Sound Patterns in a Poem of José Martí: Phonemic Structures and Poetic Musicality by Ned J. Davison (review)

Book Reviews SOUND PATTERNS IN A POEM OF JOSÉ MARTÍ: PHONEMIC STRUCTURES AND POETIC MUSICALITY BY NED J. DAVISON (Salt Lake City: Damuir Press, 1975. 118 pages, $6.95.) Until the publication of Professor Davison's book, most studies of musicality in literature have focused on either the resemblance between a literary work and a specific musical form, or a vague, undefined melodic lyricism which emanates from a piece of writing. In Spanish-American Modernism, the notion of musicality is foremost in the poetics of the movement whose literary goals and metaphysical ideals parallel those of its European contemporary , French Symbolism. Therefore, it is particularly gratifying to find in Sound Patterns a new, coherent approach to the question of musical sonority in the poetic line. Davison carefully explores the vast territory which surrounds the subject of music and poetry. Half of the book provides the reader with a useful overview of these two art forms — their parallel development from primitive times, their similarities and differences, and those characteristics of poetry which best utilize the techniques and procedures of musical composition. This general discussion of the interrelationship between music and poetry ends with an examination of philosophical and psychological aspects of poetic musicality. This section is especially well documented, and contains many examples of individual authors whose work has touched upon the subject of poetic musicality. For this reason, Sound Patterns is recommended reading as a general introduction to the field. The foregoing material serves as a background for a more detailed study of poetic musicality. Davison selects those elements of musical composition which are idiosyncratic to music, such as music's non-conceptual nature, which poetry may employ to suggest the affective values of music. In the second half of the book, Davison studies the presence of non-conceptual sonorities in a work of José Martí, one of Spanish America's first modernists. Davison briefly describes the thematic content of "Yo soy un hombre sincero ," and concludes that the poem's simplicity and succinctness are only ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW101 part of this well-organized work. In addition to formal lexical repetitions and the obvious lyricism of bis Whitmanesque "song of myself," Marti's poem exhibits complex phonological patterning which constitutes the basis of the poem's recognized melodic construction. Davison's presentation of phonological patterning is a unique contribution to die study of poetic musicality. Each stanza is printed in published form. On a facing page appears a line-by-line analysis of phonemic patterns for each stanza. In each line of poetry Davison highlights die repetition of phonemic material in red characters. Such a graphic representation of sound patterning facilitates die reader's comprehension of Marti's virtuosity. Below each stanza, there appears a prose discussion of the sound patterns in blue. Here, Davison indicates only the presence of patterning without reading into the patterns any emotional or conceptual significance. Rather, he invites the reader to discover his own impressions aroused by the interplay of phonic and conceptual aspects of the poem. Perhaps the most appealing feature of the book is its accurate depiction of musical qualities without the distraction of statistical data. The text is, in a sense, a handbook which can easily serve as a model for future studies of Modernist poetry. It is fitting, then, that the work captures in a pleasing visual approach, the sonorous experiments in one of Modernism's sonatas and symphonies in verse. HOWARD M. FRASER Howard M. Fraser teaches at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg , Virginia. AN AFTERNOON OF POCKET BILLIARDS BY HENRY TAYLOR (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1975. x+78 pages, $6.00.) With this most recent collection, An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards, Henry Taylor continues to develop a poetic stance that marks him as a unique, eclectic writer whose concern for form and content is at once academic as well as popular: he can speak to all of us. An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards offers a variety of styles and themes; no two poems are the same just as no two billiard shots are the same. The voice shifts from personal, almost confessional, as in "To Hear My Head 102BOOK REVIEWS ...