Anasazi (Style)

Style

Style in “Anasazi” is intrinsic to the poem’s presentation and meaning. A song of praise or celebration needs rhythm and a discernible cadence to bring its full bearing to life. Snyder uses two predominant mechanisms to convey the adulatory intent of this work — alliteration (similar vowel sounds and similar consonant sounds) and line length.

While the first two “lines” are merely exact repetitions of the title, they set an alliterative tone for the rest of the poem. Not only do the first three syllables of the word “ah-nah-sah-zee” rhyme, but they also carry a soft, pleasant rhythm that warrants the repetition. The alliteration continues in the very next lines with the short u sound in “tucked up” and the cl sound in “clefts” and “cliffs,” followed by the hard c in “corn.” Lines 5, 7, and 8 all end with the short e sound in “earth,” “eagle-down,” and “elbows,” and toward the end of the poem, we have “canyons,” “cold,” and “corn-basket” blended with “rolling,” “red,” and “rock.” The last line rounds out the work by simply bringing us back to its rhythmic beginning.

Line length plays a major roll in the presentation of this poem by the gradual flow of nearly complete sentences into briefer phrases and finally into one- or two-word lines that wind us down as though a dance or song is coming to an end. In his Ideogram, History of a Poetic Method, critic Laszlo Gefin tells us that in Turtle Island “the form is coextensive with the material. As Snyder comments, ‘Each poem grows from an energy-mind-field-dance, and has its own inner grain.’ — .[In other words], energy invades the mind, expands out into a field from which the poem, the dance of words, comes into being.” In “Anasazi,” Snyder moves from the longer cadences of lines such as “your head all turned to eagle-down/ & lightning for knees and elbows” to the briefer “ — smell of bats/ the flavor of sandstone/ grit on the tongue” to the drum-like beat of the last few lines. Read these phrases slowly and notice how the accents fall at the beginning of each to give them a TA-dum, TA-dum rhythm: Corn-basket. Wide-eyed. Red baby. Rock lip. Clearly, Snyder’s form here relates directly to the subjects of the poem as well as the feelings he has for them. While the work may be “officially” free verse, there is much evidence of careful crafting by the poet to create a specific sound, a specific rhythm, and a specific movement. In doing so, he has composed a piece whose form can be heard and felt, as well as seen.