Explication of At the Loom: Passage 2 - Robert Duncan

Robert Duncan: At the Loom Passage 2

                       

                                             A cat’s purr

In the hwirr thkk                “thgk, thkk”

      of Kirke’s loom on Pound’s Cantos
                      “I heard a song of that kind…”

my mind a shuttle among

                set strings of the music

lets a weft of dream grow in the day time,

                   an increment of associations,

        luminous soft threads,

the thrown glamour, crossing and recrossing,

            the twisted sinews underlying the work.

Back of the images, the few cords that bind  

     Meanings in the word-flow,

                            the rivering web

            rises among wits and senses

gathering the wool into its full cloth.

The secret!    the secret!    It’s hid

            In its showing forth.

The white cat kneads his paws

                   And sheathes his eyes in ecstasy against the light,           

      The light bounding from his fur as from a shield

                Held high in the midst of a battle.

What does the Worm work in His cocoon?

            There was such a want in the old ways

                 When craft came into our elements,

            the art shall never be free of that forge,

                                 that loom, that lyre –

           

            the fire, the images, the voice.

Why, even in the room where we are,

                   reading to ourselves, or I am reading aloud,

           sounding the music,

                                                the stuff

                        vanishes upon the air,                       

                                    line after line thrown.

Let there be the clack of the shuttle flying

        forward and back,            forward and

                                 back,

warp, wearp, varp:            “cast of a net, a laying of eggs”

    from *warp-      “to throw”

            the threads twisted for strength

                       that can be a warp of the will.

      “O weaver, weaver, work no more,”

              Gascoyne is quoted:

      “thy warp hath done me wrong.”

And the shuttle carrying the woof I find

        Was skutill              “harpoon”  - a dart, an arrow,

                  or a little ship,

           

            navicula                 weberschiff,           

crossing and recrossing from shore to shore –

    prehistoric  *skutil   *skut-

            “a bolt, a bar, as of a door”

          “a flood-gate”                ·

                                    but that battle I saw

was on a wide plain,                         for the

         sake of valor,

the hand traind to the bow,

      the man’s frame

withstanding,       each side

facing its foe for the sake of 

         the alliance,

allegiance, the legion, that the

            vow that makes a nation

one body not be broken.

Yet it is all, we know, a mêlée,

            a medley of mistaken themes

      grown dreadful and surmounting dread,

so that Achilles may have his wrath

                        and throw fown

            the heroic Hektor who raised

that reflection of the heroic

               in his shield…

Explication

Duncan’s At The Loom, Passages 2 is the paragon of the projectivist verse, of a composition by field that was the epithet of the Black Mountain literary movement. 

Initiating with onomonopia [purr, hwirr, thkk] promptly illustrates Duncan’s partiality to the lyrically tangible dimension of language. The poem also begins with a large indent, which backtracks on the following line. This is prevalent throughout the verse, as the increments of the progression of the line imply the logical rhythmic succession of the meaning of the words. Apparent in the line “forward and back,   forward and…back” we see how enjambment plays a role in line indentation to carry the meaning onto the page, as the word back is on the following line, indented ‘back’ to align with the first appearance of the word ‘back’. This method of composition speaks for the contemporary modern movement, in using the paper as the canvas to depict the form and content of the word’s significance.

Quotations scattered throughout the piece allude to a subjective voice, as the majority of the poem is scripted for imagery and objective impressions and notions, “thy warp hath done me wrong.” for instance. Quotations are also used to extend auditory rhythmic patterns, such as the sound of loom emanating from an external source and the consonance arrangement of words “a bolt, a bar, as of a door” and “O weaver, weaver, work no more.” adds a voice which plays off the original tone of the speakers voice and builds tension.

The poem constructs the notion of the mind being a composer/weaver, which intertwines the strings of its consciousness and reality to fabricate. Duncan concentrates on the building of a “word-flow” that results from the binding of the images of our thoughts, intellect and senses, manifest as threads. He stresses the significance of “the secret!” repeating it twice, and indenting “it’s hid” to imply the crucial space between the value of the secret and notion that it is hidden at the surface. Duncan further explores the penetrating light of clarity or insight that shines, which yields a blinding ecstasy and reflects back from the ‘cat’s’ shield, as if the clarity of self-truth is harmful and in subconscious anticipation is avoided with a mental shield. Duncan marks the Worm significant by capitalizing Worm and His, the Worm being the secret that eats away within, (or so can be insinuated by Duncan’s question of the worm’s work), inside the cocoon of words, the threads of language that have been wrapped around tightly around the secret to obscure it and de-clarify it. It also implies that it undergoes some sort of metamorphosis while hid from the eyes of reality, within the inner abstractions of language. Continuing on, Duncan illustrates imagery of the loom and lyre as the originators of art, which thread components and elements together and which emanate harmony from them, the stings or the musical harmony of words, simultaneously.

Duncan also outlines the notion of “the stuff” (suspended in the center of the line on its own) or the music that comes from reading, as being fleeting from instant to instant, “vanish[ing] upon the air, line after line thrown” which stresses the importance of expressing the moment that was pivotal in the Black Mountain movement. He furthers that the artistic experience is perennial in its existence “forward and back,     forward and

                        back”

continuously restarting on a new line of thread, to spawn more; in the infinite stream of creativity. Duncan also uses the metamorphoses of words to illustrate how they can progress, evolve, and display new meanings from distortions. “warp, wearp, varp..from *warp- ‘to throw’”. These new meanings, although, may not be in the power of the creator, but rather in the influence of the tools used for fabrication. “The threads twisted for strength, that can be a warp of the will,” where words, convoluted and ‘twisted’ for their effect, can in turn yield a distortion of the original intentions. The poem concludes by expressing that the battle, the melee, exists for the purpose of intention vs. creation unifying. To have the artist's hand be capable of holding the ‘bow’, the mode of the artist’s creation, in a way so as to depict the subtleties and images they imagine in clarity within reality. Duncan ends the poem with the “the reflection of the heroic” and “in his shield…” which floats ambiguously in the center of the end of the verse. This last impression shows us that regardless of the heroism of the artist in this battle, the light of clarity and truth always reflects from the shield, the egoic reflection of his innermost secret, which he holds.