I will begin by letting you in on a little trade secret of the blogging business. At least, it is my secret. Maybe not all bloggers operate this way, but I do. Here’s the thing. A blog post should be fresh, immediate, and timely. It should address some occurrence of the day and it should sound like the writer just woke up that morning and conjured up all sorts of wisdoms about the Universe and consciousness as we know it. It should ramble aimlessly for a while. Then, with a few jolts of humor or sarcasm, it should crescendo to a humdinger of an ending that brings the reader back around to whatever was the essential question that opened up the discussion and BLAM! You have a blog post, (preferably under 650 words) and it really should sound like the writer barely gave any of it a second thought.
Hardly. Here's the secret. This is not how it happens at all. Generally speaking, when I blog, I have to start writing the night before the intended post, if not sooner. Not only are there segues and interludes and thematic structures to think about, but my God, there is the literal act of posting which can cause a fair amount of hemming and hawing and re-dos, especially when the writer is trying to add in some useful links and interesting images to make the whole thing—words and pictures—come together in some sort of interesting and seamless OM-osity. Let me just say this: it takes longer than it appears.
Okay, now that I have gotten that off my chest, I can tell you that it is Tuesday, Day 2, but I am really writing this on Monday night. All day long, I was thinking about what I want to tell you. Or rather, what I want to ask you. I have all these questions about poetry: who writes it and why, where does it come from, and who reads it for heaven’s sake, besides other poets? I mean, seriously. Does anyone read poetry who will never write a single verse? I think not. Novels can be devoured by total non-writers, and certainly gobs of people listen to music who wouldn’t recognize a treble clef from a bass clef if it hit them over the head on a summer day. But poetry? I don’t know. I’m not convinced that non-poets read it. I am open to counterpoint on this, however. Enlighten me. Please.
My own introduction to poetry began in the hinterlands of my childhood with the collected works of Dr. Seuss. I loved that man, and I loved his wackadoodle characters and straight-up rhymes. Some of my favorites were The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop, Horton Hears a Who, Bartholomew and the Oobleck, and The Sneetches. Not only did these books teach me about rhyme and meter, (not to mention kindness and tolerance) they basically taught me how to read. The repetition was extremely helpful, because of the opportunity to see how words are related: fall, wall, all, ball. And what child in their right child mind can resist the admonition found at the end of One fish two fish red fish blue fish:
Today is gone. Today was fun.
Tomorrow is another one.
Every day
from here to there,
funny things are everywhere.
It is all still so true, is it not? There are indeed funny things everywhere and maybe this is something to write poems about. Then, anyone who appreciates "funny" things will want to read them, whether they write poems themselves or not. Maybe in the reading, the poem is written, or re-written, in the mind of the reader. Maybe.
I am now about to go over my ideal word limit for a blog post here, but before I close today, I want to say that the other great inspiration of my (later) youth was my poetry teacher at Vassar, Nancy Willard. I was her student my senior year, 1980-81. Nancy taught me to look with a child’s eyes at everything. She taught me to ask questions, to embrace magic, and to mix up the world and all its parts like a three-dimensional collage, an assemblage of the soul. I will tell you in Wednesday’s post about a visit I had with her in Poughkeepsie this past May. That is my plan, anyway. (I hope I had the wherewithal to start writing that post last night.)
I will close with a poem by Nancy that strikes me as related to this topic of finding the right words for that “unseen reader” that I was pondering above. This is from her latest collection, The Sea at Truro (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), which she gave me when we were last together:
Learning by Heart
The teacher who made us learn a poem
each week by the poet of our choice
also told us Cicero’s secret
for perfect memory. Invent a house,
and furnish it. Let the settee
be clothes in a line of your poem.
Let the clocks keep its time.
Let the chairs speak as one,
a collective noun, poetry.
Now walk through the house
of its only guest, the poem
on which you may spy
like a new mother, rising at night
to check on her smallest sleeper.
You are also walking
through the body of the poem,
reading its vital signs.
If the poem could be speechless,
it would stand amazed, seeing
itself everywhere unraveled
yet appraising itself,
marveling at this love
unlooked for, this care
for its breaks
and its breath, this faith
in the right word
and its unseen reader.
--Nancy Willard
Tomorrow, we will learn how to stuff a pepper.
Comments