Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy

“Earthearthearth,” Johnson remarks in the preface, “is a linkage of ear to
hear and heart. Art and hearth are also hid in it.” Certainly all these words
become paragrammatically present. But what strikes me as especially odd is
that the words “heart” and “hearth” only stand out (and then dominate)
when the line is repeated. When we read

earthearthearth

by itself, the word “earth”—containing, as it does, “ear”—remains intact,
but the longer the column above, the more dominant the th becomes in the
constellation, with “heart” right at the center between them. And further,
the column makes “the” prominent, even as arth suggests arthrography, the
radiographic examination of a joint—what lies behind the surface.
Johnson’s seemingly simple and innocuous little columnar poem thus has
an interesting relation to Mahler’s “Drinking Song of Earth’s Sorrow.” The
ear and the heart, the ¤re in the hearth—these are basic components of hu-
man life on earth, the substratum of all else, the Stevensian “the the” of the
“world on the dump” that must be treated to the arthrography or art that sees
into the life of things.
From the earth, seen in this light, the cycle moves to what is above and
beneath it:

s tone s

s tone s

s tone s

s tone s

C L O U D

A L O U D

A L O U D

A L O U D

A L O U D

A L O U D

dark behind and

dark beyond and

underneathunder

Johnson’s Verbivocovisuals 197