Several friends have noted that, generally speaking, they enjoy hearing poetry when it’s read to them, but not so fond of it on the page. Buying a book of poems would be a rare occasion. Of course, anyone buying a book of verse is pretty rare in America, as its musty corner in any book store pronounces: Abandon all Hope, Ye Who Enter Here. Why a poetry book cover might resemble the gates of hell has a long history, but let’s try to stick to the reading/hearing problem.
In a way, poems in a book are like musical notes on a page. They play in your mind, but as with musical notes, there are infinite ways they can be played, depending on the reader’s talent, experience, and mood at the time. The problem students have, I learned, is that they tend to read poems too quickly (which after all is the American way — life in the fast tweets). One has to learn to read poems slowly, trying to feel out the form, the tone, the sounds, the sense. When you hear a poet read her own poems, all these things wash over you at once, like music. If it brings you near tears, it isn’t so much the “story,” but the overall experience, like a Mozart Requiem or a Bach Chorale. A large part of this kind of enjoyment is a recognition, often subconscious, of something well done; one can react that way to a painting, or a dance, or some amazing athletic feat.
Edgar Allan Poe had the right idea when he scandalized the New England poets by claiming that poetry wasn’t a moral lesson that was “good for you” (“like broccoli,” as I was recently quoted as saying on NPR), but an aesthetic experience; Poe defined poetry as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. He didn’t say poetry couldn’t teach morals, but this wasn’t its main job.
Ralph Waldo Emerson responded by calling Poe “the jingle man.” There’s something right in Emerson’s accusation, as the quick rhythms of “Annabel Lee” testify — they’re easy to parody (“Camomile Tea,” “Cannibal Flea,” “Bananabelly,” to name a few well-known parodies). But Poe, I think, gets the last laugh. His poems are still with us, and his idea seems right to the modern reader. He was always thinking of the sounds: besides Annabel, he gave us Lenore, Ulalume, Eulalie, and others.
One night the poet W. D. Snodgrass (1926-2009) came to dinner — he was born and died in January, so I’ve been thinking about him. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his first book, Heart’s Needle, and was our guest of honor before he was to deliver his reading at Eckerd. But after a drink, when we sat down, Snodgrass wasn’t at the table. We all looked around and then heard, from upstairs, sonorous sounds of “ommm.mm, humm.mm” rolling through the house. We soon found out he was doing his usual voice exercises. He’d determined that people “don’t read poetry anymore, they just want to listen to it,” and therefore decided to make his oral presentations as effective as possible. “That’s where the money is,” he confided. That evening his reading was great; maybe five people bought the book.
I sympathize with those who have trouble reading poetry, but I urge you to give it a try. As with everything else, you’ll get better at it, and once you get the hang of it, it’s addictive. And hearing poems read will help you to read them yourself. The music, the rhythms (and even the broccoli) are all in there. Good for you.
This article appears in Dec 17-23, 2015.