Poetry: Why? and How?

Abstract

POETRY: WHY? AND HOW? Myra Cohn Livingston 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves , And the mome raths outgrabe. "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch! " He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought — So rested he by the tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. "And, hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! 0 frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" He chortled in his joy. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves , And the mome raths outgrabe. One of the most exciting things about living with a poem, or any work of art, literature, or music for that matter, is that I am constantly discovering something new in it that seemed to elude me before. Years ago, sharing "Jabberwocky" with children, I urged them to use that most marvelous exclamation , "0 frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" when they were excited or overjoyed . Later, I found myself asking what Lewis Carroll really meant by "frabjous." Searching through a variety of dictionaries, I came to understand that "frabjous" had more urgent meaning than pure joy. A portmanteau word, it suggested that frab, "to harrass or worry," and j ous , "a contraction," as I viewed it, "of joyous," expressed a happy resolution of something difficult to accomplish. Webster credits Carroll himself as coining the word, meaning "to surpass," and surpass means "doing something better than someone else, to go beyond, to be greater than." So for many years now I have told the children that it is an apt expression when they have passed a test they felt was difficult, or hit a homerun, or any manner of thing they might achieve after a good bit of worry. Why then, I pondered, a few months ago, did I never wonder about the meaning of the word "Jabberwock?" I had reached page 695 of the recently published Letters of Lewis Carroll, edited by Morton N. Cohen, when I found an explanation by the author himself. Mr. Lewis Carroll ... finds that the Anglo-Saxon word "wocer" or "wocor" signifies "offspring" or "fruit." Taking "jabber" in its ordinary acceptation of "excited and voluble discussion," this would give the meaning of "the result of much excited discussion." I hesitate to suggest to you that I pursued the logic of this much further, for it intimated that a child slaying the Jabberwock would thus be destroying the result of an excited discussion. Yet, it did make sense, knowing the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson to be a man who delighted in poking fun at the absurdities of life through nonsense. Still and all, I told myself, the boy brought back the Jabberwock' s head, and this would serve as a trophy and reminder of the characteristic response of the young to reason. And certainly all of us would hope that the Seventh Annual Conference of the Children's Literature Association, beginning today, will produce much in the way of "excited discussion" and send us home with some measure of results. Like the boy, I have been engaged of late in some "uffish thought," a state of mind, we know, "when the voice is gruffish, the manner roughish, and the temper huffish," because to come before you and attempt to cover such a subject as "Poetry: Why? and How?" in a single speech is quite impossible. I have been making copious notes for months now, dealing with poetry as fantasy, poetry as reality, the metaphor itself as fantasy. I have thought about the phantasmagoria in William Blake, reality in Isaac Watts, on the current trends in verse and poetry which range from an outpouring of nonsense 18 unparalleled in any age to the disturbing...