Born, I was born.

Tears represent how much my mother loves me,

shivering and steaming like a horse in rain.

My heart as innocent as Buddha’s,

my name a Parisian bandleader’s.

I am trying to stand.

Father is holding me and blowing in my ear,

like a glassblower on a flame.

First of all, I must note that it is difficult to reproduce indented lines accurately, owing to the discrepancy in letter sizes and kerning for all but fixed-width fonts (which are almost never used in poetry, for obvious reasons). Overall, the rule that seems to govern the indented lines in the original, printed version of this poem is that the indented line should run all the way to the margin, except in cases where doing so would create a horizontal gap between the previous line and the indented line. For the most part, this creates some degree of overlap between indented line and the previous line. One way to understand what this does to the rhythm of the poem is to consider how the lines would read without indentation:

Born, I was born.
Tears represent how much my mother loves me,
shivering and steaming like a horse in rain.
My heart as innocent as Buddha’s,
my name a Parisian bandleader’s.
I am trying to stand.
Father is holding me and blowing in my ear,
like a glassblower on a flame.

And also to consider how the poem would read if the indented lines were appended to the previous lines, to form long, continuous lines:

Born, I was born. Tears represent how much my mother loves me,
shivering and steaming like a horse in rain. My heart as innocent as Buddha’s,
my name a Parisian bandleader’s. I am trying to stand.
Father is holding me and blowing in my ear, like a glassblower on a flame.

The technique of indentation falls somewhere between these two effects, making the distance the eye travels from the previous line to the indented line not quite as great as in the case where the indented line were instead justified to the left margin, but creating some distance none the less, whereas in the long lines there is none. In this sense, the relationship between the last word of the previous line and the first word of the indented line is heightened, and the emphasis on the first word of the indented line is lessened–it is a kind of “half-line-break” or, at least, contains half of the overall effects of a full line break.

What occurs to me about how Cole employs this tactic is that he gains the effect of isolating certain ideas and images as half-broken (that is, indented) lines without the negative effects of drawing so much attention to the start of those lines. That is, he minimizes the rhythmic intensity of the break in “born. / Tears” yet swings the full weight of a line break’s effect behind the break in “me, / shivering” playing on the unclear referent, momentarily presenting the possibility of the young Cole “me” shivering when, in fact, it is the tears. Likewise, Cole minimizes the rhythmic weight that falls on “rain. / My” yet still achieves singular focus on the idea of “My heart as innocent as Buddha’s.”

Once Cole has introduced the otherwise uninteresting word “my,” he can give it weight through repetition, in keeping with the rhythm of repetition he set up in the beginning (and employs throughout this poem) with “Born, I was born.” He therefore gives full weight to the break in “Buddha’s / my” but only partial weight to the break in “bandleader’s. / I” since “I” is not a repetition. None the less, Cole again isolates the line, “I am trying to stand” without all the inconvenience of drawing so much attention to the “I.”

The most remarkable isolation, of course, is of the line “like a glassblower on a flame.” Here the metaphor simultaneously retains a degree of continuity with what it describes–father blowing in young Cole’s ear–but also draws attention to itself as a kind of pure metaphor, standing apart. It does so, however, by using the technique of an indented line to minimize the attention drawn to the somewhat weaker word “like.”

In this sense, Cole’s use of indented lines as lines which both retain continuity with the previous line and also isolate themselves as pure images or ideas represents a kind of best-of-both-worlds scenario–all the power of a line break, used appropriately, with a softened impact for the opening word of that line. Cole uses this technique masterfully in this poem to propel it into transcending the narrative into the lyric and even mythic dimensions of the poem.

What is so great about this poem is the way it feels in your mouth when read aloud (try it!) and the way it delights the senses–all the while evading much in the way of prosaic meaning. Yet despite its lack of solid, linear, non-symbolic meaning, the poem is profoundly assertive. Rather than examine the lush (concupiscent, perhaps?) language elements of this poem, I would like to take a moment to talk about the line breaks, and how the few artificially broken lines in the poem serve to strengthen the simultaneous sense of certainty and delight.

The first is:

The muscular one, and bid him whip /
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

These lines, and the one above it, are part of a command, which is necessarily declamatory. While most of the breaks in this poem fall on caesuras–like commas and periods–this more deliberate break has a deliberate effect: suspense. What will the muscular roller of big cigars whip? Apparently nothing more brutal or kinky than the makings of ice cream. But momentarily, our mind gets pushed out on that ledge.

Rather than create ambiguity, line breaks can also serve to reinforce a (false) sense of certainty about objects the poet refers to:

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress /
As they are used to wear …

Take from the dresser of deal, /
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet /
On which …

here “such dress” and “that sheet” combined with, again, the structure of a command, gives us an artificial sense that we know what the speaker is talking about. You know–that sheet. And yet, we do not. “Such” could mean “so much” as well as “that type of”–both meanings that somehow imply we know what the speaker is talking about already. This device–of declaiming in such a way as to imply the reader is inside the experience–can be a very powerful way to create certainty and ambiguity at the same time. The result is pleasure, and a more interesting poem. The line breaks serve to reinforce this, by giving great weight to the objects themselves.

Other lines build certainty through the classic device of rhyme:

If her horny feet protrude, they come /
To show how cold she is, and dumb.

Ultimately, the poem works to bring a tremendous amount of energy of declamation, certainty, perhaps even pomp and circumstance–to a collection of images and ideas that are not logically sound. The simultaneous self-assurance of the speakers voice, reinforced by line breaks and other devices, combined with the tremendous amount of strangeness in this poem, makes it a highly energetic and impactful work.

What is so great about this poet is his ability to bring tremendous strangeness and tremendous certainty together in many of his works. Ultimately, Stevens seems to have studied, understood, and reproduced a great deal of art that does not necessarily have great prosaic meaning. Yet it does mean something to the poetic mind, where it works and dwells and delights–time and again, read after read.