'Scrutiny When There’s No Thought to Convey'

Thomas Carper takes the epigraph to “The Beauty of Poetry” from Chapter X of George Santayana’s Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900): 

“I have heard it maintained by a critic of relative authority that the beauty of poetry consists entirely in the frequent utterance of the sound of' ‘j’ and ‘sh,’ and the consequent copious flow of saliva in the mouth.”

 

Santayana is having some droll fun here. Theories about language, specifically poetry, are often laughable. All I have to hear is the word “poetics” and I run for the exit. Santayana follows the sentence above with this: “But even if saliva is not the whole essence of poetry . . .” Carper’s sonnet (in the August 1986 issue of Poetry) takes it from there:

  

“I have heard a respectable critic say,

And heard his judgment greeted with a hush,

That frequent utterance of the sound of ‘j’

And ‘sh’ in poems shall get our glands to gush

A joyful moisture, and inspire a rush

Of admiration that will keep alive a

Sonnet for a century. But tush,

It surely will not be shots of saliva

That let a shabby jingling verse survive a

Scrutiny when there’s no thought to convey.

And did our special poets just contrive a

Kind of canning that can stash away

Small jars of juice we open and send sloshing

Into our mouths? Maybe the critic’s joshing.”

Carper neatly punctures the silliness of a crackpot idea. Spit is not wit.