10 June 2004. I suppose you have to have been on the dump a long time to appreciate Robert Lax's version of the the in his "river":

To begin with, we know because of its context that "river" is intended to be a poem, but all it does is reveal that poem's subject. No metaphors, no heightened language, no adjectives, even. Nothing but the one word, "river," which appears twelve times, once per line. It's hard to argue that Lax is not shirking poetry's traditional duty, which is to make its subject matter as sensually moving as possible. Indeed, it seems obstinately to refuse to do that. So, where'd my Yow-moment come from?

Part of it, I think, came from something I experienced without identifying it at the time: a feeling of viewing text-in-motion. The word, "river," was moving down the middle of the page like--well, a river. No big deal . . . except that I simultaneously was vividly aware of the text-as-poem, not simply because of its context but because of its super-obvious shape as four stanzas of three lines, each. Ergo, I was experiencing a river as a poem--seeing it, not merely reading about it.

Meanwhile, the poem's rhythmic repetition of its one word made me hear the river as a poem. It did more: it told me of, performed for me, the river-as-poem's ongoingness, its eternal ongoingness. Marvelously assisting in this was its pronunciation, which perfectly represents a major aspect of its meaning by ending where it begins. Because of this, a reader (sublingually pronouncing "river") will likely hear the poem as, "river, river, river; river, river, river, river river riveriveriveriver"--a drone that for those most sensitive to it will continue beyond the cessation of text. . . . Note, as well, the text's overtones of "evereverevereverever," which includes hints of the word, "revere"--and "reverie," as James Finnegan pointed out after seeing an earlier draft of this essay.

My conclusion (if only visceral until I later found words for it): the poem put me in the presence of river-as-flow, so also in the presence of poem-as-flow. Chanted river/poem-as-flow, I might add. And the flow was an archetypal, eternal essence out of Nature, an absolute preceding all meaning, a thing-in-itself . . . or form of "the the." Eternal repetitiveness, unchangingness . . . Time, itself, and all it contains. Seen and heard rivering down a page.

So, a poem seeming at a first glance emphatically "nothing"--a single humdrum word repeated on an otherwise blank page--grows into . . . everything. Or can grow into everything for one open to it, and lucky enough (at some point) to be able simultaneously to experience versions of the interactions with the poem I've clumsily tried to describe.

                    (Note: for more on Robert Lax, go HERE) to view Geof Huth's blog entry on him for 15 March 2004)