"Error Pursued" by Helen Pinkerton

Topics mentioned in this episode include:

 -My new page on the OPA website! 
-My delusions of TikTok stardom 
-The deliciously old school quality of Pinkerton's mind 
-Melville and Aquinas! 
-Stanzaic structures, stanzaic rhythm 
-Why iambic pentameter reigns supreme 
-Poetry: A marriage of sound and sense 
-Pride-induced dysmorphia 
-Pride as the supreme evil 
-Should I just include Milton on every episode? Yes. 
-The irony of transcendent ambition 
-Satan doesn't have time for your iambic line 
-Satan or Jesus: Who wore flesh better? 
-Ambiguity and multivalence 
-A definition of puns 
-Why puns are lit 
-Penitence, repentance, penance 
-The anatomy of despair, ala Kierkegaard 
-You are, in fact, your own worst enemy. 
-Bilingual pun!! Milton would be proud. 

Text of poem: 

Error Pursued 

Satan in Eden “was constrain’d
into a beast.” 
All of the proud, like him, are pained, 
and you not least, 
to wear the flesh of which we all are made. 

It was a means for him and Christ. 
Shrewder than we, 
each knew for what he sacrificed. 
Carnality 
destroys when not accepted and allayed. 

It is the gift of punishment
that you refuse. 
You say you sin without consent 
and thus excuse 
self-pity and self-hate—and your despair. 

For self is faithless to its end. 
Not wife or child 
will fail as badly, nor has friend 
as soon beguiled. 
It is your way, and you are most aware. 

Transcript

Versecraft Episode 8: “Error Pursued” by Helen Pinkerton 

I’m gonna start the show today with a couple of announcements: as of yesterday, my podcast is live on the Ohio Poetry Association website! They’ve put together a really beautiful page, and you can go visit it at ohiopoetryassn.org/versecraft. I’ve got a nice little headshot and bio, so if you’re curious about my background, you can go check it out there. Second thing on the docket is that I’ve made a deal with the devil, by which I mean I now have a TikTok! I’m mainly going to be using TikTok to record recitations of the poems I feature on this podcast, but I may also use it for brief instructional videos as well. You can look me up by name, Elijah Perseus Blumov, or my handle, @versecraftpodcast. Thanks so much to all of you who have been listening, and I’ll just take this opportunity to encourage you if you haven’t already to rate and review the podcast and tell your friends about the show if you think they might like it! I am truly grateful for every listener. With that said, let’s get started. 

The poem we’re going to be looking at today, “Error Pursued,” by Helen Pinkerton, is immediately interesting for a few reasons: the first is that it’s the first metrical poem we’ve encountered so far which, though it is iambic, isn’t in pentameter; secondly, it has the most interesting and unique shape of any poem we’ve looked at thus far, switching consistently between three different line lengths; and, finally, it is a poem which, though written by a modern poet, possesses a sensibility completely uncharacteristic of the modern age—the poem’s speaker is not only completely sincere and confident in her worldview, but even goes so far as to moralize and scold an unnamed addressee in a severe manner that hasn’t been common in poetry since the 18th century or even earlier. Pinkerton’s teacher Yvor Winters once said of her that “no poet writes with more authority.” That authority is on full display in this poem, and while what I’ve said might lead you to infer that this piece is going to be imperious, heavy-handed and sanctimonious, that’s hardly the case—Pinkerton gets away with her magisterial voice because she has the insight, subtlety, and eloquence to back it up. 

Helen Pinkerton lived from 1927-2017, and was, in addition to being one of the most staunch and accomplished voices of formal verse in the 20th century, a celebrated scholar of Herman Melville and the Civil War. Some of her finest poetry was written in the form of vivid dramatic monologues that explore, from different angles, the psychological complexity and moral stakes involved in that tragic conflict. Pinkerton was also a devout Catholic, and her fascination with the theology of Thomas Aquinas inspired her to write elegant and fierce philosophical lyrics like the one we’re going to look at today. The poem goes like this: 

Error Pursued

Satan in Eden “was constrain’d 

into a beast.” 

All of the proud, like him, are pained,

and you not least,

to wear the flesh of which we all are made. 

It was a means for him and Christ. 

Shrewder than we,

each knew for what he sacrificed.

Carnality

destroys when not accepted and allayed. 

It is the gift of punishment 

that you refuse. 

You say you sin without consent

and thus excuse

self-pity and self-hate—and your despair.

For self is faithless to its end. 

Not wife or child

will fail as badly, nor has friend

as soon beguiled. 

It is your way, and you are most aware. 

We have here four stanzas with five lines each, which makes for a twenty-line poem. However, the poem reads much more quickly than a fourteen-line sonnet because most of the lines are quite short. We can hear that an iambic rhythm is maintained throughout, but, except for the last line of each stanza, this isn’t iambic pentameter. Instead, we have a more complex stanzaic structure: the first and third lines of each stanza have four feet, the second and fourth lines have two feet, and the fifth line has five feet. A line of four feet is called tetrameter, and a line of two feet is called dimeter. Therefore, each stanza adheres to the following pattern: tetrameter, dimeter, tetrameter, dimeter, pentameter. 

We might ask ourselves: why have a two-foot line at all? Why not simply combine the four tetrameter and dimeter lines into two six-foot long hexameter lines? Well, for one thing, this would result in a much less intriguing rhythm. Instead of a satisfying alternation of half and whole lines, with the half lines serving as rhythmic pivots into the lines that follow them, and then ending with a decisive pentameter, we would have a sluggish three-line stanza that would seem like it should be pentameter straight through but just has too many syllables in the first two lines. This observation leads us to a phenomenon which actually helps to explain why pentameter is the most popular line length in English poetry. The reason is that pentameter is the longest line in English that remains fully intact as a line when we speak it. Lines of six feet tend to break down in our ear into two three-foot trimeter lines or a dimeter and tetrameter yoked together; lines of seven feet tend to break down in our ear into a trimeter and tetrameter line; and so on and so forth. As the longest sustainable line in English, pentameter allows for the greatest rhythmic flexibility and variety of expression of any meter. As for why most meter in English is iambic, there’s a complex linguistic explanation for this, but, long story short, iambic rhythms tend to most closely mirror the natural rhythm of English speech— therefore, they lend themselves very gracefully to poetic expression. All English speakers, from the poet laureate to the cashier at the local gas station naturally speak lines of iambic pentameter all the time without realizing it. “I lost my wallet, can I use your card?” “Just let me see it, I won’t break it dude.” “I can’t believe you wouldn’t let me pay” “Just stop, you’ve done enough, I’m going home.” All perfect iambic pentameter lines.  

To get back to Pinkerton, not only does switching lengths every line give her poem a dynamic, song-like quality, but it also gives her the opportunity to make her poem very rich in end rhymes. It’s simple math: if you rhyme the end of every line, and your lines are short, the ratio of rhymes to non-rhymes in your poem is higher than if your lines were long, and the rhymes follow on one another faster as you read it. Now you might say, well, she could have just used internal rhymes within the line—but this wouldn’t produce the same effect. Internal rhymes are great, but end rhymes, because they’re followed by a line break, achieve a sonic resonance and contextual importance that internal rhymes do not. The consistent chiming of the frequent rhymes, which follow not only a metrical rhythm but a stanzaic rhythm built out of the pattern of shifting line lengths, gives this poem a witty and musical quality. However, even more brilliantly, Pinkerton prevents this effect from becoming too sing-songy by enjambing many of the rhymes she makes. By having rhymes spill over syntactically into the next line, she keeps the poem always moving forward, not dwelling too long on the harmony of any given rhyme. 

Speaking of rhyme, we notice that the rhyme scheme of this poem extends across stanzas. In addition to a pretty standard rhyme scheme within the stanza, the last line of the first stanza rhymes with the last line of the second stanza; the last line of the third stanza rhymes with the last line of the fourth stanza. This verbal echo works because the stanzas flow by quickly enough because of their short line lengths that we can keep the rhymes in mind long enough to notice the effect. This effect in turn serves to sonically link the first two stanzas together and the second two stanzas together, splitting the poem into two halves. This is apt for the content of the poem, since even though each stanza is a new thought, the second stanza is a development of the first, and the fourth is a development of the third. Good poetry is a marriage of sound and sense, and this is an example of a thriving marriage. 

Now let’s actually get into what the poem is saying. Let’s begin again with the first stanza: 

Satan in Eden “was constrain’d 

into a beast.” 

All of the proud, like him, are pained,

and you not least,

to wear the flesh of which we all are made. 

This stanza makes two important points: the first, using Satan’s disdain at having to transform into a snake as an example, is that pride leads people to despise the limitations of having a body. This might sound abstract or far-fetched but consider: it’s the people who are most prideful who tend to care most about cultivating their appearance, making themselves look as perfect as possible, trying to erase any hint that, at the end of the day, they’re sweating, stinking, flesh and blood animals just like the rest of us. It is pride that leads one to think that one is above other people, above human error, and to despise any reminder that they do in fact possess limitations beyond their control. It is pride that leads people to try to make reality conform to their own will, rather than calibrate their will to reality. Pride is the delusion that most alienates us from the world and from truth, and this is why, in Christianity, pride is often considered the greatest sin. It is, after all, the reason Satan fell from heaven, and the reason Eve was tempted to partake of forbidden fruit. 

The second point made in this stanza is that the person the speaker is addressing is guilty of pride, and therefore guilty of despising the limitations of their body. As we will see, the poem develops into a withering analysis of this person, a damning account of how their pride has corrupted them. 

If you’re reading along, you may have noticed that the phrase “was constrain’d into a beast” is in quotation marks, and that is because this phrase is taken directly from Book 9 of  Milton’s Paradise Lost. In the scene from which the quote was taken, Satan is lamenting the fact that in order to seduce Eve, he will have to take a physical form. He acknowledges with superb irony that his ambition to conquer the highest heaven has now led him to degrade himself to the level of a lowly, earthly animal. By quoting from this passage, Pinkerton hints to us that she has a similar view of prideful people: that not only do they resent being enfleshed in mortal limitation, but that their desire to transcend their limitations is often the very thing that makes them more bound to their flesh than ever. This is as true of Satan as it is of the socialite, the Instagram model, the bodybuilder, the womanizer, the dictator, the cult leader, the transhumanist obsessed with forestalling their own death. 

These lines are iambic, but notice how the first word, “Satan,” is actually a trochaic substitution. Satan literally does not obey the iambic world order he has been thrust into, and it shows. 

            Let’s begin the poem again, and this time move on to the second stanza: 

Satan in Eden “was constrain’d 

into a beast.” 

All of the proud, like him, are pained,

and you not least,

to wear the flesh of which we all are made. 

It was a means for him and Christ. 

Shrewder than we,

each knew for what he sacrificed.

Carnality

destroys when not accepted and allayed. 

            The speaker now makes the stunning observation that both Satan and Jesus willingly took on a physical form, albeit for literally opposite reasons. Another thing that Satan and Jesus have in common is that each “knew for what he sacrificed.” That is, both Satan and Jesus deliberately chose to take on a physical form, believing that their ends justified the means. They are “shrewder than we” because we mortals had no choice but to become corporeal. The last two lines: “carnality/destroys when not accepted and allayed.” is a brilliantly ambiguous line, and a truly rich use of diction. The reason why is because both the words “carnality” and “allayed” have two possible meanings. Therefore, the phrase which contains both these words has four possible meanings—it is tetravalent. If word 1 can mean A or B, and word 2 can mean A or B, then we can read the phrase as AA, AB, BA, or BB. 

            As a side-note, let’s talk about puns for a second. What is a pun? From a technical standpoint, I would say that a pun is an actively multivalent word. What do I mean by this? Well, consider any sound or word that has multiple meanings, that is to say, multivalent. Take the word “chair” for example—a chair can be a piece of furniture, or it can be the head of a department. In most cases, when we use the word “chair” we are referring either exclusively to the wooden object or to the job title. However, if we were to use the word “chair” in such a way that it could refer either to furniture or a professional position, or both, we would be performing a pun. We would be harnessing the multivalent potential of the word “chair.” A pun, therefore, is an actively multivalent word. Contrary to popular belief, a pun doesn’t always have to be an attempt at humor. When used well, puns are one of the richest ways we can use language, a way of evoking multiple meanings at the same time in a single word, and thereby not only creating a connection between different concepts in our minds, but exponentially increasing the ways that we can interpret all of the information surrounding the pun. From a mathematical standpoint, puns are the most elegant way of using speech. You’re communicating the most information with the least signage. 

            Let’s get back to our phrase. “Carnality/destroys when not accepted and allayed.” Carnality, which comes from the Latin carne meaning “flesh” is usually used to refer to the state of being drawn to the flesh, being lustful. However, because this poem has prepared us for it, we can also interpret carnality to mean the state of being enfleshed, of being corporeal. “Allay” is a word that can mean either to diminish, or to relieve. Thus, we could read this phrase in one of four ways: 1. Lust destroys when it is not accepted and diminished. 2. Lust destroys when it is not accepted and relieved. 3. Corporeality destroys when it is not accepted and diminished. 4. Corporeality destroys when it is not accepted and relieved. The fact that the text could mean any of these, or all of them at once, is what prevents the poem from becoming close-mindedly didactic in this passage. Come to think of it, the word “accept” could either mean to acknowledge or to agree with. That means there are 8 possible readings, and that’s if we don’t include readings that allow for multiple meanings at once! Some of these readings make more sense than others, but the point is that they are possible. If I were to pin down what I think Pinkerton is trying to say, I would say that she intends carnality to mean primarily corporeality, but that carnality as lust is a prominent subtext, and that “accepted” and “allayed” are meant to balance one another: the fact that one is flesh-and-blood, and that flesh-and-blood creatures have flesh-and-blood desires, is something we must acknowledge and make peace with, something the prideful person is unwilling to do—however, we should also attempt to tame and regulate these desires even as we recognize that they are natural and deserve our care and attention. All of this and more Pinkerton says in the space of fourteen syllables. 

            Let’s begin again, and move on to the third stanza:

Satan in Eden “was constrain’d 

into a beast.” 

All of the proud, like him, are pained,

and you not least,

to wear the flesh of which we all are made. 

It was a means for him and Christ. 

Shrewder than we,

each knew for what he sacrificed.

Carnality

destroys when not accepted and allayed. 

It is the gift of punishment 

that you refuse. 

You say you sin without consent

and thus excuse

self-pity and self-hate—and your despair.

Immediately we encounter a seeming paradox: the addressee refuses the “gift of punishment.” How can punishment be a gift? Clearly, there is something about punishment in this case that Pinkerton sees as a good. Pinkerton goes on to clarify that her addressee claims that they are helpless to prevent themselves from sinning. Because they do not take responsibility and ownership for their actions, instead playing the victim, they refuse to be penitent about their crimes. Because are they are not penitent, they cannot repent, and because they cannot repent, they cannot take the further step of exercising penance for their crimes. Penance, the self-punishment which leads to the reform and betterment of the individual, is the gift of punishment being refused. The addressee’s projection of blame, and their inability to repent and take ownership, results in self-pity, self-hatred, and despair. On a deep level, they know they are in the wrong, but their pride prevents them from taking the necessary steps to reform themselves. 

Despair is the key word here. The religious philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, in his book The Sickness Unto Death, defines despair as the state of being lost to your true self, being alienated from your own deepest nature. Within this definition he identified three kinds of despair:

The first and most superficial is what he called “inauthentic despair,” a despair which results from being ignorant of any higher meaning in life. People in this state simply take the world at face value, make decisions based on desires and expectations handed down to them, and never rise to question the inner value or higher purpose of the world or their life. Such people have no idea that they’re in despair, but their shallow view of life prevents them from attaining any sort of spiritual growth and leaves them prey to forces so far beyond their control they are not even aware of them even as they suffer. 

The second kind of despair is what one might call the “despair of denial.” In this very common state of despair, a person recognizes that their self is something which has needs and potentialities beyond the day-to-day concerns of life, however, because the responsibility of caring for such a self is so daunting, so opposed to an easy life, the person does everything in their power to ignore and forget this truth and immerse themselves in mundane, easy, or pleasurable everyday activities. Despair in this case results from the disjunction between what someone does and what they know is right. 

The third and deepest kind of despair is what Kierkegaard calls “demonic despair.” Someone in this state does recognize and does seek to serve a higher truth but does not recognize the correct nature of that higher truth—namely, they do not recognize that the essential character of the self and the self’s relationship to the world is based in love, in selflessness. Driven by pride, they seek to acquire the truth for their own selfish ends, and this puts them in such absolute contradiction to the nature of the self and of truth that they inevitably fall into a state of spiritual solitude and misery. It is the sorrow and absolute loneliness of Satan, imprisoned within his own ego in the depths of Hell. 

The despair of Pinkerton’s addressee seems to fall somewhere between types 2 and 3. Because of their pride, they are in denial about their complicity in committing sin, and this leads them to remain trapped in their ways. They are, however, self-aware enough to detect their false position, their denial of their true self, and this leads to self-pity, self-hatred, and despair. 

With our enhanced understanding of this situation, let’s read through the poem again, this time all the way through. 

Error Pursued

Satan in Eden “was constrain’d 

into a beast.” 

All of the proud, like him, are pained,

and you not least,

to wear the flesh of which we all are made. 

It was a means for him and Christ. 

Shrewder than we,

each knew for what he sacrificed.

Carnality

destroys when not accepted and allayed. 

It is the gift of punishment 

that you refuse. 

You say you sin without consent

and thus excuse

self-pity and self-hate—and your despair.

For self is faithless to its end. 

Not wife or child

will fail as badly, nor has friend

as soon beguiled. 

It is your way, and you are most aware. 

            In the first line of the last stanza, we have another tetravalent phrase: “for self is faithless to its end.” Both the words “faithless” and “end” can be interpreted in two different ways, resulting in at least four possible readings of the phrase. “Faithless” can either mean without loyalty or without belief. “End” can either mean a goal, or a termination. As in the prior case, I think it best to read this line as possessing multiple meanings at once. The self is “faithless to its end” in the sense that the self chooses not to align itself with its proper purpose—this results in despair. Furthermore, the self is “faithless to its end” in the sense that the self, incapable of reform, denies belief in a higher power up until its death. It is one of the most damning lines of poetry I can think of. 

            The speaker goes on to say that no one whom the addressee is vulnerable or intimate with—neither their spouse, their child, or their friend, is capable of failing or fooling the self the way the self is capable of failing and fooling the self. The extent to which this is true is shown by the haunting last line: “it is your way, and you are most aware.” That is, the self knows what it is doing is not good for itself. Yet the self continues to fail and fool itself regardless. A debilitating sense of pride insists that what the self does is justified—it is “their way.” Because only we can see into our own selves, we are capable of simultaneously being most aware of our own failings well as most capable of causing those failings. The awareness that the self is pursuing error is not enough to prompt reform, but it is enough to cause suffering. 

            I’d like to end with another fascinating pun, but one that Pinkerton almost certainly did not intend. Pinkerton identifies “awareness” as the thing which prompts the despair. In Japanese, aware, which in its English form is spelled exactly like “aware,” means pity and suffering. If we include this reading into the poem, it fits perfectly. “It is your way, and you are most aware.” Therefore, you are most aware, the most self-pitying and miserable. The English word is the cause, the Japanese word is the effect. It makes for a beautiful and profound symmetry. 

            Probably few of the people listening to this podcast, myself included, are as orthodox in our beliefs as Pinkerton is. Nevertheless, because of the true insights into human psychology and morality, the startling and beautiful ambiguities of the language, and the grace with which it is executed, this poem manages to transcend its moralism to become a moving and universal statement on human nature. It is as much a warning as a chastisement. 

            With all that we have learned and explored, let us encounter the poem one last time, as an old friend: