Lessons of the LineCharles Simic and me Dana Levin (bio) 1. 1988 i was learning how to breathe (line vs. sentence); I was interrogating syntax but I did not know it. I thought I was building images in an open field. I pored over two versions of William Carlos Williams's poem "Young Woman at a Window" (1934), which differed in their line breaks. Both poems were originally published together in The Westminster Magazine, but only one version—what I'll call "version two"—was subsequently reprinted. Why did I prefer version two, in which line breaks obscured understanding? End Page 75 (version two) She sits withtears on her cheekher cheek on her handthe child in her laphis nose pressedto the glass I liked how stable each block felt. Stable, yet—disorienting: the puzzled mind stymied in its work, which was to swiftly find a pattern it could name, a story— Every time I read the poem, I lingered over stanza two: the drama of its suspension outside the whole poem's sentence, how defamiliarizing it was, though the diction was completely accessible—the way it sounded like birdcall if you said it out loud: her cheekher cheek on I imagined Williams walking down a city street, passing a diner window, behind which a woman sat with her child in her lap—I imagined him glancing and seeing her through the window, seeing her through the ghost of his own sun-reflected body in the glass. Was it this double-exposure that made him first take notice? A trick of light—and then realizing he was walking by a plot— End Page 76 Years later I would learn that he published version one only once, in that obscure university journal. Why didn't he ever republish it, as he did version two? Because what he had seen was obscured, here, by what he had thought? (version one) While she sitsthere with tears onher cheek her cheek onher hand this little childwho robs her knows nothing ofhis theft but rubs hisnose Stanza by stanza, version one moved inexorably toward diagnosis, with its poker tell of diction: robs—the child an oblivious vector, but still to blame. Version two was like standing in the light, outside a window. As if the poem were the window—every time I finished reading version two, I could feel a feeling trying to press through. Years later I would think of his famous motto: "No ideas but in things." I would think: the child's robbery in version one is an idea; the young woman's tears are the thing. End Page 77 2. 1988 (journal) January simic doesn't think "Young Woman at a Window" is a bad poem, but he doesn't like the prosody: "Y'know, couplets are tricky—they really must stand on their own." But thinking about it on the way home, I realize that I never looked at them as couplets—more as a flow with a flow in between— So, now I must defend myself: Why do I see it this way? Why am I impelled to design the poem this way? Why do I not see couplets the way Simic sees them? And what does Simic think about e. e. cummings? And what does prosody mean anyway? Dangers of line breaking too much: melodrama; broken glass. February Charlie and me with our surgical gloves, in the cold objective classroom of poetry, using a scalpel, a compass, a magnifying glass— * But if the poem is a process, if it is the other side of a conversation, then every time I balk at revision I am cutting the poem off mid-sentence— * Questions for Charlie: Do you enjoy revising? Is there some sort of emotional frustration behind the birth of free verse? What about punctuation? End Page 78 March "Well, you know Williams used to say that he could revise a poem twenty different times just by changing the line breaks." They taste good to herThey taste goodto her. They tastegood to her 3. green buddha charles simic! My teacher. Maybe you know his...
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