RADICAL LANDSCAPES OF R. F. LANGLEY’S POETRY: A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF TO A NIGHTINGALE

Abstract

This paper aims to examine R. F. Langley’s poetry as an example of radical landscape poetry, which is characterized by the interplay between landscape and language in an open field of con/textual relationships, with a focus on his poem “To a Nightingale”. Langley’s poetry can be regarded as a Modernist compound of tradition and innovation, affirmation and negation, certainty and doubt, and the human and the non-human. Langley’s poetic landscape(s) or his artistic canvas is associated with the late-modernist writing of his time. In Langley’s poetry, the relationships between landscape/environment and humanity, the human and the non-human are depicted as mutually constructive. Situated between the romantic and the existentialist discourses, Langley’s poetry possesses a modernist, depersonalized, scientific, innovative, experimental and speculative approach to reality and language. “To a Nightingale” epitomizes the modernist indeterminacy of reality and language through the vertiginous vacillation of the speaker between alternatives of truth and expression in the checkerboard of existence, as well as through the disordered structure and shape of the poem, alternating between opposite poles, through the use of stylistic devices such as parataxis, juxtaposition, enjambment, parallelism, deviation, foregrounding and discoursal relations. 

Keywords

• R. F. Langley; “To a Nightingale”; radical landscape poetry; modernism; stylistics; existentialism

R. F. LANGLEY ŞİİRLERİNİN RADİKAL MANZARALARI: BÜLBÜLE ŞİİRİNİN BİÇEMBİLİMSEL İNCELEMESİ

Öz

Bu makalenin amacı R. F. Langley’nin şiirlerini, bağlamsal/metinsel ilişkilerin açık sahasında manzara-dil etkileşiminin belirlediği radikal manzara şiirinin bir örneği olarak ve “Bülbül’e” adlı şiiri odağında incelemektir. Langley’nin şiirleri gelenekle yeniliğin, olumlamayla olumsuzlamanın, kesinlikle şüphenin ve insanla insan olmayanın modernist bir bileşiğidir. Langley’nin şiirsel manzaraları ya da sanat tuvali zamanın geç-modernist yazılarıyla ilişkilendirilir. Langley’nin şiirlerinde manzara/çevre ile insanlık, insanla insan olmayan arasındaki ilişkiler birbirlerini karşılıklı olarak kurar. Romantik söylemle varoluşçu söylemin arasında yer alan Langley şiirleri modernist, kişisel olmayan, bilimsel, yenilikçi, deneysel ve kurgusal bir gerçeklik ve dil yaklaşımına sahiptir. “Bülbül’e” şiiri, gerçeklik ve dilin modernist belirsizliğini, şiirde konuşan kişinin varoluşun dama tahtasında doğruluk ve ifade seçenekleri arasında vertigovari sendelemesi yoluyla ve aynı zamanda şiirin zıt kutuplar arasında değişen, düzensiz yapısı ile şekli ve  “yanaşık sıralama” (parataxis), “yanyanalık”(juxtaposition), “artlama” (enjambment), “koşutluk” (parallelism), “sapma” (deviation), “önceleme” (foregrounding) ve söylemsel bağlantılar gibi biçembilimsel yöntemler aracılığıyla örnekler. 

Anahtar Kelimeler

• R. F. Langley; “To a Nightingale”; radikal manzara şiiri; modernizm; biçembilim; varoluşçuluk

Kaynakça

1. Bradford, R. (1997). Stylistics. London and New York: Routledge.
2. Byers, M. (2017). R. F. Langley: Seeing Things. English: Journal of the English Association, Volume 66, Issue 255, 1 December 2017, doi:10.1093/english/efx032. Retrieved 20 February 2019, from https://academic.oup.com/english/article-abstract/66/255/331/4717460. pp. 331–350.
3. Derrida, J. (1991). Che cos'e la poesia? In Peggy Kamuf (Ed) & (Trans), A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds (pp. 221-237). New York: Columbia University Press.
4. Eliot, T. S. (1993). Tradition and the Individual Talent. In M. H. Abrams (Ed), The Norton Anthology of English Literature (pp. 2170-2176). Vol.2. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
5. Eltringham, D. (2013). The idea of the bird: Bird Books, the Problem of Taxonomy, and Some Poems by R.F. Langley. PN Review 210, Volume 39, Number 4, March - April 2013, pp.50-53.
6. Güzel Köşker, N. H. (2016). Revision of Helen’s Myth and A New Female Discourse in Hilda Doolittle’s Helen in Egypt. Dil Dergisi. 167(1), pp. 5-20.
7. Hamilton, I. & Noel-Tod, J. (2013). The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry in English. Oxford: Oxford UP.
8. Heidegger, M. (1971). The Thing. Poetry, Language, Thought. Albert Hofstadter. (Trans.) New York: Harper& Row.

9. Herd, D. (2019). Emptying, Holding, Settling: The Poetry of R.F. Langley. Edinburgh Review. Retrieved 20 February 2019, from https://edinburgh-review.com/extracts/article-david-herd/.
10. Kolocotroni, V., J. Goldman and O. Taxidou. Eds. (2007). Modernism: An Anthology of Sources and Documents. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
11. Langley, R. F. (2015). Complete Poems. [Kobo]. Jeremy Noel-Tod. (Ed.) Manchester: Carcanet Press. doi: Epub ISBN 978 1 78410 065 0, Mobi ISBN 978 1 78410 066 7, Pdf ISBN 978 1 78410 067 4.
12. Langley, R. F. (2006). Journals. Exeter: Shearsman Books Ltd.
13. Larios, J. (2015). R. F. Langley: Between Two Worlds. Numéro Cinq Magazine, Poetry, Undersung, Vol. VI, No. 3. March 2015.
14. Larkin, P. (2008). Being Seen for Seeing: a tribute to R F Langley’s Journals. Retrieved August 2008, from http://intercapillaryspace.blogspot.com/2008/08/being-seen-for-seeing-tribute-to-r-f.html.
15. Noel-Tod, J. (2015). Introduction. Complete Poems. [Kobo]. Jeremy Noel-Tod. (Ed.) Manchester: Carcanet Press. doi: Epub ISBN 978 1 78410 065 0, Mobi ISBN 978 1 78410 066 7, Pdf ISBN 978 1 78410 067 4, pp. 1-12.
16. Noel-Tod, J. (2013). In Different Voices: Modernism Since the 1960s. The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry. Ed. Peter Robinson. Oxford: Oxford UP, pp. 111-129.
17. Noel-Tod, J. (2011). Jeremy Noel-Tod remembers R.F. Langley, with Langley’s ‘Sixpence a Day’, Cambridge Literary Review, II/5 (Summer, 2011), pp. 71–8.
18. Olson, C. (1997). Collected Prose. Donald Allen and Benjamin Friedlander. Eds. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press.
19. Pound, E. (1916). Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir. London: John Lane The Bodley Head.
20. Rumens, C. (2016). Poem of the Week: To a Nightingale by R. F. Langley. Retrieved May 16, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/may/16/poem-of-the-week-to-a-nightingale-by-rf-langley.
21. Rumsey, L. (2016). On R. F. Langley's ‘To A Nightingale’. Etudes britanniques contemporaines - Revue de la Société dʼétudes anglaises contemporaines, Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2016, 51, 〈https://ebc.revues.org/3478#tocto1n3〉. 〈halshs-01418666〉
22. Sartre, J. P. (2000). Nausea. Robert Baldick. (Trans). London: Penguin Books.
23. Şenlen Güvenç, S. (2019). No man hath dared to write this thing as yet: Tradition and the Individual Talent of Ezra Pound. Ankara Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 10, pp. 118-129.
24. Sheppard, R. (1976). The Crisis of Language. Modernism: 1890-1930. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane. Eds. New York: Penguin Books, 323-336.
25. Short, M. (1996). Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose. London & New York: Longman.
26. Tarlo, H. (2011). Introduction. The Ground Aslant: An Anthology of Radical Landscape Poetry. Exeter: Shearsmann Books, pp. 7-18.