Richard Cureton

POETIC SYNTAX AND AESTHETIC FORM
Author(s): Richard Cureton

Source: Style, Vol. 14, No. 4, Methods at Work (Fall 1980), pp. 318-340
Published by: Penn State University Press
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Richard Cureton
POETIC SYNTAX AND AESTHETIC FORM
Of all the elements necessary to make an utterance meaningful, the most powerful is syn-
tax, controlling as it does the order in which impressions are received and conveying the
mental relations 'behind' sequences of words. . . . Consequently, syntax, however little it
is noted by the reader, is the groundwork of the poet's art. Often it supports a poetic edi-
fice elaborated by many other poetic means and the reader is content to believe that these
other means are the cause of his pleasure. But when a passage relies chiefly on its especial-
ly compelling and artful syntax to make its effect, the reader and the critic who never ex-
pect syntax to be more than 'a harmless, necessary drudge,' holding open the door while
the pageantry of words sweeps through, will be at a loss to understand why the passage af-
fects them as it does and at a loss to do critical justice to its art.*
Winifred Nowottny
WHILE FEW CRITICS WOULD DISAGREE
with Nowottny's eloquent statement that syntax is important both as a powerful po-
etic tool for the artist and as a subtle source of aesthetic pleasure for the reader, one
seldom finds critical analyses which succeed in demonstrating this fact. In the normal
case, literary critics, overly biased toward content, tend to emphasize other aspects
of poetic form and thus avoid discussing these effects altogether while linguistic crit-
ics, overly biased toward formal description, tend to produce analyses which have lit-
tle bearing on the actual source of the reader's aesthetic response to a text.2 In this
area at least, literary critics tend to be overly synthetic; they fail to relate what they
intuitively know about the whole text to what they should know through analysis
about its parts. On the other hand, linguistic critics tend to be overly analytic; they
fail to relate what they know through analysis about the parts of a text to what they
should know intuitively about the whole.3
These methodological biases have not been completely at fault, however. Stud-
ies of poetic syntax have suffered from other failings as well. In my estimation, two
have been particularly damaging.
First, while the types of effects a poet can produce with the syntax of a poem
are extremely diverse (perhaps more diverse than the effects of any other aspect of
poetic form), critics, especially in their theoretical work on these problems, have
made few attempts to distinguish these effects in any principled manner.4 For in-
stance, while I have found in my work that one must distinguish between at least
318 STYLE: Vol. XIV , Fall 1980 , No. 4
RICHARD CURETON 31 9
II types of syntactic aesthetic effects (see the typology below), in the normal case,
studies have tended to claim that one of these effects is the only effect of poetic syn-
tax - dismissing the complex aesthetic diversity involved. Needless to say, this reduc-
tive tendency has directly contributed to overly simplistic treatments of the syntax
of particular texts and, worse yet, has actively impeded any attempt to gain a full pic-
ture of the contribution of syntax to the aesthetics of poetic texts in general.5
This problem has led directly to a second, related problem. Because critics have
tended to confuse or reduce the various aesthetic effects of syntactic forms in poetic
texts, in general, they have found it difficult to demonstrate how the various syntac-
tic structures in a text, author, or period work together to contribute to the aesthe-
tic aim of that text, author, or period. In the usual case, discussions of poetic syn-
tax have been organized in structural rather than in aesthetic terms, and inevitably
the aesthetic diversity within any one of these structural types has vitiated attempts
to find any aesthetic unity within the structures assembled. While most studies have
perversely defied what I am suggesting here, it seems obvious that in order to demon-
strate how various syntactic structures combine to enhance the aesthetics of a text,
one must first characterize and classify those structures according to their individual
aesthetic functions. Any other strategy would be misguided in principle. Nonethe-
less, the use of other strategies has been the rule; the use of this strategy, the excep-
tion.6
In an attempt to overcome these problems, this paper presents, illustrates and
documents a typology of syntactic aesthetic effects which can be used as a practical
critical tool for the study of the aesthetic use of syntax in literature. Section II of the
paper isolates and motivates the individual effects represented in the typology; section
III illustrates how the typology as a whole can be applied in practical criticism, and
section IV outlines the advantages of this approach to the study of the aesthetic use
of syntax in stylistics and literary criticism.
II
The underlying motivation for the set of distinctions presented in the typolo-
gy is the belief that linguistically-based aesthetic effects derive from the peculiarly
"hypersemanticized" nature of poetic language which operates, as Nowottny would
have it, "at full stretch," with all possible avenues of communication open. Âccord-
ing to this view, the artist, in his effort to convey a particular complex of thoughts,
emotions, and sensations as precisely as possible, opens up various additional aesthe-
tic "channels" of communication at the linguistic level in order to try to "particular-
ize" (i.e., make more concrete and full) the information a comparable, non-aesthetic
linguistic rendering of that situation would convey. In this view, the contribution of
the language to the aesthetics of a text derives from the surplus of meaning, the extra
information, these aesthetic "channels" of communication convey.
My first-order classifications, then, attempt to classify various syntactic aesthe-
tic "channels" according to the general type of information they "particularize" (i.e.,
perceptual, emotive, or conceptual), and my second-order distinctions (e.g., iconic
320 POETIC SYNTAX AND FORM
syntax, syntactic tension, etc.) attempt to specify as precisely as possible the exact
nature of the information conveyed by these aesthetic "channels" and the normal
syntactic means by which this information is conveyed.
The important point to notice, however, is that these "channels" are defined
aesthetically - not linguistically. Each syntactic structure can be used to produce
more than one type of aesthetic effect and each aesthetic effect can be produced by
a range of syntactic structures.
Perceptual Effects 8
(a) Iconic Syntax
In producing this effect, poets shape the formal and/or spatio-temporal struc-
ture of the syntax so that, in some sense, it "resembles" the situation to which the
syntax refers.9 This is the syntactic correlate of sound symbolism on the phonetic
level. For example, just as authors can use a continuant sound to present flowing
movement (iconically), they can also juxtapose words to indicate spatial and tempor-
al juxtaposition, scramble words to indicate situational confusion, invert words to in-
dicate thematic inversion, and so forth. Here, the poet not only increases "the palpa-
bility of the sign," but actually shapes that sign so that it presents a "picture" of its
sense.
For instance, in stanzas IV and V of "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,"

Wallace Stevens uses iconic syntax to "present" (perceptually) the thematic content
these stanzas convey.
IV
A man and a woman

Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
Stanza IV is a clear example of iconic addition. Just as the thematic content of

the stanza states (in so many words): "the blackbird should be added to the usual sys-
tem of things which we see as being one with ourselves," so in parallel clauses the
syntax "enacts" this addition:
(1) A man and a woman are one.
(2) A man and a woman and a blackbird are one.
RICHARD CURETON 321
As one moves from (1) to (2), the blackbird is syntactically "added" to the equation
without changing the result - exactly parallel to the conceptual operation Stevens
would like us to perform.
On the other hand, stanza V contains an example of iconic deletion. As it
stands, the last line in stanza V is elliptical. In the normal case, this line would be ex-
panded to something like: or just after the blackbird whistles. However, just as we
can infer from the conceptual content of the stanza that the persona believes that the
blackbird whistling is a beautiful inflection and the silence after that whistling, a
beautiful innuendo, the sound of the word whistling phonetically whistles and there-
fore is an overt, phonetic inflection while the elliptical last line omits an expected
(but inferable) part of its structure and therefore is an overt syntactic innuendo.
In the remainder of this poem and throughout his poetry, Stevens demonstrates
that he is a master at producing these iconic syntactic effects. And he is not an ex-
ception. As other studies have shown, among poets, this is a frequently exploited syn-
tactic aesthetic effect.10
(b) Rhetorical Emphasis
Here, poets manipulate the syntax to increase the perceptual salience of words
and constituents in order to emphasize the conceptual content of these forms. In
most cases, this involves manipulating the syntax so that a normally unstressed con-
stituent receives a strong phrasal stress indicating an unambiguous sentential "focus."
For instance, as Banfield points out, many of the syntactic inversions which produce
the "grand" style of a poet such as Milton are best motivated in these terms.11
However, rhetorical emphasis can be gained with the syntax in other ways as
well. For example, Austin demonstrates that Coleridge uses syntactic "pivots" to em-
phasize the central concepts in "Kubla Khan" (i.e., "pleasure-dome", "fountain",
and "waves")12, and Gerard Manley Hopkins often uses syntactic breaks, a strong
stress meter, and the structure of the poetic line to raise dynamic verbs from their
normally destressed, medial position to a stressed, syntactically isolated, line-initial
position - thus emphasizing dynamic action in his verse. The following lines illus-
trate these features:
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion

Shine , and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall , gall themselves and gash gold-vermillion.
("The Windhover," lines 12-14)
We lash with the best or worst

Word last! How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe
Will, mouthed to flesh-burst,
Gush ! - flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet,
Brim, in a flash, full! - Hither then, last or first,
To hero of Calvary, Christ's feet -
("The Wreck of the Deutschland," stanza 8, lines 2-9)
(c) Nominal Syntax
In this "channel," poets use the syntax exclusively in its nominal (as opposed
to speech act) function for imagistic effects. These nominal structures (which lack
finite verbs) destroy the narrative, assertive force of the statements in a poem and
therefore lead readers directly to the referents of the noun phrases - bypassing the
mediation of a persona, a speaker. For instance, much of the perceptual immediacy of
imagistic poems such as Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" depends on the nominal
syntax involved ("The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/ Petals on a wet, black
bough,"). In this nominal form, the poem asserts nothing, equates nothing, but mere-
ly presents two contexts and leaves it to the reader to fuse these disparate experiences
at some higher emotional or conceptual level. Given this nominal form, the narrative
persona in the poem is totally effaced - leaving the reader in a direct confrontation
with the bare referents of the noun phrases. As much of modern poetry capitalizes on
this effect, nominal syntax has been discussed at some length in the critical literature.1^
Emotive Effects
(a) Syntactic Tension
In this "channel," poets use the slowly unfolding temporal dimension of the
syntax to exploit what readers know about the normal finished form of syntactic
structures by setting up structural expectations at one point in a complex structure
and then delaying the satisfaction of these expectations until some later point in that
structure. While literary scholars have produced some extensive studies of aspects of
syntactic tension, linguists have generally mentioned this phenomenon only briefly
and usually in association with rhythm - presumably accepting the position of
Bloomfield and others that tension is too subjective to be investigated formally.14
Actually, however, the opposite is the case. For instance, in "so many selves (so
many fiends and gods":
so many selves (so many fiends and gods

each greedier than every) is a man
(so easily one in another hides;
yet man can, being all, escape from none)
so huge a tumult is the simplest wish:

so pitiless a massacre the hope
most innocent (so deep's the mind of flesh
and so awake what waking calls asleep)
so never is most lonely man alone

(his briefest breathing lives some planet's year,
his longest life's a heartbeat of some sun;
his least unmotion roams the youngest star)
- how should a fool that calls him "I" presume

to comprehend not numerable whom?
RICHARD CURETON 323
by postponing the how- clause of the correlative so.. .how construction, Cummings
builds up tension and maintains continuity and energy through the quatrains - on-
ly to release this tension and simultaneously close the poem in the couplet. Simi-
larly, in the conclusion of "i have found what you are like":
And the coolness of your smile is

stirringofbirds between my arms; but
i should rather than anything
have (almost when hugeness will shut
quietly)almost,
your kiss
Cummings separates have from its object your kiss - thus building up tension be-
fore the delivery of the kiss. Opposed to Bloomfield's position, it has been my ex-
perience that most instances of syntactic tension can be firmly motivated in lin-
guistic terms (e.g., Cummings' use of correlatives and the uninterruptable verb-di-
rect object sequence above), and therefore a more extensive formal study of this
phenomenon could be of great value to students of poetry.
(b) Rhythm
Here, poets manipulate the syntax for non-imitative, rhythmic effects. As with
most rhythmic phenomena, these effects are largely emotive and can be achieved us-
ing a variety of syntactic strategies.
First, as Dillon points out, syntactic inversions cut up intonational units and
thus slow down verse movement.15 For instance, a preposed phrase will usually be
given a separate intonational contour and will be set off sharply from the remaining
part of the sentence by a significant pause. Thus, by including a number of syntactic
inversions in a passage, a poet can significantly slow down the movement of the verse.
A poet need not invert structures to manipulate rhythm with syntax, however.
As Gross stresses, the movement of verse is intimately bound up with the structure
of the syntax.16 Almost all changes in the relative length or semantic weight of phras-
es in the flow of a text can alter verse movement. For instance, in the first stanza of
"a wind has blown the rain away and blown":
a wind has blown the rain away and blown

the sky away and all the leaves away,
and the trees stand. I think i too have known
autumn too long
the short conjunct in line three "and the trees stand" almost creeps with battering
stresses on each word because of the length of the triply conjoined phrases preceding
it. This effect is heightened by Cummings' syntactic orchestration of the preceding
phrases which accelerate due to the decreasing structural (and semantic) weight of
the successively conjoined phrases:
(1) a wind has blown tne rain away

and. . . (2) blown the sky away
and. . . (3) all the leaves away
which proceed from sentence, to full verb phrase, to just a direct object (plus away).
Cummings speeds up the rhythm with the progressively "lighter" conjuncts only to
drastically impede movement with "and the trees stand," which returns to a senten-
tial conjunct. Taken together, these rhythmic changes nicely convey the emotional
contrast between the wild abandon of the wind and the tense resistance of the trees.
(c) Semantic Tension
In these cases, poets use the slowly unfolding temporal dimension of the syn-
tax to exploit what readers know about the semantic interpretation of finished syn-
tactic structures by setting up semantic expectations (i.e., presuppositions) and then
frustrating these presuppositions later on. For instance, Cummings often uses the pre-
suppositions associated with cleft structures to create anti-climactic, ironic effects
which both frustrate the reader's expectations and further his thematic purposes. For
example, in the first clause in "what Got him was Noth/ing," Cummings uses the fact
that the noun phrase complement of a cleft with got as a main verb is normally pre-
supposed to exist in order to frustrate the reader's expectations and force the reader
to accept the spiritual reality of Nothing (i.e., spiritual entities, things which are not
things) in human existence. Similarly, in the final structure in "but also dying":
wherever the sun and the stars and
the
moon
are we're ; but

also
nowhere
Cummings exploits the fact that the second element in a correlative not only . . .but
also construction usually semantically supercedes the first element to frustrate read-
er expectations and assert the spiritual reality of nowhere (i.e., a place where material
things cannot exist, but only spiritual entities). Importantly, many of Stanley Fish's
"self-consuming artifacts" also involve presuppositions which are generated at an ear-
ly point in a complex structure and then are frustrated later on.17
Conceptual Effects
(a) Syntactic Ambiguity
In this effect, poets use the syntax to present two different contextually appro-
priate semantic units. As Empson demonstrates at some length, poets can exploit a
RICHARD CURETON 325
variety of structures for syntactic ambiguity: dependent clauses that can modify ei-
ther a preceding or following clause; verbs which can be either transitive or intransi-
tive, dynamic main verbs or stative passive participles; genitive constructions which
can be interpreted as either subjective or objective genitives; clauses that can be read
as either subject-verb-object or object -verb-subject; and so forth.18 And, at times,
this ambiguity can be complex. For instance, at the beginning of "in":
in
Spring comes(no
one
asks his name)
a mender
of things
Cummings produces a particularly ornate and aesthetically effective syntactic ambi-

guity. As it stands, these lines can be read with in Spring as a prepositional phrase
serving as a temporal adjunct with a mender of things standing alone as the subject
of comes or with in as an emphatically preposed directional adverb with Spring and
its appositive a mender of things serving as a complex subject of comes. As others
have observed, this syntactic ambiguity is particularly appropriate in this context as
it simultaneously presents the dual nature of Spring - on the first reading, as a quiet,
mysterious natural force and, on the second, as a more well-known, boisterous person-
ality.19
(b) Semantic Process
To produce this effect, poets exploit the slowly unfolding temporal dimension
of the syntax by arraying lexical meanings in dynamic patterns above and beyond the
conventional, static propositional content of a sentence. This use of the syntax is at
the core of Hirsch's interpretation of Joyce's sentence from "Araby":20
Gazing up into the darkness, I saw myself

as a creature driven and derided by vanity;
and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.
As Hirsch points out, a purely propositional analysis (such as Ohmann provides) omits
any consideration of the carefully controlled semantic progression in the sentence
from upward movement, physical perception and physical activity (i.e., "gazing up in-
to the darkness") across the ambiguous semantic pivot ("I saw myself," which can re-
fer to either physical or mental activity) to downward movement, self-knowledge and
mental activity (i.e., "driven and derided by vanity"). This progression is not a pro-
duct of the static propositional structure of the sentence but of the reader's experi-
ence of the linear ordering of these meanings in time.
(c) Syntactic Parallelism
In this "channel," poets use the syntax as an indexical frame to compare or

contrast the meanings of lexical items or phrases which appear in equivalent struc-
tural positions in syntactically parallel clauses. Here, the syntax serves as a means by
which poets can "couple" lexical meanings across sentences and therefore is the syn-
tactic correlate of the various poetic schémas (e.g., rhyme, alliteration, etc.) on the
phonetic level.21 While parallelism has received a great deal of attention by critics,
the phenomenon as a whole is immensely complex and still has not been studied in
sufficient detail. For instance, as Kiparsky points out, poets vary greatly according
to how strictly they construct syntactic parallels (i.e., according to what level of der-
ivational structure - deep structure, surface structure, or semantic structure - they
use as the basis for their parallels).22 And, as Austin stresses, parallels can occur in a
variety of patterns (e.g., concentric parallelism as well as linear parallelism) which,
potentially at least, could lead to various subsidiary effects.23
(d) Metaphor
In metaphor, poets use the semantic interpretation rules associated with syn-
tactic structures as inferential frames to carve up and redistribute aspects of lexical
and grammatical meaning in structures which, if taken literally, are semantically or
pragmatically anomalous. A powerful means of transcendence, metaphors create new
semantic complexes and new linguistic means to express those complexes.
While the literature on metaphor is massive and need not be cited here, the con-
tribution of the syntactic form of anomalous expressions to their eventual metaphor-
ical construal has been underestimated and needs to be examined more closely. While
there have been a few studies which have tried to deal with the syntactic diversity of
metaphors, most studies of metaphor have dismissed this diversity as irrelevant to
metaphorical construal.24 However, this position is far from justifiable and if accept-
ed can lead to a dismissal of some of the most important facets of the aesthetic use
of syntax in literature. For instance, I have attempted to demonstrate that some of
Cummings' most important poetic statements depend crucially on the lexical and
phrasal redistribution of semantic features associated with the semantic interpreta-
tion of the syntax of English.25 For example, Cummings habitually violates the for-
mal and semantic constraints on prenominai attributive position in noun phrases to
create a range of unusually dynamic, emotive, comparative, and spatio-temporally
limited attributive modifiers. By using constructions such as:
under me you (Spatially Limited)

a once world (Temporally Limited)
your suddenly body (Dynamic)
your how luminous life (Emotive; Exclamatory)
Cummings creates a world in which the transitory physical and emotional settings of
objects become absorbed into those objects themselves. In cases such as these, the
syntax plays a crucial role in forging new expressive means.
(e) Semantic Interpretation
Finally, in this effect, poets use the conventional semantic interpretation rules
associated with groups of syntactic structures in a text in order to reinforce concep-
tual or thematic patterns in the text. This effect represents what is usually referred
to as "style as meaning" or "style as cognitive choice," and it is here that linguists
have made their greatest contributions to our knowledge of the aesthetic use of syn-
tax both in poetry and prose.26 For instance, Keyser shows that in "The Death of
a Soldier":
Life contracts and death is expected,

As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.
He does not become a three-days personage,

Imposing his separation,
Calling for pomp.
Death is absolute and without memorial,

As in a season of autumn,
When the wind stops,
When the wind stops and, over the heavens,

The clouds go, nevertheless,
In their direction.
Wallace Stevens uses the timeless present tense (e.g., "Death is absolute"; "Death is
expected") and non-agentive intransitive verbs (e.g., "Life contracts"; "The soldier
falls"; "the wind stops"; "The clouds go") to construct, in his words, "a timeless
world without agency, a world in which events are inevitable and human agency is
absent."27
Despite this excellent work, there still remains a great deal to be done in this
area, however. For instance, while Freeman has shown the importance of the seman-
tics of causativity ; Traugott and Keyser of stativity; Keyser, Taylor, and Siegel of as-
pect; Halliday of transitivity; and so forth, many of the semantic distinctions con-
trolled by the syntax remain relatively unexplored in literary contexts.
Ill
In order to illustrate the typology of syntactic aesthetic effects presented a-

bove (and, in the process, the importance of detailed syntactic analysis in literary
criticism), it is instructive to look at a poem in which syntactic strategies make a
particularly crucial contribution to the aesthetic value of the text. A good example
is e.e. Cummings' "supposing i dreamed this)":
1 supposing i dreamed this)

2 only imagine, when day has thrilled
3 you are a house around which
4 i am a wind
5 your walls will not reckon how

6 strangely my life is curved
7 since the best he can do
8 is to peer through windows, unobserved
9 - listen, for(out of all

10 things)dream is noone's fool;
11 if this wind who i am prowls
1 2 carefully around this house of you
13 love being such, or such,

14 the normal corners of your heart
15 will never guess how much
16 my wonderful jealousy is dark
17 if light should flower :

18 or laughing sparkle from
1 9 the shut house(around and around
20 which a poor wind will roam
As with many of Cummings' poems, the thoughts this poem expresses are sim-
ple and need little explication. The theme of the poem, of course, is love - in this
case, unrequited love and the conflicting feelings of uncontrollable attraction and en-
forced separation this situation produces in the rejected lover. Like a wind around a
shut house, the poem says, the unrequited lover cannot help but press himself against
the object of his love, "curving" his life to hers, probing for an opening, jealously
cherishing her "light" and laughter - but, of course, all in vain.28 Like the wind, he
remains "unobserved," shut out. Self-contained, his lover, like a house insulated a-
gainst unwanted winds, need not heed the happenings outside her "walls." As is of-
ten the case with Cummings' poems, there are few problems in need of thematic in-
terpretation here.
However, unlike many of Cummings' poems, "supposing i dreamed this)," at
least in most obvious respects, appears extremely simple in form as well. The poem
is divided into well-proportioned stanzas unified by a regular a-b-a-b scheme of full
and partial rhymes. Similarly, except for the usual Cummings liberties with capitals
and punctuation, there are no wild grammatical, morphological or typographical devi-
ations for the reader to struggle with (in fact, with minor exceptions, the word order
in the poem is an absolutely direct prose order), and other than the preliminary "when
day has thrilled" and the simple conceit on which the poem is built (i.e., the house-
wind analogy), the metaphors Cummings uses are slight and add relatively little to the
aesthetics of the poem (e.g., "if light should flower/ or laughing sparkle"). As with
matters of thematic content, there seems to be nothing very exceptional in the form
of the poem either.
RICHARD CURETON 329
Nevertheless, after repeated readings, I have found it impossible to deny that

somehow the formal structures in the poem convey with some degree of intensity ex-
actly those conflicting feelings of dependency and separation, yearning and rejection,
which mark the emotional dilemma of the rejected lover - an experience which is al-
most totally lost in a simple prose rendition 01 me thematic content of the poem.
What I hope to demonstrate below is that Cummings conveys this experience with
just that "harmless, necessary drudge" Nowottny claims is the groundwork of the
poet's art - the syntax.
Parallelism
Starting at the most general level, Cummings uses parallelism to construct the
basic frame in which the poem develops. If one takes lines 1-2 as a prelude and lines
9-10 (and 13) as an interlude, the poem falls into two sections, lines 3-8 and lines 1 1-
20 (excluding Une 13) between which Cummings draws three major parallels:
Part 1 : you are a house around which

i am a wind (lines 3-4)
PARALLEL NO.l
Part 2: if this wind who i am prowls
carefully around this house of you
(lines 11-12)
the shut house(around and around

which a poor wind will roam (lines 1 9-20)
Part 1 : your walls will not reckon how

strangely my life is curved (lines 5-6)
PARALLEL N0.2 pdrt 2: the normal corners of your heart

will never guess how much
my wonderful jealousy is dark (lines 14-16)
Part 1 : since the best he can do

is to peer through windows, unobserved
(lines 7-8)
PARALLEL NO. 3
Part 2: if light should flower:
or laughing sparkle from
the shut house. . . (lines 17-19)
Semantically, the first parallel defines the general physical relationship between
the house/you and the wind/i' the second, their differing levels of awareness; and the
third, their respective actions.
Within these semantic parallels, two sets of syntactic parallels are impor-
tant thematically.
First, while the structures in parallel no. 1 and parallel no. 3 are fairly
loose syntactically (reflecting the diversity in the physical actions of the house /
you and the wind/i ), in the second parallel, Cummings constructs a fairly strict
syntactic parallelism between the semantically parallel sections:
your walls will not reckon

the normal corners of your heart will never guess
how strangely my life is curved,

how much my wonderful jealousy is dark.
which formally mirrors the persona's lover's unchanging lack of awareness of the
persona as the latter changes states (i.e., curves , peers , prowls , and roams).
Second, within each of the three major parallels, Cummings carefully main-
tains syntactically parallel descriptive noun phrases for the house/you and the
wind/i in order to tighten the comparison between the major characters in the
poem. In parallel no. 1, the house/you and the wind/i are given simple deter-
miners:
Parallel No. 1 : you are a house

i am a wind
in parallel no. 2, post-posed modifiers:
Parallel No. 2: the wind who i am

this house of you
and in parallel no. 3, a pre-posed modifer:
Parallel No. 3: the shut house

a poor wind
Parallelism, then, is the main mechanism through which Cummings con-

veys the static relationships in the poem: the thematic juxtaposition of the
house/you and the wind/i and the former's unchanging disregard for the lattei
Rhythm
While this static frame is important in itself, it also provides an invarian

structure against which Cummings can present the major syntactic and semant
processes in the poem.
First, comparing the three parallels presented in the preceding section, one
can immediately see that the poem syntactically expands and, therefore, rhyth-
RICHARD CURETON 331
mically accelerates as it progresses. In particular, noun phrases pick up modifiers

and verb phrases and adverbial elements progress from simple to compound.
Stanzas 1-2 Stanzas 4-5
a house the shut house

NPs : a wind NPs: a poor wind
my life my wonderful jealousy
your walls the normal corners of your heart
Advs/VPs: around Advs/VPs : around and around

peer flower. . .or. . .sparkle
Consequently, as the reader moves through the poem, he/she must process more
material in order to experience the units in the second part of the poem which
are semantically and syntactically parallel to items in the first part of the poem.
As I experience it, this creates a considerable feeling of momentum (rhythmic
acceleration) - a momentum which directly reinforces the progressively increas-
ing emotional intensity conveyed by the conceptual content of the poem.
Semantic Process
Of course, the syntactic expansion outlined above is not just rhythmical

and formal, but conceptual as well. While the noun phrases in the first part of
the poem merely describe and define, the parallel modified noun phrases in the
second part evaluate, characterize and summarize. The house becomes a shut
house; the wind, a poor wind; the persona's life, his wonderful jealousy, and the
persona 's lover's "walls", the normal corners of her heart. Similarly, the formal
progression from simple to compound verb phrases is accompanied by a seman-
tic progression from simple to multiple, repetitive action - part of a larger lexi-
cal and syntactic pattern in the poem in which states-of-being progress to sta-
tionary/passive actions and then to dynamic and repetitively dynamic activities.
For instance, in loose paraphrases, one could characterize the actions of the
main characters in the poem as:
the wind I i
The wind is around the house (stative)

The wind peers through the windows of the house (stationary)
The wind prowls carefully around the house (dynamic)
The wind roams around and around the house (repetitively dynamic)
the house ¡you
The house is encircled by the wind (stative)

The house does not observe the wind (stationary)
The house flowers and sparkles (repetitively dynamic)
Consequently, as the poem builds rhythmically and formally, it builds concept-

ually as well.
Together, then, the static syntactic parallels in the poem and the semantic
and syntactic processes which work within them generate just that tension which
is characteristic of the feelings of the spurned lover. While, in unchanging paral-
lels, the house/you remains "shut," unaware of her effect on the wind/i , as the
poem progresses, both the house/you and the wind/i become more active - the
house/you becoming increasingly attractive, increasingly alluring and the wind/i,
increasingly attracted, increasingly allured.
Semantic Interpretation
While these parallels and processes are powerful in themselves, Cummings

further conveys the estrangement of the two characters in the poem by careful-
ly manipulating the propositional form of the syntax to minimize any reference
to interaction between them. For instance, in the world of the poem, all actions
are intransitive or negated transitives. The wind/i peers, prowls, and roams while
the house/you sparkles, flowers, and does not observe. Consequently, in strict
propositional terms, the house never acts directly on the wind and the wind nev-
er acts directly on the house. Grammatically, one is never the positive object of
the other's action.
Similarly, while pragmatically the poem sets up situations in which one
must infer that the house/you has indeed affected the wind/U Cummings avoids
the use of the causative verbs which a direct expression of this interaction de-
mands - substituting instead the stative, perfective participles and adjectives cor-
responding to these causative verbs. For instance, while in pragmatic terms, the
house/you certainly "curves" the wind/i ( i.e., causes the wind/i to curve), in the
propositional structure of the poem, the action is complete; the wind merely
"is curved." Similarly, wliile she indeed "darkens" his jealousy (i.e., causes his
jealousy to darken) with her sparkling laughter and flowering light, in the pro-
positional structure of the poem, reference to this causative action is avoided; he
merely "is dark."29 Thus, while many situations in the poem, in pragmatic terms,
imply strong interaction, Cummings meticulously avoids direct reference to this
interaction - thus indirectly heightening the reader's sense of the conflict in the
spurned lover who desires interaction with the object of his affection but can
have none.
Again, while these strategies are important, it is with the relative clauses in
the poem that Cummings creates his most striking conceptual effects. For in-
stance, in lines 3-4, the relative clause around which i am a wind is actually un-
grammatical. While one can relativize a wide variety of structures in English, as
Ross has shown, one cannot relativize a noun phrase which itself occurs in a re-
duced relative clause. However, this is exactly the situation in lines 3-4. At some
deeper level, the structure in lines 34 involves subordinating (1) to (2):
RICHARD CURETON 333
(1) I am a wind which is around a house

(2) You are a house
However, to do this, one must move a house (together with around ) out of the
relative clause which is around a house - just the operation which is forbidden
by very general constraints on the form of English syntax (and perhaps the form
of the syntax of all languages).30
The important point, however, is not that Cummings uses this deviant
structure but that the deviant structure, once used, is remarkably appropriate to
the theme of the poem. In an important sense, the poem is a study in emotion-
al dependency - a sketch of how one's life can be uncontrollably molded
("curved") by one's love - even when one is ignored, shut out. And, semantic-
ally, lines 3-4 define this relationship in terms of the central conceit in the po-
em (the analogy between the lovers, a house, and a wind). However, by using a
grammatical strategy which deviantly subordinates the wind/i to the house/youy
Cummings creates a poetic tool which perfectly furthers his thematic purpose.
Just as, thematically, the wind/i is desperately dependent on the house/you for
his emotional existence, Cummings introduces him to the reader in an unnatural-
ly subordinate grammatical position as well. The claim here is that the intense
feeling of emotional dependency which the poem produces in the reader is, to
a large degree, a product of the wind's unnaturally subordinate grammatical po-
sition. This is indeed syntax as art.
While the relative clause in lines 3-4 violates a Ross constraint, notice that
the parallel relative clause in lines 19-20 is somewhat deviant as well. While, in
the normal case, speakers have the option of preposing a preposition in a com-
plement when forming a relative clause (e.g., one can say either The track which
I ran around was muddy or The track around which I ran was muddy), I find
that this latter structure becomes unnatural when the preposition is compounded
(as in The track around and around which I ran was muddy). I find that these
structures are much better with post-posed prepositions (as in The track which
I ran around and around was muddy). If this is so, then this relative clause also
forces the wind/i into an abnormal subordinate clause - further emphasizing his
emotional dependency. Here the placement of the relative clause is important as
well. Being at the end of the poem, these final lines leave the reader with a
sense that this emotional dependency will continue - just as the last word in
the poem, roam , leaves the wind/i searching, unfulfilled.
Iconic Syntax
Finally, in addition to the conceptual and emotive effects outlined above,

Cummings also manipulates the syntax for perceptual effects. First, while one
must admit that the relative clauses in lines 4-5 and 19-20 are most important
for their conceptual effects, the deviant nature of the preposed phrases around
which and around and around which also gives the reader a feeling of superflu-
ous movement and encirclement. As outlined above, in the normal case, these
phrases cannot be moved from their sentence-final position. Consequently, with
respect to their normal placement, these phrases "circle" their respective clauses:
lines 4-5
"iconic encirclement"
You are a house. I am a wind [arouncl* a house].

You are a house around which I am a wind.
lines 19-20
"iconic encirclement"
. . .the shut house ^ a poor wind will roam f iround and around]
^the shut house. /
. . .the shut house around and around which a poor wind will roam.
The claim here is that the deviance of these relative clauses, in some sense,
makes these preposing transformations psychologically real. In processing these
deviant clauses, a reader must, at some level, perceive the movement of the pre-
posed phrases as he/she shifts back and forth between the poetic and the more
normal order.
If this is so (and I perceive it to be), the relativizing strategy Cummings
uses in the poem (in addition to its conceptual effects) takes on considerable
perceptual significance as well. Besides being about attraction and separation,
"supposing i dreamed this)" is also a poem about encirclement and bending. His
life, the persona relates, "curves" to his love and he roams around and around
her, soliciting her attentions. In fact, in metaphorical terms, the persona defines
his very existence by the fact that he "is around" his lover. Consequently, if, in
disentangling the syntax, the reader experiences the unusual bendings and cir-
clings in these structures, he/she perceptually enacts in his/her mind's eye the
exact encirclement and bending the poem thematically conveys. Again, Cummings
molds form and content into a perfect union.
Importantly, Cummings presents this perceptual encirclement on a larger
structural level as well. Looking back to our discussion of parallelism in the po-
em, one finds a severe asymmetry. In the first part of the poem, only lines 3-4
refer to the general physical relationship between the house/you and the wind/i.
However, the second part of the poem contains two sections which refer to this
relationship - one at the beginning of this section (lines 11-12) and one at the
end (lines 19-20). Consequently, as with the relative clauses, in comparison to
the first part of the poem, the second part of the poem is encircled - and with
a phrase that directly expresses repetitive encirclement (i.e., around and around
which a poor wind will roam)' This is iconic syntax in full array.31
RICHARD CURETON 335
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Summary
Even though many important elements of the poem remain untouched by

this syntactic analysis, it is clear that much of the art of "supposing i dreamed
this)" resides in the syntax of the poem (see Table I. for a summary). Faced
with the artistic problem of conveying in as full a manner as possible the emo-
tional predicament of the spurned lover, Cummings exploits the syntax on sever-
al levels simultaneously in search of an acceptable linguistic solution. Using par-
allelism, Cummings conveys the enduring elements of the situation, the close jux-
taposition of the main characters and the persona's lover's unchanging ignorance
of her admirer's attentions, while, using various formal and semantic processes,
especially an expanding and accelerating syntax expressing progressively more dy-
namic activity, he constructs the dramatic tension between attraction and rejec-
tion which the spurned lover, inevitably, must suffer. On the other hand, using
various aspects of the propositional form of the syntax, intransitive verbs, sta-
tives, and relative clauses, he produces a conceptual world devoid of interaction
in which relationships are not defined in terms of equality but in terms of un-
natural dependency and subordination while, using the purely physical and for-
mal structure of the syntax, movement rules and a structural refrain, he forces
the reader to directly experience the strained, repetitive searching and disfigure-
ment of the persona in his attempt to solicit his lady's love. Considering the
depth, complexity, and diversity of these strategies and their unerring aesthetic
success, "supposing i dreamed this)" provides an excellent example of a poem
which justifies Nowottny's assertion that poetic syntax is often far from the
"harmless, necessary drudge" that critics often make it out to be, but can often
indeed be "the groundwork of the poet's art."
IV.
The preceding presentation has important implications - both theoretical

and practical - for the analysis of syntax in literature.
First, using the typology presented in Part II of the paper, an analysis as
full and detailed as the one presented in Part III of the paper follows as a nat-
ural result. Using the structure presented in the typology, a critic facing the task
of analyzing the syntax of a poem would be led, not to reduce the complexity
of the task, but to actively search for structures which illustrate the various ef-
fects detailed in the typology, and if he/she found these effects, would be able
to make clear functional distinctions between them. Here, theory would directly
aid, not impede, productive, revealing analysis.
Second, syntactic analyses produced in this format could be compared in
clear aesthetic terms across poets or from poem to poem within a poet's work.
For instance, in the poem analyzed here, Cummings exploits five of the effects
the syntax can produce but, in general, avoids the other effects in the typology
(e.g., rhetorical emphasis, syntactic tension, nominal syntax, etc.). Using facts of
this sort, it would be fairly easy (once one had a fairly large number of analy-
ses in hand) to construct a clear characterization of the functional syntactic
style of a poet or group of poets - a result that could be of great utility to
literary historians and scholars in comparative literature and stylistics.
Finally, syntactic analyses produced in this format provide a structure
which makes it possible to directly relate the various aesthetic effects of the
syntax of a poem both qualitatively and quantitatively to those contributions of
o^
other aspects of poetic form. For instance, as was mentioned briefly in the
presentation of the typology, many of the effects of the syntax have clear cor-
relates on the phonetic level (e.g., iconic syntax correlates with sound symbolism,
syntactic tension with metrical tension, syntactic parallelism with phonetic sché-
mas, and so forth). As a result, this type of analysis holds some considerable
promise of being able to actively further attempts to understand, not only the
aesthetic effects of poetic syntax, but the aesthetic effects of poetic form in
general.
NOTES
* Winifred Nowottny, The Language Poets Use (London: The Athlone Press, 1962),
pp. 9-10.
2
For instance, for a review of the shortcomings of the work by linguists on Cum-
mings' syntax, see Donald C. Freeman, "The Grammar of Ungrammar," Semiotica, 22:3/4
(1978), 369-385, a review of the best work on Cummings' syntax to date; Irene Fairley's
E. E. Cummings and Ungrammar (Searingtown, N.Y., Watermill Publishers, 1975); and my
review of the 'he danced his did' controversy in " 'he danced his did: An Analysis," Journal
of Linguistics, 16 (1980), 245-260.
3
For example, see the exchange between Roger Fowler and F. W. Bateson in Roger
Fowler, The Languages of Literature (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971), pp. 43-64.
4
A good example is the recent work by Keyser, Austin, Freeman, Epstein, Siegel,
and others, on what they like to term "iconic syntax" (see the references cited below).
While this work deals with a variety of effects which syntax can produce, in these studies,
all of these effects are given one label, "iconic" (or "mimetic") syntax. However, if one
terms all syntactic effects, "iconic" effects, then this term does no theoretical work. One
might as well call "iconic" syntax aesthetic syntax - and be clearer for it.
The tendency to overgeneralize and thus reduce the complexity of the effects of
literary language is ubiquitous among literary theorists. For instance, of the principal com-
mentators on poetic language, Prague School linguists exaggerate the contribution of fore-
grounding to the detriment of other effects; Richards and philosophers such as Langer, e-
motive effects; linguistic critics such as Ohmann, Thorne, Halliday, and others, conceptual
effects; Jakobson and Kiparsky, parallelism; and so forth. Opposed to these positions, my
claim is that all of these effects are (1) important and (2) different. An adequate treatment
of the aesthetic effects of any given poem or small group of poems should reveal this, and,
more important, an adequate theory of literature should include categories which actively
facilitate, rather than impede, this revelation.
^For example, in Syntax in English Poetry 1870-1930 (Berkeley: University of Califor-

nia Press, 1967), William E. Baker attempts to classify poets according to the structures that
they use (e.g., elaboration, fragmentation, dislocation, etc.) and then attempts to jump to aes-
thetic considerations from there. However, since structures can be used for many different
functions, he often runs into difficulty when he attempts to compare poets. For instance,
while he rightly notes that Cummings uses a great deal of dislocation and fragmentation in his
poetry, on intuitive grounds, he finds it impossible to group Cummings with either his con-
temporaries (who tended to use fragmentation for imagistic effects) or his predecessors (who
tended to use elaboration for emotive effects) and can only conclude that Cummings was syn-
tactically perverse - that his deviant language is merely language play (p. 33ff.). Of course,
the problem is not with Cummings' poetry but with Baker's analytical tools. As I have out-
lined elsewhere ("E. E. Cummings: A Case Study of Iconic Syntax" (forthcoming, Language
and Style ) ), what Baker needs is the functional notion of iconic syntax. Much of Cummings'
syntax, while structurally diverse, performs basically the same aesthetic function: it perceptu-
ally presents what it semantically expresses.
7
See also Geoffrey N. Leech, A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry (London: Longman
Group Lmt., 1969) and Semantics (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1974).
o
For a further discussion of all of these effects, see my dissertation The Aesthetic Use
of Syntax: Studies on the Syntax of the Poetry of E. E. Cummings (Unpublished Doctoral Dis-
sertation, University of Illinois, 1980), Chapter 1.
9
Of course, what "resembles" refers to exactly in this definition raises a host of inter-
esting but highly complex theoretical issues that go well beyond the scope of this study. See
Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1970),
pp. 191 ff. for an elaborate attempt to solve this problem. In most practical situations, how-
ever, readers make judgments about "resemblances" easily and with little variation in inter-
pretation. The theoretical difficulties here, then, while interesting, are somewhat irrelevant to
my purpose - the construction of a practical, critical tool.
10 v
For a representative sample of these studies, see: A. K. Zolkovskij, "How to Show
Things with Words: On the Iconic Representation of Themes by Expression Plane Means,"
Poetics , 8 (1978), 405-430; E. L. Epstein, "The Self-Reflexive Artifact: The Function of
Mimesis in An Approach to the Theory of Value in Literature," in R. Fowler, ed., Style and
Structure in Literature: Essays in the New Stylistics (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press,
1975), pp. 40-78; Donald C. Freeman, "Iconic Syntax in Poetry: A Note on Blake's 'Ah! Sun-
flower'," in J. Stillings, ed., University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics II
(Amherst, Mass.: The Graduate Linguistic Student Association of the University of Massachu-
setts, 1976), pp. 51-56; Donald Davie, Articulate Energy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1955); Timothy Austin, A Linguistic Approach to the Style of the Early English Romantic
Poets (Amherst, Mass.: The Graduate Linguistic Student Association of the University of Mas-
sachusetts, 1977) and "Constraints on Syntactic Rules and the Style of Shelly's 'Adonais',"
PTL, 4:2 (1979), 315-343; many sections of Stephen Ullmann, Style in the French Novel
(London: Cambridge University Press, 1957) and Language and Style (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1964) and my article (cited above).
Ânn M. Banfield, Stylistic Transformations: A Study Based on the Syntax of Para-

dise Lost (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1973), pp.
1 2 1 ff.
Âustin, A Linguistic Approach, pp. 56ff.
RICHARD CURETON 339
13
For the most extensive discussion of this effect, see Baker, pp. 188ff. For a discus-
sion of nominal syntax in Marianne Moore's poetry, see Marie Borroff, The Language and the
Poet (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 80ff. For nominal
syntax in Cummings' poetry, see Fairley, pp. 17ff. Philip Wheelwright also discusses this ef-
fect in "On the Semantics of Poetry," in Chatman and Levin, eds., Essays on the Language
of Literature (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967), pp. 257ff.
* For Bloomfield's discussion, see: Morton W. Bloomfield, "Stylistics and the Theory
of Literature," New Literary History , 7:2, 271-311. For the best literary study, see Barbara
Herrnstein Smith, Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1968). For linguistic studies, see Austin, A Linguistic Approach, pp. 65-67;
Donald C. Freeman, "The Strategy of Fusion: Dylan Thomas's Syntax," in R. Fowler, ed.,
pp. 19-39; and George L. Dillon, "Inversions and Deletions in English Poetry," Language and
Style , 8:3 (1975), pp. 220-237.
^Dillon, pp. 232ff.
^Harvey Gross, Sound and Form in Modern Poetry (Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press, 1964).
17
See Stanley E. Fish, Self-Consuming Artifacts (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1972).
18
William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (New York: New Directions, 1947), es-
pecially pp. 55 ff.
19
See Louis C. Rus, "Structural Ambiguity: A Note on Meaning and the Linguistic
Analysis of Literature," Language Learning , 6 (1955), 62-67 for a more extensive discussion.
20
See David H. Hirsch, "Linguistic Structure and Literary Meaning," Journal of Literary
Semantics , 1(1972), 80-89; and the article which prompted his discussion: Richard Ohmann,
"Literature as Sentences," in Chatman and Levin, eds., pp. 231-238.
21
For example, Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics," in Chatman and Levin,
eds., pp. 296-322; Samuel R. Levin, Linguistic Structures in Poetry (The Hague: Mouton,
1962); and Paul Kiparsky, "The Role of Linguistics in a Theory of Poetry," Daedalus , 102:3
(1973), 231-244.
22ibid.
23
Austin, A Linguistic Approach , p. 103
24
For the best studies which attempt to deal with the syntactic diversity of metaphor,
see Urial Weinreich, "Explorations in Semantic Theory," in T. Sebeok, ed., Current Trends in
Linguistics Vol. VIII (The Hague: Mouton, pp. 395-477; and Christine Brooke- Rose, A Gram-
mar of Metaphor (London: Martin, Seeker & Warburg, Lmt., 1958). For a recent example of the
dismissal of this syntactic diversity, see Samuel R. Levin, The Semantics of Metaphor (Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).
25
See my dissertation, Chapters 2, 3, and 5.
'J fi
For a representative sample of studies on poetry, see: Samuel Jay Keyser, "Wallace
Stevens: Form and Meaning in Four Poems," College English , 37:6 (1976), 578-598; Donald
C. Freeman, "Keats's 'To Autumn': Poetry as Process and Pattern," Language and Style, 11:1
(1978), 3-17; Elizabeth Traugott, "Generative Semantics and the Concept of Literary Dis-
course," Journal of Literary Semantics, 2 (1973), 5-22; Muffy E. A. Siegel, "The Original
Crime: John Berryman's Iconic Grammar," Poetics Today, 2:1a (1980), 163-188; W. A. Peters,
Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Critical Essay Toward the Understanding of his Poetry (London:
Oxford University Press, 1948); Ronald Clayton Taylor, "Semantic Structures and the Tempor-
al Modes of Blake's Prophetic Verse," Language and Style, 12:1 (1979), 26-49. For some prose
studies, see: M. A. K. Halliday, "Linguistic Function and Literary Style: An Inquiry into the
Language of William Golding's The Inheritors in Explorations in the Functions of Language
(New York: Elsevier North-Holland, Inc., 1973), pp. 95-135; Seymour Chatman, The Later Style
of Henry James (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972); Richard Ohmann, Shaw: The Style and the
Man (Middletown, Conn.: Wesley an University Press, 1962); sections of Stephen Ullmann, Style
in the French Novel, and Richard McLain, "Semantics and Style - with the Example of the
Quintessential Hemingway," Language and Style, 12:2 (1979), 63-78.
27 Key ser, p. 548.

9o
Throughout the analysis of the poem, I will refer to the persona as he and his lover
as she simply to save repetitive he/ she's. The assignment of gender is arbitrary, however, and
I use it merely for readability.
^Notice that the tension between the stative is dark and the causative situation one
can infer pragmatically from one's knowledge of the world is heightened by Cummings' use
of the adverb of degree much , which combines naturally with dynamic inchoatives and causa-
tives but is unnatural with statives. Compare:
(i) You will never guess how much my jealousy. . .
darkens, (inchoative)
is darkened, (causative)
? is dark, (stative)
This violates what Ross has called the Complex Noun Phrase Constraint. For Ross s
examples which are directly parallel to Cummings' construction, see J. R. Ross, Constraints
on Variables in Syntax (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1967), p. 11.
Interestingly, Fairley (p. 120) claims that Cummings does not violate Ross constraints. If I am
right about this example, it directly refutes this claim.
31
Other minor uses of iconic syntax appear in the poem as well. For instance, the
phrase around and around both expresses and presents repetitive activity. This is what Zolkov-
skij has called "regular reiteration." The grammatically isolated participle unobserved also pre-
sents its sense. At some distance from the subject pronoun he which it modifies, unobserved,
like the wind/i, is isolated, grammatically "unobserved."
For a more extensive attempt to accomplish this, see my dissertation, Chapter 6.

Richard Cureton

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POETIC SYNTAX AND AESTHETIC FORM

Author(s): Richard Cureton

POETIC SYNTAX AND AESTHETIC FORM

WHILE FEW CRITICS WOULD DISAGREE

318 STYLE: Vol. XIV , Fall 1980 , No. 4

For instance, in stanzas IV and V of "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,"

A man and a woman

I do not know which to prefer,

Stanza IV is a clear example of iconic addition. Just as the thematic content of

(b) Rhetorical Emphasis

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion

We lash with the best or worst

("The Wreck of the Deutschland," stanza 8, lines 2-9)

(c) Nominal Syntax

so many selves (so many fiends and gods

so huge a tumult is the simplest wish:

so never is most lonely man alone

- how should a fool that calls him "I" presume

And the coolness of your smile is

a wind has blown the rain away and blown

(1) a wind has blown tne rain away

(c) Semantic Tension

wherever the sun and the stars and

are we're ; but

asks his name)

Cummings produces a particularly ornate and aesthetically effective syntactic ambi-

(b) Semantic Process

Gazing up into the darkness, I saw myself

(c) Syntactic Parallelism

In this "channel," poets use the syntax as an indexical frame to compare or

under me you (Spatially Limited)

syntax plays a crucial role in forging new expressive means.

(e) Semantic Interpretation

Life contracts and death is expected,

He does not become a three-days personage,

Death is absolute and without memorial,

When the wind stops and, over the heavens,

In order to illustrate the typology of syntactic aesthetic effects presented a-

1 supposing i dreamed this)

5 your walls will not reckon how

9 - listen, for(out of all

13 love being such, or such,

17 if light should flower :

Nevertheless, after repeated readings, I have found it impossible to deny that

Part 1 : you are a house around which

the shut house(around and around

Part 1 : your walls will not reckon how

PARALLEL N0.2 pdrt 2: the normal corners of your heart

Part 1 : since the best he can do

your walls will not reckon

how strangely my life is curved,

Parallel No. 1 : you are a house

in parallel no. 2, post-posed modifiers:

Parallel No. 2: the wind who i am

and in parallel no. 3, a pre-posed modifer:

Parallel No. 3: the shut house

Parallelism, then, is the main mechanism through which Cummings con-

While this static frame is important in itself, it also provides an invarian

mically accelerates as it progresses. In particular, noun phrases pick up modifiers

Stanzas 1-2 Stanzas 4-5

a house the shut house

Advs/VPs: around Advs/VPs : around and around

Of course, the syntactic expansion outlined above is not just rhythmical