There are times when lines collide and comment on each other wonderfully, like in this battle between American poet Jorie Graham (Iowa, Harvard) and Indian poet, novelist, and musician, Jeet Thayil.
Graham has been a force (and a controversy) in American poetry since the early 1980s—when this line was published:
A rooster crows all day from mist outside the walls.
The line from Thayil is more recent, but do we care when a line was written?
There are no accidents. There is only God.
These two lines strike different parts of our brains, with equal pleasure.
The inner eye of our senses registers the rooster and the mist and the walls.
Our speculative faculty ponders what it means to say there are no accidents—there is only God.
The order in which elements arrive in a line of poetry make a subtle difference in how we feel about it.
Why is there a sublime feeling of distance in the Graham line? Because we travel in the line from the rooster—to its crowing—to its crowing all day—to the mist—to outside—to outside the walls.
Graham is not a formalist; but this, her best line, is a perfect alexandrine—6 iambics, one more than in the common iambic pentameter—and this stately meter contributes to the line’s sublimity.
The sublimity of Jorie Graham’s line is no accident.
Let’s change the sequence of the line, keeping all its parts, all its elements the same, and see what happens.
Outside the walls,
All day, from mist,
A rooster crows.
Just by changing the order, it now sounds like a haiku, with a homely, intimate, “Eastern” feel, rather than a poignant, majestic, “Western” one. (And it’s still iambic.)
Change the order of the other line and:
There is only God. There are no accidents.
Somehow this now sounds less certain, more dubious, and almost invites the reply: what do you mean there are no accidents?
The line make more sense when God follows accidents; for accidents can seem to exist when they happen, and then only afterwards—we feel, ahh! that was meant to be. In order for the line to have force, it must be in the order Thayil presented it—with God at the end.
And now, Marla, let us walk outside these walls and discuss which one of these lines finally ought to win at last.
Marla Muse: It is a pleasant evening. Yes, let us go.
