So, this is pretty cool: as part of her degree requirements to earn an MFA at the University of Washington, Lauren Schlesinger wrote a thesis titled “Turning In & Away: A Discussion on the Turn from Description to Revelation within Emblem Poems.”
Here’s the thesis’s abstract:
Turning In & Away explores how poets can use the notion of a turn to generate a sense of uncertainty and surprise within emblem poems. Using poems by Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Elizabeth Bishop, and Emily Dickinson, this critical thesis interrogates how the turn between description and meditation can be used to destabilize how a poem is read. Furthermore, this study examines how these turns can be endorsed by other elements of craft besides their placement within and orientation to the dominating structure of a poem’s argument. This essay concludes with a final discussion about how the turn proves to be crucial for establishing the sense of intimacy or sense of distance between the speaker and the object of inquisition. (2)
The poems Schlesinger focuses on are Schnackenberg’s “Advent Calendar,”Bishop’s “Cirque d’Hiver,” and Dickinson’s “There’s a certain Slant of light”–wonderful emblem poems, all.
Schlesinger’s approach is to use the thinking on the emblem poem found in Structure & Surprise as an initial entry into the poem, but then to move beyond this kind of introductory treatment of the structure in order to examine the more nuanced, complex dynamics of the emblem’s turn. As Schlesinger states,
[W]hile explicating poems by Gjertrud Schnackberg, Elizabeth Bishop, and Emily Dickinson, I will investigate how the making and unfolding of an emblem poem is also an investigation into how the poet navigates the relationship between the eye and the mind—such that the mind does not always follow the eye, but always the interplay and dance between them is essential to the emblem poem. (4)
What follows, then, is a close reading of each of the poems. Each reading is attentive, perceptive, and revealing. Anyone interested in the emblem structure will find these readings highly engaging.
Of particular interest, though, is the fact that MFA candidate Schlesinger is clearly intrigued by the emblem poem as a working poet. Schlesinger states,
[I]t is evident that—for me— as I proceed to write emblem poems in the future, I must reconsider how I, too, can modulate the orientation of the speaker to the object—to delay, to fuse, to wrench, or to annihilate the speaker’s consciousness between and from the source that arouses such a meditation. Pace and placement of this turn determine the momentum of surprise. (32)
I can’t wait to read Schlesinger’s work! I’ll post what I can of it when I can.
In the meantime, if you’re hungry for more great thinking about turns, check out the contributions made to the Voltage Poetry website by the faculty on Schlesinger’s thesis committee: “Turn, Counterturn and Stand: Music and Meaning in Wallace Stevens’ ‘Autumn Refrain,'” by Pimone Triplett; and “False Turns in Alan Dugan’s ‘Last Statement for a Last Oracle,'” by Andrew Feld.
Structure & Surprise 