When we talk about sensuousness in poetry we tend, I think, to mean the intensity of the sensory evocativeness of imagery and description. We might be thinking of lines like \u2018The luscious clusters of the vine \/ Upon my mouth do crush their wine\u2019 from Marvell\u2019s \u2018The Garden\u2019. There, physical sensations of taste and touch are directly referred to by \u2018luscious\u2019 and \u2018crush\u2019. The sensuous impressions evoked by the meanings of the words aren\u2019t just a matter of meaning, though. They\u2019re powerfully reinforced by sound, and even more by the physical sensations of forming the sounds in our mouths. \u2018Luscious\u2019, \u2018clusters\u2019 and \u2018crush\u2019 are powerfully foregrounded by the assonance and alliteration between them. Collectively, they embody that meaning in a physical way. They\u2019re mouth-filling words that we linger over uttering. There\u2019s a clustering of repeated phonemes between them (that may be partly why \u2018cluster\u2019 makes me almost physically imagine the grapes in the bunches crowding together and pressing against each other). The \u2018sh\u2019 sounds in \u2018luscious\u2019 and \u2018crush\u2019 give a hint of drunken slurring to the \u2018st\u2019 of \u2018clusters\u2019.<\/p>\n
But the first stanza of \u2018The Mower to the Glo-Worms\u2019 is more interesting in this way because the intensity of impact which I think affects the brain in a way that transcends explicitly physical references and isn\u2019t tied to the actual physical nature of glowworms:<\/p>\n
Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
\nThe Nightingale does sit so late
\nAnd studying all the Summer-night,
\nHer matchless Songs does meditate;<\/p>\n
Everything here, it seems to me, depends on the extreme refinement of the phonetic and rhythmic patterning. Perhaps what I say will seem to some people almost insanely subjective but I\u2019ll say it anyway because the impression in my own mind is so strong.<\/p>\n
First, the components of sound and meaning are picked out in an extraordinarily clearly focused and focusing way. The first two lines each break exactly in the middle, and this gives each half line, which is also a complete phrase, time and space to shed its suggestiveness into readers\u2019 minds sensitized by the precision of the poet\u2019s expression.<\/p>\n
The first phrase sets the key for this slowing and sensitizing of attention. I have to get a bit technical to describe the effect but I suspect it\u2019s something most people do feel as they read. So what is it that makes the idea of \u2018living lamps\u2019 seem so charged and alive? The alliterative clear ls obviously contribute something, bringing the two words into dynamic relationship. The contrast between the vowels following them contributes to the suggestion of careful sounding. More important, I think, is the subtle way \u2018living\u2019 receives a finely calibrated extra metrical emphasis. \u2018Ye\u2019 as a term of address takes a natural stress, just as \u2018you\u2019 used as a term of address would do. The first syllable of \u2018living\u2019 has to climb above that level of stress. But \u2018living\u2019 \u2013 opening with a liquid l, followed by a short vowel and a fricative \u2013 isn\u2019t what you might call a \u2018loud\u2019 word in itself so there\u2019s a very precise combination of emphasis and delicacy in the vocalisation. So both the separate words \u2018living\u2019 and \u2018lamps\u2019 and the whole phrase that paradoxically combines them shed their full radiance. And it\u2019s the balance of the whole line, divided, as I\u2019ve said, into two equal halves, that gives clarity and weight to the phrase \u2018dear light\u2019, as well as the fact that it\u2019s a spondee (a unit of two stressed syllables coming together) that produces a natural slowing and emphasis.<\/p>\n
I could go on. My point, though, is that the extremely sensitive handling of the language itself makes the words themselves enter the mind and imagination more deeply, word by word, phrase by phrase, releasing suggestions that don\u2019t crystallise around single images but instead create a shimmering phantasmagoria of impressions which are both intense and evanescent, like the rainbow of light created by the soul bird in \u2018The Garden\u2019. Perhaps it would be better to call these impressions transparent<\/em> because it seems to me that in that stanza images of an intensely concentrating poet at a desk in a lamplit study and of\u00a0 a nightingale on a branch shine through<\/em> each other, both irradiated by the tenderness and wonder evoked in different ways by \u2018living lamps\u2019 and \u2018dear light\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When we talk about sensuousness in poetry we tend, I think, to mean the intensity of the sensory evocativeness of imagery and description. We might be thinking of lines like \u2018The luscious clusters of the vine \/ Upon my mouth do crush their wine\u2019 from Marvell\u2019s \u2018The Garden\u2019. There, physical sensations of taste and touch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andrew-marvell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2740"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2740"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2744,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2740\/revisions\/2744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}