What are we doing when we read poetry?
To use a sports metaphor, since this is March Madness—it is an advantage to know your opponent (your poem).
Just to take an example in baseball: The second time through the lineup, when the hitters have already had a turn at bat, and they have seen “what the pitcher can do,” the pitcher in that game, facing the hitters a second time, will find it more difficult in getting the batters out. To “know” your opponent, in sports, means they become less of an opponent—to know is to diminish the other’s effect on you.
Is this true in poetry? When we get to know a poem, does it then become less of a poem to us? Less interesting to us? When the novelty wears off, do we no longer admire some poems?
Are we reading poetry to know it and “defeat” it, or do we desire it to defeat us—and therefore we are not reading poems to “know” them?
Is the poem good—like an opponent is good—when it defeats us? Does knowing the poem, therefore, make it less enjoyable?
And if this is true, how does the poet keep us from knowing about the poem?
As we examine the 8 poets vying for a spot in the Sweet Sixteen, let’s look at this
Jennifer Barber, who is seeded no. 1 in the Mystery (or Mysterious) bracket, offers up what looks like an easy pitch to hit:
“Sure, it was a dream, but even so/you put down the phone so soundlessly”
The reader is expected to bite on, “Sure, it was a dream,” and we do bite, because dreams are ubiquitous; we feel at times that life is a dream. “Sure, it was dream” is much better than, “It was a dream,” which would make us slightly uneasy;” It was a dream” sounds a little foreboding. Or a little boring. Either one.
So right away the poet has set us up beautifully. “Sure, it was a dream…”
Here’s the rest: “but even so/you put down the phone so soundlessly.”
The “but even so” disarms us further: Sure it was… But even so.
Then, in a few words, Jennifer Barber gives us the strange, the intimate, and the mundane all at once: “you put down the phone so soundlessly.”
Imagine the difficulty of describing the thousand sounds of a battle. Here the poet triumphs in terms of delivery by describing something mysterious which needs almost no describing: “you put down the phone so soundlessly.”
The experts in the March Madness Poetry tourney all say Jennifer Barber is one of the the contestants to watch.
Can you see why?
It sets us up. And delivers.
Srividya Sivakumar describes for us what she’s doing:
“I’m searching for coral and abalone deep in the dragon’s lair.”
The movement of this line features objects of a search (coral and abalone) which are not found, but may be found, in the danger of the line’s end: lair.
It’s wonderfully done.
We love this line.
But Jennifer Barber wins.
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Merryn Juliette “grey as I am” and Aakriti Kuntal “Close your eyes then. Imagine the word on the tip of your tongue. The warm jelly, the red tip of the quivering mass.” go toe to toe.
This may be the most interesting match so far—grey versus red.
All art has a frame—do we save our admiration for how much can be put into the frame?
Why shouldn’t we wander away from the frame, and be free? Why do we care for what happens to be inside an artificial frame?
Life is ours, and can never live inside a frame. We should resent all frames, and with the famous Greek philosopher, hate poetry. What is wrong with us?
A poem’s length is its frame—“grey as I am” is a miniature. Its duration, its frame, its existence, is but a model of all life. If we worship anything, anything at all, a person, or an animal, or a flower, or a thought, why shouldn’t we kneel in holy rapture and affection before, “grey as I am?”
What should we make of Aakriti Kuntal’s strange command?
“Close your eyes then.” All life is but a blocking out. One sensation, one exit, one entrance, replaced by another.
And then another strange command: “Imagine the word on the tip of the your tongue.”
Those who carry words on the tips of their tongue tend to be shallow deceivers. Is this what the poet means? The name of someone dear to you lives in your heart, not on the tip of your tongue.
And then comes the joke: “The warm jelly, the red tip of the quivering mass.”
Could it be the poet is commanding their enemy to close their eyes and contemplate how silly and shallow they are?
You are but a tongue!
This is speculation by March Madness experts on Kuntal’s fascinating line. It has just the right amount of mystery, don’t you think?
But the whole spirit of “grey as I am” is entirely different. We don’t have commands. We have a reticent humility.
In a close contest, “grey as I am” wins.
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Michelina Di Martino has one of the most unusual lines in the tournament, consisting of a two pieces of speech, one of them a question. It is bizarre but does not strain after the bizarre. It is utterly charming.
“Let us make love. Where are we?”
Sridala Swami counters with a difficulty which is almost mathematical.
“There is only this book, and your one chance of speaking to the world is through the words in it.”
The line suggests set theory.
Here is all words. Here is this book with a certain amount of words. And your one chance is speaking with the words in the book. By the time one speaks, has one already been spoken for?
With one line, Sridala Swami suggests the whole psychology of poetry. It is a powerful line, indeed.
It is power versus charm.
“Let us make love. Where are we?” prevails at last.
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Nabina Das has given us a real mystery with “under the same ceiling/fan from where she/later dangled.”
Kushal Poddar provides the flip side of a mystery—something closer to a reverie. The joy of a reverie participates in the feeling of mystery, but one which is pleasant, and not necessary to solve.
“Call its name around/with the bowl held in my cooling hand./I can see myself doing this. All Winter. All Summer.”
There’s something in us, however, which wants to solve every mystery, even those reveries, even those moments when we quietly forget. “What was that?” we ask. “What should I be doing now?”
In the battle of the uncomfortable versus the comfortable, Kushal Poddar, with his “All Winter. All Summer,” wins.
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