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A daily festival blog from Kwame Dawes
Wednesday June 12th – Day Two
June 13, 2013
I say no. A tad unfair a response, after all, but one prompted by her statement, “But I have never heard an African poem before.” What does an evangelist of poetry do with such apostasy?
Two poets sitting at a table were asked by the interviewer, “Is there a poem you wish you had written but were unable to?” Which is a great question. The Romanian Daniel Banulescu, who believes the condition of the poet (insert irony warning here) is miserable, said he could not understand the question. It is that subjunctive mood that will screw up a non-native speaker of any language. The Canadian, Ken Babstock, said yes: “A fast paced, kinetic novel in verse – 360 pages long. It is sitting just outside the range of my talent. I can hear it but I can't reach it”. Which is beautiful. In a sad sort of way.
Poets have jokes, though, and the jokes are about character and about the presumed condition of the poet. It is hard not to see this as a performance, an affectation, if you will. One has a sense of being in the midst of a cauldron of affectation when one is at a poetry festival. Someone will inevitably say that nobody cares about poetry in the larger scheme of things, and poets won’t challenge this – they will nod as if this is somehow true. There is a presumption that people care about other things. There is a presumption that people should care about poetry, but don’t. So instead of getting depressed about this, poets make jokes.
“Poetry is like prayer,” the Daniel begins to say with the gravitas of a pope. One expects, in that thick eastern European accent, profound thought – the kind forged from hardship and struggle and deprivation. “Poetry is like a prayer,” he says. “The problem is that real prayers go out to God, and poetry prayers go out to people. God is more powerful than people. So poetry is not so powerful.”
I do like that poetry is like prayer. I do like the holiness of this. I do like the unholiness of the sense of inadequacy and helplessness that comes with knowing what poetry cannot do.
There are large photos of the poets performing in the grand hallway of the Rotterdam City Theatre building where the poetry events are taking place. It is easy to feel like something of a star, but the tone of the space is subdued, always. These are lovely places to hear poetry. The theatre spaces are well-equipped arenas—the crowd looks down at the poets. Some of us are imaginative enough to think of ourselves as gladiators. The predators, though, are our fears.
I am starting to think that it might be a good idea to have the words of poems projected onto a screen when a poet is reading, even if they are reading in the same language as the projected words. It occurs to me that most of us come to poetry by reading, for better or for worse. So when we can follow the reading by reading this kinetic, physical movement of language across the screen, something is reinforced, ironies are made possible, and we can concentrate more – in a curious way. Reading focuses us in ways that listening does not and should not. I imagine that if we allow for the evolutionary role of our sense, certainly listening is something we have learned to do in distracted way. One must always listen to the breaking twig, the sound of the intruder even as we enjoy the soprano moaning around the fire. I am distracted when I listen to a reading.
Note to self:
– invest in data projector to take around to readings
– get great designer to graphically represent poems on the page
– poetry karaoke
– bouncing balls
– variations of text and spoken poem
– fish for dinner
I have not had a fish dinner yet in this city. I gather the fish is good here. This tends to be the case with old cities by the sea. Rotterdam is uncertain about the matter of age. Rotterdam is a European city with a name scattered all over the grand fiction of western history, as a player with a speaking role and the occasional soliloquy. It is a proud and wounded lamenter at the lack of old clothes to wear among the gaudy and ostentatious city peers because the war, they say, destroyed its heart, yanked it out, crushed it, and forced it to build its dwellings like some nouveau riche city, like city in the Midwest of America. Of course, for one who comes from cities built closer to the ground and constantly convinced that the better thing, the more permanent thing is the new thing – from a city whose past has been as an afterthought in quaintness, I am grateful for the fact that I do not have to deal with the oppression of history in the stones looming overhead. There is a delusion of newness that is comforting – as if we are reinventing the world. Rotterdam does not enjoy this lie. Its inhabitants see the ghosts of old edifices, the cathedrals, the Grand Banks, the mansions, the theaters, the city halls, looming over everything—It lives with a sense of perpetual loss, which is a kind of poetry, I suppose.
But this, of course, is my invention. I know so little about the Dutch, and even less about the nuances of the Rotterdam people. Then again, a poet does better sometimes with less – information is often distractingly stultifying. I do need a good fish meal. Fried whole fish with head and bones preferably.
I am thinking of these things while motoring sluggishly though the dark ochre, tea brown thick waters of the harbor. We poets are on an organized tour on a boat through the harbor. The largest in the world, I am told. It feels narrow and long, but hardly wide, although I may have a scale problem. Some grand things are incapable of being impressive to those of us who imagine largeness in ignorance. Who would know that a wide harbor is really relatively small when compared to a country or a lake? It's all a matter of scale. Like calling a poet a best-selling poet or a famous poet. Those terms make sense only in relation to the history of poetry. Scale.
They have found for me, down the road, a gym that allows me to sweat. I suspect I am hogging the only really sensible elliptical machine in the place. I think of being generous and allowing others to cut in after half an hour. I decide instead to invoke my inner American. I stay for the hour. Everyone is polite – at least they seem so from the muted place of my headphone-dumbing world. Maybe they don’t care. For my part, I am working to be half the man I used to be. There is a price for that. I am half as considerate as I used to be. A fish meal would be really good.
In the lobby of the Rotterdam City Theatre where we do our readings, a jukebox in a nondescript corner plays videos of poets declaiming: Robert Creeley, Elizabeth Bishop, Andrian Mitchel are some of the English-speakers I know. These are greatest hits for poets. And poets, like violists, know all the worst jokes about poets. They all involve being broke or some related idea about hustling or being reminded everyday of why the famous poet is an absurd construction. Poets relish the role of underdog, though poets want to be as famous as rock stars. Of course, “poets” is a false construction – it presumes homogeneity of vision and experience. Some poets prefer to live in caves. I point out that poets do alright if they are doing alright which is a useless construction really, but true enough to be hopeful.
I give a talk about African poetry – a good talk I might add. Then I open the floor for questions and a woman says, “Could you read an African poem?” I say no. A tad unfair a response, after all, but one prompted by her statement, “But I have never heard an African poem before.” What does an evangelist of poetry do with such apostasy?
Two poets sitting at a table were asked by the interviewer, “Is there a poem you wish you had written but were unable to?” Which is a great question. The Romanian Daniel Banulescu, who believes the condition of the poet (insert irony warning here) is miserable, said he could not understand the question. It is that subjunctive mood that will screw up a non-native speaker of any language. The Canadian, Ken Babstock, said yes: “A fast paced, kinetic novel in verse – 360 pages long. It is sitting just outside the range of my talent. I can hear it but I can't reach it”. Which is beautiful. In a sad sort of way.
Poets have jokes, though, and the jokes are about character and about the presumed condition of the poet. It is hard not to see this as a performance, an affectation, if you will. One has a sense of being in the midst of a cauldron of affectation when one is at a poetry festival. Someone will inevitably say that nobody cares about poetry in the larger scheme of things, and poets won’t challenge this – they will nod as if this is somehow true. There is a presumption that people care about other things. There is a presumption that people should care about poetry, but don’t. So instead of getting depressed about this, poets make jokes.
“Poetry is like prayer,” the Daniel begins to say with the gravitas of a pope. One expects, in that thick eastern European accent, profound thought – the kind forged from hardship and struggle and deprivation. “Poetry is like a prayer,” he says. “The problem is that real prayers go out to God, and poetry prayers go out to people. God is more powerful than people. So poetry is not so powerful.”
I do like that poetry is like prayer. I do like the holiness of this. I do like the unholiness of the sense of inadequacy and helplessness that comes with knowing what poetry cannot do.
There are large photos of the poets performing in the grand hallway of the Rotterdam City Theatre building where the poetry events are taking place. It is easy to feel like something of a star, but the tone of the space is subdued, always. These are lovely places to hear poetry. The theatre spaces are well-equipped arenas—the crowd looks down at the poets. Some of us are imaginative enough to think of ourselves as gladiators. The predators, though, are our fears.
I am starting to think that it might be a good idea to have the words of poems projected onto a screen when a poet is reading, even if they are reading in the same language as the projected words. It occurs to me that most of us come to poetry by reading, for better or for worse. So when we can follow the reading by reading this kinetic, physical movement of language across the screen, something is reinforced, ironies are made possible, and we can concentrate more – in a curious way. Reading focuses us in ways that listening does not and should not. I imagine that if we allow for the evolutionary role of our sense, certainly listening is something we have learned to do in distracted way. One must always listen to the breaking twig, the sound of the intruder even as we enjoy the soprano moaning around the fire. I am distracted when I listen to a reading.
Note to self:
– invest in data projector to take around to readings
– get great designer to graphically represent poems on the page
– poetry karaoke
– bouncing balls
– variations of text and spoken poem
– fish for dinner
I have not had a fish dinner yet in this city. I gather the fish is good here. This tends to be the case with old cities by the sea. Rotterdam is uncertain about the matter of age. Rotterdam is a European city with a name scattered all over the grand fiction of western history, as a player with a speaking role and the occasional soliloquy. It is a proud and wounded lamenter at the lack of old clothes to wear among the gaudy and ostentatious city peers because the war, they say, destroyed its heart, yanked it out, crushed it, and forced it to build its dwellings like some nouveau riche city, like city in the Midwest of America. Of course, for one who comes from cities built closer to the ground and constantly convinced that the better thing, the more permanent thing is the new thing – from a city whose past has been as an afterthought in quaintness, I am grateful for the fact that I do not have to deal with the oppression of history in the stones looming overhead. There is a delusion of newness that is comforting – as if we are reinventing the world. Rotterdam does not enjoy this lie. Its inhabitants see the ghosts of old edifices, the cathedrals, the Grand Banks, the mansions, the theaters, the city halls, looming over everything—It lives with a sense of perpetual loss, which is a kind of poetry, I suppose.
But this, of course, is my invention. I know so little about the Dutch, and even less about the nuances of the Rotterdam people. Then again, a poet does better sometimes with less – information is often distractingly stultifying. I do need a good fish meal. Fried whole fish with head and bones preferably.
I am thinking of these things while motoring sluggishly though the dark ochre, tea brown thick waters of the harbor. We poets are on an organized tour on a boat through the harbor. The largest in the world, I am told. It feels narrow and long, but hardly wide, although I may have a scale problem. Some grand things are incapable of being impressive to those of us who imagine largeness in ignorance. Who would know that a wide harbor is really relatively small when compared to a country or a lake? It's all a matter of scale. Like calling a poet a best-selling poet or a famous poet. Those terms make sense only in relation to the history of poetry. Scale.
They have found for me, down the road, a gym that allows me to sweat. I suspect I am hogging the only really sensible elliptical machine in the place. I think of being generous and allowing others to cut in after half an hour. I decide instead to invoke my inner American. I stay for the hour. Everyone is polite – at least they seem so from the muted place of my headphone-dumbing world. Maybe they don’t care. For my part, I am working to be half the man I used to be. There is a price for that. I am half as considerate as I used to be. A fish meal would be really good.
© Kwame Dawes
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