I want to write about words today. Usually I focus on sound—it is my ear that defines poetry for me—and it would be easy to describe in detail the richness of Vaughan’s sound-play, but I don’t want to do the easy today. Lyn Hejinian said that language ‘makes us restless’ and I want to follow my restlessness and see where it takes me.

A note here: I have no more than a tiny sprinkle of te reo Māori. I am unqualified to comment on Vaughan’s anō, although I am very curious about the interplay between the two versions, and I look forward to one day hearing him read anō aloud.

So, to words. Hejinian also said “over here is word, over there is thing at which the word is shooting amiable love-arrows.” My goal is to discover the thing at which straightly is shooting its love-arrows. But to get me in the mood, I’ll start with another word—one that makes me a little less restless. Encounter.

I encountered heaven again

I ask, why encounter rather than meet? Putting aside all sound-based arguments, first I see a clear reference to the expression “heavenly encounter.” But taking it further, the OED defines encounter as: unexpectedly be faced with or experience (something hostile or difficult); meet (someone) unexpectedly. It seems pertinent that this definition adds the implication of “unexpected” to the word meet. Etymologically, encounter developed via Old French encontrer (confront) from Late Latin incontrā (in front of). If we believe that the first line or two of a poem teaches us to read what follows, then encounter sets us up to expect that meeting heaven on this occasion was challenging and a surprise for the speaker.

Despite Word insisting on red-lining straightly as I type, it is a legitimate word—it’s just not very commonly used. COCA[i]* gives straight a usage count of 89,798 while straightly only gets 19! Straightly is clearly adverbial (“in a straight manner”), whereas straight must be seen in context to determine its function (adjective/adverb/noun), meaning we are clear that straightly is attached to fixated, not ahead, which requires an adjectival form. Freeing us from the limiting concept of ‘straight ahead’, Vaughan challenges us to consider a wider application of the idea of straight, possibly the obvious ‘in the manner of a straight line’, but what if we also think in terms of a straight look—’bold and steady’—or straight thinking—’clear, logical and unemotional’? If fixate means ‘to direct one’s eyes towards’, then surely the addition of ‘in the manner of a straight line’ would be superfluous. How would it change our experience of the poem if those swan were directing a bold, steady, clear and unemotional gaze at the speaker?

Yes, those swan. I would need another 500 words to discuss the omission of the -s. And the idea that this might be a swansong? Perhaps another day.

notes

[i] COCA: Corpus of Contemporary American English. https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/ The corpus contains and analyses more than one billion words of text from the following: spoken, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, academic texts, TV and Movies subtitles, blogs, and other web pages.

jac jenkins