The-The-The-

-Sarah Bixler

C ode begins verbally cluttered with lines fast and close, but as it ends the words are replaced with silence and the lines are separated by large gulfs of space. C ode is about the difficulty of putting emotion and thought into words. It is about how hard it is to express the inside of yourself through the language of the outside. We want our words to be immutable yet the inside we want them to describe, is always changing; the definite words are inadequate. And the more complex, confused with emotion, with meaning and import, our insides become the more our words fail and drop away. But the more difficult it is to communicate our insides the more urgent communicating them becomes. We trip over ourselves and stutter—we try so hard to speak! We say, "The- the- the-" but we cannot say what, and words are replaced with silence.

Published in Loose Sugar and written by Brenda Hillman, C ode is an interesting poem to look at; it is scattered down and across the page. Some lines begin flush left, some are indented and some are double indented. Compared to the sparse spread of single lines near the bottom of the page, the top is cluttered; near the top the stanzas all have two lines and are broken by single spaces, whereas near the bottom the stanzas are single lines separated by double spaces. The poem is divided into two main sections, with the first ending at "…slipping C!" and the second beginning after a double or triple line break, "And texture took the position…". It is after this visual break that the poem becomes sparse, and filled with quiet on the page.

when it moves up the alder

only its red C moves

The poem begins in lowercase as if it begins in the middle of a sentence. The vague subject, "it" implies that the subject has already been named, but it has not. The stanza begins, "when" which implies something past or yet to come. "Only its red C moves" suggests that there is a part of "it" which is stationary. "It" is vague whereas "alder" is specific. "It" is nameless, but "the alder" is named. "Red C" would begin to describe part of "it" but as yet, "red C" has no meaning apart from the absurd literal image it creates, a red letter "C" moving up the alder.

the- the- the-

feels sorry for it

the red-headed woodpecker

in front of ofness, moved before the tree

"The" would come before a noun, but here "the" trails off and introduces a feeling instead, "the- / feels sorry for it". If "it" here is the same "it" that moved "up the alder" then the next stanza modifies this "it" by giving it a name, like "the alder". Now, "it" is "the red-headed woodpecker". But instead of moving up the tree, the "red-headed wood pecker moves "in front of ofness". Unlike "red C" or "alder", ofness is not a word. It is written in italics and so it is read emotionally rather than literally; it is, it does not "describe". Because ofness is understood emotionally, ofness, cannot have a static meaning. Its meaning will change depending on who reads it and how they feel when they read it. However, "alder" is always "alder". It is defined in the dictionary. So the "red-headed woodpecker", the definition or the name, moves before "ofness", or being. So if it is the name that is separate from being, then "the alder" is in front of ofness as well. It a name placed in front of being in order to represent that being verbally and enable it to be (in some part) communicated. "when it moves up the alder/ only its red C moves" only the red C moves because "red C" is like "red-headed wood pecker", it is like "alder", "red C" is a word separate from being, so it moves on the same plane as "alder". "Only its red C" moves up the "alder" which is to say that only the name moves, and the names move together. "Red C" and "alder" move in front of ofness. The bird and the tree are separate, the bird moves before the tree, just as the name and being are separate, "the red-headed woodpecker moved in front of ofness". There is a separation between the underlying being of a thing and the language used to describe it. "The-the-the-" is like a struggle to name something, to say something definite. It is like tapping against something visceral, knowing it is there but being unable to say what it is. "The-the-the-" is the sound of the woodpecker tap- tap- tapping against the tree. "The-the- the-" is tapping at "the tree" or the surface, in an effort to break through "the alder" into "ofness". So "the-the-the-" precedes "feels sorry for it", it precedes an emotion, rather than a thing.

As envy feels sorry

for the thing envied, after

C for career of searching, for the solid thing

As for the red on his head: the hydrant stuck in the snow

feels "sorry" for it

 

A sharp cry from the schoolboy in the snow

pierced the slipping C!

 

"As envy feels sorry…" is the first stanza to begin with a capitol letter. The capitol letter invokes a feeling of beginning, like the beginning of a sentence. As is an active word, "as" implies something that is currently happening. Whereas "when" implies that something has happened or will happen. "As" also connects two things together. Here "As" implies a connection between the stanzas that follow it and the stanzas that precede it. "C for career of searching" is like the "red C" from before. "C" is a letter and letters make words. C is also the letter that begins "career". Saying "c for career of searching" is like using "C" to name the act of searching. "C" is a "name" or a "word". So, "only its red C moved" is like saying, "only its name moved up the alder"; it was language that moved before ofness. The "solid thing" is like a definition. "A solid thing" is defined in the dictionary; it does not change depending on its reader. The search for the solid thing is a search for accurate language to describe emotion. After a "career of searching, for the solid thing", "envy feels sorry/ for the thing envied", "envy feels sorry" for the solid thing. Envy is an emotion, and it is the emotion with changeable meaning that feels sorry for the "solid thing" which has one definition and cannot feel. Emotion/being is both sorry for and envious of "the solid thing" and words. Words seem inadequate to describe feeling, and so feeling feels sorry for their ineptitude but at the same it envies them their ability to communicate.

Without words, being is silent, but without being words are meaningless. "The hydrant stuck in the snow / feels "sorry" for it". The "hydrant" is definite, a "solid thing." It is defined in the dictionary and does not change. Feelings, however, do change. Being changes and being alive means changing. So the hydrant feels but its feeling is a "word." Sorry is in quotation marks, which emphasize the verbal nature of "sorry", in contrast, italics emphasize the emotional nature of ofness. The quotation marks imply that "sorry" is only a word, not backed by an emotional meaning.

"A sharp cry from the schoolboy in the snow / pierced the slipping C!" Unlike the hydrant which is "stuck in the snow" the schoolboy is not stuck. The schoolboy is living and breathing and moving and being. The schoolboy is able to pierce the slipping "C", the C which is language moving in front of "the tree" which is in front of "ofness". So the schoolboy pierces the slipping C in front of the tree, in front of ofness, and pins words to being.

Language can be better than "alder" or "tree", language can do more than name solid things, it can describe being and communicate being and make invisible meaning known.

And texture took the position the bird

moved against

"Texture" is not like "alder", texture does more than name something, it describes the nature of a thing. To say a tree is texture, is to say the tree is feeling, it is not a word, "bark", but it is an existence. The schoolboy united word and being. His sharp cry is like a rallying cry to do more with words. Now rather than moving "before" or in "front of", which imply to separate beings, "moved against" implies friction and so a connection. Word and being, bird and tree, "wood-pecker" and ofness are tied together now, they affect one another. So the bird, which is the language, moves against texture, which is the being. "Texture" is the result of tying language to being, so it is an attempt to describe the tree more true to the experience of being. But this is not easy.

(The dim cry of my love

in his fever)

The bird moved against, a universe unscaled

Patches of striving

(Where my love in his fever lay down)

The last three lines all begin from the same position, almost as if they are one stanza separated by much silence. "(The dim cry of my love / in his fever)" is set off from the rest of the poem by parenthesis. It is interjected almost like a thought, interrupting "And texture took the position the bird / moved against" with an entirely new subject. Like a thought from language, "the dim cry of my love" is separate from the rest of the poem. Although "my love" has no place in the rest of the poem, the thought of "my love" changes the poem and makes ofness, emotion, more difficult to describe. After "the dim cry of my love…" the bird moves against "a universe unscaled", the "tree" or the being that language is trying to describe has become overwhelmingly complex. And so, like "ofness" is a made up word attempting to describe being, "unscaled" is also a made up word attempting to describe an unspoken universe/being.

"My love" is like saying "my emotion" rather than "my lover" or "my solid thing"; "love" makes a noun of a verb, it is describing being (or ofness). But, my love is helpless. His cry is dim it is hard to hear him. Like a thought, or a feeling, without words to describe it "my love" lacks a voice to describe himself and so he is falling away from the speaker, the two are beginning to separate. But just as the schoolboy pierced "the slipping C" and united word to thought, the narrator wants to unite herself to her love. But she is separated from him by his fever, "my love / in his fever", she looks at him like the woodpecker moves before ofness. She struggles to communicate with him, like the bird moves against "a universe unscaled" she is struggling to connect with him. She attempts to speak and to communicate with him, but she achieves only "patches of striving" small inept words which fail to convey the meaning with which they are imbued. Between each single line stanza, the spaces are large. The silence has grown huge.

"Patches of striving" are feeble attempts to find anchor against a growing emotion, "the universe unscaled". But it is very hard to translate emotion into words and sometimes, despite every effort, words fail. This "unscaled universe" is "Where my love in his fever lay down". He lay down in his own thoughts and after a pause, he sank into silence. His "dim cry", her words, her "patches of striving", failed to bring them together. "In his fever" he has slipped from her world. The poem ends in parenthesis and so in thought. The final words, "lay down" come after a pause in the line a moment where words fail. "(Where my love in his fever lay down)" My love gives up trying to communicate. He lies down under his fever, inside his own thoughts. He sinks into "the universe unscaled" and like the woodpecker in front of ofness she taps away at him, trying to get inside, "the- the-the-"