SENTENCE AND POEM

Archibald Hill has proposed that the chaotic word order of a Cummings poem ("nonsun blob a") can be rearranged so that clear sentences emerge. He has made a version of the poem in this way, but that version is questionable, not on the ground that such work is out of order, but on the ground that the biases of a linguistic theory, generative grammar, have led Hill to treat each sentence separately, as if each were isolated from the rest of the poem. A second version of the poem, arrived at through rearrangement of the word order, but with an eye to the overall meaning of the poem, is offered as a counter to Hill's. The argument is made that users of language, when they are behaving naturally, always assume that there will be overall meaning in any text—conversation, novel or poem.A hearer or reader always interprets a sentence in light of the rest of the text. Sometimes he may be led to interpret erroneously, but he must interpret. A more prudent linguistic theory will take account of this fact.