Michele Leggott Seminar

by Anna Leclercq

[Michele Leggott, "Micromelismata." DIA (Auckland: AUP, 1994) 7].

Introduction

I am going to talk about two of Michele Leggott’s poems, WHERE EXACTLY ARE WE?’ and ‘Micromelismata’. My main focus is on ‘WHERE EXACTLY ARE WE?’, followed by a short commentary on ‘Micromelismata’.

Half way through the preparation of this seminar I had thought of ditching the subject and finding another one which would be less difficult, more straightforward, where I could quote from learned critiques which would give us all a firm understanding of what the poems were about. I found none such critiques in my research for these two poems, but they would not let me go. Like an abstract painting, their very unintelligibility kept pulling me back to have another look in an endeavour to find a meaning, any kind of meaning, to them.

What a person viewing an abstract painting sees in the finished painting is not necessarily what the painter has in mind whilst he is completing the work. Nevertheless, who is to say the viewer’s interpretation is any the less valid. It is on this premise, therefore, that I gave myself license to indulge my own imagination, delve into these two ‘abstract’ poems and ‘make my own connections’.

Michele Leggott’s book entitled DIA, published in 1994, is her third book of poems, the first two being Like This published in 1988 and Swimmers, Dancers in 1991. It comes in a red and white cover with a Minoan* mural done as a Maori weaving, the latter stamping the collection with a New Zealand imprint, however faint or unrecognised.

Like Susan Howe, Leggott has achieved a name for being an intellectual poet, and in her first poem in DIA, namely ‘WHERE EXACTLY ARE WE?’ she makes no apologies for that. She demonstrates her intellect by the use of Greek, French and Latin references, and of abundant use of polysyllabic and Latinate diction; her carefully chosen words are used as much for their beauty of sound and structure as for their meaning. Exactly what Leggott is telling us in this poem is obscure, yet the poem, I would like to think, does tell a story, and, as far as I can see, (which incidentally is another poem title of Leggott’s), on many levels.

"WHERE EXACTLY ARE WE?" was originally a "ribbon text," which first appeared on the walls of the Wellington City Art Gallery, who had commissioned the work in the 70s. In its original form it was interactive in that the reader had to walk to read the poem, and the strung-together words from various discourses invited viewers and readers to make their own connections. I next found ‘WHERE EXACTLY ARE WE?” in a March 1991 edition of Landfall 45(1):3-24 where again it appeared as a ribbon beginning at the bottom of page 3 and continuing on through the pages to its end.

Now, in another incarnation, it has appeared as the first poem in DIA and keeps company with four other pieces, Micromelismata, which I will discuss briefly later, Blue Irises, Circle and Keeping Warm, all of which Leggott calls ‘heart poems, the ones that take one’s breath away or make tears and laughter come’. Blue Irises, Circle and Keeping Warm could well be described as less obscure in their meaning than the first two; but all challenge conventional lyric reading.

Douglas Barbour, in his ‘Essays on Contemporary Poetry’ states that ‘like Leggott’s poem, "Micromelismata,", ‘WHERE EXACTLY ARE WE?’ focuses on its materiality and on the fact of its production, encouraging us to "see" poetry in different frames from those in which we usually receive it’.

The word DIA comes from the Greek and means Goddess; it also means ‘through’ and it means two, couples; lovers, partners. Leggott, faithful to these interpretations, has chosen to display both ‘WHERE EXACTLY ARE WE?’ and Micromelismata in two parts being spread over two pages, and the voices, although both male and female, show a predominance for the female voices.

For ‘WHERE EXACTLY ARE WE?’ Leggott uses large unsophisticated capital letters, some bold, some in outline, some shadowed in parts or in whole, which compel us to view the words and phrases at the same time both ‘as advertising and art’, while requiring us to read them in what Douglas Barbour calls ‘their fragmented engagement with various discourses of power’.

For a number of years now Leggott has been suffering from two diseases of the eyes. Although she was not diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa until 1985, and then macular degeneration in the mid 1990s – long after ‘WHERE EXACTLY ARE WE?’ first appeared – it occurred to me that the unevenness in the density of each typed letter could be a representation of the dawning on Leggott’s subconscious of the fact that her eyesight was already showing signs of the onset of eye disease, and perhaps this was a way of displaying, in poetry, the changes in her vision. This is only a stab in the dark (sorry about the cruel pun), but I could find no other way of explaining this phenomenon .except for emphasis; and this I felt would be too transparent for Leggott. I would be interested to hear what others have to say on this point.

Andrew Johnston, in his work Entertaining Possibilities: Six Contemporary New Zealand Poets, states that Leggott’s poetry ‘explores the power of language to enact experience, rather than to formulate abstractions from experience’. He goes on to say that Leggott’s poetry is a ‘torrent of sounds, sentiments, situations and sensory detail (great alliteration there); it is the most colourful poetry being written in New Zealand.’ Mark Williams said of her earlier work: ‘Leggott is a sensualist of the word. Her poems enact sound, colour, taste, smell, movement’. I have to say I would agree with that, and the poems contained in DIA certainly reflect that point of view.

‘WHERE EXACTLY ARE WE?’ contains no punctuation; the whole poem runs like a river and, were it not to begin with the word IN and end with the word OUT, it could equally appear circular, running back in on itself, like a river returning to its source, a snake wreathed in its own coils, a torque, a helix.

The work crafts wonderful sound pictures achieved by alliteration, assonance and repetition. ‘ALMOND ABEILLE AMYGDALA AH; COELENTERATE SOUP SIP SUP FOLLOW HER UP SPIRULA SPIRULA’. It also has great movement particularly when describing water, e.g. HYDROPHILE PURLING. You will see later what I mean when I give my interpretation of this word coupling.

Leggott appears to be having a good time playing with sound and rhythm, yet the meanings of the words are mysterious, hard to pin down. Once she has finished writing the poem she appears to have finished speaking. She then surrenders the poem, handing it over into the care of the reader who is charged with giving it its new life form.

A number of words written in bold type which, if linked together, read ‘IN DESIRE DESIRE ORAL DELIGHT DELIGHT OUT’ immediately stand out as though they should have some attention., and, like Jane Stafford in her article entitled ‘The panic of O’ (New Zealand Books Journal, Volume 4, number 3 (Issue 15) 1994), I saw them as a reinforcement of love and desire to underline eroticism in the poem. Stafford commented that these words would be ‘enough to get anyone’s hydrophile purling!’.

I wanted to find out if the poem as a whole did have any understandable meaning or message running through it, or whether it was just words strung together to create a sensuality of sound. What could I make of its meaning now that I, as a reader, was charged with giving it its new life form. A Latin dictionary, hardly used since school days, proved invaluable when tackling the Latinate diction. There did appear to be words that could be interpreted as signposts which might lead me to a coherent understanding of the poem. For example, ONTO LOGICAL = ONTOLOGICAL=the study of existence. PELAGIC = sediments deposited beneath deep ocean waters that are rich in the remains of microscopic organisms; INCUNABULA = the early stages of becoming something. Could she be speaking about the beginning of life?

Many complex English word couplings, such as ‘HYDROPHILE PURLING’ added to the poem’s complexity. ‘Hydrophile’, I discovered, is derived from ‘hydrophilic’, a chemical term meaning having a strong affinity for water or being able to dissolve in, or be absorbed or mixed easily with, water. ‘Purling’ has, as one of its meanings , flowing with a curling or rippling motion, and a soft murmuring sound, as a shallow stream over stones.

INCANDESCENT LACUNAE FLUORESCE AT A TOUCH DESIRE TORQUES DILOQUENT PEARL CURVES LUMENS CON BRIO ALIGHT. Doesn’t it sound wonderful? It is a torrent of sound, it is sensual, it has an atmosphere of love. But does it actually mean anything? A loose translation created the following:

GLOWING POOLS FLOW AT A TOUCH DESIRE SPIRALS UPWARDS THE SIGHT OF PEARL CURVES ILUMINATED BY RADIANT LIGHT ALIGHT (sets fire to).

I won’t go through the meaning of every word here, but if my amateur translation is correct, this poem appears to describe, the process of attraction, copulation and fertilization from the moment the male sets eyes on the female to the end of the process where fertilization takes place. The poem is layered: that is to say the story is told not just on one level, the human level, but also on a botanic level (DELIQUESCENCE describing the release of the spores from the mushroom, for example), and from a marine level ‘FISHTAILS DEEP TROPES SQUIRT SQUID SUCH OCTOPI PULL ANEMONES GULP; eroticism over Latinate structure over biology, over botany over storytelling of beginning of life (life as we know it having its origins in the creatures that crawled out of the sea on to land).

The unconventional presentation of the poem and the complexity of the words did hinder a smooth reading; and instances of words such as ‘sanglots’ (sobs – French), for example, refused to allow me to tease out the reason for being there. Perhaps they were there for their sound as much as their meaning. The lack of a smooth reading and difficulties with some of the words did take away a little of the poem’s magic. Not being able to find an official interpretation of it is also unsatisfactory.

Nevertheless, if I had to describe this poem I would say it is a celebration of words, rhythms, sounds which all relate to the process of procreation and the rhythm of life/death in the natural world. Whether I am correct or not in my interpretation we shall probably never know. My interpretation could be dismissed as pure whimsy; I can only say in defense of my conclusions that it does have a certain validity because Michele Leggott herself states, as I mentioned above, that we must ‘find our own meanings’.

‘Micromelismata’ .

Taking the words ‘BEE DESIDERATE MOUTH’ from ‘WHERE EXACTLY ARE WE?’ moves me conveniently on to Michele Leggott’s next poem in DIA. "Micromelismata" is an example of ‘concrete’ poetry. ‘Concrete’, historically, is a particular moment, largely in Europe, but extending to Britain and the United States also, within a wider context of shaped poetry, going back to the work of George Herbert (died 1633) in England. Herbert himself knew of at least one predecessor for his work, an edition of The Greek Anthology, Theocriti Idyllia, printed by P. Brubacchius, Frankfurt, 1545. This information comes from an essay entitled Poetics edited by Joel Kuszai.

‘BEE DESIDERATE MOUTH’ reminds me of the Marilyn Monroe type bee stung lips which the type forms within the two poem balls that constitute ‘Micromelismata’. The balls are identical in shape; the first ‘ball’ being made up entirely of Xs and the second made up of words, the letters of which correspond accurately to the placement of the Xs. According to Elizabeth Caffin in issue 4, September 2007 of ‘A New Zealand Journal of Poetry and Poetics’, indentation, spaces between words, use of italics or small caps were all matters affecting meaning and taken with great seriousness by poet and publisher.

There are many voices, many more female voices than male, in this poem: many ‘Is’, Iris is there (Robin Hyde), mother, mama, you, them, her, the female, Isis the Egyptian female deity, the goddess of myths and life. There is dance and music in this poem: Melisma, in music, is the technique of changing the note (pitch) of a single syllable of text while it is being sung. Music sung in this style is referred to as melismatic, as opposed to syllabic, where each syllable of text is matched to a single note; melodiously.

There are kisses, lips, berries, flowers….. This poem is like a reverie, dreams coming in flashes of a single word. It is emotional and reflective; again it celebrates sensuality – reflections on kissing - and nature; the beauty that is around us.

In regard to both WHERE EXACTLY ARE WE? and Melismata - which could be said to be bordering on the unintelligible,- Leggott has been accused of ‘sophism** , elitism and pretension’ (Jane Stafford The panic of O). I would like to be much kinder and put them under heading of experimental. I greatly enjoyed the challenge of delving into these two poems which represent my first experience of works of such unusual construction.

Although I am sure many codes and allusions contained in the poems have eluded me, and not being able to find an official meaning left me somewhat frustrated, as I said earlier, I remain astounded by her mastery of language, captivated by her dexterity of word placement, and seduced by her lyricism.

* Minoan: relating to the Bronze Age civilization on Crete that lasted from around 3000 to 1100 BC.

**An argument or explanation that seems very clever or subtle on the surface but is actually flawed, misleading or intended to deceive.

Sources

Allan, Guy. New Zealand Herald 3: 6; 8 Oct 1994.
Barbour, D. Lyric/Anti-lyric: Essays on Contemporary Poetry (Edmonton: NeWest, 2001).

Direen, Bill. Listener 146(2849): 65; 19 Nov 1994.
Jensen, Kai. Printout 9: 88; Autumn 1995.

Leggott, M. DIA. Auckland : Auckland University Press, 1994.
Landfall, 45(1): 3-24, March 1991

Mead, P. Landfall 189: 121-125; Autumn 1995.
Sharp, I. Evening Post p.7; 7 Oct 1994.
Stafford, J. New Zealand Books 4(3): 10-11; Sept 1994.

Weston, Tom. Press Sup.p.14; 17 Dec 1994.
Wilson, Janet. Quote Unquote 24: 31-32; June 1995.

Poetry Session 3: Graham Lindsay

[Photograph: Bill Lindsay (nzepc)]

If you've read the interview with Graham Lindsay which I included in your course anthology, you'll remember that he talks about his "notebook process":

"I started writing and publishing when I was in my late teens, and that’s twenty, twenty-five years ago [the interview was conducted in 1997]. Over that period of time I’ve been using a kind of notebook process. When something occurs to you, you have a notebook handy so that you can actually put down some approximation of that idea or thought or feeling at the time, whilst you’re hot, whilst you’re familiar with it. So, having adopted that approach, I’ve found that I don’t really know at the time that I’m writing something, whether or not I’m going to be able to do anything more with it. I’ve got to go through it, perhaps months, years later, to see what is of interest there, what I can do something more with.

At this point Graham got up to show me the notebooks in his desk. The bottom drawer was packed full of red, hard-backed 4B1 notebooks. Above was another drawer, perhaps slightly less full. There were, he told me, 132 of them.

During their third birthday symposium in July 2004, Graham was presented with one of the nzepc's special Tapa notebooks. He returned it to Auckland University Library's Special collections for archiving in July 2005. Here's one of the pages:

[10-2-4T]

she said they get some
weird people off the street
during the writing courses
I said I'm one of those people
pretty soon she made a gesture to the effect
'the purpose of my visit had been met'
maybe she shifted in her chair

Yeah, Graham! I fear I'm one of those people, too ...

only two or three weeks ago we said to each other,
How long has she got? and agreed
two, maybe three years at the most.
The following week she was dead. That last night,

following her up the stairs (my job in case she fell -
he daughter pulling her by wrists) I said the usual
encouraging things like Shake a leg, Granny, and
Go Granny, you're doing well (she had lost the ability to retort).

She put everything into it,
as if it were the last leg to the summit.

Graham also provided an introduction to the notebook:

I felt really honoured to be presented with my tapa notebook. Stephen Innes's choice for me turned out to be a good one too. The cover looks to me to suggest a cosmological scene or one to do with navigation, a dark star seen over the shoulder of a solar flare or above an outrigger sail.

I decided to use my notebook to present a selection of notes from my time as the 2004 Ursula Bethell / Creative New Zealand Resident in Creative Writing at the University of Canterbury. Michele indicated some graphic elements would also be welcome so I began sketching signs on roads and pathways on my cycle route to and from the university.

I've been keeping notebooks for ages, but I've never tried to develop a handwriting style. Occasionally, I've been impressed when a 't' makes a sort of mast or the looping tail on a 'g' looks pretty wild. But I've always considered notebooks as places to catch thoughts and language rather than aesthetic objects or places where thoughts are completed. I usually go back to see what still interests me to see if I can do anything more to it to make it publishable.

So the idea of making a selection from my notebooks, even though it seemed straightforward, caused various performance anxieties, like having my teaching inspected, or replicating a 'spontaneous' conversation.

Which is why I thought Murray Edmond was onto it when he used a ringbinder for his 'tapa': if he made a mistake, he would be able to have another go. I'm not saying he did, just that he could.

In fact I was given two tapa notebooks, I used the other one to do dummy runs in. (It has a cover that vaguely looks like a handmirror with a pixie face in it.)

I did some drafting on my computer too. Though I often went back to the original wordings and constructions because of not having an open-ended amount of time. In the interim I came across this quote from Toss Woollaston: 'Smoothing over work you have just done is going backwards. Tidying up is the devil—you don't touch that in painting. If relations are wrong you make huge alterations, you don't tidy up—you repaint the whole thing every time you touch it.' (From Gregory O'Brien's book Lands & Deeds). I think that's relevant? Also I roughed out a layout on my computer.

I had thought about making my own 'tapa' notebook using locally made paper and learning how to bookbind. I had thought about learning calligraphy. I've always admired my father's handwriting, he used to transcribe his favourite poems by Chinese poets onto a newsprint block. He had a beautiful hand. I've hankered for years to have a go at painting my poems. These thoughts were all part of that. When I accepted Michele's invitation to meet a deadline though I had to get on with it and so the originally intended format was retained.

The title The Priests of Nothingness comes from a quote, which I have included in the notebook, about these Japanese monks called Fuke monks who used the flute as a meditation tool. As the quote says, 'They would walk through the streets . . . trying to play the one note that would enlighten the world.' That's partly what I think poets try to do. I think poets are priests of nothingness.

curtains shifting in light air

shaft like a lift well
on its side:

at the near end
blue light playing along its edges

the far opening on smokey-grey
star clouds

~

It's this "notebook process" I'd like to start off with at our session on Monday. You'll note that the tapa notebook process was far more elaborate - almost staged, in fact. The spontaneity of a notebook can hardly be evident when you've done "dummy runs" in another notebook first, and even done some drafting on the computer first.

I guess that's the reason why Graham had provided that semi-apologetic introduction to "The Priests of Nothingness," as he ended up calling the collection as a whole.

I guess I'd like to talk about the Beats (Ginsberg, Kerouac et al.) and their cult of spontaneity in word in deed. Then go on to Black Mountain (Olson & Creeley) and the "open form" they introduced to NZ poetry in the 70s, when Lindsay first started writing and publishing. I'd also like to talk about Zen, domesticity, George Oppen, and a host of other subjects -- but we'll see hwo far we get.

In any case, this conversation can segue over into the discussion of Peter Reading and Paul Muldoon we're timetabled to have after mid-year break (note the change in the timetable: two poetry sessions in a row, sandwiching the holidays, and then two fiction sessions in a row).

Prelude

Professor Fred Inglis

The thrust and parry of high intellectual debate reached a zenith on Monday and Tuesday of May 5-6 when visiting Professor Fred Inglis from Sheffield University (UK) presented two seminars at Massey University, Albany.

The first lecture called ‘The Performance of Celebrity’ targeted a student audience; the second, ‘The awfulness and necessity of Cultural Studies’, was for the academics of the Cultural Studies department. Any academic addressing and challenging his peers must be prepared to accept as good as they give, and in the second seminar the good-natured professor seemed to revel in the interaction between minds almost perfectly matched. But next time put the lecture notes down and talk to us from the outset.