Oh dear, do I throw together a Wobbly today, having had no time to write it ahead of time, or do I skip it?
I’ll do it, regardless, and hope you’ll forgive me if it’s less coherent. That’s the practice I follow as a writer all the time. Get the words down even if you’re late, pressured, or feeling incoherent.
Yesterday’s Zoom was all I hoped it would be, except for my crazy idea of adding something new to the program at the last minute. I added the feature that saves the conversation, and I must have done something wrong, because the link wasn’t working, my voice was echoing (two programs working at once, I think), and almost half those who signed up couldn’t get in. I am going to stick to what I know next time. Nothing new.
I remind myself how much difference it makes to hear poetry and hear about poetry in person. Regular readers can manage by using the voice in their heads, but for many, you need a person, you need to feel the presence of the writer, if possible. I first heard poetry from my father, not on a page. I wish I were a good memorizer—I’d recite instead of read—but I’m wretched at remembering. Ask Jerry. If it weren’t for him, I’d forget appointments, our grandchildren’s birthdays, where I put my socks.
What you need—and I say you, including me—is to have a sense of the voice of the poet. You don’t HAVE to, of course, but it’s better. When I read other people’s poems, I have to listen for it, invent it, in a way. But if I once hear the poems from the poet’s mouth, I can forever more hear it. What’s meant is partly bodily, meaning the whole person is in the poem, and when only the words appear on the page, something is lost.
It’s also helpful to hear a bit about background. For example: “I wrote this poem because I’d been talking to my son, and when I said this was the worst year ever, he told me about another worst year, which sent me to research and started the poem.” Doesn’t that knowledge enhance how you hear the poem?
The End of the Clockwork Universe (order here)
I guess maybe The End of the Clockwork Universe is a “hard” book. It has a lot of science. But each poem explains the science in a way that a careful reading should reveal. I don’t feel like apologizing for that. A poem doesn’t have to be easy. In fact, I appreciate the richness of a poem I have to read several times. There are poems by Lucile Clifton, Robert Bly, Emily Dickinson—I could go on—that seem easy to read and are deep in their own way. But the “hard” ones are their own reward.
Two kinds of “hard” : the ones that are hard because they’re carelessly written, or written by a confused mind. You might struggle and struggle and still not understand. The other kind is deep and rich and requires a lot of the reader. I hope we have not lost the ability to stay with something until it reveals itself to us. To re-read. To think about it.
Is Language becoming the property of the elite, the well educated? I guess it has always been true, but for a while the great human experiment has been to educate as many people as possible in the use of Language. That seems to be less true these days, or, rather, I should say, some people use Language brilliantly, while others can barely read. The split is as dramatic as the red/blue split in this country. I wonder if we were able to help more people with Language, the political divide would soften. I do think so.
I’m wordy today, and I didn’t think I had anything to write about. It’s a perfect example of keeping on. Something will often emerge I didn’t know I was thinking about.
I am going to add the first Zoom people to the second invitation, so you can join if you’d like. I hope you do. I love the conversation