Chapter 1-7 Overview: Diction, Form, and Intertextuality in Larkin and Trethewey
Overview and goals of the session
Instructor: Professor Sievers speaks from a sick room, delivering an audio-only lecture focused on writing tips, close reading, and how to approach poetry as a writer.
Recurrent aim: balance negative lessons (what not to do) with positive strategies (how to write with energy, clarity, and a sense of invention).
Core pedagogical moves:
Break rules or formulas to see why they exist and when they’re useful.
Encourage following your instinct and building confidence in your own abilities as a writer.
Emphasize the importance of ordinary language in poetry (against over-ornate diction) and the potential of neologisms to create fresh meanings.
Promote holistic reading of poetry: grasp the overall meaning through repeated readings while supporting that meaning with detailed close reading.
Connections to the course’s ongoing topics:
Discussion of Larkin’s diction and the “low register” of poetry.
Exploration of how poets use ordinary language to reach a broad reader, and how poets sometimes clear space to allow new phrasing to emerge.
The role of intertextuality and ekphrasis in later poems (Trethewey and Lowell), and how poetry interacts with visual art, music, and historical texts.
Exam orientation:
Students will likely encounter two to four poems on the exam; the goal is to grasp their meaning holistically and justify interpretation with multiple readings.
The next in-class essay will often revisit previously covered poems, with some potential review rather than introducing entirely new poems.
Poetics in focus: the tension between reverence and irreverence in language; the challenge of translating experience into accessible but not trivial diction; the risk of commonplace words (e.g., “relatable”) becoming dead ends.
Key concepts introduced in the lecture
Ordinary language vs. elevated diction:
Larkin’s project involves using ordinary, conversational language to reach a broad reader and avoid obscurity or heavy mythic references.
This approach is positioned against a Romantic tradition of sublimity in language, suggesting an intentional shift toward plain, direct speech.
Neologism and linguistic invention:
Poets often create new phrases to capture a moment or perception that standard words can’t quite express. Example phrases discussed: ext{sun comprehending glass}, ext{ any angled light would congregate endlessly}and other near-neologistic line endings.
Neologism here is not pure coinage for its own sake but a means to reframe perception (e.g., light in a new, arresting register).
Summary: It's about finding a new label or descriptive phrase.
Clearing space and the role of transition words:
Transition words (first, secondly, similarly) are often unnecessary and can deaden prose.
The goal is organic transitions that arise from the ideas themselves, not from formulaic connectors.
The logic of interpretation:
Reading poetry involves grasping the whole meaning, not just cataloging devices; repetition of near-obsession with a poem’s central image (e.g., light, windows) helps build a robust interpretation.
Diction as a strategic tool in Larkin:
Larkin’s diction often foregrounds ordinary language and ordinary readers, but at the ends of poems he moves toward novel phrasing or new collocations (neologisms) to provoke fresh perception.
Intertextuality and the reader’s participation:
Larkin expects readers to supply missing references (mythology, literature) from the context and common culture.
Ekphrasis and the politics of memory in poetry:
The class shifts to discuss poems that engage with other artworks (e.g., photographs, paintings) to explore memory, history, and national identity.
The idea that poetry can speak across media (word, image, music) to renegotiate meaning.
The problem of immortality and memorialization in poetry:
Debates about what will survive of us—how monuments, love, memory, or poetry itself can endure or fail.
Practical techniques for approaching poems in exams:
Read multiple times, identify a controlling idea, support it with specific lines, and consider the poem’s formal features (rhyme, meter, repetition).
Diction and register in the Larkin group of poems
Larkin’s approach to ordinary language (as discussed in the 1973 interview quoted by the instructor):
Write to measure the effects on a reader starting from cold, avoiding obscurity and references the reader cannot access.
Aim for language that uses the ordinary voice and accepted words/grammar.
The reader fills in the missing cultural references, which makes the poetry more accessible and more interactive.
The tension between the ordinary and the new in Larkin:
The poems often begin in a low register but move toward a higher moment that clears space and reveals something previously unseen or reframed (e.g., imagery around light).
Negative examples to avoid in writing (as warned in class):
The word relatable (caution against reliance on this dead-end term).
Overuse of artificial transitional words (firstly, secondly, similarly, etc.).
Positive emphasis for student writing:
Learning to assert a meaning in a holistic way, not just by applying a set of formulas, and recognizing the importance of the reader’s role in interpretation.
The poems of focus (Larkin’s Water and High Windows) as case studies in diction:
Water uses a religiously charged, intense diction with neologisms like “sousing” and a phrase like “congregate endlessly,” which reframes a religious metaphor around light.
High Windows shifts to a more direct, plain description of beauty and revelation, ending in a contemplation of nothingness and endlessness, with a deliberate attempt to move beyond doctrinal language.
Key terms to note:
Neologism: coined or newly applied words to create novel meaning in poetry.
Solipsism of the interpreter: risk of the reader imposing their own references to the poem without acknowledging the text’s own logic.
Liturgy, “sun comprehending glass,” “any angled light would congregate endlessly”: sample phrases illustrating neologistic energy in Larkin.
Close reading notes on specific Larkin poems mentioned
Water (Larkin):
Opening idea: how the speaker’s religious or sacred imagery shifts to a more secular or reimagined frame.
Endings: phrases near the end—“the sun comprehending glass” and “any angled light would congregate endlessly”—signal a move from the familiar to a new perception of light.
Neologism and phrase-making show Larkin’s attempt to present ordinary language with a fresh poetic charge.
Concepts introduced: neologism, clearing space between registers, signifying the moment of new perception.
High Windows (Larkin):
Starts in a difficult or irreverent register (reflections on sexuality and irreverence toward religious space).
Ends with a reframing: “the sun comprehending glass” and “the deep blue air that shows nothing and is nowhere and is endless.”
Emphasizes the shift from explicit language about sex to a contemplation of light, air, and nothingness.
Sad Steps (Larkin):
A later poem that returns to a nighttime window moment (moon as subject).
The moon becomes the center of the poem’s meditation: its hardness, brightness, and the “wide stare” as a reminder of the strength and pain of being young.
The poem’s subject evolves across stanzas, inviting multiple readings to detect the deeper meditation on youth, memory, and time.
Arundel Tomb (Larkin):
Ekphrasis: the poem turns a monument (the tomb) into a meditation on memory, time, and the life of the couple depicted.
The opening gives an image of “the earl and countess lie in stone” and the “faint hint of the absurd” (pet dogs, armor, Latin names imagined around the base).
The poem tracks how time changes perception: “air would change to soundless damage,” memory, names, and the sense of authenticity deform under time.
Enduring line: “what will survive of us is love.” This famous line invites reflection on truth, memorials, and the difference between physical monument and lived memory.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (referenced for contrast with Larkin’s concerns about immortality):
Classic contrast: beauty’s decay vs. poetry’s immortality through “eternal lines.”
Technical note: rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet (abab cdcd efef gg) and the function of the closing couplet in asserting truth.
The Road Not Taken (Frost):
Mentioned as a familiar model of poetic language where the speaker’s decision and the rhetoric of the poem shape meaning—used as a reference point for what counts as a surprising or novel use of language.
Inter-article connections (for later classes):
The Union Dead (Lowell): ekphrasis and the memorialization of Civil War memory.
Trethewey’s engagement with ekphrasis and memory, especially in relation to national history and personal heritage.
Natasha Trethewey: miscegenation and intertextuality
Summary of the poem Miscegenation (1965 Mississippi):
The speaker recalls parents breaking two laws of Mississippi by marrying in Ohio and moving to Canada; the lines trigger historical memory of interracial relationships in Mississippi.
The poem invokes a chain of associations: the line “Faulkner's Joe Christmas” (from Light in August) signals race, secrecy, and ambiguity of identity.
The speaker’s father reads War and Peace when giving her name, linking literature with personal identity and lineage.
The date stamp: the speaker was born near Easter in 1966 in Mississippi, and at age 33 (the “Jesus year”) she contemplates the meaning of her father’s era and the possibility of historical cycles.
Repetition and form:
The poem ends almost every stanza with the name “Mississippi,” creating a persistent refrain that recontextualizes identity through constant naming.
Trethewey uses a Persian form known as a ghazal (or a ghazal-inspired structure) called a ghazal (here spelled “ghazal” in the transcript), a form built on repeated end words and refrains that emphasize cyclical memory.
The repetition of the name (Mississippi) functions like a refrain that anchors and destabilizes identity (racial, geographic, and linguistic).
—> It is constantly recontextualizing its meaning acorss various historial, personal, racial, geographic, an liguistic context. Meaning, it means something different in each line, reinforcing how the writer was shaped by her place of origin
—> It also says that her identity in unstable since it shifts depending on what aspect one’s focusing on (law, history, music, or memory)
Intertextual and cross-media connections:
Allusions to Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddamn (civil rights era song) as a touchstone of resistance and memory; Trethewey’s intertextuality invites us to compare the poem with Simone’s performance and broader civil rights discourse.
The professor suggests reading the Nina Simone piece (Mississippi Goddamn) online to understand how Trethewey engages with text across media (poetry and song) as a cross-media conversation.
Intertextuality with other works and authors:
Contextual references include Loving v. Virginia (1967) and the era’s legal landscape (interracial marriage laws and their repeal).
Trethewey’s poem situates itself within a web of literary and cultural texts that include Vermeer and other canonical references in related assignments.
Form and technique in miscegenation:
The ghazal-like repetition is not a strict formal requirement but a technique that preserves musicality and chant-like resonance across stanzas.
Practical implications for writing about Trethewey:
Consider how repetition (Mississippi) redefines identity and memory.
Explore intertextual echoes (Song, literature, legal history) to frame the poem’s political and personal stakes.
Examine how Trethewey uses legal and historical language to shape personal narrative and race in America.
Open prompts for analysis:
How does repetition of place-name enact memory and national identity?
How does intertextuality broaden what the poem can say about race, place, and genealogy?
What is the effect of a ghazal-like form on the poem’s themes of memory and lineage?
Intertext and painting reference in Trethewey’s broader project:
The class highlights the relationship between poetry and artworks (repentance and Vermeer) and instructs students to consider diptych-like reading: look at the Vermeer painting and read the poem, then switch back and forth to notice perceptual shifts.
Intersections with ekphrasis, memory, and national history
Ekphrasis in American poetry:
The class draws connections between Larkin’s physical monuments and Trethewey/Lowell’s ekphrastic poems (poems about statues, tombs, and public memory).
The Union Dead is cited as a comparative example of ekphrasis; Lowell’s poem becomes a vehicle to discuss Civil War memory in a public city space (Boston Common) and the way art memorializes or distorts history.
Trethewey’s approach to national and personal history:
By foregrounding interracial marriage laws, the poem makes intimate history inseparable from national legal structures.
The Nina Simone reference and the Loving v. Virginia context place personal memory in a broader civil rights timeline.
Thematic and ethical implications raised in the lecture
The ethics of language choice in poetry:
The instructor cautions against language that abets miscommunication or trivialization (e.g., “relatable”).
The ethics of addressing complex histories of race, memory, and national identity in a way that respects complexity and avoids reductionism.
The tension between permanence and change:
Monuments and poetry both try to fix meaning; poetry often reveals how memory and meaning shift over time (e.g., Arundel Tomb’s ending line: “what will survive of us is love”).
The role of the reader in interpretation:
Readers actively fill in gaps when a poet uses ordinary language and references beyond the text’s explicit content; that participation is a core part of how poetry communicates.
Interdisciplinary readings:
The lecture emphasizes cross-media engagement (poetry with painting, song, and historical documents) to enrich interpretation and critical thinking.
Key terms and concepts to remember
Neologism: creation of new words or new combinations of words to evoke new meanings. Example: phrases like “sun comprehending glass.”
Ghazal: a form of poetry borrowing repetition and refrains; Trethewey’s Miscegenation uses a ghazal-like repetition pattern rather than a strict formal ghazal.
Ekphrasis: a literary description of a visual work of art; used in discussions of The Union Dead and other poems.
Intertextuality: relationships between texts (poems, songs, stories) that influence interpretation.
Relatable (as a warning): a common word deemed a dead-end for prose or poetry; signals the risk of flattening language to generic identifyability.
Cleared space between registers: the technique of moving from everyday diction to more elevated or novel phrasing to unlock new perception.
She wants the reader to interpret what was previously read it, to slow down.This technique encourages a deeper engagement with the text, inviting readers to explore nuanced meanings and emotional resonances that might otherwise be overlooked.
Also, it could refer to the author’s exhaustion that mirrors the woman inside the painting. (Takes a pause, and allows the reader to take a pause, analyze, or rest somehow)
Also it can be a representation of her drunken state (Since drunk people sometimes drag words, take pauses or overall have issues with speaking)
Makes it look untidy/ messy
Solipsism of the interpreter: the risk of projecting one’s own framework onto a text without acknowledging its standpoints.
Repetition and recontextualization: Trethewey’s Miscegenation uses repetitive naming (Mississippi) to reframe identity; repetition can reframe meaning rather than simply emphasize it.
Immortality and memory in poetry: the question of what lasts (monuments, love, poetry) and how poems themselves enact a form of immortality.
Chronology, numerical references, and key dates (to aid exam prep)
1914: Beginning of World War I in Europe; referenced in Larkin’s MCMXIV as a marker of a historical shift from heroic nineteenth-century war poetry to a modern, more skeptical view of heroism.
MCMXIV: Roman numerals at the top of Larkin’s poem title pointing to the year 1914. This requires translation by the reader to connect to the historical moment.
1965: The year Trethewey’s Miscegenation poem is situated; the speaker recalls her parents breaking Mississippi’s laws against miscegenation.
1966: Trethewey’s speaker notes her birth in Mississippi (Easter, 1966); the poet’s own life is braided into the poem’s memory of historical events.
1967: Loving v. Virginia (Supreme Court decision striking down laws against interracial marriage in the United States).
1968: The date associated with the Larkin poem “Sad Steps” (as discussed by the instructor).
1954: Date associated with Larkin’s poem “Water,” which precedes “High Windows” and helps illustrate the progression from ordinary language to more elevated perception.
1967: “High Windows” is discussed; a date kept in mind for its mid-to-late-1960s context.
33: The line “When I turned 33, my father said, it’s your Jesus year” in Miscegenation, a concrete biographical moment that anchors the poem’s exploration of time and memory.
Miscellaneous: The lecture references multiple poems and concepts (e.g., The Road Not Taken, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18) to illustrate form, immortality, and the relationship between life and poetry. These appear as comparative touchpoints rather than as dates.
Connections to other lectures and broader relevance
Intertextuality in modern poetry:
The Miscegenation poem’s dialogue with Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddamn, and its situating within Loving v. Virginia, demonstrates how poetry dialogues with music, legal history, and civil rights discourse.
Ekphrasis as a vehicle for memory and national history:
The Union Dead and Arundel Tomb show how poets use monuments, photographs, and sculpture to critique or preserve memory, and to prompt questions about what constitutes truth in historical memory.
The continuity of light as a guiding motif:
Water, High Windows, and Sad Steps all use windows, light, and a nocturnal vantage point to reframe perception and meaning, tying together diction, imagery, and philosophical inquiry.
The continuity of immortality debates across centuries:
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 is used as a pivot to discuss how poetry can offer a form of immortality, contrasting with the skeptical stance in Arundel Tomb and the modern interrogation of memorial practices.
Practical takeaways for exam prep and writing practice
If you must discuss diction in Larkin or Trethewey:
Identify the register shift and explain how neologisms or repeated refrains reframe perception.
Note how repetition (Mississippi in Miscegenation) recontextualizes identity and memory.
When approaching ekphrastic poems:
Describe how the poem engages with the artwork and what new meanings it creates through its word choices and narrative moves.
For holistic analysis:
Read a chosen poem multiple times to extract a controlling idea, then back it up with 3-5 close readings of specific lines or devices.
Ethical considerations in interpretation:
Be mindful of how language choices affect representation, particularly in discussions of race, memory, and national history.
Possible essay prompts you could practice:
How does Larkin use ordinary language to challenge traditional reverence in poetry? Use Water and High Windows as case studies.
In Miscegenation, how does repetition of Mississippi function as a tool for memory and identity formation, and how does intertextuality deepen the poem’s political stakes?
What does Arundel Tomb imply about the relation between memory, monumentality, and the transient nature of human life? Discuss with reference to the final lines.
Suggestions for further study and connections to assignments
Revisit key poems discussed in the lecture (Water, High Windows, Sad Steps, Arundel Tomb) and write a short paragraph on how each uses diction to shift perception from the ordinary to the extraordinary.
Read Trethewey’s Miscegenation alongside Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddamn and Loving v. Virginia to practice analyzing intertextual links and historical context.
Look at a Vermeer painting (as suggested in the lecture for the Repentance poem) and attempt a brief ekphrastic exercise: describe what you see and then write a line or two that reframes the painting through a poem.
Prepare for the exam by outlining two potential essays: one on Larkin’s diction and the other on Trethewey’s miscegenation; include thesis statements, three supporting points, and a short close-reading sample from each text.
Quick glossary (for quick reference during revision)
Neologism: creation of new words or novel phrase constructions to capture new meanings in a poem.
Ghazal: a poetic form with repeating refrain elements; Trethewey uses a ghazal-like structure in Miscegenation.
Ekphrasis: a literary description of a visual work of art.
Intertextuality: the interconnectedness of texts across media and genres that informs interpretation.
Refrain: a line or phrase that recurs at intervals throughout a poem, shaping its musical and thematic structure.
Immortality in poetry: the idea that poetry can outlive its subject through enduring lines and memory, as discussed with Shakespearean reference and the ending of Arundel Tomb.
Summary takeaway
The lecture argues for a writerly practice that respects the intelligence of the reader, values ordinary language, and uses linguistic invention to reveal new perception. It demonstrates this through close readings of Larkin’s Water, High Windows, Sad Steps, and Arundel Tomb, and Trethewey’s Miscegenation, while linking these to broader themes of memory, memorialization, intertextuality, and the ethics of representation. It also provides practical strategies for exam preparation and for writing that is both precise and inventive, with attention to how poetry speaks across media and history.