activity of climbing over the jamcloset and into the flowerpot, we are in fact keeping the cat in this state of agency, and thereby somehow cheating death. Of course the poem leaves this kind of extended interpretation solely to the reader. It merely provides a series of steps, rhythms, particular word choices, and the image itself, but by focusing such intense concentration on a single, ordinary, moment in time, the nature of that concentration creates this transcendence. This seems to me to be the very essence of the Imagist ideal.

Emily again: Love reckons by itself — alone

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know about my annual affair with UPenn’s Modern and Contemporary American Poetry course (“ModPo”) taught by the great Al Filreis. I’m on my sixth year.  This is no impersonal MOOC, though I share the course with some 30,000+ students, most of whom will return every year to re-engage with old and new poems, as the course is constantly changing, growing, and offering new ways to interact with both classic and very recent poetry and poets. The course runs for 10 weeks but remains open throughout the year with discussion groups, ongoing interpretations, regular ongoing meet ups and crowdsourced close readings, teacher and student resources and constantly good conversation.  The course always begins with Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, effectively the mother and father of modernism - both representing separate stylistic poles that link and underpin all of the work that follows.  Nothing is mandatory, but I like to do the essays each year, especially as they’re always a little different.  And if you search the blog, you’ll see that I’ve posted each essay up here.  This week’s is a brief 500 word analysis of Emily Dickinson’s "Love reckons by itself--alone”.  Feel free to chime in with your own comments if you’re taken, or just read and enjoy the poem.  Poetry talk is always welcome.  

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Love reckons by itself — alone —

"As large as I" — relate the Sun

To One who never felt it blaze —

Itself is all the like it has —

As with many of Emily Dickinson’s poems, “Love reckons by itself – alone”, begins with an almost puritanical constriction, appearing to spiral inward and tighten, but with each reading the work becomes more expansive, inflationary, even explosive and sensual.  Even by Dickinson’s standards, this is a short poem of a single stanza, and appears, as her poems often do, to be a simple explication about the nature of Love’s grandeur and self-containment.  The closer you look, the less simple the poem becomes, each word informed and changed by the structural context, the Dickinsonian punctuation, the unusual rhythm where tradition and atonality work side-by-side, and the multiple meaning of each word.

The poem begins with one of poetry’s most overused words, and Dickinson throws it straight out there - charging and distorting the word Love through personification, slant rhyme, and odd conjunctions undermining a saccharine sense of romantic love.  Dickinson’s Love with a capital L could be God, or the equal of God in sensuality, or could be the human imagination or Poetry, or our ability to empathise and move beyond our individual selves. Following the word with the verb ‘reckons” turns Love from an abstract idea into a self-referential character, recursive – turning back onto itself as in resolving, self-contained and entire.  Dickinson uses the dashes to set the word “alone” off, making the quality of this self-containment visual.  Then she gives Love a voice, putting the next line in quotations and allowing Love to talk about how large it is, relating the heat of Love to the heat of the Sun, and how that blaze is both the perpetuator of life, and unknowable. Because it’s unknowable, we can only imagine it, even if we think we’ve experienced it, thereby undermining experience. 

There are particular rhythms and rhymes in this poem.  One of the more obvious is the equation of all the capitalised nouns: Love, Sun, One – each of these things not only rhyming but moving forward and backwards on the page to create a rhythm of motion and inevitability.  There is a heavy use of alliteration, particularly the L sound which creates a somewhat languid but progressive rhythm from Love to itself, alone, large, relate, blaze, all, and like.  The dashes not only set off the word “alone”, but then create a series of gaps or pauses which invite the reader to reflect for a brief moment, in those connective spaces.  The ending on the last space leaves the poem open ended, on a sentence which is cryptic enough to allow for multiple interpretation, multiple reading.  Free otherwise of punctuation, the poem is presented as iambic tetrameter, which is subverted by the dashes at the end of the first, third and forth lines.  The second line could be enjambment with the following line (relating the sun to one), or more likely the lack of a dash functions as a full stop/period, as evidenced by the capitalisation of the word “To” next to One.  This allows the third line to mirror poems like “Volcanoes be in Sicily”: a celebration of imagination rather than a celebration of experience.  We don’t need to experience to know what Love feels like (in fact, we can’t get at this through the visceral).  Instead we have all the correspondence (the ‘reckoning’) we need in our imagination.