Dodie Bellamy Report

Paul Delaroche
The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, 1833
Oil on canvas
The National Gallery, London

Dodie Bellamy read here at SOU Wednesday evening for the Emergent Forms series. I'd assigned Cunt-Ups to my poetry students, so she read one piece from that at the end of the reading in answer to a student request, but mostly she read a single long piece entitled "Lady Jane," potentially part of a longer work in progress, but essentially complete in itself.

During the entire reading, a PowerPoint slide of the Delaroche image above was projected on a screen beside her. The piece uses the painting as a launching point, wittily using the execution of Jane Grey as a metaphor for a painful academic hiring experience. Beyond the humor of the conceit, Dodie's writing played with the ecphrastic form in ways that were both funny and dazzlingly skillful. As the piece progresses, it works in recountings of assorted "humiliations" from throughout the author's life (many of them involving bathroom stalls and falling down in front of people), as well as imaginary fortune cookie texts and narratives of various autobiographical events. Dodie said that she had been considering "Lady Jane" as a possible chapbook, and I hope this happens, because it deserves to be read as widely and as soon as possible.

The next morning, at an informal colloquium, Dodie read another selection from Cunt-Ups, and talked very engagingly for about an hour with students and other attendees about experimental poetics, queer & feminist literary communities, horror films and porn as source materials, and her writing process in general. Afterwards, she signed copies of Cunt-Ups and Pink Steam.

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Addendum: Dodie's piece made me think of another of my favorite passages of prose, also on Lady Jane, by Roger Ascham, tutor to Queen Elizabeth I, in his book The Scholemaster (1570):

And one example, whether loue or feare doth worke more in a child, for vertue and learning, I will gladlie report: which maie be heard with some pleasure, and folowed with more profit. Before I went into Germanie, I came to Brodegate in Lecetershire, to take my leaue of that noble Ladie Iane Grey, to whom I was exceding moch beholdinge. Hir parentes, the Duke and Duches, with all the houshould, Gentlemen and Gentlewomen, were huntinge in the Parke: I founde her, in her Chamber, readinge Phædon Platonis in Greeke, and that with as moch delite, as som ientleman wold read a merie tale in Bocase. After salutation, and dewtie done, with som other taulke, I asked hir, whie she wold leese soch pastime in the Parke? smiling she answered me: I wisse, all their sporte in the Parke is but a shadoe to that pleasure, that I find in Plato: Alas good folke, they neuer felt, what trewe pleasure ment. And howe came you Madame, quoth I, to this deepe knowledge of pleasure, and what did chieflie allure you vnto it: seinge, not many women, but verie fewe men haue atteined thereunto. I will tell you, quoth she, and tell you a troth, which perchance ye will meruell at. One of the greatest benefites, that euer God gaue me, is, that he sent me so sharpe and seuere Parentes, and so ientle a scholemaster. For when I am in presence either of father or mother, whether I speake, kepe silence, sit, stand, or go, eate, drinke, be merie, or sad, be sowyng, plaiyng, dauncing, or doing anie thing els, I must do it, as it were, in soch weight, mesure, and number, euen so perfitelie, as God made the world, or else I am so sharplie taunted, so cruellie threatened, yea presentlie some tymes, with pinches, nippes, and bobbes, and other waies, which I will not name, for the honor I beare them, so without measure misordered, that I thinke my selfe in hell, till tyme cum, that I must go to M. Elmer, who teacheth me so ientlie, so pleasantlie, with soch faire allurementes to learning, that I thinke all the tyme nothing, whiles I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall on weeping, because, what soeuer I do els, but learning, is ful of grief, trouble, feare, and whole misliking vnto me: And thus my booke, hath bene so moch my pleasure, & bringeth dayly to me more pleasure & more, that in respect of it, all other pleasures, in very deede, be but trifles and troubles vnto me. I remember this talke gladly, both bicause it is so worthy of memorie, & bicause also, it was the last talke that euer I had, and the last tyme, that euer I saw that noble and worthie Ladie.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 71

Classroom exercise from this morning: read Sonnet 71 and catalogue the poetic techniques.

No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it, for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I, perhaps, compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let your love even with my life decay,
Lest the wise world should look into your moan
And mock you with me after I am gone.

What makes the language "poetic" rather than "prosaic" (aside from stock conventions like lineation, rhyme, and meter)?

Synthesizing from the total responses, I come up with three main poetic strategies: 1) grammatical, 2) structural, and 3) tropological. Naturally there may be overlaps between two or more of these categories.

1. Grammatical effects might be divided further into grammar proper and syntax. Syntactical deviation is in part a function of meter, but in fact one might say that this is the level on which meter is a significant poetic feature and not just a generic mechanical contrivance. So, for example, the syntactic reversals and tmetic interruptions of phrases ("No longer ... Than you shall hear," "I ... would be forgot," "let your love ... decay" [the ellipses standing in for the interrupting words]). Some of these are more interesting than others; the reversals are almost as prevalent in everyday early modern discourse as in literary usage, so it leads to somewhat of a chicken-and-egg stituation. As for grammar proper, the two most striking deformations in this poem occur at line 8 ("make you woe") and line 13 ("look into your moan"), with their conversions of a noun into an adjective (or verb?) and of a verb into a noun, respectively. That both the affected words are directly related to the central theme of mourning, and that both are directly preceded by a form of the second-person pronoun, serves to connect them to each other and thus further reinforce the impact of the deviation.

2. Structural features would, on the surface, include familiar "poetic" devices like alliteration, assonance, and consonance, as well as the aforementioned stock devices of lineation, meter, etc. These features only achieve true signifying force, however, when their cumulative weight makes itself felt as accessory to a complex of semantically interrelated units. Arguably, one organizing linguistic system in this poem is defined by the dyad mourn | world, the former being the thematic nucleus of the sonnet, and the latter assuming importance by virtue of repetition (it appears three times). Much of the paronomastic play in the poem revolves around sounds (warning, worms, woe, moan, etc.) generable from those two words. There are of course other organizing schemes in the text, and it is important not to overload such aspects of sonic surface with more motivated significance than they can bear. Structural patterns at the level of argument are accommodated by the stanzaic framework of the "English" or "Shakespearean" sonnet: thus, in the first quatrain, the addressee is told to confine his mourning to the length of time it takes for the death bell to announce the author's departure; in the second quatrain, he is directed to read a line of the poet's work without making the associative leap to the actual writing hand; and in the third quatrain and concluding couplet, he is instructed to read the poem without pronouncing the poet's name). There are several ways of charting the progression here. One is to point out the dwindling movement of physical specificity from quatrain to quatrain: from the author's body being devoured by worms to his isolated hand to his bare name. The overall sense is of the speaker's bodily presence fading as the poem advances, until he is completely "gone" at the end of the last line.

3. Some of the most striking poetic effects in the poem arise from simple (or not-so-simple) word choices with metaphoric implications. One example is the "surly sullen" bell that gives "warning": the sense of malice in these terms substantially colors the poem; the negativity resounds in language like "vile," "decay," and "mock." On the other hand, that the speaker goes to "dwell" with worms, and that his body is "compounded" with the earth, both suggest a relatively positive figurative transformation of the process of decomposition: one in which the speaker continues to live on as in a house, and another in which his mortal substance is converted and refined through alchemical means.

All of these, I suppose, are types of "figures," in that they are ways of figuring meaning without recourse to direct and/or literal reference.

In class we discussed one more way the poem does this, but I'm not sure how to categorize it except under the general grammatical umbrella of ambiguity. In the couplet, the phrase "Lest the ... world ... mock you with me" can be read in at least four ways: 1) "lest the world mock you at the same time that it mocks me"; 2) "lest the world mock you in the same way that I mock you [in this poem?]"; 3) "lest the world use [the reminding image or thought of] me to mock you"; and 4) "lest the world mock the concept of you ever being with me (especially, perhaps, if the "you" is another man). (In their overdetermined way, all these possibilities achieve the same end--the continued presence of the speaker in some form, and thus a qualified negation of "gone.") This isn't the only one of Shakespeare's sonnets that ends on such a note of indeterminacy. And actually, one of my students suggested what might be a fourth poetic strategy under which this example would fit. He asked, in so many words, whether there couldn't be such a thing as an inherently poetic overall meaning. My first (silent) instinct was that this was an "unscientific" throwback to symbolist theory, but I'm not so sure now. Maybe poems are nothing more than expedient apparatuses for the expression of poetic meanings. Banal tautology or legitimate insight? You be the judge.