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The Language(s) of Poetry (review)

Despite the redeeming parenthetical "(s)" in James Olney's title, he attempts to establish a universal paradigm of poetic language, one that transcends peculiarities of time, place, and social circumstances. Although Olney speaks intelligibly at the outset about cultural differences in what has been thought to be poetry, he immediately represses this insight in order to pursue his grail of describing "the nearly ahistorical language of poetry" (2). What can such a phase possibly mean? Are poems written on moon rocks by moon rocks? Surely historical forces affect poetic language just as they do other forms of discourse. We ought to know enough by now to be skeptical of any blanket distinction between poetic language and ordinary language, or indeed any reified binarism with its implicit hierarchy of value. Sailing determinedly against the contemporary theoretical Zeitgeist, Olney asserts that "the language of poetry is always characterized by heightened rhythmization, heightened figurativity, and a kind of eccentricity of usage" (4). It should be obvious, if we think about it, that these three qualities are not universal at all but culturally determined. Concrete poems and other "visual texts" do not employ heightened rhythmizations but are instead oblivious to rhythm. In the 1930s, the Objectivists attempted not to heighten figurativity but to lower it. And the poems of various communitarian peoples reveal not an eccentric use of language but its opposite, a formulaic use.