Each poem is unique in its own way. The three poems that are analyzed in this essay use different techniques of compression. In the three poems, compression not only makes the poem more abstract, but also allows us to use our imagination to paint out an image that we think the poet is describing. Word choice and sentence structure are also vital components in making a poem more concise and to the point. Techniques like metonymy, synecdoche, polysyndeton and asyndeton are used in all the poems. Compression is a major poetic technique and if the three poets did not use this technique, we would not be able to feel and visualize the images they portray and symbolize in their poems.
Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” is a perfect example of compression in poetry in which the poet uses a precise economy of language to effectively say much about what he has witnessed or what strikes or impresses him. Pound’s poem is written in two lines with a total of fourteen words, eight in the first line and six in the second. In the fourteen words, Pound describes what he saw on the Paris Metro vividly. The first line begins with ‘The apparition”, an imagery for “the faces in the crowd” (1). The word apparition makes me visualize the scene on the Metro which must have given Pound some sort of mystical feeling when he saw so many people with expressionless faces riding on the crowded Metro. I thought of ghostlike people when I first read the line. The poet obviously wants to make the reader visualize the scene like he does. The word “apparition” that conveys a supernatural feel does a great job. As for sentence structure, Pound links the two lines together with a colon to lead us on to the transition from the mystical image of the “apparition” directly to the lovely and delicate image of “Petals” that begins the next line. This is a direct contrast to the bleakness of “a wet, black bough” (2) that follows. The word “petals” suggests something delicate, beautiful and feminine. It contrast with the “wet, black bough” which is a bare branch. A petal on a black bough is very distinctively noticeable, not like the ghostly faces in the crowd. The poet uses the technique of synecdoche as “bough” is a part of a tree while “apparition” is only a description of people’s faces but not their bodies. Pound does not have to go into detail about the contrasts he portrays because the compression of words encourages the reader to picture the crowded scene on the busy Metro in Paris, a glamorous city in Europe. A poem like this uses precision in word choice to convey a set of images and emotion.
Like Pound, “Love Without Hope” by Robert Graves uses compression to portray the image and the story of a hopeless love told all in two couplets in a quatrain. The poem describes the unrequited love a young bird-catcher, who is from the laboring class, feels for the Squire’s daughter whose father is a landed gentry. The second line, “Swept off his tall hat to the Squire’s own daughter” (2), is another example of a compressed line. Instead of saying the bird-catcher is “swept off his feet” by the Squire’s daughter, which is the true feeling of the boy, he “swept off his hat” to salute her like someone much beneath the girl in social status and has to hide his feelings from her. The words, ‘”bird-catcher” in the first line and “daughter” of the Squire in the second are crucial contrast to the stations of life of the two young people. Whatever love exists, it is hopeless. In his feeling of his hopeless love for the girl, the bird-catcher lets “the imprisoned larks escape and fly” (3). The poet makes use of the imagery of the “imprisoned larks” that now have the taste of freedom and sing for joy “about her head, as she rode by” (4) to reveal the sadness of the bird-catcher as it symbolizes through simile, the closest he can ever get to her. This is beautiful but sad reality for the bird-catcher who cannot physically sing a song of love to the girl and now, the task is done for him by the freed larks. This quatrain of unrequited love compresses an otherwise long tear jerking story into four lines with secret longing and yearning. The readers are left to use their imagination to fill in the details of the case of “Love without hope”.
Apart from these two rather general poems, the most extreme type of concise compression comes in the poem “Rhyme for a child viewing a naked Venus in a painting of ‘The Judgment of Paris’” by Robert Browning. This poem is written in only two lines, “He gazed, and gazed and gazed and gazed, Amazed, amazed, amazed, amazed” (1-2) with the assonance “a” and resonance “z” for effect. The powerful use of repetition of the words “gazed” and “amazed” four times each is an amazing technique that Browning employs to describe the shock, the awe and the fascination of the child as he sees the painting of naked Venus for the first time. The daring economy of words used in the two lines to create such a strong impact on the emotions of both the child and the readers can only come from a gifted poet like Browning. Of course, the title of the poem “Rhyme of a child viewing a naked painting” is vital to help us appreciate the two lines of strong emotive behavior of the child. The polysyndeton used in the first line “gazed, and gazed and gazed and gazed” and the asyndeton used in the second line “amazed, amazed, amazed, amazed” make the poem very unique as two figure of speech techniques are used in two lines. Line one uses the conjunction “and” three times in succession to create a powerful continuation of the gaze of the child on the picture and the line seems to tell us that when the child wants to look away, his gaze simply goes back to Venus with the word “and”. Line two has the omission of all conjunction to describe the reaction to the “gaze”, which is, “Amazed, amazed, amazed.” Although compression is very obvious in this poem, Browning cannot compress anymore. If the poem is compressed into “He gazed and amazed”, all sense and feeling the poet wants to express about the child would be completely lost.
All three poems are different. Pound uses imagery. Graves uses metonymy and similes to show the bird-catcher’s hopeless grief, while Browning uses extreme brevity. However, they all have something in common. Compact word choice and sentence structure lead to their respective successes in compressing the messages hidden in the poems. Without compression involved, the poems would be very bland and prosaic. The art of cramming the hidden meanings of a poem is a very tough task and all three poets use their respective creativeness in the choice of poetic forms, meters, diction and sound effects in their poems. Compression is a vital technique in poetry, as it can fire the imagination of the readers and arouse their emotions as they enjoy the beauty of the lyrical techniques with the use of rich imagery and figurative language. They give readers depths to think, to feel and to visualize and, when read aloud, to enjoy the rhythm and sounds of the diction. This way, the poem sounds more sophisticated and lyrical while at the same time, interesting and easy to remember.
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