Pronominal Poetics: "This Is How It Goes."

In adopting the poetic stance we adopt the posture of reading the poem (and there is a definite posture to reading); the articulatory or verbal gestures of the poem become our own. The standing is also a pointing or an indicating. As the poem nods or winks or grins or raises a subtle eyebrow, so do we, the reader. This is how it goes.

“This” is a pronoun; it points to where it stands. This is where it stands. This is how it goes. Not “that,” which points to the past or to some other place. This is the present, for the poetic experience is always in the present. When we adopt the poetic stance we are always adopting it here and now. If “this” is the poetic experience, then “it” is the poem.

The poem is a pronominal object that points elsewhere; it stands for the complex of sounds and associations that constitute the poetic experience; in essence, the poem is pronominal for the poetic experience. The poem, the “it,” points to “you” and “me” the reader, and it points to the poetic experience that you and I will have. “This” is the experience of “it.” This is how it goes. It is an experience.

“Is” is the pure copula, connecting the subject to its predicate, connecting “this” to “how it goes.” The pure copula has no content except to signify existence, that “this” and “it” are connected. But “this” is how it goes. “This” is the “how,” the “how” of “it.” “How” is a conjunction. “How” connects the pronoun “this” to the pronoun “it” and its existence is asserted by the pure copula “is.” “How” is the “manner in which” of “this,” how it goes.

“Goes” is the verb, simple present tense and intransitive. “To go” means to move, to go from one place to another. “This,” the poetic experience, is “how,” the manner in which, “it,” the poem, goes. This is how it goes. But “it” goes nowhere but within the reader, for whom “this” is the experience of “it,” here and now, the manner in which the poem moves within you and me.

In adopting the poetic stance, we adopting the standing of the poem, its posture, the way it stands in relation to other things, what “it” is about. “This” is how the poem goes about being about what it is within the reader’s adoption of the poetic stance. The reader stands for the poem by adopting its stance, and what the poem stands for becomes what the reader stands for. This is how it goes.