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93 For he can creep”: Christopher Smart and Anaphora Joelle Biele I have always loved Christopher Smart’s poem “My Cat Jeoffry” from Jubilate Agno. It grabbed my attention when I discovered it as an undergraduate , and it has held my attention ever since. Written during Smart’s 1756–63 confinement at St. Luke’s Hospital, the poem uses anaphora to build to a quiet resolution. Considering that Smart was institutionalized for a religious mania that found him in a state of almost constant prayer, his use of a poetic form that can be found in religious texts from around the world makes complete sense. That the poem is about his cat is something I find deeply appealing. The word “anaphora” comes from ancient Greek and means “a carrying up or back.” As a rhetorical device, anaphora makes its first appearance in the first century b.c., in the Rhetorica ad Herennium and in Cicero’s de Inventione, where it is defined as the same word or phrase starting each line. In Greek, anaphora is related to the word for “offering” in the sense of sacrifice. This connection between the use of repetition and religious rites suggests anaphora’s oral roots. You find anaphora used throughout the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. Take Ecclesiastes, chapter 3—“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted”—or Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.”1 It is found in Celtic chants, Navajo prayers, and Malaysian spells, in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox liturgies , African American sermons, and Baptist hymns, in Hebrew response poetry and Yoruba and Zulu praise poems. The Aztecs used it, and so did the ancient Egyptians, along with Chaucer, Rabelais, and Shakespeare, to “ )DOFRQHU&KLQGG $0 joelle biele 94 varying degrees. After Whitman, there is, of course, Allen Ginsberg followed by contemporary poets like Joy Harjo and Gerald Stern. What draws me into the poem is the sheer delight Smart takes in describing his feline companion. He begins, “For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry,” and continues by using “For” to start the next seventy-three lines. The way Smart structures the poem is to make a statement or series of statements about the cat’s devotion to God, which he then follows with an example or series of examples that elaborate his original claim. This pattern emerges in the third line with the assertion: “For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.” Next comes the clarification: “For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.” Employing the religious and persuasive uses of “for,” the speaker calls to mind both a priest leading a congregation in prayer and a lawyer presenting a reasoned case. Smart then brings in an image by using the metaphorical “wreathing” instead of “circling,” shifts his diction to the conversational “seven times round,” and succinctly qualifies his description with “elegant quickness.” What keeps me in the poem is Smart’s humor. Utterly serious about what he is saying, Smart shades each line with a gentle grandeur and a playful irony. His joy is abundant as he pairs the philosophical with the quotidian and glides between the devotional and the everyday. For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt. For every family had one cat at least in the bag. For the English Cats are the best in Europe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . For he is tenacious of his point. For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery. For he knows that God is his Saviour. Smart’s juxtapositions work so well because of the repeating“for”; anaphora is the thread that holds the beads of the poem together. Occasionally, he expands on the original“for”by adding a few words that will also repeat.You find it in lines nine to eighteen, where he whimsically outlines his cat’s day, beginningeachline with“For first,”“for secondly,”“forthirdly,”“forsixthly,”“for eighthly,” winding up the series with“For tenthly he goes in quest of food.” )DOFRQHU&KLQGG $0 [3.131.13.37] Project MUSE...

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