Book Review: Poetry and Language: The Linguistics of Verse

In Chapter 6 of his book Poetry and Language: The Linguistics of Verse (2019) Michael Ferber writes that ‘understanding a poem is a kind of reverse engineering’ (p. 170): a process which will undoubtedly be familiar to stylisticians. This is not to say, however, that Poetry and Language appeals exclusively to seasoned linguists, but rather it is a book that is written primarily for students of literature with no background in linguistics. Ferber expands his metaphor further in noting that with a poem, ‘we are given a contraption: to find out how it works’ (p. 170). Although this demystification of poetry would recently have sent me ‘fleeing in the opposite direction’, in Ferber’s words (p. 14), it is clear on finishing Poetry and Language that employing linguistics in order to examine the construction of poetry is a valuable pursuit for any literary critic or linguist who wishes to expand their analytical horizons. Ferber underscores the value of his work, aimed primarily at readers without specific linguistic expertise, in his introductory chapter, for while he takes care to mention the ‘many fine books that describe and illustrate’ various aspects of the study of poetry (p. 13), he emphasises that ‘what makes the present book different is its attempt to bring to bear what modern linguistics can show us about many of poetry’s distinctive characteristics’ (p. 13). What follows is a unique blend of literary criticism and linguistic analysis, which would refresh any reader’s appreciation for poetry as a whole.

Chapter 2 begins with an explanation as to how the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) can help us to ‘understand better the purely oral or auditory features of poetry’ (p. 17). Ferber shows that by listening in, so to speak, on the inner workings of poems, one not only hears them better, but also sees them better. To illustrate this, Ferber provides an IPA transcription of the first eight lines of Robert Frost’s sonnet ‘Design’ (p. 26), demonstrating that ‘the four rhymes in “white”, “blight”, “night” and “kite”’ are, in fact, ‘spelled two different ways’ (p. 27). In short, Ferber informs the reader that ‘the IPA helps raise the possibility for you to evaluate’ (p. 27), therefore adding another method to the literary analyst’s toolkit.

Throughout Chapter 3, Ferber continues to focus on the importance of sound in poetry by examining rhyme. The purpose of the chapter is to ‘step back from [rhyme] so that it seems somewhat strange’ (p. 59), and Ferber achieves this by considering the significance of syllables. Ferber broadens the general reader’s understanding of a familiar concept by using the CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant). He diagrammatically explains the process used in CVC analyses so that, similar to the ways in which the IPA can enhance a reader’s experience of poetry, so too does a firmer grasp of the sounds which make up syllables introduce more scope for reading and analysing poems. Conscious of how alienating discussion of the science behind syllables may be to readers unfamiliar with linguistics, Ferber (as the author of European Romantic Poetry (2005), among other works associated with Romanticism) deploys examples of popular Romantic verse to elucidate his commentary. Here, the author draws on lines from Coleridge’s poem ‘Kubla Khan’ as an example of ‘very rich rhyme’ (p. 62). The latter portion of the chapter consists of an impressively succinct summation of the history of rhyme, in which Ferber concludes that poets ‘have had much to say about rhyme, for it or against it, and an interesting book might be written that follows that thread’ (p. 84). This sentiment has been echoed elsewhere, such as by Don Paterson in The Poem: Lyric, Sign, Metre (2018), who states in the chapter titled ‘Rhyme’ that ‘it would take another book to discuss the subject fully’ (Paterson, 2018: 78). Given his accessible yet well-informed style, I hope that Ferber takes up the challenge in the near future.

Having introduced readers to some basics of linguistics in the first three chapters, Ferber explores more complex aspects of the relationship between linguistics and poetry throughout the remainder of his book; with Chapters 4, 6 and 7 proving particularly useful. For example, Chapter 4 demonstrates that onomatopoeia can tell us much about ‘the origin of language itself: that the first speakers made up words that echo or imitate natural sounds’ (p. 87). Chapter 6 refers to this process of ‘reverse engineering’ a poem in order to better understand it (p. 170), Ferber writes that linguistics is valuable to the ‘debate over the poet’s intention’ because ‘it turns on what a language is’ (p. 150). Ferber therefore utilises linguistics to challenge Wimsatt and Beardsley’s ‘case for separating the meaning of a poem from the intention of the poet’ (p. 149). For example, Ferber draws attention to Beardsley’s textbook Aesthetics (1958) in which the author puts forth the claim that the meaning of poetry ‘may be said to change as the meaning of the words change’ (Beardsley, 1958: 156). By this logic, Beardsley argues that the ‘plastic arm’ of ‘the Sovereign Spirit of the world’, mentioned in Mark Akenside’s eighteenth-century poem ‘The Pleasures of the Imagination’, has ‘acquired a new meaning in the twentieth-century and this is now its dominant one’ (Beardsley, 1970: 19). Ferber describes the backlash to Beardsley’s interpretation and sardonically notes that ‘Akenside’s lines cannot possibly mean that God had an arm made out of synthetic organic polymers’ (p. 151). After dismantling Beardsley’s argument, Ferber (reassuringly) writes that his readers are not required to ‘become historical linguists, but they must acquire some sense of the history of language if they are to understand fully what they read’ (p. 153). The act of reading poetry can therefore be refined by Ferber’s recommendation not to too readily apply a twenty-first-century understanding to older poetry and prose, but rather to think more carefully about the original meanings of the words being considered.

Chapter 7 examines the role of metaphor in poetry. The author begins by outlining various competing theories concerning the construction of metaphors, from the likes of I.A. Richards in his book The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936) and Max Black in his influential article of 1954. Ferber concludes that ‘Black’s term “focus” prompts the thought that a filter is like a lens’ (p. 207). This approach enables the reader to consider the biological makeup of metaphors, in a manner of speaking, because ‘a lens might magnify, but it might also alter its subject in other ways, moving parts of it into and out of focus’ (p. 207). Developing upon ‘I. A. Richards’s contention that metaphors pervade common speech’, Ferber notes that ‘George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have drawn attention to what they call “metaphorical concepts” or “conceptual metaphors”’ in Metaphors We Live By (1980) and More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (1989) (p. 218). Ferber gives argument is war and time is money as examples of underlying conceptual metaphors, and states that ‘these cases need only be stated to reveal themselves as metaphorical’ (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 218). Ferber also explains that ‘Lakoff and Johnson are very good at detecting’ (p. 219) those ‘more subtle and abstract expressions’, such as ‘“I went to the race” (AN EVENT IS AN ENTITY)’ (p. 218), which take us ‘to the borderland between metaphor and metonym, or even metaphor and literality’ (p.2 19). Concerning Lakoff and Turner (1989), students of literature might be pleased to read that, according to Ferber, More Than Cool Reason is a work which ‘all students of poetry will find interesting’ due to the ‘Index of Metaphors’ contained therein, ‘where ninety metaphors are listed in propositional form (p. 219). Conveniently for the literary critic, ‘these categories are illustrated in passage after passage of English poetry as well as biblical, classical and several other sorts of verse’ (p. 219). Obviously these two texts in particular are very familiar to linguists, in this overview Ferber persuades literature students and literary critics of their seminal importance, and he concisely details their role in the development of our understanding of conceptual metaphor while demonstrating that their terms are now ubiquitous in metaphor analysis. This brief yet thorough synopsis of the works of Lakoff, Johnson and Turner serves as a recommendation for students of literature; assuring them that they ‘will come away much more attuned to the pervasive but largely subterranean ways of metaphor in everyday speech’ (p. 220).

Ultimately, the value of Ferber’s book lies in its broad appeal; it will enhance and inform the reading and analysis of poetry for both students of linguistics and literary criticism. I say ‘students’ because the book is primarily for the non-expert, evidenced by Ferber’s general introduction to the deconstruction of language in the first three chapters, with key linguists such as Saussure only being mentioned when Ferber ensures that the reader has an understanding of the basics of linguistics. An issue some may have with the book is Ferber’s consistent peppering of Romantic poetry throughout; the examples of well-known poetry help to clarify Ferber’s explanations, but they may prove tiresome for readers uninterested in the Romantic milieu. While it is true that works in literary criticism which make overtures to linguistics, such as Eagleton’s How to Read a Poem (2007), can be helpful to literary critics and linguists respectively, Poetry and Language is uniquely valuable in that it unites both schools of thought in the pursuit of instilling within the reader a superior understanding of poetry that they otherwise would not have attained. I would recommend this book not only to the non-experts in linguistics at whom it is aimed but also to accomplished literary critics whose analyses could be enhanced by a deeper layer of thought, that is, a careful consideration of the ‘springs, sockets and spirals’ (p. 170) hidden within perhaps deceptively straightforward poetry.