So now we have a poem by Lorine Niedecker sometimes referred to by its first two lines, grandfather advised me and sometimes referred to as poet's work. Niedecker is, you know some people think of her as writing in a Dickinson tradition but, but it's not the first thing that we say about her but it helps us to put her in a Dickinsonian context here. The poem is very short, is there any reference in the poem to the poem's own gravities? >> Yes. >> Emily? >> She says I learned to sit at desk and condense. To sit at desk, she like skips an article. So that's just been in a sense. >> Right, so normally, if it were prose, or if it were a wordier poem, it would say, it would say what? >> I learned to sit at a desk. >> A desk my desk or the desk or his desk. So why take that word out? >> Because it enacts the very thing it's invoking? >> What rights to, to, to, to do form in content? I know that's a high level answer, can we, is there a lower level answer? Who wants, that's quite a set up, but would you like to say a lower level answer you know? Max, what do you think? Why, why take a word out? Why do we ever take words out to make things more condensed? In your lives, when somebody's. >> Other than, other than to make it more condensed? >> [laugh] >> Yeah, well why do we do that? Why do we do that? Why do we do that in our lives? Why do we do that? >> Just to drop, to drop articles, to drop words. >> Why do we take a sixteen word sentence and make it five words, in our lives? >> For speed and efficiency. >> Speed and efficiency. >> In a poem, maybe sometimes to force things to fit into a rhyme scheme, a meter. >> That's condensation though. >> Yes, So, that's why we'll get this out of you. >> Okay >> In your papers, any, have you ever gotten a paper back with some red mark, some red pen from the teacher crossing. >> Sure. Well, it's, of, for, for the sake of notes then, for paratactic comments we tend to drop words where the, the meaning can already be gathered without say. >> Right. So, things that are unnecessary. What else? >> Mm-hm. >> Well, it packs more punch sometimes to say something. >> We say that it packs more punch. Right. What else does condensing language, someone who can speak for an hour. And say the same thing as another person who can speak for five minutes? We typically applaud the latter, because, Amaris? >> It's more effective. >> Effective. >> Taking away what's superfluous or excessive. >> Alright. >> Repetition is stripped from a poem. >> Right. Subordination sometimes. Which is harder? Harder work? >> To be concise, it's much more difficult. >> Is it? Everybody agree with that? It's harder to be less wordy. So that's work. Already, we have a sense of work. Okay. So now let's tell the story. What's the story here? What's, what's this poet. Presumably the eyes, the poet, Lorine Niedecker. What's the story? Once upon a time, someone said something to someone else. >> Very patronizingly she's been, advised by, a patriarchal figure? >> [laugh] >> A patriarchal figure. A grandfather. >> He says what, in what tone does he say this? Say it. >> With authority. >> Say, say learn a trade in the grandfather's way. >> Learn a trade, Lorine. >> [laugh] >> Lorine, what you need is a job. It's about time. >> And what would she say? But grandfather I'm. >> A poet. >> I'm a poet. What kind of job is that? He would say. >> So I guess, yeah, she's elevating it to, or placing that in contention with what he assumes is economically the best route for her. She saying that artistically there's maybe more yield and less layoff. >> Less layoff. And he doesn't just say, get a job. He says something a little more specific. What does he say? >> Well, he says, learn a trade. >> What's a trade? >> A trade could be, like you think, you know, the guild trades of like the middle ages. You know, like being a blacksmith or being a. >> Can you make it a little more modern? >> Let's say. >> What are some trades? >> Trades. >> A carpenter. >> She's not familiar. >> A carpenter. >> Or a painter. >> A plumber. >> Or an electrician. >> A roofer. Electrician. >> Yeah. >> A trade. >> Good. >> And it's all said and done. I mean my, my, my, you know the grandparents were all about. >> One special they learned that I was going to be a professor, and say well, you know in a bad economy, the people will still need roofs. They didn't really want me to be a roofer, but they wanted me to do something with a high degree, a higher degree that would be like that. Some guarantee, something solid, a trade. >> I think I read a little bit more into it, in that at the time this was written, I'm not sure exactly when it was written but women didn't typically have. >> Trades, where they weren't typically in the workforce. So, by her grandfather advising her a learn a trade he was almost implying that he thought she was going to be an old maid. >> Oh, I thought you were going in the direction of his being a little more progressive then Amaris made him out be with her use of the word patriarch. >> I didn't see that just because of the derogatory way she referred to the trade that she ultimately learned. Well she's, she's kind of angry about this. And how do we see her turning it around? >> Grandfather advised me to learn a trade. >> Well, then she says that she learned. >> So she took the word learn, puts the word I in front of it, I learned. That's the way I read it. I haven't heard her, her. I don't know if there's a recording of her reading this. But I imagine her reading it this way. I learned. You want me to learn? I will learn. I learned. To do what, Max? >> To well, to go off with what Dave was saying, I imagined the trade that the grandfather had in mind would've been the sort of, the skill or job that, that women used to have, say to be a typist for instance, and so or something secretarial or clerical and so there's definitely a sort of, a play on that which I think goes along with what you're saying Al. She learned to sit at the desk, but what she's doing is she's not transcribing notes or she's not answering the phones or, or, or dealing with letters or something but instead she's, she's at this desk. >> Condensed being a poet. >> I learned to sit at desk, and condense. Now, Max has already invited a reading of this as of metapoem and I just have to pause by saying that, that this course is full of metapoems. There is almost no poem in this course that's not a metapoem. Why, what, what do we mean by metapoem? >> Then in some way it's a poem about a poem. Or about the process of writing a poem. >> What were you going to say? >> Yeah, I was just going to say, a poem about poetry or the poem itself. >> So one of the ways in which we can characterize modern poetry. It's, it's, it's not the only thing and it's not universally true but, typically a modern poem is self-conscious. It's often got leaps, traces of its own writing, its own written state, its own textuality. In this case, the figure of the writer puts herself through the poem, and the writing of the poem becomes the work. In this case the, the, the grandfather is wanting her to do, and that's hinted at that already. Grandfather but he learned a trade. I learned to sit at desk and condense. Now let's talk about. The activity of condensing, we started that a little bit a while ago, but what does condensing mean for a writer? Let's get right to it. Anyone? >> Well it's kind of in a sense a negative action right? You're cutting things off you're pairing things away. >> You're doing some hard work. You're, you're clearing stuff that you've written you're taking away stuff that you've done okay. >> I don't know that it's negative. I think it's more just like if you take things from kind of like the greater cosmos and you pair it down. >> And, and produce something. I, I think that's what she's really doing. I think it's, it's more that she's like taking these things from the world around her, and, you know, if you think about the Whitmanian sense, you take things from the world around you and you get these, like, gigantic long lines and these catalogs and all this. But what she's done is she's taken all of that from the world and just like, shrunk it down to, to this, which essentially says the same thing. >> The hard work, of the Whitmanian poet is to, the effort in including the world as much of it as possible. >> Mm-hm. >> The hard work, of the Dickinsonian poet, or at least of this one. >> Is to. >> Included in the whole world and the openendedness that we talked about with the gambles of this guy in much more economized language. >> Okay, so the gesture of condensation is not a gesture of cutting out the world. >> Here's your argument. >> Yeah. >> Just. I learned to sit at desk and condense, and then she asserts something that seems to be back at grandpa. >> No layoffs from this condensory. Can someone translate that, Amaris into plain English? >> I would say, well there's a condensory of one, so the condensory refers to a factory setting and. >> Condensory is a really nice word, almost a neologism. It's not a word that we've seen, you know. I haven't been to a condensory, but I sort of have. I mean, it has almost the connotation of a place where milk is processed from cows, it's almost a, I'm not sure what that is, but there's, it has a slight kind of productivity, factory-like sound to it. >> So there's that connotation of like Anna was saying, concentrating something down to its essence, and here she is the condenser of one being self-employed, so no layoff. >> She's self-employed, no layoff, I can't be laid off because I'm, I'm self-employed. There is no layoff. No layoff because in fact, this is not a job, but it is work. No layoff from this condenser. The word this is so important. >> I said earlier that this, that this is the most important word in Dickinson seems to be an important word in the acre too. Molly what does this do? >> Well if we look at it the same way we looked at the Dickinson, this is the poem. >> And if this is meta like it probably is, and we're writing about the, the process of writing and this, this making of this poem. >> This, this poem. This, these words. This work. No lay-off from this work. That's, so she's essentially immune from economic downturn because she's the person who goes into her room, sits at her desk. Sits at desk and produces. She's productive. >> I feel like there's also a little bit of a sense that the work is never done, you know, not only is it a good thing that there's no lay off, but also there's so much to do. There's so much to condense. >> So, another characteristic of modern poetry, not all instances but many, is openness. The open poem as opposed to the closed poem. >> This is not as obviously open as other poems, but what are some signs of openness here? >> I think all the punning is definitely a sign of openness that. >> Open to. >> Grandfather. >> Variable meanings. >> Right. Grandfather wants her to learn a specific trade, with a specific end product, but here we've already unpacked a meaning of condensed layoff and condense. >> That's nice, Amaris and, and possibly the most open word in the poem is learn, because learning is thought of as school. But in a Dickinson's since how we'll later in our course celebrate Dickinson's self-education, her collegium of different areas of knowledge and learning and her teaching herself this is a kind of, this is, this kind of radical learning is in that spirit, radical female learning as Susan how we'd say of Emily Dickinson. Grandfather told me to learn a trade. Well, I learned to do what I do in my own way. Good. Any other signs of openness? >> No punctuation. >> Yeah this poem doesn't really end. There's no, there's no period. There is no punctuation except for the colon, in the little grandfather, line. No layout from this condenser. Yes? >> I think that also goes with the form there is no period, its not a condensed form. She is making fun of the concept of condensing by the way she spaces out the lines. >> We are reminded of Emily Dickinson's notion that this is her occupation. For occupation this. No layoff from this. This is what I do. What we have here is a Dickinsonian deconstruction of life work, of experience. Experience in the resume sense. Experience in the, I've learned and I've got a degree and, I have skills and I get a job sense of being occupied by something. She's deconstructed the notion of participating in the economy of learning, education followed by getting a job. Kind of gives you hope that even if you don't have a job you have a job if you are a writer. >> It goes on and on and on. No layoff. >> And I kind of think that her autonomy. You know iss kinda flipping the finger towards her grandfather because. It's like, you can't stop me from writing. >> It's very, we. I think it's important to end on that note. It's very. It's radical, it. Amaris used the word patriarchy. It's grandfather who says you should do this the traditional way. And it's Lorine, the female poet who says no. I'm going to be very productive, but I'm going to do it in a, in a way that will occur to you to be slight. And I'm going to do in a way, in a way thats not got the economy to be it's central focus. Now I'll learn, but I'm not, I'm going to do it in my own way.
