I am not my poem.
I am a 52-year-old trucker from Antigua. I frequent
lemur hospitals and pudding cups. On Wednesdays I
build straw men and on Fridays I douse them with rum.
The Sunday roast burns the pudding.
In Oslo, I became a cobbler. Your feet were bitten and
bare. Someone stole the bells. The straw man shattered
in the jaws of the ass.
Tomorrow I will drive home. Melting
is all that is left to do.
I will not become a poem. I am words. I did not write
this. You thought it and it appeared, naked as
the lemur. Bandaged. Broken. Silent.
When I give a poem to my students for analysis, it is always sans title, sans writer's name, sans date. I want their first impression to be of the words themselves -- what can they glean from just that information? It is not a trick. They know there is no right or wrong answer -- any answer is correct, so long as they can back it up with evidence from the text. Only after the text has been deconstructed as a stand-alone entity do I give them additional information. Often they are correct, but just as often there are elements that I as a reader would never have extracted and similarly, the students would never have extracted them had those avenues been closed by providing biographical/historical context beforehand.
Knowledge of context and provenance prejudices a reading and privileges certain elements while allowing others to remain undiscovered. This does not mean it is never useful. Poetry is a valuable tool to illuminate aspects of an historical or cultural period, or provide insights into the character of a writer -- however, these pieces of information too often overshadow the true value of poetry, which is to provide insights into ourselves as readers and help us to understand our place in the world. A poem, once written, no longer belongs to the writer -- except perhaps as a reader. Poems, like any text, only find meaning when being read.
I am a 52-year-old trucker from Antigua. I frequent
lemur hospitals and pudding cups. On Wednesdays I
build straw men and on Fridays I douse them with rum.
The Sunday roast burns the pudding.
In Oslo, I became a cobbler. Your feet were bitten and
bare. Someone stole the bells. The straw man shattered
in the jaws of the ass.
Tomorrow I will drive home. Melting
is all that is left to do.
I will not become a poem. I am words. I did not write
this. You thought it and it appeared, naked as
the lemur. Bandaged. Broken. Silent.
When I give a poem to my students for analysis, it is always sans title, sans writer's name, sans date. I want their first impression to be of the words themselves -- what can they glean from just that information? It is not a trick. They know there is no right or wrong answer -- any answer is correct, so long as they can back it up with evidence from the text. Only after the text has been deconstructed as a stand-alone entity do I give them additional information. Often they are correct, but just as often there are elements that I as a reader would never have extracted and similarly, the students would never have extracted them had those avenues been closed by providing biographical/historical context beforehand.
Knowledge of context and provenance prejudices a reading and privileges certain elements while allowing others to remain undiscovered. This does not mean it is never useful. Poetry is a valuable tool to illuminate aspects of an historical or cultural period, or provide insights into the character of a writer -- however, these pieces of information too often overshadow the true value of poetry, which is to provide insights into ourselves as readers and help us to understand our place in the world. A poem, once written, no longer belongs to the writer -- except perhaps as a reader. Poems, like any text, only find meaning when being read.
It could be worse