Abrams brings poetry’s ‘fourth dimension’ to CU

When most Columbians were waiting in line for free barbeque on the lawn, one of the greatest literary critics of the 20th century could be heard as he delighted in a selection of lyric poems.

On Wednesday, M. H. Abrams—professor emeritus of English at Cornell, editor of “The Norton Anthology of English Literature,” and acclaimed author of “The Mirror and the Lamp”—spoke about what he terms the “fourth dimension” of a poem at an event sponsored by the Heyman Center for the Humanities.

After noting the attention that readers and critics pay to a poem’s visual appearance, meaning, and sounds, he urged them to take into account this fourth dimension—the physical act of articulating a poem. As Abrams clarified, a poem has “a material body with its own material meanings,” and, by ignoring the oral act of enunciating its speech sounds, a reader disembodies the poem. Abrams argued that readers should instead delight in reading the way a baby delights in lolling, the repetition of a consonant sound for the sheer joy of being able to utter it.

Abrams then put his advice into effect and delivered beautiful readings of six carefully chosen poems ranging from William Wordsworth’s 1815 “Surprised by Joy” to A. R. Ammons’s 1963 “Mansion.” Some of them were funny, some sad, and some decidedly sensual. Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal” is recommended to anyone who needs convincing that the Victorians could write about sexual longing, just as Ernest Dowson’s “Cynara” is recommended to anyone in search of a beautifully poignant poem.

M. H. Abrams has changed the way both to read and think about poetry. In beginning his lecture, he cited the opening lines to Nabokov’s “Lolita:” “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.” As Abrams suggested, these lines have much to say about the physical pleasure of enunciation—something that students should learn to indulge in themselves.