[New-Poetry] Effective-Poem Check-List, Housman

[Bob Grumman]

I've had a tough day: got rained on going to a substitute teaching 
assignment, and have been fighting off some kind of head cold for the 
past few days.  I did a rough draft of my Analysis of the Houseman poem 
yesterday but it needs a lot more work, and I'm too beat to do it 
today.  So, I'll start by posting my paraphrase, followed by a few 
comments sure to bore Judy:

    Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
   
The boughs of the cherry trees, which are the most beautiful trees

    Is hung with bloom along the bough,

are laden with blossoms at this time

    And stands about the woodland ride

and line the trail through the woods

    Wearing white for Eastertide.

decked out in a white hue appropriate for Easter
(which is the happiest time of the year)

    Now, of my threescore years and ten,
    Twenty will not come again,

At this time, twenty of the seventy years the Bible suggests I'll have
are gone permanently.

    And take from seventy springs a score,

If you subtract twenty springtimes from seventy

    It only leaves me fifty more.

it will leave me just fifty more years of life


    And since to look at things in bloom
    Fifty springs are little room,

Because fifty years of springtimes don't give one much time
to enjoying looking at Nature's blossomings

    About the woodlands I will go

I'll proceed through the woods (right away)

    To see the cherry hung with snow.

To take in (as much as I can of) the beauty of the snow-like blossoms of 
the cherry tree.

The paraphrase is lengthy, perhaps too lengthy, but I believe a 
paraphrase should cover every word in the text paraphrased, and I did my 
best to do that.  A paraphrase that says too much is better than one 
that fails to say all it should.  I also expect to improve my paraphrase 
in due course.

I believe my paraphrase twice goes beyond paraphrase into what is 
implied by the text: the connection to the Bible four score and ten 
makes, and the fact that Eastertide is a happy time.  This brings up a 
question for me: I think a proper understanding of a poem requires, to 
begin with, a paraphrase that states in the simplest and most complete 
terms exactly what the poem explicitly says--AND something else that 
states in the simplest and most complete terms what the poem SAYS to any 
serious, knowledgeable engagent--which means things like the connection 
to the Bible, and the connotations.  Question: is there a name for such 
an enhanced paraphrase?  Or is a paraphrase expected to include what's 
implied?  I'm inclined to call the first kind of paraphrase a 
"denotational paraphrase," and the second a "full paraphrase." 

Later I expect to try to make a full paraphrase of this poem.

Okay, I've decided I should be able to give a very quick rough Judyan 
evaluation of the Housman, using my new check-list.  So, does the poem, 
for me:

(1) express something importantly true or represents of something 
centrally beautiful--
assuming it doesn't do both?

It does both.  Moreover, I think it expresses more than one important 
truth.  Note: I've been thinking that an excellent poem needn't express 
the same important truth to two people, it's sufficient that it express 
/some/ important truth to both.  I feel I know what the main meaning of 
the poem is but am not yet able to express it properly.  It is some 
combination of "Beauty is at least as important as anything else in 
existence,"  and "Seize not the moment but the lifetime--in this case, 
don't even think about a fling with Persephone, marry her."  Plus, 
"Hurrah for springtime and cherry trees."

But the poem has more meanings that are of value if not perhaps 
Important that I want to discuss but can't yet do coherently.

(2) have sufficient Thematic Misdirection, or something that makes its 
ultimate meaning or effect difficult quickly to ascertain, but 
eventually achieves Clarity?

The poem is weakest in this area but does, for me, have thematic 
indirection.  I'll just mention one instance of it: simply its taking a 
long time getting to its (surface) point, and doing so metrically, with 
all kinds of poetic devices, getting in the way of a quick prose 
understanding of its theme.  I also think its true theme is much more 
complex than a paraphrase of it indicates--so much so that I'm having 
trouble working it out.  This strongly suggests some kind of 
misdirection is going on.

(3) have a Unifying Principal, or some meaning or image or the like 
which pulls its elements
reasonably close together?

Yes.  I have a lot to say on this, but won't say it here.

(4) contain few or no superfluous words?

Not for me.  At a few place ("along the bough") it has text unneeded 
from its prose meaning but needed for its music, which is as important.

(5) boast some constituent of substance that few or no other poems have 
such as
uncommon diction, grammar, expressive modality (e.g., mathematics, visual
art), and imagery?

Several.  One is its tonal wit, you might call it, when it uses 
arithmetical calculation against lyrical swoonery.

(6) avoids excessive use of inappropriate Cliches of diction, imagery or 
thought; too overt
Sentimentality and hackneyed use of some technique or form;

I don't think so.  I find nothing wrong with its rhymes.  None is in the 
love/above category, though none is brilliant.  Ditto the choice of 
words.  The use of the other sound devices is superior.  The meter is 
pentameter and tetrameter, with weak-beats lopped at the beginning of 
three or four lines to energizing effect, I think.  (It's not tetrameter 
and trimeter, Robin, so not a jingly-seeming as Dickinson's meter can 
seem, especially in a Serious Context like funerals, which the Housman 
is merrily not.)

So, it's an excellent poem for me.

Possible biases: I love spring, and I much prefer happy poems, 
healthy-seeming poems.

--Bob


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