"Swineburne syndrome"

[todski28]

bumpski

 

[twelveoone]

If interested, two links on Swinburne as poet

http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw12.html
Eliot's famous (or infamous) essay on Swinburne
and
http://jacketmagazine.com/20/vft-swinb.html
a rebuttal in Jacket Magazine
“The prince of online poetry magazines… The design is beautiful, the contents awesomely voluminous, the slant international modernist and experimental.” — The Guardian

 

[Remec]

Lol well I do like to be thorough. Thank you.

Still the whole argument seems to rest on whether "riot" is a poor word choice because the author had to rhyme with "quiet." I guess I would argue that dead winds and spent waves could only riot in doubtful dreams...or dreams of them.

Musing done and back to work!

I took it, on both initial read and rereading it this morning when I saw the thread had been bumped, was that 'riot' was being used as a noun with an unspoken usage after both winds' and waves'


Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' [riot] and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;

It's like, to me, he's saying that here where everything is calm and serene to the point of being a surreal aftermath of rioting storms...in this place
am I watching.

 

[Angeline]

I took it, on both initial read and rereading it this morning when I saw the thread had been bumped, was that 'riot' was being used as a noun with an unspoken usage after both winds' and waves'


Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' [riot] and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;

It's like, to me, he's saying that here where everything is calm and serene to the point of being a surreal aftermath of rioting storms...in this place
am I watching.

Yep, I can see how it is meaningful that way, too. The thing is that it makes sense whether you read "riot" as a noun or a verb. And there's no punctuation to guide the reader to definitively know it's either. But that's a good thing in a poem, I think: the ability of words to allow more than one interpretation. Once a poem is being read by readers (as opposed to the person who wrote it), meaning becomes the result of the reader's experiences and understandings as much as (probably more than) the writer's intention. I've had the experience of writing a poem and having someone who read it see something I didn't intend but their interpretation also makes sense. I guess that has happened to most of us. Of course, unlike us, Swineburne ain't around to tell us what he meant.

 

[butters]

I took it, on both initial read and rereading it this morning when I saw the thread had been bumped, was that 'riot' was being used as a noun with an unspoken usage after both winds' and waves'


Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' [riot] and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;

It's like, to me, he's saying that here where everything is calm and serene to the point of being a surreal aftermath of rioting storms

exactly as i read it

Yep, I can see how it is meaningful that way, too. The thing is that it makes sense whether you read "riot" as a noun or a verb. And there's no punctuation to guide the reader to definitively know it's either.

i'm confused - might be an anglo/american difference, but the possessive apostrophes and the words 'dead' and 'spent' give me no alternative reading to the one remec's stated. is there really that much of a difference in the punctuation-rules between our landmasses?

 

[Angeline]

exactly as i read it

i'm confused - might be an anglo/american difference, but the possessive apostrophes and the words 'dead' and 'spent' give me no alternative reading to the one remec's stated. is there really that much of a difference in the punctuation-rules between our landmasses?

I don't think it's the apostrophes but how one reads lines 2 and 3. There's no punctuation after "seem," so if you enjamb those two lines, you can read "riot" as a verb instead of a noun. And that changes the meaning.

I may have confused the issue talking about punctuation. I'm always interested in the accuracy of it because I know that over time some publishers take liberties with texts and what you see is not necessarily what was originally written. And there are also some punctuation differences between our cultures. So I will often try to rule out those possibilities when I am trying to understand something I read if that makes sense.

 

[twelveoone]

Yep, I can see how it is meaningful that way, too. The thing is that it makes sense whether you read "riot" as a noun or a verb. And there's no punctuation to guide the reader to definitively know it's either. But that's a good thing in a poem, I think: the ability of words to allow more than one interpretation. Once a poem is being read by readers (as opposed to the person who wrote it), meaning becomes the result of the reader's experiences and understandings as much as (probably more than) the writer's intention. I've had the experience of writing a poem and having someone who read it see something I didn't intend but their interpretation also makes sense. I guess that has happened to most of us. Of course, unlike us, Swineburne ain't around to tell us what he meant.

good catch, if he really wanted to be a mind fucker, a comma...which I believe is allowable, maybe...spent, waves' riot could this still be read as a noun phrase? Spent could also be read as a verb.
Dead winds' and spent, waves' riot

A slight function shift and ambiguity to roll around in the skull a bit.

 

[Angeline]

good catch, if he really wanted to be a mind fucker, a comma...which I believe is allowable, maybe...spent, waves' riot could this still be read as a noun phrase? Spent could also be read as a verb.
Dead winds' and spent, waves' riot

A slight function shift and ambiguity to roll around in the skull a bit.

That's the thing: it's all in how you read it, right? If I see no punctuation at the end of a line, I enjamb when I read and assume that is the intended meaning. If there had been a comma after "seem," I'm sure I would have read it the same way Remec and butters did. But the more I think about it, I believe he intends "riot" to be a verb because it does make sense for illogical things to happen in "dreams of doubtful dreams." I just want to make sure a function shift is a result of the poet's intent and not some crazy copyeditor who looks at a poem and says "we must have a comma here." It does happen, especially with new editions of old, public domain writing.