Comments on: The eclipse of a cry

By: Via Negativa » Blog Archive » The evolution of a reading

Via Negativa » Blog Archive » The evolution of a reading — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 21:05:20 +0000

[...] My post on difficult poetry and poetry readings spawned an interesting discussion. Both Laura and Bev felt there was a strong connection between hearing a poem and understanding it, which is interesting considering how difficult it can be to grasp the meaning of a poem on first listen. Bev wrote, The speaking is what makes it come alive for me. If I don’t understand a poem, I read it aloud two or three times. Btw, when I was working on my graduate degree in Eng. lit, I was assigned to the university’s writing tutorial services. I used to work with students who were having problems with their essays. I frequently had students bring in a poem they were supposed to write about. They wouldn’t know what to say because they didn’t understand the poem. I think they thought I’d explain it to them. Instead, I’d make them read it to me at least a couple of times â€” sometimes more. The first time was usually quite pathetic. Subsequent attempts were usually much better. After a couple of readings, we’d sit and discuss the poem – and most times, they’d already be starting to get the meaning. I liken the process to talking to your dog about your problems. You already know the answer, but you just have to hear it. [...]

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 19:09:15 +0000

Bev- Thanks for the follow-up. I actually had a high school English teacher who, though not very old at the time, believed strongly in making students memorize poems. I can still recite part of “Elegy Written In a Country churchyard,” but not much else. Even poems I’ve committed to memory on my own, such as the Prelude to The Bridge by Hart Crane and the “descent” section of WC William’s Paterson have dissolved into fragments in my memory. If we still lived in an oral society, I wouldn’t be the poet – my older brother would. He has an excellent memory, has learned many languages, can still recite Dr. Seuss books, etc. So, much as I admire the poetry of oral societies, I’m glad to be living in a literate one that rewards original vision rather than memory!

By: bev

bev — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:18:37 +0000

Both of your previous pieces were very interesting. There’s a lot there.
I’m familar with it and believe I read parts of it while at university — perhaps while studying courses in contemporary aboriginal literature. I find it interesting that, in our own time, we place so much emphasis on the written word, when it isn’t really all that long ago, that the spoken word contained so much power. It still does, but I don’t think we tend to fully acknowledge that power. In my previous comments, I almost wrote about how, as a kid, my grandmother used to teach me to recite long poems (Longfellow’s The Wreck of the Hesperus for one), and also various narrative songs. She was born around 1890, and was of that generation that found pre-radio and tv ways of passing the time – in the form of poetry recitations, story-telling, musical performance, the making of shadow images on walls with their hands, and all of the other areas of knowledge and skill that we are, in many ways, gradually losing as we become receivers rather than creators.
Well, speaking of creating, I’d better get off this keyboard and do a little creating around my place before the rest of the day has vanished!

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 15:37:45 +0000

Have you read Walter J. Ong's Orality and Literacy? I blogged about it here and here.

By: bev

bev — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 12:59:11 +0000

Regarding orality vs. literacy, that’s of interest to me too. Although there’s nothing to say that a poem has to be spoken, performance does give it a different dimensionality. In any case, I think poetry is like most other arts – it will probably continue to evolve to suit the times and the available technology.

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 03:26:00 +0000

That’s very interesting, Bev. I think if I were reading your comment first thing in the morning, I’d have a lot to say in response – the merits of orality vs. literacy is one of my favorite hobbyhorses – but right now my brain is too tired to register much more than, “Yeah – that sounds about right!”

By: bev

bev — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 00:26:48 +0000

Interesting piece. I’d have a difficult time sitting through a reading given by a poet who didn’t seem to have at least a little enthusiasm for what they had written. I feel rather the same about seemingly brilliant professors who can make their lectures so boring that it makes it difficult to listen, concentrate, enjoy and understand.
This is just my opinion, but poetry has always seemed as much about performance as about written words. The speaking is what makes it come alive for me. If I don’t understand a poem, I read it aloud two or three times. Btw, when I was working on my graduate degree in Eng. lit, I was assigned to the university’s writing tutorial services. I used to work with students who were having problems with their essays. I frequently had students bring in a poem they were supposed to write about. They wouldn’t know what to say because they didn’t understand the poem. I think they thought I’d explain it to them. Instead, I’d make them read it to me at least a couple of times — sometimes more. The first time, was usually quite pathetic. Subsequent attempts were usually much better. After a couple of readings, we’d sit and discuss the poem – and most times, they’d already be starting to get the meaning. I liken the process to talking to your dog about your problems. You already know the answer, but you just have to hear it.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 15:06:15 +0000

Fred – I just noticed that my response to your comment seems to have vanished.

Your remarks about Angel’s reading are very charitable; maybe you’re right.

To me, a poem is difficult if I cannot allow myself to be in a similar mental and emotional state as the poet was when he or she wrote.
Yes. Which kind of suggests that readers will gravitate toward poets whose worldviews are similar to their own, doesn’t it? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 15:04:16 +0000

Sorry to go on so.
Don’t be absurd. Your comment was just the length it need to be, I think, and you make your points succinctly and well.

I’ve been reading poems by Machado, Lorca and the other Spanish surrealists – in bilingual editions – ever since my mid-teens, but I still wouldn’t claim to have really, completely understood them. However, I understand enough to know that I love their imagery, their dark moods, their flashes of insight into the soul. I dunno. I’m not very good at writing/talking about poetry either. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with responding to the imagery first and foremost, though your remarks about listening to recordings suggest that the music, too, has a strong if not primary appeal.

Anyway, thanks for your detailed and sympathetic response to this post. I almost took it down after I posted it, because I felt some parts of it were unecessairly snarky (who really cares whether I like John Ashbery or not?). Glad you liked the links – I had fun digging them up.

By: Laura

Laura — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 05:01:54 +0000

I love to hear poetry read aloud. I’ve never been to a reading, but enjoy those I do hear once in a while on the radio. It really helps me to understand and get a better sense for the poem.

I remember once at a translation conference in college hearing a translator read one of Ernesto Cardenal’s poems that I’d read often in Spanish, yet hearing it for the first time in English was very powerful and changed totally my experience with the poem and the poet. Not to mention the huge crush I developed on the translator as a result. ;-0

I really enjoyed your links in this post and especially the Gioia essay. I hadn’t read any criticism of Kooser before and found his point about the simple poems being the most difficult to craft interesting.

I think you’re right that I’m easily intimidated by poetry, but don’t know that I know enough about how to talk about it to be able to classify for you the type of poems that I find difficult. Sometimes I feel like all I understand are images, without being able to infer the whole meaning; does that make any sense?

I haven’t read or studied much in English; maybe that is part of the issue for me. Among Spanish prose I prefer those who write simply; Galdos and Baroja, for example, and Neruda. Machado and Lorca seem overly difficult – but why? I’m not sure.

Sorry to go on so.