When combing through the blog entries and contemplating a possible thread, it occurred to me; one of the most intriguing aspects of poetry is the omnipotent control that the poet has over the image presented. So, I began searching for blog entries that featured poems, in which the poet transforms an image or emblem into something else. The OED defines emblem as, “To be the emblem of (something); to express, symbolize, or suggest by means of an emblem.” If this definition is applied to all poetry, then the likely consensus is that every poet and every poem utilizes figurative description of images to convey unlimited emblems. All of the posts throughout the blog discussed poems that were emblematic in some way. However, the posts tagged in my thread don’t solely discuss poems based on their inclusion of emblems. But instead, posts that discuss poems exhibiting an emblematic transformation; emblems that are altered or changed from their original forms, rethought and redefined, or imagined in a non-traditional way. Brigit Pegeen Kelly was the first poet that epitomized the importance of this technique to me. Kelly guides her reader through many contrasting manifestations of transformation. But, these transformations are achieved in a contemporary collection published in a time where it's expected to resist against the traditional. I wanted to go through the centuries of poetry to see if could track the evidence of emblematic shifts. So, I thought back to one of the oldest poems I knew, “Dream of the Rood”, and I tried to find any evidence of emblematic shift present. And I immediately found one within the cross as it transforms into multiple forms. The transformations present in “Dream of the Rood” proved that emblems are in flux at both, the early and contemporary, ends of the poetic spectrum. This set me up to find two more poems in our blog that exhibited evidence of emblematic transformation in the 16th, 17th, 18th, or 19th centuries.
Anne Finch’s poem, “The Bird and the Arras” was the first poem I found to exhibit a significant transformation in a figure. The first transformation was the arras. First off, an arras is a tapestry embroidered with scenes and figures.
Finch sets up opposing descriptions of the arras in the first lines of the poem. “By neer resemblance see that Bird betray’d/ Who takes the well wrought Arras for a shade,” (1-2). The juxtaposition allows the reader to perceive the arras possessing good qualities(“well wrought,” “shade”), as well as bad qualities, (“neer resemblance,” “betray’d”,(1-2)). The connotation between the two enforced opposing qualities within the end rhymes of both lines, which creates an uncertainty in the reader’s judgement of the arras. As the arras betrays and traps the bird, Finch utilizes two more emblematic transformations. The first emblem shift is the shade offered by the arras. The second line illustrates the shade as the bird’s primary desire and these lines clarify, “There hopes to pearch and with a chearfull Tune/ O're-passe the scortchings of the sultry Noon,” (3-4). The transformation occurs in, “That piece a Grove, this shews an ambient sky,” which turns the bird’s desired shade into a negative shade, and fastens itself to the sky and literally blocks the bird from the light. Finch allows the shade to act in its desired usage, and he allows it to fulfill the betrayal, which teeters on the reader’s expected notion of the emblem.
Pound believed “the proper and perfect symbol is the natural object… a hawk is a hawk,” (A Retrospect, pg. 9). Because of Pound’s assertion on symbolism, I would argue that Pound doesn’t transform his emblem the same way as the poet discussed previously. He changes the emblem by redefining and reimagining a figure in a way that in itself, is unique. Pound accomplishes the transformation of images by utilizing a style that precisely describes each image with exact, economic language. Pound’s first image in “The Garden” consists of an upper-class woman in the Kensington Gardens. Pound gives the reader the symbols they’d expect, but this is not how he transforms the emblem. He transforms the emblem simply using a simile. The simile works on a precise level in this poem because of his carefully chosen descriptors. I’d mentioned in my post, “‘Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall,’… imagines the upper-class woman in the poem as a piece of expensive cloth stuck against a wall. A skein is a loose piece of fabric usually cut from a larger piece of fabric, which characterizes the woman as being separated from the rest of society because of her class”(blog). Pound utilizes precise vocabulary and excels at transforming emblems because they’re individual emblems within the description of an additional emblem, and they create an image that the reader can imagine. Pound manages to reimagine the emblem while saving its known characteristics.
The poet exhibiting the final evidence of the emblematic transformation is Brigit Pegeen Kelly. The title poem from her poetry collection, The Orchard, is saturated with more emblematic transformation than the other two examples. Critic Fiona Sampson said, “Kelly’s Orchard is the dangerous grove where transformations happen,”(web). The poem utilizes both techniques for its transformations. Kelly tends to allude to religious emblems. Matthew wrote, “aspects of birth, lactation, references to red, blood, etc.,” which is how she accomplishes multiple transformations within “The Orchard”(blog). The blog agrees the images are dream-like and tend to drift off from clarity and logic, which is how Kelly transforms her poems’ into a disjointed confusion. Though, I would argue that if you tracked two of the primary emblematic transformations you'd gain insight about how they’re transforming. The first transformation that Kelly creates in the first eleven lines:
“I saw the dog in a dream. Huge white
Boney creature. Big as a horse. At first
I thought it was a horse. It was feeding
On apples. As a horse might. Though not
With a horse’s patience. For it was starving.
Its hipbones were empty bowls. The horse
Wolfed down the apples. Without breathing.
Without looking up. The way a dog wolfs
Down meat. And then it growled. And I saw
That the horse was a dog. But the apples
Were still apples,” (1-11).
These lines give the reader a grounding point up front, which then allows the reader to access the illogical scene with an authority over the situation because Kelly blatantly states that the scene is a dream. Then, Kelly begins to disjoint the scene by describing a creature in two different and disorienting ways. For example, in lines (3-7), the creature was eating apples like a horse but not like a horse. It was hungry, then the horse ‘wolfs’ down the apples. The same way a dog ‘wolfs’ down meat. The transformation being worked here is that the individual characteristics of each animal are deconstructed and then combined with the other’s traits, and then she reforms the image into a universal animal. She destructs the animals by using 'wolf' as a verb to describe the horse and dog’s actions. She also uses horse descriptors to describe the dog and then states “That the horse was a dog,” (10). In the same selection, Kelly begins to deconstruct the apple/meat in lines (7-9) by showing the creature wolfing down apples and meat, and then she states that the apples are just apples. This combination transforms meat and apples into the same thing, which creates a universal food that further alludes to deconstruction and combination. The second emblem Kelly transforms is the entire orchard. She repeats the colors “black” and “yellow” beginning in the thirteenth line and ending on line 119 toward the end of the poem. The transformational work that the color repetition accomplishes is by describing the orchard in a consistent color pattern, which allows Kelly to allude that everything else is the same too. This setup displaces the reader because everything seems to share the same qualities, which grants Kelly the shift-set-up to make the final emblematic transformation, which is the reimagined orchard as a hive. “Of the orchard’s hive when it masses/ and the Queen in a fiery constellation/ is carried to new quarters,” (121-123).
The different ways that poets control their figures, images, and emblems reduces down to the style of the individual poet. I found that all three poets that I explored executed similar techniques within their poems, but they are in no way doing the same work. Each of their transformations had a different intent and emotion buried deep inside of it, and although, they were linked together in my thread their end results couldn’t be more different.
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