Monday, January 12, 2009

"One does not use nouns" says Stein

When creating the image, through panopoeia, melopoeia and logopoeia, there is no point in using any word that fails to absolutely solidify the image; as Pound says, "incompetence will show in the use of too many words" (ABCs of Reading). An imagiste cares to present yet one image in a lifetime, if successfully embodied through verse, to the exclusion of voluminous disembodied works (A Few Don'ts By as Imagiste).
The creation of one image involves objectivity, that is , the true portrayal of set "thing" as if examined as a molecule itself. Pound speaks of Optics, "the lens that brings the rays from an object to a focus," as a sort of formula to begin with in modern poetry ("An Objective" from Prepositions). It is clear that the imagiste must logically, melodically and visually recreate and make re-complete the image before an audience -- then we receive set image. This endeavor is better than t.v., yet similar in function.
The economy of words speaks to the fact that through choice words we transmit an image. Pound reminds us that as poets there is a "...faith that the combined letters are absolute symbols for objects, states, acts, and interrelations...". However, Stein's "Poetry and Grammar" from Lectures in America confronts this faith based approach and questions the validity of some of these combined letters, namely nouns. Stein discourages the use of nouns, as well as their counterparts, the adjectives.
Instead of nouns, it is good to use feelings. "How are you feelings inside of you?" and "Do you always have the same kind of feelings in relation to the sounds and words that come out?" -- i.e. poetry. This kind of attention to the three forms phanopoeia, melopoeia and logopoeia is exactly what is asked of from the imagistes -- A poet should know what is inside a thing and write about that instead of using a name. Stein says that as humans we know this intensity of understanding and explanation from when we are in love. In her words, "a writer should always have that intensity of emotion about whatever is the object about which he writes,"she concludes "one does not use nouns".

a few thoughts on "tender buttons" -- images and things are tactile, we can "handle" them -- they can carry our feelings

3 comments:

  1. It's interesting to read Stein quotes like "one does not use nouns" and then read something like Tender Buttons, which is chalked full of nouns. I think she believed in the tender treatment of nouns and the love that one must have for them to deal with them. Because a thing in named there is no point saying that name. It is defined and static. But in "TB" she is trying to make language more translucent and malleable, pushing it in directions that strips language of it's normal uses and connotations. I think in "Tender Buttons" we are under the illusion that we can "handle" images but all language is very slippery to Stein, and the image is just stacks of slippery language. To think you can handle it is a trick of the light.

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  2. Although I do agree that they carry our feelings, memories, connotations.

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  3. stacks of slippery language -- a trick of the light

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