How to Read My Poetry (and other peoples’ too)
First just let me say, I don’t mind at all if someone doesn’t like something I’ve written as long as they can tell me what it is they don’t like. A strong response is always preferable to luke-warm whether it be love or hate. In fact, I find most poetry is “love it or hate it,” and the bad stuff you just couldn’t care less about. I, of course, hope not to be in that last category, but if I am there’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do about it, so why worry? In the long run, I write for myself. If others find value and resonance in my words, that’s lagniappe.
Words are music. Judicious use of them can create whole bouquets of thoughts, paint vast landscapes or intimate portraits. I am working, of late, to make full use of the silence in poetry. The Chinese said of speech, “If you cannot improve upon silence, then it is best to remain silent.”
So, that brings us to the reading of my work. Here are the hard and not so fast rules of “reading” Emily Parker.
Rule No. 1—don’t read for the author’s meaning.
Nearly all of my work is dead personal. Unless you were there at the time I wrote it, you don’t have a high chance of gleaning exactly what I was thinking. My work is extremely situational. The poems are little stories—moments—slices of my life. So, while I am sharing a mood with a reader, and while the words may say something to the reader that moves them (in any direction) the chances of them feeling exactly what I was feeling are small. You, the reader, are not me. Call it a pet peeve if you will but poetry classes have always ticked me off with, “What the author really means is….” How the hell do you know Buddy? Were you there?!
Rule No. 2—my “contemporary work,” while rhythmic, is mostly blank verse.
Lately, I find my rhythm and cadence is getting stronger. I don’t write in rhyme schemes usually in my “contemporary” work. Painting pictures and creating visions with words doesn’t follow a rhyme pattern in my world.
Rule No. 2a—Shakespeare didn’t use punctuation but I bloody well do!
I use punctuation as a part of my poetry. It serves to make sure the reader can read the work at the pace and cadence in which I wrote it. My work is more like a spoken monologue. I hear the words in my head as I write them and punctuate them as such. It is here that the reader may gain some sort of proximity to the author. I really don’t like to read my stuff out loud but I do like to hear others read it. Weird I guess but there you are. It’s not my voice…I don’t know what it is. Perhaps it’s that I can’t vocally approximate the feeling in my breast that comes when I re-read the words…the emotion doesn’t make it past the throat. In others though, I can hear it as I intended it to be heard.
The form of my poems is useful to the reader as well—useful in breaking down the text for reading. You can “beat” them like a script. To read them you have to turn off the inner scientist and turn on the inner actor. Still remember, “it ain’t Shakespeare”…so don’t read it for scansion because I often move from a smoothly flowing pentameter directly into an end-stopped sentence.
Rule No. 3—read for emotion—yours.
Don’t think to yourself, “Okay, I’m going to read and fully understand the meaning of this poem.” Don’t attack it as a problem to be solved. Drink it. Poems are like fine wine or whiskey—all ocean and fire in the glass. Read it. Just read it. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense. Read it for feeling. Read it for color, light, breath. If it doesn’t speak to you, it doesn’t mean that either the reader or the piece being read is inferior (although there are tons of rubbishy poems out there—some of them mine) it simply means that THAT poem doesn’t speak to you at that time. Don’t give up on it. It may take you differently at a different time. Move on to something else and come back later.
If a phrase sticks in your head, turn it over. See if you can unlock its secret. Interpret the words as they apply to your life, not the author’s. Do the words hold a resonance for you, the reader? You’re not trying to find Emily in my poetry, though you may see pieces of me, true enough. You’re trying to find what the words mean to you. Find your own picture. No two people see things exactly the same. That is the greatest joy and sorrow of the world. It makes for rich experiences and hopefully we are lucky enough to share them with someone.
--esp November 2004