One of my pet peeves is hearing the phrase, "i don't get poetry." I know why this phrase bothers me so much: I know exactly what that means. As much as I like feigning ignorance and giving quizzical looks every time I hear someone say that they won't read poetry because they don't "get it," I must admit to often feeling the same. I like the sound of but truly don't get Sylvia Plath. I read Ariel like my Spanish Lit books: in awe of the sound and certain clever phrases but knew deep inside that I would have to read the English translation before class and really I can't major in Spanish Lit.
But it still annoys me when people say that. I think people don't give poetry a chance. It really puzzles me how avid readers who read through many awful fiction and nonfiction don't try more than three poets.
Okay, poetry does make us feel guilty. It's a prime suspect for inspiring, "oh I really should've read this person" feeling. And it also makes otherwise over-educated people feel stupid: "I don't get exactly what this poet is saying here and I have a nagging feeling that every other word is some sort of a metaphor I can't get." Now in our culture, it's okay to not get the first law of thermodynamics because, ya know, there's calculus involved and such, but poetry is just a string of words and not "getting it" makes people feel illiterate.
But how can those same people then go and stare at paintings at museums for modern arts in various cities. Do you "get" those? Why is poetry different? Why don't we just enjoy poems instead of trying to get them as if we were desperately trying to be a part of an inside joke? Even though I often don't "get" poetry, I find that poems are all I can read when it becomes really difficult to read anything or when I feel especially despondent precisely because I don't have to "get" it.
Anyway, I am being bitter and judgmental because I can afford to be. I have a friend who includes a poem every once in awhile in his email (bry), another who handpicks poems for me to try according to poems I already like (alice, my personal netflix-like poetry recoomandation system), and a friend who sends me a book of Joseph Brodsky poems through snail mail (natalie). So it's easy for me to find poems to try.
But if you don't have friends who offer poetry, you can try The New Yorker. In fact, one of the poems I told Alice about was found in the magazine. Or you can try "The Writers' Almanac" with a daily poem on WNYC at 8 PM (precisely!). Okay, these sound like awful suggestions, sorry, but I hope people find poems they like if not for the intrinsic value of poetry in their lives then to feel less guilty about not having a favorite poem.
It's spring; it's the national poetry month; it's time to not suffer from a sense of low self esteem due to being word-challenged.
For me, I am celebrating the national poetry month (really for the first time in my life) by trying a new poet. After reading a NYT magazine article comparing Emily Dickinson to Twits, I thought she would be perfect for someone like me who is concentration-challenged. But when I tried to read her, I found that I didn't, what-do-ya-know, "get her." So I tried Joseph Brodsky (thanks again Natalie) and oh I get him, sorta, and I definitely enjoy reading him.
3 comments:
Yeah... when some people say they "don't get" poetry, they mean they think it's an inside joke they're outside. Unfortunately, sometimes they're right. Eliot and Auden both lapse into inside-joking pretty frequently. "The Waste Land" has a dedication in Italian, an introduction in Latin and Greek, a paragraph of German, and a lead-out in French, and that's just the first of five parts. (The poem's actual final line is in Sanskrit.) What, you don't understand it? Then that part isn't for you, you plebe. Or at least that's how I feel when I read the Modernists, with their allusions and eruditions -- like they're writing for each other, not for me. That's at their worst. There are poems and fragments of Eliot's and Auden's that I quite like. They tend to be the ones in English.
When other people say they "don't get" poetry they mean they don't get Shakespeare. Like Eliot, Shakespeare writes in a different language (though not on purpose). Most people, and I include college-educated people, can't read Sonnet 125, say, without consulting the footnotes to figure out what the hell the poem means literally (much less glean what it implies metaphorically or appreciate Shakespeare's mastery of contrast). But Shakespeare is introduced to us as the greatest poet who ever lived. How discouraging when we discover we can't even understand his words! Poets must indeed be different from everyone else, and their experiences must be different from ordinary human experiences.
So we mythologize poets -- they're above us, separated by time or scholarship or circumstance from our reality -- or resent them for making us feel inadequate. We lose sight of their humanity, which is the worst thing that can happen to a poet because humanity is ultimately what most poetry is about. I can enjoy poetry because I see it as a communique from another soul. If it's just cold words issuing from a textbook, a code to be deciphered, of course it can't be powerful.
Modern art -- now that I don't get.
oh, i missed poetry month... i often think i feel poetry, even when i don't read it...
i was wondering if you are still at College Point... ken tells me on facebook you're in queens, so i assume i have it right. i bought this book the other day at a second-hand bookstore, "the writing life", and, having read a portion, i think it might be for you so i'll send it along.
anyway, lots of love.
I've been thinking more about this post, and I wonder if maybe it would be a step in the right direction to make middle and high school students read less poetry and write more poetry. If they discover they can do it too then the divide between them and the poets they read in class is narrowed.
Post a Comment