Posts Tagged Poems

(copyright m.a.h. hinton)

A number of readers have told me that they like my Seven Basic Rules on How NOT to Read a Poem. Some have written to me that they have forwarded it on to friends or fellow writers, or re-posted it on their own blogs. Others have asked permission to reprint it for a class or writer’s group. I am always happy to find out  that someone has found anything I have written helpful or interesting.

A small number of readers have also asked me to say a little bit more about how I do read a poem. And so for the past few months now, I have been thinking about how to explain how I read poetry. I have even taken a few stabs at the topic but am always dis-satisfied with the results. Because in the end it amounts simply to this: You read a poem with a pencil and your ear.

When I read a poem, I always do it with a pencil or pen in hand. Now that I am also reading poems electronically via Kindle (or half-a-dozen other reading apps), I always have the highlight function at the ready. I have a pencil in my hand to underline and mark the lines I like best… the ones that stop me in my tracks… the ones I find myself repeating.

Reading poetry is not about figuring out what a poet really means so much as figuring out what you, as reader, most enjoy about each poem and each poet. What line(s) or image(s) or combinations of sounds most catch your ear or eye? What line(s) do you find yourself slowing down to re-read… to repeat? Which line(s) or image(s) or combinations of sounds would you like to share with a friend? A lover? Which line(s) or image(s) or combinations of sounds will you remember tomorrow? Next week? Three decades from now?

Which line would you like to memorize and take to your grave?

That is how you read a poem: with a pencil and your ear.

And given that… from now on as part of my poetry reviews I will include a note of my favorite line(s) or image(s) or combinations of sounds.

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A reader recently sent me an email critical of my poetry reviews. She said she found MontanaWriter when she was doing a paper for school. She did a google search of a poem she was working on… and my review of that poem – she did not mention which – came up. She said she was writing to me to let me know that she was disappointed with my review because I did not “analyze” the poem per se, but rather talked about “everything but the poem.” Upon further investigation, she said, that was true of all my “reviews.” She said I should call them something else. She did not, however, offer any suggestions.

I have never been comfortable with poetry analysis in the same way that ultimately I have never been able to make peace with that peculiar discipline called “biblical criticism.” Though I suspect that there is much merit in both, most of the time what passes for literary or biblical criticism/inquiry is merely another self-congratulatory exercise in academic mental-masturbation that only succeeds in missing the point of whatever is being examined. To me, poetry… and the bible… matter too much for that kind of bullshit.

Having gotten that little rant off my chest, I will say that my emailer does have a good point. Looking back over my poetry reviews I see that I do go far afield in my “reviews,” as I go far afield in most of what I write here. It is, alas,  in my very nature to wander and to wonder about things.

In my defense, however, a quick internet search for a definition of the word review comes up with these two definitions, among many:  1. To look over, study, or examine again. 2. To consider retrospectively; look back on. Certainly my reviews fit that definition quite nicely since many are retrospective in nature… or more properly, “reminiscent.”  But in the end it hardly matters. My emailer was looking for and expecting to find poetry analysis and, of course, my reviews are anything but that.

Prometheus Brings Fire to Mankind by Heinrich Fueger

This is a poem I originally wrote in the late 1990s as I was reading a number of books on mythology. As is my way, I have rewritten and reworked it for more than 10 years…. As I look back at journals, I see it is actually closer to 15 years.

I have written elsewhere that there are poems that stand alone and poems that benefit from context. I have always thought of this as one that needed the right kind of context and so I have written and re-written a number of “contextually” similar poems that have never quite, to my mind, fully arrived

I did not include it in my published volume of poetry called Montana Poems because it did not seem to truly “fit.” Looking at it again with fresh eyes in the context of this blog, I think it could have been included, and maybe should have been.

So now, on the last Tuesday of January, I let “Prometheus Deconstructed” go out alone into the world.

Enjoy!

Reddo 

The poem that once 
appeared in this space
is being re-drafted
and re-typed.

It will be re-posted
someday soon
at MontanaWriter.com.

Stay tuned!

____

 

Spitball, The Literary Baseball Magazine is an online and print magazine headquartered in that most baseball of all cities, Cincinnati, Ohio. One of the reasons I am commending it here is that they featured my poem “Roberto Clemente (Topps 1972)” on their website. (It can be found here.) The other reason I am commending it is that it is a damn good website.

Literature about baseball remains one of my favorite things to read. With the possible exception of boxing, baseball is the sport that has produced and continues to produce the best writing. It is a combination of the nature of the game and the nature of the fans.

Over the years I have enjoyed a number of magazines about baseball. Spitball, and their website, is one of the best. When you get a chance, check out their website. I think you will like what you find. A subscription to their magazine is very reasonable as well.

Thank yoy Spitball for publishing “Roberto Clemente (Topps 1972)”!

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While it remains my contention that poetry is about feeling more than it is about meaning, I have been asked by a number of people to offer a little “help” in “reading” a few of my poems. Since I know that everyone who has asked me to do so can read quite well, I assume that what they are really asking for is help in understanding my poems.

For  the past few blogs entries I have been trying to provide exactly this kind of help by providing a basic “context” for individual poems.

At the most basic level, the first context for any poem is a clear emotive moment.  A poem’s ultimate form, direction, and movement comes from the interplay between that first instance of emotive clarity, the poet’s intellectual, theological, geographical, temporal, and emotional milieu, and the skill and workmanship of the individual poet. While emotions may be universal, and experiences common, the ability to give “living flesh” to those emotions and experiences is rare.

Whether my poems achieve this for others, I cannot ultimately judge. If a few words about the humble beginnings of a glimmered idea help you as a reader to make “meaning out of these murmurings”… I am happy to oblige.

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Jordan’s last shot

The two sports I love the most are baseball and basketball. While baseball lends itself naturally to great writing, great writing about basketball is difficult to come by.

There is not time enough in the frantic pace of a good basketball game for words to matter. Emotions come so quickly and unbidden that we are swept up, carried along by the action, living at the mercy of the ebbing and flowing currents and undertows of those players most able to direct the action.

In this way, basketball is like jazz music. Jordan is like Coltrane.

This poem was written sometime after the 1998 NBA Finals and Jordan’s last real shot in the NBA– a picture-perfect jump shot to win Game 6 and the series against the ironically named Utah Jazz.

Reddo 

The poem that once 
appeared in this space
is being re-drafted
and re-typed.

It will be re-posted
someday soon
at MontanaWriter.com.

Stay tuned!

_____

A poem in the theme of Easter. Maybe turning 50 makes me think of such things.

This post is something new for me: a poem I have not spent years and years rewriting. It is time to try doing things in a new way.

 

Reddo 

The poem that once 
appeared in this space
is being re-drafted
and re-typed.

It will be re-posted
someday soon
at MontanaWriter.com.

Stay tuned!

_____