The movement created in Howard Nemerov's "Style" is very similar to the movement created when traveling up and down a musical scale (I end where I started, and begin where I will end). Here I will refer to the pentatonic scale, as it is the one with which I am most familiar; though this movement could be represented using many different musical scales.

For me Howard Nemerov creates an aesthetic experience for his reader. We can argue here whether poetry itself is aesthetic, but for me, I consider this medium one with aesthetic capabilities. I make this claim based in the fact that while reading/hearing "Style" one experiences a transformation (a movement) of sorts leading to the rise of the aesthetic emotion. This aesthetic emotion being one, specific, unique inner movement capable of being experienced during a myriad of aesthetic exposures. That is, I can experience the same aesthetic emotion from looking at a two-dimensional piece of artwork as I can from listening to a four-movement symphony. Essentially, what I am pointing to is one feeling/movement -- one aesthetic emotion.

In a painting, image, line, and color are used, but the experience or emotion comes from the compilation of these parts, not from their formation or representation alone. With this, it is not the images, words, or metaphors Nemerov presents, it is the place I am taken, the movement that is caused. I could even argue that this poem compels one to movement, a movement created in non-action; this is what he represents in Style, non-action as power.

Flaubert’s novel was never written and it will never be taught in universities. We are better off for this. Who takes the time to read one’s spirit as the poem suggests? It is with this non-action (not writing the novel) that this alternate story (the story of one’s spirit) can be explored. Without these two novels, room is left for exploration, room is left on our bookshelves, in our classrooms, room is made from this lacking.

The confines of the poem (words, line, metaphor, image) allow us to reach for something truly unique: the story of our spirit, the unwritten, innate, the so often forgotten part of our whole that creates the existence wherein we read and experience these novels (is not this existence more important?). With this, I am reminded of my initial proposal. Though the mediums are different, the pentatonic scale offers the same confines, wherein a musical exploration is made, and an expression developed from basic theory. In this scale numerous possibilities exist, but there is a choice, much similar to the choice we make daily to live and work within the confines of society/university/humanity while still maintaining personal freedom. I do not doubt there is freedom in form.