Open Form Poetry in "What a Wonderful Bird the Frog Are"

Introduction: Attention-Getting Devices in Poetry

Artists and writers utilize all manner of devices to attract their readers' attention. Vladimir Nabokov, in his novel Pale Fire, framed his work in the form of a poem and its associated criticism. Nabokov publicly stated that he attempted absolute mediocrity in writing the poem "Pale Fire," but this only showcases the unerring genius in the remainder of the work — and, as some critics would have it, genius in the poem itself despite Nabokov's own disclaimer. Thomas Pynchon, in his epic Gravity's Rainbow, used all manner of attention-getting devices, including various songs that the reader automatically sets to music in her head.

In the anonymous poem "What a wonderful bird the frog are," the author uses several attention-attracting techniques across just six lines to set the work apart in the reader's mind. Primarily, the poet uses open form style as defined by Michael Meyer, but she — if we arbitrarily assign the poet a female persona — also employs techniques of startling the reader and repetition to drive home the uniqueness and the concept of the poem.

Michael Meyer defines open form poetry as "an intense use of language to establish rhythms and relations between meaning and form. Open form poems use the arrangement of words and phrases on the printed page, pauses, line lengths, and other means to create unique forms that express their particular meanings and tones" (Meyer).

Open Form Style and Line Length

The most immediately striking example of open form style in the poem lies in its line lengths. The line lengths decrease until the third line, at which point they begin to increase until the last line, which is by far the longest: "When he sit, he sit on what he ain't got almost."

The effect of the varying line lengths is to lull the reader into an acceptance of the poem's tone and meaning. Like a pitcher who works quickly to batters in baseball, the poet establishes a certain rhythm early in the poem and reduces line length to make this rhythm feel natural to the reader. When the reader has been coaxed into accepting the poet's tone — by the third line, the shortest — the poet slowly begins to expand the line length and push the boundaries of what the reader is willing to accept. To continue the baseball analogy, a pitcher will throw a borderline strike and then continue to try to expand the strike zone, until the umpire stops granting the call.

That is precisely what the poet hopes to accomplish with line length. She knows her poem is unconventional, so she fights — or rather, connives — for the reader's acceptance before pushing the envelope and drawing the reader into the poem's purposes in tone and meaning.

Dialect and Grammar as Poetic Tools

Open form poetry techniques are also evident in the poem's use of dialect. The poet uses words like "ain't" and grammatically irregular constructions to convey a colloquial style. The author resists the trappings of elevated speech in favor of the language of familiarity and identification. The resulting grammatical patterns are endearing and further win the reader over to the author's viewpoint and perspective.

Pynchon and Nabokov, mentioned earlier, also use this same open form strategy to accentuate their points. Pynchon often uses dialects to convey what certain characters are thinking. Though other stylistic elements may shift throughout Gravity's Rainbow, each character's individual manner of speaking or thinking remains constant, providing both a grounding point for the reader and a reason to identify more closely with each individual character. Nabokov employs the same method but stays away from slang dialect; instead, he employs different lyrical patterns in both the poem "Pale Fire" and its associated criticism. The result is the same: the reader feels grounded and identifies more strongly with Nabokov's characters and themes. Both of these benefits are quite evident in Nabokov's broader body of work and in "What a wonderful bird the frog are" as well.

The loose grammar also serves to complement the light tone of the poem. The subjects are frogs and birds and what they ain't got; the poet is not plumbing morbid issues of death and depression. The grammatical lapses drive this point home. This is a simple but profound poem of observation which, on the surface, carries no deep implications for life and death — though the reader is free to extrapolate as he wishes. With the poet's successful employment of open form poetry, the reader is nudged to do exactly that. He is lulled into an acceptance of the poem's uniqueness, and then its endearing grammatical patterns win him over entirely.

Conclusion: Layered Interpretation Through Poetic Strategy

The end result of all of these poetical strategies — open form, startling, and repetition — is that the poet opens up her poem to the reader for various layered interpretations. But these interpretations are only possible because she is successful in grabbing the reader's attention and forcing him to sit up and take notice of her poem — "almost."

Works Cited

Meyer, M. Open Form Poetry.

Nabokov, V. Pale Fire. New York: Vintage, 1953.

Pynchon, T. Gravity's Rainbow. New York: Viking, 1973.