Based upon Berstein’s article “Artifice of Absorption” this poem is absorptive. His use of diction in the poem address the poem itself entire, saying “This line is..” or “This line has…” He does not use any direct address to the reader throughout his lines, simply only referring to the poem and ideas that can be applied to it. No outside reference of the author or the reader is mentioned or referenced to, even including “This line/cares not for itself or for/anyone else—it is indifferent,/ impersonal, cold, uninviting which.” I find very interesting as he does take a step back from the traditional idea of what poetry tends to be, where you are discussing a topic of importance or an experience, that has some emotion behind it. Bernstein seems to move to an impersonal sense of writing in this poem, as he even begins the poem with “This line is stripped of emotion.” He introduces a main theme in the poem, which is quite literally a poem that might be relatable with some lines, yet consistently keeps a distance with the reader.
This poem truly is interesting to me as Bernstein has described a lot of what the English world has created literature to be, and especially poetry. “This line is not more than an illustration of a European/ theory. This line is bereft/ of a subject.” He breaks up the last sentence to separate visually on the page where the sentence starts and has the subject, to the end where it address what it is missing. He literally creates a line by breaking the sentence on to two lines, without a subject. Each sentence creating a statement about the poem in a different sense, moving from base ideas just as “without a subject” to more complex ideas such as “This line is elitist, requiring,’ to understand it, year of study/ in stultifying libraries, poring/ over esoteric treatises on/ impossible to pronounce topics.” Bernstein is addressing the outside world of the reader without directly referencing the reader, as poetry has been seen in the literary world as this off limits modality, as you must be able to master and have years of study to do it properly. As Perril states”many Language writers are preoccupied by dramatizing the experience of being a reader of that world” though with Bersteins poem, he is not entirely off. As he may be dramatizing the reality of the poem itself, it seems as though he is speaking toward the whole of the English and writing community about its self importance and view of the written word.
Listening to Bernstein read his own poem, https://youtu.be/YpOp-GmifoI?si=u485xJTx8QqF2KzZ, helped me identify that there is absolutely no rhyme, yet he does pause and stop at where he has placed periods, even if it is in the middle of a line. As the poem itself is about the fact that poetry seems to have all these constituent factors to classify or be able to read it, Bernstein directly goes against the traditional idea of rhyme scheme of any kind. He begins each line confident and end confidently, yet creates a softer sound pattern through the middle of the sentences. Though the poem is titled “This Line” it is somewhat ironic as only two lines of this 21 line poem begin and end with a complete idea. All other lines begin with the sentence at one point and transition into the next line, creating a push back to what introduction he has given to the reader. As Bernstein is commenting on, mainly negatively, about the English community, he follows his idea of “You can’t fully critique the dominant culture if you are confined to the forms through which is reproduces itself, not because hegemonic forms are compromised ‘in themselves’ but because their criticality has been commandeered” (Perril 229). As he is breaking form the traditional forms of poetry, he steps outside of this hegemonic form and the dominant culture, almost cultivating his own idea of what poetry and a poem can be. He might not be directly addressing the reader or the author, but he states so much about the English community as a while, all while simply referencing the poem he created.
https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.charleston.edu/dist/6/907/files/2019/02/this-line-1z9p1cm.pdf
https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.charleston.edu/dist/e/831/files/2017/03/Perrill-1uvw1h6.pdf
Hi Rebecca,
I really liked your reading of Bernstein’s “This Line” and how you explore the metatextual relationship between the poet and the poem. It is interesting how Bernstein writes a poem describing itself, very much adhering to the language poetry “rules” of focusing on the language and the structure to leave room for the readers to make meaning. The exact descriptions of what the poem aims to do is something I found compelling, because it left me questioning whether the poem was actually achieving what is described: Is this line stripped of emotion? Does that line really refuse reality? To me, the poem does the opposite, and I believe this was Bernstein’s goal.
When Bernstein says “This line/is only about itself” he is contradicting that statement. That line has no meaning without the next one because it is a continuation of the thought. When he says “This line refuses reality” I have to disagree. There are many instances in the poem one can attribute to their own life and consider how it is commenting on something they are experiencing. There are so many layers to this poem, and I really like that you spent extra time to talk about it, because after reading it again I found a new appreciation for the opposite effect Bernstein seems to have created!
Thanks for taking us through this poem–and the quote from Bernstein at the end really highlights what language poets felt they were doing by transforming and disfiguring language in the way that they did. You’re right that this poems expertly creates a distance between the poet and reader, and also pokes fun at many critical conventions for how we read poems (it even pokes fun at itself, as language poetry is often very difficult and can feel as though it might take years of study to understand). At the start, you say that the poem is absorptive. But I think you mean anti-absorptive–work that works against the grain, that won’t lull the reader with an easy sense of emotion and meaning. It’s a poem that resists us at each stage, overturning our self of what a poem should do.