WEBVTT

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When we ask what a
movie or novel is about,

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this is usually to collect
a bit of information on it.

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When we ask what
a poem is about,

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this tends, instead, to
be shorthand for, OK, OK,

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but tell me what it means.

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In other words, just reduce
this Helter Skelter language

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to something I can get.

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Bottom line it for me, pal.

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I haven't got all day here.

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Suddenly, the clock is ticking.

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And in fact, asking
what a poem is about

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is like asking what
music is about.

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And our inability to answer
that question succinctly

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is hardly a testament to the
meaningless of poetry or music,

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for that matter.

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When we mistake a poem for
a newspaper article or even

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an anecdote, then
the expectations

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for a poem's language
changes, and drastically.

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As Eliot said, poetry,
quote, "is a concentration,

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and a new thing resulting
from the concentration,

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of a very great number
of experiences, which

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to the practical
and active person,

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would not seem to be
experiences at all," unquote.

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Indeed, at its best
a poem might be

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comprised of breath, desire,
intelligence, and memory,

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our influences and conventions,
rhythm and imagination, sound,

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narrative, history,
and spontaneous play,

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as well as reference
emotion and the unconscious

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in the music of the
language itself.

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As Robert Creeley put it,
"simply, it is a complex."

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Poetry resists just
this kind of disclosure.

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To me, that is part of a poem's
unique power, our inability

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to reduce it.

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In fact, poetry is
already a reduction

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or, as one of my
undergraduate students

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said recently, a compaction.

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We don't need to unpack
a poem for its pleasures

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to be visited on us.

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Seldom do we get a chance to
do so at a poetry reading,

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shuttling along with the poet's
voice from poem to poem, one

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after another.

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This doesn't
compromise our pleasure

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if the poems are any good.

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Indeed, it can heighten it to
hear the poet's own cadences,

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timbre, accents, breath,
asides, and silences, even.

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But talking about it
later won't ruin the poem

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or make snobs out of us.

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When did discussing
something unknown or new

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threaten to make us elitists?

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Or perhaps it is
liking or even loving

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something we don't fully
understand that makes

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us sound pretentious?

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In that case, I am guilty.

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Much of what I love in
poetry, admittedly, I

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do not fully understand.

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But then again, I
don't fully understand

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the paintings of Basquiat or
my dog either, for that matter.

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But that doesn't prevent
me from loving them,

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however irrationally.

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As Donald Hall puts
it, quote, "there

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are a thousand ways
to love a poem.

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The best poets make up new
ways, and the new ways mostly

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take getting used to, unquote."

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Yet, what is it that we
lose in a defensive response

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against poetry?

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Perhaps, ironically
enough, it prevents us

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from further access as entry
or passage to our imaginations,

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to our ability to think in
ways beyond our logical kin,

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to feel through language,
perhaps, especially,

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to remain in a poem's
uncertainties and doubts

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"without any irritable
reaching after fact" or reason,

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as Keats famously
wrote to his brother.

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Saying, I don't
get it, or worse,

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blaming it on the overly obscure
poets writing to show off,

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as Billy Collins claimed
on Talk of the Nation,

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is just a way of
rutting ourselves

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in the little trench we've dug
to stay safe in the familiar,

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in the world we like to
think we recognize and know.

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Poems destabilize that,
seemingly effortlessly.

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So it's no wonder poets with
their peculiar locutions

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and allusions appear
blameworthy themselves,

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or worse, the institutions
that support them.

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When did we learn
to go around citing

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the meaninglessness of that
which we don't yet understand?

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As a protective measure,
I think I follow this.

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As my student, Hannah, says,
we don't like to feel stupid,

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and poetry, it
seems, can do that.

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It's a defense, right?

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It shields us from the object
of our dismissal, the poem,

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in this case.

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But more importantly,
it prevents us

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from any obligation of
having to participate

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in what the poem might mean.

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Abdication of our own
ability to respond

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can be really satisfying.

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And we can fold our
arms indignantly,

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look to either
side, and say, well,

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this nonsense isn't my problem.

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And this dismissal can be
funny too, as the recent Onion

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headline, parodying
poetry's irrelevance

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to contemporary
matters, reads, quote,

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"distressed nation
turns to poet laureate

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for solace," saying
later that, quote,

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"their masterfully crafted
verses and subtle explorations

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of interiority dispel the
nation's fears in a way

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that nothing else can, unquote."

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The general public,
Jarrell went on to say,

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quote, "has set up a criterion
of its own, one by which

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every form of contemporary
art is condemned.

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This criterion is,
in the case of music,

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melody, in the case of
painting, representation,

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in the case of poetry, clarity.

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Instead of having to perceive,
to enter, and to interpret

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these new worlds which
new works of art are,

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the public can
notice at a glance

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whether or not these pay lip
service to its own principles

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and can praise or blame
them accordingly, unquote."

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Today, perhaps even
jazz's unique rhythms

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and improvisatory modes are
part of the culturally accepted

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Ken Burns-approved art
forms, even if late Coltrane

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and Bitches Brew are still
forbidden from the radio waves.

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Perhaps we have even grown
accustomed to this estranging

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quality of modern visual art.

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We can look admiringly at
a painting by Mark Rothko

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without straining to
will it into a figure

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or rise at anger at its apparent
disavowal of portraiture.

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We don't demand to
know what it's about.

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It might be about
color, and we can

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be pleased to see color
manipulated compellingly.

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At least we can accept
it as a fact of artistry,

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as artifice, its former
estranging in capacity now part

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of the familiar
fold of what hangs

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on the walls of notable museums.

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Why, then, should a
poem, simple as 30 or 40

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words carefully ordered,
generate so much

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anger and frustration,
derision, even?

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Because a poem may be in search
of uncertainty and discord,

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full as it is of both
curiosity and the unknown.

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A poem is, at once,
an act of making,

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poiesis, and an encounter,
as Paul Celan reminds us.

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In an early essay, Celan
writes, quote, "now, I

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am a person who
likes simple words.

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It is true, I had realized
long before this journey

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that there was much
evil and injustice

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in the world I had now left.

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But I had believed I could
shake the foundations

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if I called things by their
proper names, unquote."

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In fact, the moment the poem
has ended, it asks us for more.

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It lingers, or
bedevils, or simply

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overwhelms us with
its possibilities.

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It is comprised of
language, after all,

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and it has the capacity to
differ and defer endlessly,

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ineluctably, sometimes
even pleasurably.

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But why should this
debate about poetry

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continue-- arguments
about its death,

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its unfitness for modern
life, its inability

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to accommodate human experience,
its unapproachability

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and obscurity?

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And its myriad difficulties
date back to well

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before even 1928, when
Edmund Wilson asked,

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"is verse a dying technique?"

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By 1960, in his famous
Meridian speech,

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Celan said, quote, "ladies and
gentlemen, it is very common

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today to complain of the
obscurity of poetry," end

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quote.

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By the early '90s, its Dana
Gioia's undying "Can Poetry

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Matter?" essay articulating many
similar concerns over poetry's

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dwindling markets, if
not its inaccessibility.

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Last month, in the
Washington Post,

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Alexandra Petri asked,
"is poetry dead?"

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And I can't help but think
of rapper El-P saying, quote,

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"the critics
claiming every year,

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'hip-hop's over,' fuck you.

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Hip-hop just started.

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It's funny how the
most nostalgic cats

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are the ones who were
never part of it," unquote.

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The assumptions there are
that poets, themselves,

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are holding poetry back from
gaining wider audiences.

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So why is this?

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Is it because poetry gets
more and more obscure, less

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and less readable?

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No, not at all.

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Jarrell puts it like this.

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Quote, "in England,
today, few poets

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are as popular as Dillon Thomas.

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His magical poems have
corrupted a whole generation

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of English poets.

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Yet, he is surely one of
the most obscure poets who

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ever lived, end quote."

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Jarrell's point-- and he
cites many early wonderfully

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perplexed responses
to Shakespeare--

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is that even if
poetry is obscure,

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that's hardly a
reason to not read it.

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Besides, Jay-Z's
irregular sensual rhythms

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and Lil Wayne's arcane and
prolix references and puns

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have hardly prevented
them from appealing

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to millions, literally, today.

00:10:04.560 --> 00:10:06.890 align:middle line:84%
In fact, I think this
debate about poetry,

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beyond its place
in popular music,

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resurfaces zombie-like again
and again because poetry is

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a language art, like no other.

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And it is precisely
because of that

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lure of direct communication
that we like to assume

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is possible was spoken
in written language

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that poetry continues to
trouble as it swerves out

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of the realm of the
expected, attendant as it is,

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to setting the conventions
of communication

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in place, only to lay the
promise of direct communication

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itself aside.

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Wittgenstein said this more
elegantly in his notebooks

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when he wrote,
quote, "do not forget

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that a poem although
it is composed

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in the language of
information, is not

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used in the language game of
giving information," unquote.

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But that slipperiness
of a poem, elusiveness,

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even, is not a wall.

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That's an invitation
to participate

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in the field of
meaning any poem makes

00:11:05.110 --> 00:11:08.500 align:middle line:84%
available on first
hearing or reading.

00:11:08.500 --> 00:11:09.000 align:middle line:90%