Form and Meaning

Form and Meaning

A teacup has a particular form which is intimately related to its function. Loosely speaking, a teacup has a shape that can hold liquid and is small enough to hold easily in one hand. We recognize a teacup because of its form and the meaning of teacup, which is its function, is that form.

Some musical forms also display this kind of intimate relationship between meaning and form. This is particularly true of dance music. A dance form like a waltz has a particular form because its meaning is to act as a basis for a certain kind of dance. Thus meaning and form mutually interpenetrate.

The meaning of poetic forms, like sonnet, villanelle, tanka, etc. are not as easy to spot. This is because the function of poetic forms is not immediately clear in the way that the function of a teacup is clear, or the function of a dance form in music is clear. If I consider what the meaning of the form of a teacup is, I can easily access that meaning; the relationship between meaning and form is apparent. If I consider what the meaning of the form of sonnet is, I find that a more difficult question to answer.

But I think it is a question that is worth pursuing. Larry Gross wrote in the 1995 Tanka Splendor, “A form evolves and persists over time because it does certain things exceedingly well.” The Japanese Tanka has a written history of over 1300 years and its form has remained constant during those centuries. The sonnet has a history of about 800 years and its form has retained a sense of constancy during those centuries. Both of these forms do something “exceedingly well” which is why people are attracted to them, continue to mold their poetry to them.

But what is it that a persistent poetic form does? How can we access the meaning of the form in the way that we access the meaning of more concrete and functional forms, like a teacup? One approach is to start with the length of the form. Contrast, for example, the length of the sonnet with the length of the tanka. The sonnet is 14 lines with an overall syllable count of 140 syllables. The Tanka is five lines with an overall syllable count of 31 syllables. As many commentators have observed, the sonnet is the length of a typical English paragraph. It is well suited to presenting an argument; not argument in the sense of a logical argument, rather argument in the sense of presenting a view. An opening statement can be followed by examples, or metaphors illustrating that statement. There is time and space enough in a sonnet to make a fairly complete presentation of an idea.

In contrast, the tanka, simply by being short, lacks the time and space to present an argument. In such a short form it is difficult to go through all the steps of presenting a view, backing it up with examples or metaphors, and then coming to a conclusion. What a short form like the tanka is good at is the presentation of an image, or images and allowing that presentation to resonate in the reader. Many commentators on tanka have referred to this as a kind of “space”, or “dreaming room” that surround a tanka. Tanka does this superbly and one reason it is so attractive is that the form itself leads in the direction of a presentational approach, rather than an argument/view approach.

So part of the meaning of a poetic form lies in the overall length of the form. It is helpful in exploring meaning and form in poetry to start with two forms that are sharply distinct; like sonnet and tanka. From there one can move to an investigation of forms that share more characteristics.

The other day I was having a conversation with a poet friend when I brought up the cinquain. He had not heard of it, so I explained that it was created by Adelaide Crapsey and it has the syllabic structure of five lines with a syllable count as follows: 2-4-6-8-2; for a total of twenty-two syllables. My friend, Karl, pondered this for a moment and said, “That has a very different feel than the tanka.” “How so?” I asked. Karl said that the closing line of two syllables seemed to be strongly “cadential”, like the last chord in a piece of music. The cinquain at first opens up, then comes to a strong close with the last two syllable line. In contrast, the tanka has a feeling of opening at the end, more like a river entering the ocean, with the closing two lines of 7-7.

I found Karl’s comments helpful and I think these kinds of intuitions can help us understand the connection between meaning and form in poetry. Discussions of meaning and form in poetry will, I think, always be somewhat tentative. Unlike the clear connection between the form of a teacup and its meaning, the connection between the form of a poem and its meaning is more subtle. But it is still there and investigations into the relationship can prove fruitful.

Returning to the discussion of the short forms, such as the tanka and the cinquain, I would add into this mix some of the traditional Chinese forms. For example, there is a Chinese form that consists of four lines, seven characters per line, for a total of 28 syllables/characters. (For a collection written in this style see “Poems of the Masters”, translated by Red Pine, pages 181 through 367.) The syllable count falls between the cinquain, at 22 syllables, and the tanka, at 31 syllables. One difference is the number of lines, four lines for the Chinese form, five lines for the cinquain and tanka. But for me the most significant difference is that the Chinese form has a regular line length, while the cinquain and tanka change line length through the poem.

The regular line length in the Chinese form (and all Chinese forms I am familiar with have regular line length) gives Chinese poetry a sense of balance and elegance. The tanka, in contrast, flows, seems to move forward, it seems to be in motion. The Chinese form feels more like a picture to me. This difference is subtle, yet at the level of feeling, at the level of pulse, there is a definite difference.

What I am suggesting here is that a particular form in poetry has meaning that transcends any particular poem in that form. I am suggesting that the form of the sonnet is a kind of meaning, and that the form of the tanka is kind of meaning, independent of the content of a particular sonnet or tanka.

What has happened in modern approaches to poetic form is that form and meaning have been separated. This is particularly true when we consider Japanese forms in the English language. The form of Japanese poetry has, to various degrees, been abandoned. It is my contention that when the form of a type of poetry is abandoned, the meaning of that form is also abandoned. That is to say, when the form of haiku is abandoned, the haiku itself has been abandoned; when the form of a tanka has been abandoned, tanka itself has been abandoned, etc.

This would not be a difficult point to understand with pottery. For example, if someone offered you a flat tile and told you it was a teacup, you might laugh, but because the form lacked the meaning of teacup, such an assertion would not be taken seriously. Even if the tile was beautiful, it’s still not a teacup. In poetry, however, because the connection between form and meaning is more tenuous, more difficult to access, such a separation can be attempted without such an attempt being immediately dismissed.

What I am suggesting is that the forms of haiku, tanka, and renga (the three forms English speakers have taken an interest in) are meaningful as forms in themselves, as syllabic structures, that those forms have meaning in the same way that the form of a teacup has meaning. This contrasts with the primary societies devoted to these forms which seem to encourage an approach to these forms which abandons the syllabic bases of these forms, deferring to free verse norms. It is my suggestion that, to a significant extent, the transmission of these forms to the English-speaking world is the transmission of the syllabic forms because the meaning of those types of poetry is the form that they embody.

It is interesting for me to observe that most poets have an intuitive understanding of this connection. Outside of the official societies devoted to these forms, almost all poets write haiku or tanka in a way that affirms the traditional syllabic form. A good example is “The Calligraphy of Clouds” by Yeshaya Rotbard, published in 2007. The haiku and tanka included in this volume, excellently crafted, are syllabically rooted in the traditional form from which they derive. From the haiku of Richard Wright to such modern collections, there is a large body of English language poetry, rooted in Japanese poetic forms, that consistently finds the traditional syllabic contours meaningful and definitive.

I’d like to conclude with another observation Larry Gross made in the 1995 Tanka Splendor: “While the tanka seems to thrive on innovative content, it is less clear whether drastic alterations of form are equally welcome.. . . [T]he genre has remained remarkably consistent in form and technique through the centuries. When we treat it as any other 5-line verse, . . . we may be blurring an important distinction.”