Let's throw some poetry into the mix, shall we?

Welcome to the dark side of this corner of cyberspace, where I will randomly (meaning here, once a week) post entries for Greg Keeler's Contemporary American Poetry class (550). I warned you this might get confusing . . . and I realize this is all very personal, and I am sorry.

I’m taking “informal” very much to heart. These are my scattershot musings on poetry still in a very disconnected, incomplete, and questioning form. I claim to have no answers, just lots of thoughts, often not fully ensconced in sentences or paragraphs. Perhaps I’m practicing paying attention to the sounds of words and phrases in preparation for actually writing poetry (a rather scary prospect in my book).

So, I’ve decided that there is not enough poetry in my life. Though I wonder if one really needs as much spare time as Billy seems to have to be a poet. If that is a prerequisite, I’ll never be even a hobby poet, but I can find time to enjoy poetry, and perhaps, I’ll manage to write something this term that evokes the insanity of my life. Or perhaps I will counterfeit. The idyllic world he describes, full of quiet moments, peaceful scenery, calm, patterned, methodical living doesn’t much match the world I know. While it is beautiful and makes for a nice escape, it also makes me a little discontent with my current life. Why don’t I have time and opportunity to lie in a field and watch the clouds? What is necessary for poetry? Other questions I’ve been asking, just in an exploratory manner, mind you, include: What does poetry do? What is its purpose and role in our culture/society/world right now? Is the reception of poetry all that different now from what it was, say a hundred and fifty years ago? (i.e., are audiences for poetry really that much smaller or more “elite” or vice versa?) What is the power of poetry? What are our expectations of it? What are its requirements of us? How do you talk about poetry? How is our discussion of contemporary American poetry the same as, similar to, and/or essentially unlike our discussion of the older poetic tradition? Where is poetry going next? What will be the major catalysts for the next major change?

So what do I think poetry is doing or can do or should do? I have a phrase in my notes from last week, but am not sure if it was said or hinted at in class or if it is something I heard somewhere else and decided to jot down just then. “What does poetry do? Gives the imagination for the world to change.” By which, I think I mean, a new vision of the world (to be interpreted in as wide or narrow a manner as the situation calls for) is necessary to exist (somewhere) before it can be realized. The poet is perhaps the ideal creator of this new imagining, experimenting with alternate worlds and alternate understandings. The everyday nature of contemporary American poetry serves the essential purpose of making us appreciate and notice. Billy Collins is right now making me appreciate, savor, and celebrate the joy of my morning coffee. Something that is often only seen as perfunctory and unnoticed, regarded merely as a caffeine injection becomes an acknowledgment and celebration of the fact that I woke up today. The more I notice the taste and texture of the coffee (dark and silt-y, I think of the coffee grounds impregnating the boiling water to create an entirely new molecule), the more I take time to feel the sensation of the warm and heavy mug in my hands, the more alive I am, the more invested I am in the act of living and being here now. The power of poetry is in its ability to make us re-see, to slow us down and show what was in front of us all along but to change the angle and reposition the light.

I think my favorite Billy Collins poems are the ones which treat the bookster’s life (my own word, perhaps related to huckster, meaning one circumscribed and defined by books and words, one who lives through and by and in language). In fact, I copied for and read “Marginalia” to my 121 class. I’m not sure what they thought of it, but I hope it makes them re-examine the way they consume written words. “What I Learned Today,” “Journal,” and “Japan” belong to this group, sharing the experience of the written word.

I would also be lying if I said that I didn’t greedily grab hold of anything treating death and grief, still desperately seeking some understanding, some strategy, some new way of seeing and dealing with these experiences.

I am a little concerned that I don’t really know how to talk or write about poetry in a critical manner. I have my impressions and my personal taste, but I feel the need to develop a vocabulary to deal with the what and how of a poem, why it provokes certain reactions and resonances.

What I think I most love about poetry is its oral/aural nature. The feel of the words on the tongue, the way they insinuate themselves into the ear. A symbiotic life form inhabiting one’s head, stuck there like a song. Every now and then I have to get out my tattered copy of A Coney Island of the Mind and read “I am Waiting” aloud to my empty house, almost as if it were a magical or religious incantation.

After looking Billy Collins up on good ol’ Google, I am struck with his almost evangelical fervor and missionary activity concerning poetry and contemporary society. For example, I was already familiar with the existence of the two Poetry 180 volumes, but I didn’t realize his motivation or the significance of the number 180. Getting poetry into every high school student’s day is a lofty and admirable goal, and I realize my sympathy with this endeavor when I remember how delighted I was to hear that my son’s first grade class last year had a poet of the month. Jericho’s favorite was William Carlos Williams and “The Red Wheelbarrow.” Even I can’t explain his fascination with that particular poem or pretend to know what it meant to him, but I do know that he made me read it to him before bed on a regular basis. Many other poems not specifically written for children followed. I know that his positive attitude towards poetry greatly contrasts mine from youth, and this delights me. I could not be more pleased. The literary missionary fever has me firmly in its grasp. I told my students today that I have an incurable literature disease. I didn’t tell them that I hope it’s contagious. The other example of Billy’s democratic approach to poetry which I discovered today is that one may legally download (for free) The Best Cigarette, which contains thirty-four tracks of him reading his own poetry with some commentary, generally prefatory remarks. It is the soundtrack for this paper. Imagine his calm, slightly self-deprecating, yet secretly proud voice, words, pauses punctuating my own.