Notes on Bathos

by ericaeller

I’d like to take you on an intertextual journey of bathos. To begin with, let’s get a working definition of bathos. A google search of the definition comes up with this:

noun: bathos

  1. (especially in a literary work) an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous.
    “his epic poem has passages of almost embarrassing bathos”

  • Origin: Greek

    mid 17th century (first recorded in the Greek sense): from Greek, literally ‘depth’. The current sense was introduced by Alexander Pope in the early 18th century.

Alexander Pope made the term famous by writing a parodic style guide for bad poetry entitled Peri Bathous, regressing intentionally from the ancient guide for sublime poetry entitled Peri Hypnous.

Recently, in response to Donald Trump’s outrageous demands for “unqualified praise” from reporters, Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post created her own “bathetic” style guide for Trump coverage in the news.

Point #3 of Petri’s guide is a bathetic allusion to Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”:

3. Does Donald Trump contradict himself? Very well; he contradicts himself. Donald Trump is large. Donald Trump contains multitudes.

The lines from “Song of Myself” read:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

 

Arguably, Whitman’s own lines are an “omnisexual” bathetic allusion to the bible, perhaps to “Song of Solomon”, which has been described as perhaps the sexiest, most conspicuously “queer” book of the bible. A comparison of the two “Songs” is made here.

I’ve opted to make a slightly less elegant allusion than Petri has in a similar bathetic allusion to lines from “Song of Myself”:

Donald Trump too is not a bit tamed, he too is untranslatable,
He sounds his barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

 

Pope with his bathos and Whitman with his free-verse were two poets who willfully challenged poetic traditions. A poem I once wrote willfully merges the freedom of Whitman and anticlimax of Pope in my own “Song of…” poem.

My poem is entitled “Song of Sandwich.” The poem’s sex symbolism comes from my rendering of the sandwich as a symbol of the vagina. I try to make jabs at patriarchal and poetical attempts to “trump” women’s choice, discourse, etc (although you may have to “undress” the language to find these jabs).

Before I give you the text of this poem, however, I shall divert you to another quip I made about Trump via Twitter in relation to this sandwich theme:

By clicking on the link in my tweet, you’ll find a lively rebuttal by arrantpedantry.com of Merriam Webster’s “definitional meaning” of hotdog, stating that instead, meaning should be derived from use. Therefore, for all intents and purposes there is no such thing as:

Genus: Sandwich, Species: Hotdog

nor can we establish the following claim:

Genus: Politician, Species: Donald Trump

Octopi (I assume), Hotdogs, and Trump are to remain taxonomic anomalies.

Now, I present you the ultimate anticlimax of this post!

“Song of Sandwich” by Erica Eller

Until the night shall cometh, I’ve several little squares
Of cheese inside my sandwich, I won’t offer to share–
This is my reward for stretching dollars ’till they tear.
 
Says one cheese to the other (why must I overhear):
“I’m not about to tell you, and neither would you dare
write minor reportage about this underwear
I’d rather not abort, nor am I an au pair!”
  
A minor correspondence crawls out into the air
From a phallic ‘wich, though rowdy is its hair
purges mayo at its crust, as if it didn’t belong in there
 
My nemesis is meaning, but it seeps inside the lair
of every poet’s dreaming who ever had a spare
word to lace a paper–rolled, lit and inhaled just to impair
the sharp blade of the morning, the deep bliss in the stare
of Mona or Madonna, Magdalena or Cher
 
If this doesn’t have a subject, you know, neither did Seidel
But this has a smaller budget and I don’t write as well.
Imploring for a subject, look how flat I fell!
But words still sing so swell–
 
yes, words still sound so rare
When they find their proper pair–
 
Swelling oceans have a moment
Of pause before they break
Couldn’t call you on the phone
Or invite you for a steak
 
I couldn’t quite afford it
When all I had was this–
A lingering abyss–
 
Leave it there to rot, now
Leave it there to write
The lines of how Kraft singles
And Wonderbread unite
 
The voices in a sandwich,
They call me an absurdist–
but I think I heard them wrong,
I thought they said an artist.
 
In the mirror, I gazed at it so long,
It never had occurred to me
That myself and I could belong
to the archives of our longing
 
The poet’s names who stack so high
All fingering their “ladies” 
No mothers asking why
They haven’t swallowed coffee
Or drunk all of their tea
Or took to Law of Murphy
They’re so filled up with sea
(foam)
Sea water in their salty tears
Hot air in their lies
A crab or two down under
A carcass hosting flies
We know that our lineage of poets
Would rather shore up guys
 
Chorus:
I’ve only an addiction
to making mess of this:
the art we’re so attuned to–
I sing you streams of piss