April is turning out to be a dizzying whirl of a month. My trusty ThinkPad which saw me through many good times (and some really bad ones) faltered to an end last week — it was already a specialist in slowness but additionally, the screen hazed over and the adapter stopped working. I bought a new Sony Vaio. Now, I have to let go of the old and embrace the new, make it my own, stop looking at it as something I’ve borrowed for a while. I grow into things slowly. Even the shiniest, blingiest ones. Especially those.
But, but, but, the brighter, speedier machine could not have come at a better time. It’s National Poetry Month in the US and the internet is agog with poetic activity. It’s impossible to keep pace with everything that’s going on but I’m trying to snack on as much good stuff as possible, whenever I get the time. It’s a great reminder of what truly matters in life. Lots of people are writing a poem a day, here and here. The New York Review of Books is posting a poem a day from their archives and the website of the Academy of American Poets gives you a prompt a day at their workshop. Also, at Poetry Out Loud, Robert Pinsky is talking about reading poetry aloud and there are readings by contemporary poets as well.
So I was listening to some of the readings and it struck me (again) how hard it is to harness the twin talents of writing and performing. For example, I liked Linda Pastan’s ‘why are your poems so dark’ and Beth Ann Fennelly’s ‘Because People Ask What My Daughter Will Think of My Poems When She’s 16′ as poems on the page, but didn’t think they were read particularly well. Pastan lacks energy and Fennelly sounds strangely breathy at odd moments. On the other hand, Tod Boss does justice to his ‘Don’t Come Home’ and Kim Addonizio’s poetry may not be the greatest but one can’t deny she reads damn well.
Yes, poetry did begin as an oral art and it’s important for a poem to sound as good as it looks. But what if a writer is not a good performer? How much does the poem suffer as a result? After all, the two skills don’t always nestle side by side in the same person. Multiple factors affect the reading of a poem: diction, accent, inflection, energy, emotion, attitude. The poet’s personality. Most of all, that. Which also leads me to another question: how much does one like or dislike a poem based on what one feels about the personality (or rather, persona) of the poet?
There are lots of arguments about the written versus the performed poem and that’s not really my question here. I think both are valuable in their own ways. What I’m questioning is the premise that the enjoyment of a poem is always enhanced when the poet’s personality pops itself into the process, which some hold up as defence of poetry readings. For example, the Poetry Archive (one of the best places to listen to poetry), has this to say about poets reading their own work:
In this respect, it’s difficult to say a poet ever reads their work entirely ‘badly’. Even if they mumble a bit, or read ponderously, or at too great a lick, their delivery will still have important things to tell us about the links and separations between the speaking voice and the character in the poem, about its mood, about how the poet thought that sense would be communicated, and about how he or she hears it inside their own head.
But what about slips between thought and lip? I know people who are exceptionally articulate in their head, and expressive in their writing but when it comes to speaking or reciting, they fall short. Their tongues plod or trip at the wrong places. Their tone is casual when it shouldn’t be and portentous at an incongruous moment. Meter is misplaced. Meaning is fumbled. I’ve seen or heard this happen to poets as well.
Then there is the matter of shifting meaning. Neruda said, “And I watch my words from a long way off./ They are more yours than mine.” And it’s true of poems as well. Once someone reads a poem, it becomes more hers (or his) than the writer’s. Even if one accepts that a poem is a conversation between the poet and the reader, whose interpretation of that conversation trumps? Once I have assimilated a poem’s meaning into my bloodstream, do I really want somebody else (even the poet) to come along and say, “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.” And if someone does come along and say that, do I need to hastily correct my understanding or can I cleave to my original reading which was based on the purity of the words as they stood on the page — and nothing else.
During readings, some poets tend to contextualize their poems, explain why and how a particular poem was written. Does this amplify the conversation that’s taking place between the poet and the reader, or undermine it? If the poem communicates effectively, does it need the white noise of explanations, disclaimers, solemn appeals?
But I know that many listeners respond well to poets who do this. Words and their relationship with meaning, their ability to convey it with exactitude, lies at the heart of poetry. But there is work involved in reaching into the poem and taking what it has to give us. I think there is laziness involved in expecting a poet to caption or footnote excessively, to spice a poem with personal anecdotes or lace it with humour.
An old essay by poet David Groff at the Academy of American Poets talks about ‘The Peril of the Poetry Reading’:
The prospect of eventually reading a poem aloud can also affect a poet’s creative process. Looking to please the madding crowd, poets can unconsciously take aesthetic shortcuts that can damage a poem; the effects that work so well in performance are often the kind of schtick that deadens a written poem. Yet public readings can also serve as a poet’s bullshit detector. By tuning into the eyes, ears, and vibe of their listeners, poets can often tell whether the language or effect of a line of poetry is working. This can be a useful public version of the private reading aloud that good poets perform while revising a poem. Lazy poets can indulge in the opposite tactic, using oral skill and sheer velocity to throttle past the places they know are rough or cheap.
Though I think he’s much too harsh on poetry readings, I agree with some of what he says. There are poets so skilled at performative pyrotechnics that they manage to befuddle the audience. When you go back and actually examine their poems, line by line, word by word, you’re puzzled and a bit distressed because the written thing doesn’t live up to the performance. A performance may crackle or blaze because of personality. But on a page, words must be the fire.
Well, anyway, one needs all the joy one can juice from life so I like to read as well as listen. Here are some useful links: Academy of American Poets Listening Booth and Poetry Archive, which offers interesting ‘guided tours’ as well as categorization by poet, title, theme, form etc. There’s classic poetry read aloud (not by the poets themselves obviously) at Classic Poetry Aloud and contemporary poetry From the Fishouse and of course, there’s the BBC Poetry Out Loud which I mentioned earlier.
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I’m sorry this has been long and rather rambling. It’s not meant to be an indictment of poetry readings at all (for anyone who didn’t catch that), more an ongoing exploration of the reading / performance of poetry versus written poetry.
