Richter Post--Amy Bower

     Hans Arp's poem, "The Guest Expulsed 5," illustrates the roles of chance and sonic qualities in Dada poetry. According to Richter, chance played a role in Dada poetry "in the form of more or less free association." Arp's poem begins with the line, "their rubber hammer strikes the sea," and though a theme of the sea and sailing continues throughout the poem, for the most part the poem is nonsensical in meaning, and the characters and actions of the poem are unclear and seemingly unconnected. Take, for instance, the second stanza of the poem:

          All striped in yellow with the tides
          They decorate his firmament.
          The epaulettes they then construct
          Of June July wet cement.

     The poem reads as nonsensical. It makes no sense that an "epaulette" would be constructed out of "wet cement," and what even is "June July" wet cement? This stanza exhibits how Arp chooses words not to construct meaning, but rather, for their sonic value. As Richter explains, "coincidences of sound or form were the occasion of wide leaps that revealed connections between the most apparently unconnected ideas." Arp's poem is similar to Edward Lear's limericks in that just as Lear takes a very regimented poem structure (the limerick) and inserts words based on rhythm and sound, Arp is choosing words simply to fulfill his rhyme scheme. However, Arp differs from Lear in that while although Lear's limericks are nonsensical, the limericks still focus on a specific character and action. And while the character and actions may be ridiculous and nonsensical, the reader has a fairly distinct image of what is happening in the poem, even without the accompanying illustrations. When reading Arp's poem, however, it is hard to picture exactly what is happening in the poem. The difference between Arp and Lear is, as Richter discusses, the role of free association of chance. Instead of concentrating on one image, as Lear does, Arp's free association style of writing takes him from one image to another, seemingly unrelated, image. Usually, the link between these two images is the sound quality of the words and the structured rhyme scheme that Arp has set up for himself. For instance, the stanza quoted above starts with the line, "All striped in yellow with the tides," and though the image itself is somewhat unclear, the reader can infer that the poem is still dealing with some sort of ocean theme. However, the final line of the stanza is, "of June July wet cement," which invokes an image of land, rather than sea. The idea of "wet cement" is not typically associated with the idea of the sea. The clearest link between these two concepts is the rhyme of "firmament" with "cement." It is purely by chance that the meanings of the words "firmament" and "cement" would be so different in meaning.

     Furthermore, the emphasis on the rhyme of the poem is reflective of the Dada interest in performance. Because of the emphasis on sonic quality, the poem is best understood when read aloud, as the focus is more on the sound of the words than the actual content of the poem.