Odds and Ends Essays, Blogs, Internet Discussions, Interviews and Miscellany

That seems to me to be a perfectly crisp “imagist” line in keeping with the kind of poetics you call “empiricist”. Not
vague at all!
Andrew Shields
Jane, I looked up ‘November’, and it’s not the one you thought it was. But I do remember noticing the hairbrush, too,
and at some point soon I’ll probably stumble across that one again, as I’m working through S A for my seminar on
his work.
Jeffrey Side
Andrew, it does seem that way at first glance, but it raises the question: In what way are his hands clean? Is this
alluding to moral probity (i.e. as when someone says “I have nothing to feel guilty about, my hands are clean”) or
merely physically clean hands. If we take the lines literally, that he has dirty clothes but always washes his hands,
then they seem slightly ridiculous, in my view. If we take them more metaphorically, as alluding in some sense to
moral probity, then the lines have more resonance. Yes his clothes are dirty, he is saying, but he has a clear
conscience. To the woman he is appealing to “lay” with him, this is a statement of self-justification that he hopes will
persuade her. So in this reading, the lines are not as empirical as they appear.
Mark Granier
Jeffrey, it seems to me that your arguments cancel each other out. Nobody said that that line by Dylan was empirical,
but it certainly seems no LESS empirical than lines/images from the Armitage poem, such as:
‘water in the pipes finds its own level’
or
‘we have found ourselves, but lost each other’
or
‘ . . . there is understanding
in things more telling than lipstick kisses:
the air, still hung with spores of your hairspray;
body-heat stowed in the crumpled duvet’.
The evidence may be empirical, but the mood and suggestiveness of these phrases and images (words like ‘level’ and
‘spores’) is anything but.
You began your article [‘Ambiguity and Abstraction in the Lyrics of Bob Dylan’] by asserting: ‘To many people
contemporary poetry is a turn-off. The reason for this is that the majority of these poems are boring’.
Some truth in this of course, though I find it weirdly perverse that you pick on Armitage, who is surely one of the
most popular poets now writing. You could describe either of them as “just a song and dance man”, though it might
be as well to acknowledge the original irony in that apparent self-deprecation.
Jeffrey Side
Mark, isolated in the way you have taken them these lines do seem less empirical. But if you look at their placement
in the poem you will see that they function as adjectival phrases to build-up a picture of the scene in the room: ‘Once
again I have missed you by moments; / steam hugs the rim of the just-boiled kettle, / water in the pipes finds its own
level’. These phrases give us a more detailed description of the room the poet is occupying-a very physical one by
all counts. As do the lines:
the air, still hung with spores of your hairspray;
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