Awareness: Of the Song Within the Words

Jonathan Stalling creates a very magical and dynamic artifact in Yingelishi.  As he says himself, "If you turn your head toward English, you hear the word 'English' spoken with a Chinese accent, but if you can understand Chinese, you hear "chanted/sung songs, beautiful poetry,' four words that together form the strongest possible valuation of the sounds being heard as an aurally beautiful poetic idiom fully capable of song."  

Or to put it another way:

Turn your head slightly to the left,
     and you hear English,
          slightly to the right,
                          Chinese,

                                  straight ahead, neither,


                                              both.

There is much stirring reference to song in Stalling's introduction to Yingelishi, e.g., 

The word [Chinese character] "yin" is more than a word for singing; it is a word used to name a way of reciting classical Chinese poetry as song.  Further, it describes a very unique way of finding the music inside the language through a mixture of following tonal prosody and the feelings that arise from the characters' meanings.  This form of singing, therefore, doesn't impose a song upon the words, but finds the song within the words, and then releases both for others to hear.  This is the mission of the work here: to release the songs within the accent of Sinophonic English so that others can hear the music emanating between our languages." (3)

Even when speaking of the phrase book from which much of Yingelishi is derived, he is acutely aware of voice:

When I first read this simple phrase book, I felt so moved, not because of its melodramatic story that capitalizes on the commonly exaggerated danger of traveling abroad, but because the accented voice that tells the story never fully becomes English because it never really stops being Chinese.  If the vulnerable voice of the protagonist is the tragic "chanted song" of this book, then the poems that take shape within the phonetic architecture of this simple story are its "beautiful poetry." (6)

Stalling speaks of "a voice coming from behind the Chinese" (5), and "all these voices" he hears in his head when he tries to chant the poems of this book (10).  In a way which I find vulnerable, in its recognition of his values and limitations, he says "While I love to read and chant these songs, I traveled to China to find someone with a voice that could reveal the feelings I feel when singing them, which I do not think were necessarily accessible through recordings of me reading the work" (7).

I admire how he speaks simply and as accurately as possible about his experience of this work, which readers won't recognize because of precedent but only because of perhaps previously unarticulated apprehensions about language:

The idea for chanting the poem "Numbers" (the second poem in the book) was given to me by the Taiwanese poet Guan Guan, who upon reading the poem in Qinghai, China, in 2009, chanted it for me as if it were a Buddhist mantra.  The experience left me with no alternative but to explore this possibility further; those felt auras of sound took up residence in me and refused to budge. (8)

Stalling raises questions about multiplicity of voice in language, or rather specificity of the ears the listener brings, making meaning molten and fluctuating, heaving between linguistic continents.

There is a deep respect -- for all the people who bring their gifts, for his own foolish enterprise -- for the kitchen table and "the dark gate of poetry chanted free of the vulgarity of intentional referential meaning," both held in the same questing sentence.

In English, a chant also refers to song but is most often built on repetition, which can seem wooden perhaps, in relation to the fluidity of Yingelishi:

The repetition of a word or phrase adds strength to a poem.  Also, the rhythm of the repetition forms a musical beat, one that uses words the way a rock and roll song is driven by its beat:

          Go away now, and leave us alone.
          Go away now, and leave us alone.
          Go away now, and leave us alone.

Try beating that one out on a table top.  It should sound like a musical phrase with a strong, rhythmical pattern  To feel it build in intensity, say it aloud seven or eight times, instead of two or three.

Of course, most chants don't repeat just one line over and over.  They combine repeated lines or phrases with words and sentences that vary.  Blues songs, slave songs, and prison songs all draw on the ancient for of the chant.
                                           
(Ron Padgett, Handbook of Poetic Forms, 45)

It is almost as if the approach recommended here is to beat one's way into another space, battering through the words.  It seems different to the seemingly free-form questing chant of Yingelishi.  What do you think?  What would be the mood of your chant?

The Handbook of Poetic Forms recommends:

To write a chant, it helps to come up with a good line you wish to repeat; that is the foundation.  Remember that a chant is musical, so make sure that your line or phrase has a lilt or beat that seems musical to you.  What do you do next?  Why plunge on into the unknown, remembering that chantsm with an openness and spontaneity you won't find in a sonnet or a sestina, lack a predetermined beginning, middle, and end. (45)

Using these directions, or your own poetics, write a chant related to your reading of Yingelishi, or any of its lines.