At a spring poetry event, I was flummoxed as I always am by
statements from all the poets during a Q&A session to the effect that they
shared only poems of theirs that they believed to be good & what
self-respecting poet would ever inflict poems on a reader or an audience unless
these poems were the poet’s best work.
Granted the poets were on the spot & these Q&A
sessions always bring out the worst possible answers because who has time to
think & there’s an audience etc. However, this sort of attitude towards
poetry has always intimidated me, for one & bothered me, for another.
I can speak only for myself & would never dare presume
that my opinions on poetry or any other subject applied to anyone else, but
this is what I think:
1.
The point of any art form for me is to provoke,
disturb & start a conversation or a monologue. I suppose one can argue that a good poem
doesn’t necessarily have to be a perfect poem, but for me, even the idea that I
have to keep my poems to myself til they’ve reached some level of exactly right-ness,
is scary & daunting. that is never going to happen. I am simply never going
to be satisfied with anything that I write to the point that I won’t feel
vulnerable when I share it. but by sharing the work, I am hoping that
it will resonate with someone who might be able to find something in it that
makes them think or makes them feel or a combo thereof. Ideally this person is
also a creative person who might be able to try out whatever I’ve done or some
variation thereof for themselves, thereby improving it.
2.
I don’t see myself as an isolated poet but rather
one in a long line of poets. others have shared what they have learned & I have
learned from them. I will share what I have learned & hope that others will
learn from me. the body of our creation will lead to something strong &
ingenious.
3.
I think editors can be helpful if they help the
poet to achieve what she is setting out to do, but not to protect the poet from
making a fool of herself. that, I’m afraid, is a given. I can’t care about that
sort of thing. to share what crazy nonsense beats in my heart is a vulnerable
thing to do & there’s no going around that. I don’t want editors to protect
me from world opinion of me as a quirky git.
4.
I ran across an interesting article in the
online edition of the New Yorker entitled “Woolf’s Darkness” written by the brilliant Rebecca Solnit, author of a favourite book of mine, “A
Field Guide to Getting Lost.” The article was about Virginia Woolf’s essays
& her tendency toward the uncertain. Solnit also talked about Keats’
Negative Capability: “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties,
mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
The idea to me is that the poet has to
leave space for uncertainty, for not knowing. All of this controlling & sharing only the best
poems & hoarding one’s poems in the attic until they are “ready” for the public
seems to me to be not leaving room for uncertainty.
Solnit goes on to say...
“A similar kind of aggression against the
slipperiness of the work and the ambiguities of the artist’s intent and meaning
often exists in literary criticism and academic scholarship, a desire to make
certain what is uncertain, to know what is unknowable, to turn the flight
across the sky into the roast upon the plate, to classify and contain. What
escapes categorization can escape detection altogether.
There is a kind of counter-criticism that
seeks to expand the work of art, by connecting it, opening up its meanings,
inviting in the possibilities. A great work of criticism can liberate a work of
art, to be seen fully, to remain alive, to engage in a conversation that will
not ever end but will instead keep feeding the imagination. Not against
interpretation, but against confinement, against the killing of the spirit.
Such criticism is itself great art.
This is a kind of criticism that does not
pit the critic against the text, does not seek authority. It seeks instead to
travel with the work and its ideas, invite it to blossom and invite others into
a conversation that might have previously seemed impenetrable, to draw out
relationships that might have been unseen and open doors that might have been
locked. This is a kind of criticism that respects the essential mystery of a
work of art, which is in part its beauty and its pleasure, both of which are
irreducible and subjective. “
I want poetry to be slippery. I want it to
open up the work rather than be closed to a world of potential meanings,
emotions & associations. I want to show my uncertainty, to reflect my
confusion with the world, with life’s purpose, with the day to day meanderings
of my tiny mind. I’m not waiting to share my work. I’m sharing it now. Life’s
too short to wait.
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