On breaking codes

A quick thought on Young Alumni Achievement Award recipient Tiffany Eberle Kriner's presentation - "Ascent, Continuance, and Immersion : Hope in the Poetry of Denise Levertov" - tonight: I appreciated her comment that she wasn't attempting to revolutionize Levertov's poety by over-analyzing it; she wanted the poetry to speak for itself.

Her refreshing comment relieved me in an 'Oh, you can actually do that?' sort of way.

In recent weeks, especially while writing the critical analysis essay, I've felt pressure to devise relevatory theories on the nature of literature, feeling discouraged to find that my puny "good" ideas have been beaten to pulps by minds much more intelligent than mine. What else is there to say? (I mean, I know there's always more to say, but there might be some truth in our inability to say anything but what has already been say. Maybe the power we possess is of saying it better? That alone provides endless writing material.)

In her book The Cloiser Walk, poet Kathleen Norris writes of her experiences teaching poetry to elementary school students. She writes of one teacher who, afraid that Norris might introduce the concept of metaphor, cautioned "they don't know that yet, they haven't been taught." To which Norris replies, "Oh, they know it. They just don't have the words for it yet." Like those students, I guess I have to learn how to do literary criticism even though, as sometimes professors remind us, we've been doing it all along. We have to be taught to "code" of which Bourdieu writes, for "the capacity to see (voir) is the function of the knowledge (savoir), or concepts, that is, the words, that are available to name visible things, and, which are . . . programmes for perception" (1810). Maybe, even, we have to learn the code in order to subvert it?

In the dance realm, ballet is the code, the standard form, to which every dancer must adhere. Budding ballerinas spend years upon years slaving over terms like arabesque, attitude en l'air, battement, and fouette, coordinating them with textbook perfect body movement. Precision, adherence to the code, strength in the executing the code makes one a "good" dancer in those early years. Yet, once the proper form has been established, once the code has been cemented, the mature dancer begins exploring forms like jazz and modern. Forms which deliberately break the code. Forms with challenge the code. The lifted center becomes the contracted abdomen, the irregular rhythms interrupt precise waltz structures. Great dancers break the codes well. Great dancers like the legendary Martha Graham, mother of modern dance. (Check out that YouTube video - her choreography is amazingly unconventional.)

Maybe that's what literature requires, too.