Hernandez- Free Write Ramble

The concept of white space is really interesting. Before I actually began reading and writing poetry, I thought it was simply a visual aesthetic. Mallarme does use that aspect of white space, creating a pull and flow in the visuals, the ebb of the tide to the reader, linking to the visual of the Master sailor hesitating when going out to sea. And yet there’s a lot more. We can see that white space, a real absence of meaning and sight, is connected to the void. There is absence there, there’s nothing to really make out, just a lack of everything. And yes, I think Mallarme uses this for a reason beyond shaping the text to a suitable visual structure. It seems that he uses it to confuse or at least intrigue the reader, with the white space being everything that surrounds the words, a barrier of sorts. It’s a great contrast, the aspect of structure in a concept which should logically not have any structure at all, as it represents the void. The void itself in relation to white space is so much like the ocean imagery we get as well. It’s interesting to thing that in Mallarme’s time the ocean was a void, it was a vast unknown what was under the waves, and even in modern times continues to be a place of uncertainty, one of two frontiers we have yet to chart in their entirety (the other being space). So once again, hit with the initial imagery of the Master hesitating, we are struck by a wave like flow of visual construct, a gap of knowledge of the white space, and most of all, a real connection to the unknown within the void, or even an absence of knowledge. And then we have to draw this into a direct connection with the throw of a dice. The absence of knowledge in chance is a great thing to contemplate in relation to the previous thoughts. Nonsense itself is much like this, a throw of the dice, chances taken to produce pieces of great divergence and meaning within the absence of meaning. Chance is a great player; it has so much to do with the mind of writers, a trek into the void, even the relation of the void to death. It’s almost like it’s beyond thought, the absence of meaning. I've said that phrase over and over and I can’t help but think that although some may classify nonsense as such it is quite the opposite; it’s a grand scheme of connecting meaning to what should not have meaning. So perhaps Mallarme took these three concepts, the void, absence, and the ocean and said “I’ll make a poem of chance, and it will be nonsense” or perhaps took these and made it a contrast of itself.