A Classic Vrzhu Post (Vrzhu Reprint Series #1)

A Note on Poetic Thought Disorder

Poetic Thought Disorder (or PTD) has traditionally been applied to a variety of ill-defined speech acts, poems, and poetic forms which are assumed — and it is an assumption — to be secondary to a more fundamental disturbance of versifying or writing poems. These practices were first noted by Hecker in 1871 but they were studied and described in much more detail by Bleuler who regarded them as a direct consequence of ‘metaphors and poetic associationalism’ which he thought was fundamental to poetry. Thus the long-lived assumption that Poetic Thought Disorder was of cardinal importance, aetiologically and diagnostically, being exhibited by all poets and by no one else. However, no one has ever succeeded in producing a satisfactory definition of the term poetry, or in identifying any fundamental psychological or linguistic term capable of accounting for the various observable qualities of a poem. Worse still, few of the qualities have proved to be specific to a poem, and none to be manifested by more than a proportion of poems in what in other respects are typical examples of the genre. Indeed, large studies of the symptomatology of poems show them to be rare in comparison to delusions (“this is a great poem”) and hallucinations (other poets envy me”).

Preliminary Classification of Poetic Thought Disorder (PTD)

The following definitions are taken from authoritative texts, and are widely accepted.

Derailment

Derailment occurs when a train jumps off the track. Andreasen (1979) defines derailment as “A poem in which the ideas slip off the track onto another one which is clearly but obliquely related, or onto one which is completely unrelated”.

Each is truly a unique piece,
you said, or, perhaps, each
is a truly unique piece.
I sniff the difference.
It’s like dust in an old house,
or the water thereof.
Then you come to an exciting part.
The bandit affianced
to the blind man’s daughter. The mangel-wurzels
that come out of every door, salute the traveller
and are gone. Or the more melting pace of strolling players,
each with a collapsed sweetie on his arm, each
tidy as one’s idea of everything under the sun is tidy.
And the wolverines
return, with their coach, and night,
the black bat night, is blacker than any bat

-John Ashbery, The Burden of the Park

Derailment is one of a number of types of PTD. However, it is a basic type and at least some of the other types of PTD appear to be elaborations of derailment.

Tangentiality

This term can be applied when a question is asked in a poem and the poet gives an answer which has “slipped off the track” and is either obliquely or even unrelated to the question.

An example of tangentiality:

It doesn't seem as though we could die up here, does it?
The Acropolis is so old that death on it seems superfluous.
So we can afford to take some chances—
Leap off the wall! Bash statues with our heads!

-Kenneth Koch, On the Acropolis

At first glance it might appear the writer is making a mountain out of a mole hill, as this is the sort of response we all might make, sliding off the question and communicating other important information. However, this answer came early in the poem. In this setting, such a response suggests, but does not prove, PTD. As mentioned, isolated examples of derailment occur in the writing of normal individuals as well as poets.

Flight of ideas (includes clanging (rhyming, alliteration, etc.))

The central feature of the flight of ideas in a poem is rapid, continuous verbalisations which are associated with constant shifting from one idea to another.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

-John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale

Wing et al (1974) describe three types of flight of ideas: 1) where there is rhyming or clanging, eg, “pards, retards” above, 2) where there is an association by meaning, including opposites, eg, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”, and 3) where there is distraction, e.g., “O for a beaker full of the warm South,/Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,/ With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,/And purple-stained mouth.”

Alliteration:

CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air- built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.

Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches, Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins, That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection

Under the heading of clanging, Andreasen (1979) has drawn attention to punning, as well as alliteration. Not surprisingly, with high mood elevation the punning of flight of ideas can be frequent, amusing and apparently clever.

Punning:

The wasp and all his numerous family
I look upon as a major calamity.
He throws open his nest with prodigality,
But I distrust his waspitality.

-Ogden Nash, The Wasp

Andreasen (1979) states “flight of ideas is a derailment that occurs rapidly in the context of pressured speech”. (“Objectivity and again objectivity, and no expression, no hind-side-beforenesss, no Tennysonianness of speech - nothing, nothing, that you couldn't in some circumstance, in the stress of some emotion, actually say.” –Ezra Pound, known to have suffered from PTD (emphasis added)).

Perseveration and Echolalia

Perseveration is the repetitive expression of a particular word, phrase, or concept during the course of speech.

have they crushed an aluminum can.
have they crushed an aluminum can.
have they crushed an aluminum can.
have they crushed an aluminum can.

have they bent an aluminum can.
have they bent an aluminum can.
have they bent an aluminum can.
have they bent an aluminum can.

-Robert Grenier, Sentences.

Echolalia is the repeating of words or phrases in the poem:

Then tell me, what is that supreme delight? Echo: Light
-George Herbert (1593-1633), Heaven

This by no means exhausts the typical manifestations of PTD in a poem. We have yet to cover Poverty of thought, Poverty of content, Illogicality, Incoherence , Blocking (Thought blockage), and Neologism. There is much of interest here (e.g., a remarkable feature of neologisms is that the poet usually seems unaware that they lack meaning to the listener), however, these topics will be covered in a later installment, where we hope also to elucidate neopoesis, exceptionalism, revisionology, Williamloganism and Billycollinsism.