Pantoum: The Mirror of a Mirror
The Pantoum is a poetic form with a Malay origin. It consists of a series of quatrains woven together by (normally) an abab rhyming scheme. Breaking it down further, the opening couplet of each quatrain (referred to as the pembayang) often depicts imagery of some sort. To contrast this, the second and final couplet of the quatrain (referred to as the maksud) often displays the meaning behind the pembayang. Author Vince Gotera of “The Pantoums Postcolonial Pedigree” describes these two couplets as mirrors to one another (254). As we weave together all the quatrains into one piece, we sort of end up with a metaphorical chain of these mirrors reflecting off other mirrors.
When you look into a warped mirror you can still recognize yourself. You’re slightly distorted but you’re still recognizable. Now imagine taking this distorted image and reflecting it off another, equally warped, mirror. What you get is another image even more distorted than the last. Keep this pattern going and eventually the image is so distorted you can barely recognize your own figure. As we read these pantoums, we can think of the form as the same distortion we see in this pattern. Singling out specific quatrains we can always both sense and visually see the reflection of the preceding ones. But putting them all together, we get this beautiful graduation of slight distortions (or changes) that come together to create a narrative within the piece. To dive deeper into this metaphorical mirror of a mirror (of a mirror of a mirror), we can take a look at Peter Meinke’s “Atomic Pantoum.”
To start, here is the opening two quatrains:
In a chain reaction
The neutrons released
Split other nuclei
Which release more neutron
Now lets compare it to the second quatrain:
The neutrons released
Blow open some others
Which release more neutrons
And start this all over
At first glance, we can see how these two quatrains are sort of warped mirror reflections of each other. The second line becomes the first and the last becomes the third. Since these two quatrains share two identical lines they feel very similar yet different (even if slightly). For example, in the pembayang we see similar imagery of a neutron splitting. And in the maksud we get very similar commentaries on repetition. The second quatrain has such slight differences from the first that when comparing them alone you barely sense the differences. But moving back and looking at the poem as a whole, you can see a graduating form.
What started off as a representation of an atomic reaction becomes a commentary on religion and war. In our mirror pattern, the reflected image gets increasingly distorted to the point where it’s unrecognizable. And that is not to say the distortion is bad, it’s just different. In this poem, we see a similar graduating form. Comparing just the first and the last line, you’d see very little similarities, but as a whole the poem displays a natural change.
By looking at Meinke’s poem we can see how the use of this pattern elicits a narrative that we don’t always see in poetry. The poem starts off small, with the action of splitting a nuclei. This then slowly spirals to a point where society eagerly awaits to use this bomb to their advantage and then praying and lamenting on doing so. The use of this form shows us how quickly one can become the other; how curiosity could quickly become fear. This graduation creates a story or a series of small distortions which ultimately makes for a more powerful piece.
Gotera, Vince. “The Pantoum’s Postcolonial Pedigree.” An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. Edited by Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes. U of Michigan P, 2002, pp. 254–261.
Meinke, Peter. “Atomic Pantoum” An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. Edited by Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes. U of Michigan P, 2002, pp. 258.
