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How to Read Poetry – What’s in it For Me?

Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Why read poetry at all? Why bother to become better?
Most who read poetry read to experience joy, the beauty of language jitterbugging through time; the satisfaction of turning the key that unlocks the door to a room filled with wonder; the apotheosis of participation in sacred rites created by writers; the sudden, sacrosanct, orgasmic rush illuminating secret paths between conscious and subconscious thought.
Poetry constructs states of ecstasy and satisfaction accessible to memory and available for replay.
To which some Americans must wonder “But really, what’s in it for me?”
Fair enough.
Learning to read poetry generates material world rewards as side-effects to the intellectual and emotional joy invoked by coming upon and embracing poems capable of igniting our unique, primordial, intellectual, and emotional responses.
Those who read poetry live more romantic lives and enjoy better sex. Translated to guy-talk, those who read poetry have more sex and enjoy better romance. This should go without saying, but now it’s been said and it should be reason enough for anyone to start reading poetry. Think it through.
Reading poetry infuses us with the capacity to read between the lines and better distill information from content.
Reading poetry improves decision-making.
Reading poetry makes us more marketable. Think higher salary and better title.
Reading poetry expands the size of our world.
Reading poetry improves our sense of self.
Reading poetry leads to a better understanding of the sacred.
Reading poetry leads to direct experiences of joy.
This list was created to demonstrate that poetry has immediate, real-world benefits. Poetic language plays no role in day-to-day business communication but knowledge of poetics improves comprehension and competence. Through poetry we learn to better understand, anticipate and explain the workings of business and society; all to our advantage. The list does not include every benefit of poetry. For each person who embraces poetry, the reward for the effort varies but all can benefit.
Note – I use a very broad definition of poetry when I write of the returns for the effort. This definition includes reading and listening to poetry, stories and music; watching drama on stage, street and screen; contemplating photographs, paintings and drawings. Because some newscasters make intense use of rhetoric to couch their deceptions and since rhetoric belongs to the tool-box of poetics, learning to objectively listen to the lapdog political pundits that permeate news media counts as poetry … in a way … but only if we learn to parse the slight-of-hand.
© 2009 Chrome Poet
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1.How to read Poetry – Of Poets We Have Enough

Monday, June 1, 2009

Of Poets we have enough. More to the point, of people who attempt to write poetry, our society overflows. Readers we lack; those who read poetry well appear too seldom in our society.

Against all odds, poetry got cool to do. Current interest in poetry does not attain overwhelming popularity like that generated for national talent shows and reality TV. But it flourishes, if not on Main Street then just off the main drag and around the corner. With the popularity of open-mic and slams, writing and reciting poetry has found a new home in a subculture not far from the suburbs.

That the surge of poets occurred without equal growth in readers should not surprise. Publishers publish books to help naïve writers write poetry. Education presents poetry in a manner that few survive and of the survivors, nearly all survive by writing, not by reading, poetry. Open mike nights and poetry slams encourage poets to read poetry: poetry they’ve written; not the same as learning to read other poet’s poetry. Many poets seem only to read poetry they have written. We might have more active poets than active readers of poetry.

Poets are coming out of the woodwork but readers of poetry are not. Judging from comments readers make, the few who read poetry, read poetry poorly.

Of the little time educators dedicate to poetry, few if any lessons explore interpreting and reading poetry; rarely does a student encounter an appealing relationship between reader and verse. Poets, even dead poets, retain iron-clad control over readers. The partnership between poet and reader remains unexplored. Poetry becomes a puzzle or embarrassing maze readers need to navigate. Educators may disagree with this perception. I doubt students have any doubt that it is true.

The pedagogy of poetry misleads students to the role of reader while discouraging all but the most talented from embracing poetry, ever, under any circumstances. The few, brightest, who manage to salvage love of language from the disaster of poetry classes must learn how to read poetry on their own. Like the victims of abstinence-only sex-education, they must unlearn much before learning little. Unlike the victims of abstinence-only sex-education, poetry readers learn alone; they read without partners; modern media provides no support; society disregards poetry as having no utility, as an aesthetic, as an art of no genuine value. Developing skills in a vacuum, have no doubt, poetry reading is a skill, challenges the best; yet most who find reading poetry essential to quality of life cultivate the art of reading solo, without gurus, road-signs or how-to books.

Reading poetry produces dangerous citizens; seeking and interpreting great poetry expands the mind beyond the restricting implants of those who protect status quo.

Knowing how to read poetry adds considerable value to the reader’s life, especially in our Age of Disinformation. A good reader sifts grain from chaff, recognizes the misleading, finds intent between lines and forms a unique interpretation in contrast to the masses who accept perceptions from self-appointed pundits. Embracing poetry as reader, an individual may escape the bear-traps of propaganda, sensationalism and misguidance of media generated Zeitgeist.

Schools teach students to read as if all words emerge from technical documents. Readers are asked to identify meaning; to second guess the author; to explore the mind of the speaker. In technical reading, this approach works because to succeed, technical writers and their readers require a transfer of idea from the mind of the writer to the mind of the reader; a transfer as complete and unchanged as possible. When a technical writer states “ … the foo is bar …” the verb form to be acts as an ‘=’; the writer informs the reader that foo and bar are interchangeable. The meaning intended by the technical writer is essential to the utility of the document.

Reading poetry is very much like playing the piano and not at all like reading a user guide.

Reading poetry requires a very different approach; interpretation in contrast to understanding the writer’s (or speaker’s) intention or meaning; more akin to appreciating painting, dancing or playing music than to reading a white paper. Piano players interpret music. Some piano players display more skill with the tool than others. Some display more talent for interpretation than others. Some do both. None do so without training and practice.

Reading poetry requires us to interpret the poetry which does not mean we try to discover the meaning. We no more need to grasp the meaning of poetry as we read than we need to discover the meaning of Satin Doll when playing from a fake book.

Until educators teach poetry as an act of interpretation rather than an exercise of understanding; as the creation of two artists: the poet and the reader, our society will lack poetry. It is not enough to have poets without readers any more than it is enough to have composers without musicians.

Note:
At this time, I do not read poetry well. The talent co-exists with great laziness. In the absence of external encouragement, I stopped development at a point just above average. Given the level of the bar, this does not deserve applause. Study of my very visible short-comings, in the context of reading poetry, and desire to improve inspire this personal examination of the reading process and a mode of thought that seems to improve enjoyment of poetry for me. I hope it will do the same for you.

This is only the beginning, I hope it has peaked interest.

© 2009 Chrome Poet

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How to Read Poetry – Beginning Thoughts

Monday, May 11, 2009

I hit a writing wall. Not a physical wall. Not writer’s block. A wall of distraction.

Coffee in hand, I lay my pen against journal pages to create quick, small bits of poetry and watch, disappointed as my pen slips from the truth of poetry into paragraphic opinion and personal dogma. In my manner, I stroke three quick lines to indicate end of that thought and begin again. Pen flows lovely for a second before twisting away into prosaic statements of whine and rant; words tainted by the I of Me. I slam into a wall of I need to write this mundane thing before I can write what I want.

In poetry, bits of poet stick to phrases but most, if not all, great poets do not dwell on themselves except as vehicles for metaphor and analogy. The poem resounds with the poet’s voice but the speaker and poet are not one. Universe and life provide the themes for great poetry.

In prose, I write not of poetic prose, the great fiction and rare non-fiction works soaring on wings of metaphor and analogy but of ubiquitous, scientific-style prose that attempts no more than to transfer a set of idea from writer to reader; in prose the writer not only speaks but speaks to put in the reader’s mind part of the writer’s mind.

Poetry attempts truth in invocation; prose in evocation; poetry by providing catalyst for inspiration; prose by description of insight.

My insight I trust but lack confidence of my prose to describe that insight accurately; to paint it completely enough to resonate. I much prefer writing poetry but suffer a need to write prose. I must eliminate the distraction of opinion that soils my verse. I need to write blah, blah, prose.

I do not look forward to this exercise. My prose I find wanting – inauthentic – soapboxish.

The above should provide fair warning. In the next few days I shall attempt to document and publish my views on How to Read Poetry. Opinions on other current events may leak into the mix but the primary focus, at the moment, seems to be How to Read Poetry.

To date, I’ve done little more than collect a few research notes on the topic. My way of saying I’ll be making this up as I go along.

I will not be attempting essay form. I love to read well formed essay and would like to provide same but have never acquired the skill. Instead, taking a cue from W. A. Auden’s wonderful The Dyer’s Hand, I will assemble somewhat related fragments to provide peeks into my approach to reading poetry … do not mistake this as a claim that I read poetry well but as a claim that I know how I would like to read poetry … the fact is, like everyone else I struggle to read verse well.

I find the topic, How to Read Poetry, of the highest importance, the fact that we do not read poetry well means we do not listen to stories, watch movies or hear news stories well. Our culture suffers our casual attitude toward language. With luck, I will be able to communicate why I think this. I should probably have mentioned that up front where more people would have read it. But I did not. This is one of the reasons my prose sucks.

© 2009 Chrome Poet
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Fast Poem: #22 – “Drunk with celebrityhood and his own ego, he became a media clown … “

Friday, May 1, 2009

We endured adolescent tribulations,
success and celebrations,
in private, in public and on TV.

We made love under State Street willows,
in bedrooms, in cubicles, on kitchen tables,
in the backseats of imported cars.

We made children who are laughter.
We made children who are murder.
We made children who are nothing at all.

Boomers, we are
a tidal-wave generation,
we consumed a nation,

in an unending search for new
that we might be eternally cool.

© 2009 Chrome Poet
Title from a statement attributed to Owsley Stanley
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Fast Poem: #21 On Denial

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

If I believed that in seven cosmic days
the Omnipotent painted this canvas we call home,

and I can think of no reason not to

I would quake and tremble each time I heard
yet another species passed the way of the dodo,
another victim of yet another madhat hunt
or developing incursion into limited habitation
by Homo Sap Sap.
I’d hide in shadows head down for fear
the great artist might suddenly appear
and demand to know who cut brushstrokes from the canvas
to make room for Mr. and Mrs. Wafflepot,
recently joined by Holy matrimony,
to raise an unnecessary family
in a brand spanking new gated community.

If I believed in Darwin’s theory,

and the evidence is such I must,

If I believed a billion cosmic accidents,
as rare as winning the lottery,
occurred in space through time
to put on this spinning island
a creature as beautifully complex as the Labrador Duck,
I would gasp in sorrow to hear
the luck of not only an individual
but the luck of all alike for all eternity
had run out,
that the billion mutations and adaptations
had been erased
forever
to satisfy
status seeking desires:

oversized cottages
where the river meets the coast;
down pillows, piles of steamers
and of course
perpetuation of surnames.

© 2009 Chrome Poet
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Fast Poem: #20 Abecedary Disciplinary Distractions

Monday, April 20, 2009

A game of Focus vs Creativity
haunting another waking occasion.

Tempting is the Focus pill,
resolute immersion,
idea, goal, deadline, completion,
interrupted only by frequent washing of hands.

Enjoyable the other,
natural,
unmedicated Creativity,
bouncing, fluttering thought,
associative,
continually dancing like sunlit patches
splattered on a forest floor;
laughing images,
wise, silly, foolsung phrases;
fragments flocked and flying,
shifting, twisting,
conceiving marginal unison
like migrating blackbirds;
like the chaotic paths of branches.

Creative loves sleep more,
a score for Focus.
Sleep, never loved,
an uninvited interruption of too-short life,
though compared to wake,
equally necessary.

What needs this day more,
focused eye
or the frustrating deficit of insight?

To eat a pill
or
not to eat a pill.
That dear Hamlet
is the question.

© 2008 Chrome Poet
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Bailout Bankers Day, 2009

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Welcome to Bailout Day or as I read in the flyer left on my door by the Our Lady of Creative Cynicism Shelter and Lemon Stand, the last day of The Alms for Bankers and other MBA’s Charity Drive.

Never have those with so little given so much to those with too much. This feels like a genuine moment in history. Do you agree. Let us sway.

Certainly, in some circle of Hell, the originator of FUD cackles with glee to see his concept redefining the relationship between wealth hoarders and contributors in this spectacular, slushy, spiraling way.

We, the people, are like children in a carnival where they’ve threatened to stop the rides if we do not play the midway games. But the midway games have no prizes. If we win, they let us pay for another game. If we lose, they force us to play another game. And they tell us if we stop playing, the rides will all stop. Not one. Not some. All! So we play their games. In the background we hear music from the rides going round and round; rides we cannot go on because we must play the games that keep the rides we cannot ride going.

We are good, obedient children but lately I suspect someone lied about the rides stopping. Even if they are not lying about the rides stopping, I wonder do we really need the rides.

We can always play cork-ball?

On the other hand, what do I know? I’m a genius, not a economist.

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Censorship Promotes Ignorance

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Censorship promotes ignorance.

Censorship attempts to discourage or prevent access to media. Media contains information.

Failure to attain information perpetuates ignorance of that information. Preventing access to media prevents access to information. Censorship prevents access to media.

Therefore

Censorship promotes ignorance.

No logical path can circumvent this simple truth. You may argue that most media contains inappropriate, false, irrelevant or irreverent information.

I neither deny nor admit the validity or value of information. I merely state that lack of information through censorship causes ignorance of that information.

You may argue that we are better off without some information.

I doubt the truth of this, but if in truth we are better off without some information, I question who has the wisdom and objectivity required to decide the information we are better off with and the information we are better off without.

Censors must access information to know the inappropriate qualities, false-hoods, irrelevance and irreverence of the information. If censors honestly, from direct contact, label media as inappropriate, false, irrelevant or irreverent, then the censors must have accessed the information. To allow a small group access to all information so they may restrict the amount of information available to the remainder of the population seems incompatible with the idea of a free society.

In a society that allows a minority to determine the level of ignorance to which the majority is subjected, who assigns the elite group? Who determines who sees all that they may keep the remainder in the dark? Who decides what is appropriate, true, relevant or reverent?

What criteria has been developed to determine how ignorant the general public should be?

Who developed the criteria?

You may argue, there is information that must be considered inappropriate for children.

Why?

If a child has the intellect needed to understand concepts and situations, then it must be time to introduce that child to those concepts and situations; to encourage the child to learn the social consequences, individual responsibilities and acceptable responses to those concepts and situations.

Ignorance is neither innocence nor bliss.

Rather than censor books, videos, photographs, movies, plays et al, perhaps we should teach students to interpret media and encourage our children to learn the art of applying discretion and proper response to inappropriate, deceiving, irrelevant and irreverent material. Imagine a culture comprised of people who make informed decisions about content they have directly experienced in contrast to a culture who day-to-day live the dark ignorance of censorship.

(Teaching people discretion where media is concerned would destroy many popular news sources but you have to break a few eggs … )

All censorship including the censorship of political correctness, the censorship of Church, the censorship of State, and especially, the censorship imposed by multinational corporations leads to ignorance of citizens.

We cannot afford more ignorance and should sense developing tragedy when companies we view as champions of quality let us down; when companies we look to for information products cave to invisible censors; censors who ignorantly deem themselves qualified to determine what you and I can read and watch.

Ignorance does not ignite the human spirit.

Long shadows dim our potential as free, creative and productive citizens; shadows cast from iron walls erected by champions of ignorance, champions we did not choose, champions claiming to protect us from ourselves without asking.

Champions who continually and deceptively promote themselves as mainstream.

Sounds like Science Fiction but it is right here, right now.

Censorship leads to ignorance.

Censorship is on the rise.

Ignorance blooms.

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Fast Poem: #18 The Emotional Availability of Sverre the Shipless

Monday, March 23, 2009

My penis fell off in the night.
it lay on the counterpane
next to her night clothes,
a lonely pink thought
without a pen.
I tried to put it back again
but it was cold & burned my hands.

She came home at 6PM.
Indecently incomplete,
I hid behind the bathroom door.

She saw my penis on the bed,
giggled & knocked & said everything would be okay.
Easy enough for her to say.

I cracked the door to watch her change;
the office heartache stepping out of
designer labeled pinstriped skin,
emerging from closet shadows
a primal goddess clad in nothing but air.
Breasts whole and firm were there,
and behind soft blond curling hair,
Sacred Pink pouted
intact.

Easy for her to say
Everything would be okay.

The Goddess donned pajamas;
primal splendor disappeared
into silky ecru clouds;
a sophisticated sorceress,
aura rippling in breezes
of her own design.

She dropped my penis
into the pocket of her dressing gown,
and walked down the stairs.

I heard her boil water for tea,
pop a cork and add brandy

She called up the stairs,
told me once again not to worry
Then tuned in an episode of something
on TV.

Eventually,
I reluctantly
found sleep.

The moon in the window
woke me at midnight & my left hand,
as is my habit,
checked for bits
of this and that & thrilled to find,
resting, warm & happy
the recently errant penis
safe and sound where it belonged.

At my side,
my lover murmured
sacred vowels and ancient rites
invoking buff spirits
and demons with six pack abs.

The thought came to me,
I should keep her close
for eternity
or flee.

© 2009 Chromepoet
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Fast Poem: #19 A Splash of Selfish Sorrow

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

The silence belongs to me,
not requested,
not demanded,
the silence belongs to me.

If I wanted to share I would.
If it meant things could change
and I wanted to share I would.
If it mattered,
meant things could change
and I wanted to share,
I would.

It is between God and me now.
God shows no remorse.
I’ve run out of patience.
Gifts grow old,
wear out or break,
tragedy swirls emptiness around naked trees
cold drifts from curb to curb,
keening cosmic winds whine
through the eaves,
kiss a heart broken soul,
and are gone …

…

Meteoric joy skips off time thin atmosphere.
Life, evanescent, love illuminated;
seasons harmonize howling pain, guilty laughter;
memory retains ecstasy, hilarity and wonder;
retrospect extends life beyond time.
Survivors,
we imbibe a libation of air,
each inhalation a sliver of luck.
God need not rue.
Patience has less virtue than I thought.

This is for me and God to sort.

If I wanted to share I would.

The silence belongs to me.

© 2009 Chromepoet
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