Grex Poetry Conference

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Grex Poetry Item 227: Late night ruminations on poetry
Entered by flem on Sun Nov 19 06:36:06 UTC 2000:

So (I've gotten into the arguably bad habit recently of starting
random conversational style writings with "So", for some reason.
Can't decide whether I like it or not.  I mean, it seems kind of bad
form, but it also seems to have a kind of looseness, a devil-may-care
sort of "I don't give a shit about you and your damn rules of style,
I'm going to express myself with whatever damn words come out of my
mouth, even if the first one is 'So'.".  But, getting on with what I
was writing...) I was discussing with a friend, the other day, a book
I'm in the process of reading, one "Reading Rilke - Reflections on the
Problem of Translation", by William H. Gass.  (The book is (so far,
little over halfway) excellent; if you see it you might check it out.)
Before I turn into beady, I'll get to the point.  My friend remarked
that translators, because they spend so much time thinking about poems
on a word by word, line by line scale, tend to have a deeper and more
powerful experience of the poem than a casual reader might.  I allowed
that he was right, but suggested that there are other ways to achieve
that detailed kind of understanding of a poem, such as memorizing it.
When I memorize a poem, I said, just the fact that I spend so much time 
on it, that I come back to the poem so many different, disjoint times 
with (presumably) the slightly different perspectives that time 
brings, means that I learn a lot about the poem in the process.  So
much, in fact, that I rarely feel as if I really understand a poem
well unless I *have* memorized it.  
  For me, at least, one of the most important parts of having a rich
experience of poetry is time.  The more time I spend reading and
thinking about a poem, the better I understand it, and the better 
(I think) I understand poetry in general.  Also, the longer and more
difficult the process of understanding a poem, the richer the reward.
(assuming, of course, that the poem in question turns out to be
worthy of the attention.)  This is one of the reasons that the idea of
taking a class on poetry kind of makes me twitch:  the idea of reading
(or writing) poetry on a schedule seems totally counterproductive to
me.  
  I'm kind of running out of steam here, but the idea was that I
wanted to start a conversation about what people do to get more out of
a poem.  Once you read it the first time and decide that you like it,
where do you go from there?  What's next?

2 responses total.

#1 of 2 by jazz on Sun Nov 19 13:51:41 2000:

        I think that'd depend, in some part, on the poem.  Something tells me
that in order to properly appreciate _Howl_, you have to hear it read late
at night, in the downtown part of a major city, or somewhere on old Route 66,
at least part of the way through drinking that evening, to properly appreciate
its' spirit and power.

        Consider Mike Doughty of Soul Coughing fame, and his potry and lyrics.
He often admits that he chooses words simply because he likes the sound or
feel of a word in the place that it is in;  in order to properly appreciate
his work not only do you have to be fluent in the language it's written in,
but you have to hear the cadence, the rythm, and the interplay between the
words.  The depth of which a translator understands a poem might not be up
to the breath of his poetry.

#2 of 2 by orinoco on Sun Nov 19 22:03:38 2000:

I'd agree that translating a poem must be an excellent way to get to know it
well, as must memorizing it.  Generally, in any given book of poetry I own,
I'll read a few of the poems again and again, and more or less ignore the
rest -- again, a way of getting to know a poem more deeply, maybe.  

I think I have more to say about this, but my head isn't working right now.
I may be back.

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