Shuffling coal

Question

Hi, What does "shuffling coal" mean? Thank you, Laumont.

Clive · Accepted Answer

Hi,

I think perhaps you mean 'shovelling coal'.

You'll find the verb 'shovel' in your dicytionary.

Best wishes, Clive

Laumont · Answer

Hi,

You might be right. But I am still "confused", because the expression "shuffling coal" is present in this stanza by Harryette Mullen:

"down there shuffling coal

humble materials hold

vestiges of toil

the original cutting tool"

Also, in this passage on the web:

http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/articles.php?id=34

It seems to me, after your explanation, that the real verb is indeed "shoveling." I wonder why they are using "shuffling" instead of "shoveling"? Is there any "extra," subtle meaning at stake?

Clive · Answer

Hi,

In the case of your second passge, it just seems to be a spelling mistake by the writer.

In the case of Mullen, you can't be sure, because poets like tp play with words.

Consider this excerpt from http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/perloff/after_langpo.html

The pink highlights are by me.

"Despite random, arbitrary, even nonsensical elements." Mullen has remarked of Muse & Drudge, "the poem . . . is saturated with the intentionality of the writer." "I intend," she insists, "the poem to be meaningful: to allow, or suggest, to open up, or insinuate possible meanings, even in those places where the poem drifts between intentional utterance and improvisational wordplay." And she talks of the poem's amalgam of "topical references to subculture and mass culture, its shredded, embedded, and buried allusions, its drift between meaning and sound, as well as its abrupt shifts in tone or emotional affect." Metonymy and pun, already much in evidence in the earlier Trimmings, are the key tropes, but they function in a traditional lyric form that ironizes their mode of operation, and is itself ironized by these figures. In the words of a later stanza:

down there shuffling coal

humble materials hold

vestiges of toil

the original cutting tool (M & D, 11)

where the paragram "coal" "hold" "toil" "tool" contradicts the ballad account of the miner's dreary work routine. Lyric and linguistic play combine to create a vision at once detached and yet oddly "personal."

Best wishes, Clive

Laumont · Answer

Clive,

Thank you so much!!!!! Laumont

Shuffling coal

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