Snow Day Post--Amy

Near the beginning of Mallarme's poem "A Dice Throw," there is a line "whether the Chasm..." and between the words "the" and "Chasm" there is a gap of white space larger than the white spaces between the other words. This gap of white space is representative of a "chasm." Thus, the form of the poem enhances the meaning of the words by visually representing the words. Also, these words are descending downwards, and it is as if the words are falling into a chasm of white space. Not only are the words falling into the chasm, but the reader seems to be descending into this "chasm" as well as his or her eyes follow the words downward into more white space. There are many "chasms" in Mallarme's poem. Mallarme breaks the rules of form by having the reader jump from one page to another to follow the poem, and the crease between the pages is a sort of "chasm" that Mallarme tries to cross using his words. The chasm cannot be bridged fully, however, for it is very jarring at first to have to jump back and forth between pages when we are used to reading one page at a time. In fact, we cannot even be sure that this is the way Mallarme intended for us to read it. In the "chasm" line itself, the "c" in "chasm" is capitalized, as if the word starts a new sentence, however, there is no punctuation after the word "the" and in a grammatical sense, the word "chasm" should be in the same sentence that "the" is in. Thus, it seems that the chasm itself (and by chasm I mean the large gap of white space) serves as a sort of punctuation. The white space is itself its own sort of grammar, and through it Mallarme is able to bend the rules of conventional writing and open up new doors for meaning and interpretation.