For years, I’ve thought that an important next step for educating poetry readers about the turn would be to incorporate, and perhaps even highlight, the turn in an introduction to poetry textbook. So far, this has been done only once, in John Ciardi’s How Does a Poem Mean? In that book, the final chapter—but also the chapter that Ciardi refers to in his introduction as the most important one—“The Poem in Countermotion” focuses on turns in poems, though Ciardi refers to the turn as the “fulcrum.” Ciardi’s book, however, was published in 1959—and his focus on the turn was not picked up on by any subsequent introduction to poetry textbooks.
Needless to say, then, I was heartened to see Jeremy Tambling’s RE: Verse—Turning towards Poetry. The book’s title, at least, indicated that there might be some focus on the turn in the book. And there is, but, alas, just some. However, seeing what happens to the turn—how it is both raised as a topic of conversation, and then elided—in RE: Verse can be instructive.
The turn comes up on page one of RE: Verse. Defining “verse,” Tambling writes,
“[I]t comes from the Latin versus, meaning “a line or row, especially a line of writing (so named from turning to begin another line), verse, from vertere to turn” (Oxford English Dictionary). Verse means both a line of writing and the turn by which another line is reached, going from line to line. In English, the turn at the end of the line on the right hand edge of the page means a reverse back to the left. Verse and reverse: the turn turns back.”
It is important to note here that the turn is an element of the poem’s form. However, the term “turn” quickly comes to mean other things, as well. According to Tambling, though it may consist of only one line, Japanese waku can still be thought of as turning, so “you may have to look for the turn inside the one line itself.” Tambling, however, is not clear how one would find this turn in a one-line poem, and he further complicates his use and sense of the turn when, after having quoted three lines from Paul Muldoon’s “Incantata” (“I thought again of how art may be made, was it was by Andre Derain, / of nothing more than a turn / in the road…”), he notes, “This book starts with the proposition that poetry is always a form of turning, and if for Paul Muldoon it is a “turn in the road,” then the way the poem twists and turns will suggest a very winding path.” How would a formally twisting and turning poem suggest a very winding path? Would it slither down the page in the manner of, say, an e.e. cummings poem?
But this is not what Tambling means by the “very winding path” of the poem—virtually all of the poems he cites at length in RE: Verse left-justified. Tambling, in fact, is interested in helping readers recognize, and recognize the importance of, structural turns in poems. (For information on the difference between form and structure, click here.)
The first poem Tambling examines closely is William Blake’s “London.” In a sentence immediately following his observation that “the way the poem twists and turns will suggest a very winding path,” Tambling introduces his discussion of “London” by noting that “[w]riting poetry often plays on this idea of turning.” And his discussion of the poem, when it focuses on the turn, focuses on the structural turn. Tambling asks of the poem, “How shall we approach it?” And his first of a few “hints” he offer is: “[L]ook for the turn: the moment where the poem changes direction, or shape. (There may be more than one turn, of course.) Nearly all poetry will have such a turn…” Tambling also eventually locates the poem’s major turn (notice that there are not 15 turns, as one might expect if turns occurred as one line turned into the next) at the beginning of the fourth stanza, about which he writes: “[S]tarting with “But most” indicates a turn, a new emphasis, something different from the first three stanzas.”
The second poem Tambling examines closely is William Wordsworth’s sonnet “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802.” Discussing the sonnet, Tambling, quoting Paul Muldoon’s interview with Lynn Keller, states,
“The sonnet began as an Italian form in the thirteenth century, and the word implies a song. The Italian, or Petrarchan sonnet, of which this [“Westminster Bridge”] is one, is divided by a pause, or a turn, into eight lines followed by six. Paul Muldoon, who like many other modern poets, has written many sonnets, speaks in an interview about the “thought process of the sonnet”. “You establish something and then there’s a slight change”, he says; and he associates this change with “the turn”….”
And speaking of the shift from octave to sestet in “Westminster Bridge,” Tambling states, “We have already noted a break at that point, and when reading poetry, any such turn, change of tone, or of approach, should be noted.”
Tambling clearly believes that knowledge of the structural turn is vital for reading poetry. However, the attention he pays to the structural turn is less systematic and more sporadic. In his book’s second chapter, “Five Ideas for Reading,” Tambling offers “five points, or principles, for reading” poetry—but a principle such as “look for turns” is not included in this list. Even though, it should be added, that there are plenty of poems featuring turns in them that follow Tambling’s list of principles.
Why this assertion and (unintentional, it seems…) denial of the power of the structural turn? I can only speculate, but I offer a few ideas.
First, it seems as though seeing turns and their importance is not enough. We need to continue to develop and teach the language, the grammar, of turning. It’s not that poems simply turn, it’s that, often, they turn in identifiable ways, ways which, once recognized, greatly help one see what’s going on in a poet, or, as Ciardi puts it, how a poem means.
Additionally, we need to think more about the ways that assessment influences what we teach when we teach poems. Tambling wrote his book with some specific audiences in mind. While being attentive to the needs of a general reader Tambling has written with a target audience in mind; he states, “I have tried, in writing, to consider the needs of people starting with poetry at GCSE, where anthologies of poetry are frequently set, and people working on specific poets for A Level. I have tried to work with questions that undergraduates will want to know answers to…” It could simply be that the exams for which Tambling prepares many of his readers do not concern themselves much with the identification and discussion of turns, so turns, while acknowledged, are not focused on.
Overall, Tambling’s RE: Verse reminds us that we need to revise the ways we discuss and teach poetry. His good, but also problematic, book reminds us that to talk seriously about structural turns in poetry we have to be ready to allow the turn to let us talk about different poems differently. We must be willing ourselves to be transformed by the turn.
Structure & Surprise 