Can a real English major not particularly enjoy poetry all that much?
Not like the packed-in meaning,
the laborious pained re-re-re-re-reading?
I thought someday I could
but I can’t: can’t will the desire into being,
can’t fake the literary orgasm.
But give me 800 pages of Quammen
and island biogeography and I’m in
heaven, no faking necessary—ecstatically
re-reading, marking up, eating it up.
I wrote this pathetic verse-like string of words in the back of Random Symmetries: The collected poems of Tom Andrews. We're reading it for my book club this weekend and I haven't made much progress. Of course I feel a bit of pressure since the only other English guy is my friend who chose the book: "So, Ron, you are an English guy--what the hell does this mean?" As If I would know. I don't do poetry that well, never have. It's not that I can't appreciate a poem but I'm not drawn to its intense-every-word-counts style.
Andrews does have some nice one-liners.
In "A language of Hemophilia": "the sun will nickel and dime you to death" and "my solitude can lick your solitude any day of the week"
In "When comfort arrives": "Death is no terrible height/ you peer over now and then--/ it's simple, a fine silence, rain on black/ earth" and "A time comes when you want to account for tears/ and wrong silences, when the promises/ you make to yourself/ and to others are the same promises..."
Still, I know I'm missing so much: I don't recognize the name Mandelstam, unmotivated to look up "trilliums," not sure if the ambiguous pronoun "him" is referring to Mandelstam or death, and even when I almost get a poem (a wonderful image of sun falling like grace and a boy stepping backward down a snow covered road leading to an insight that we can learn to appreaciate small quiet beauties but unfortunately have to blabber about them to make them real), like the third movement in "Praying with George Herbert...", I still can't quite make out "my sins are bright sparks in the dark of blamelessness."
I know the poetry sermons (just sent one out to my students--savor the words, read out loud, the joy will be like that slow then sudden recognition of a magic eye picture) but I'm not really a believer and doubt I ever will be.
1 comment:
Well, I love poetry, but that doesn't mean I love all poetry. Certain poets have made me feel a little sheepish about being a poet, but that's stupid.
Isn't there any poet that you feel at home with? For me, there were always certain touchstones--Frost first, Hopkins, Yeats. You should try Anne Carson. She's a poet for people who don't like poetry, truly.
Post a Comment