Lately, appreciating poetry feels more and more impossible. Some pieces are accessible, but too much of them are all Ezra Poundish, too moderney and inscrutable (maybe I’m just far too lazy to scrute). Wednesday night I went to former Poet Laureate Charles Simic’s reading of his own collected works hardly knowing what to expect, either from him or myself.
Liz Dodd delivered the introductory speech, as she is wont to do. She is actually getting more and more prolix each time she does this, drawing on more interpretations and more metaphors and more more with each speech. The next day’s Collegian article would say that she "opened with an elegant and insightful introduction of Simic, beginning with a brief biography and ending with an exploration of some of the themes within his work." Heh. It simply made me restless; intro is like bling, and the less, the better. Too quotey, I wrote down and showed the Hipster. We ducked behind the people in front of us to laugh, hoping the Eyes of Dodd couldn’t see all the way to our irreverentially muted mirth at the back of Forum Hall.
The Former Poet Laureate began by taking us into his first poem, "Shelley," with a portrait of his own life as it was when he was writing the poem. The portrait did not lack for fine detail, which is to say that as he talked about his life in New York City in the 80s, "a period where nothing much happened to me," he admitted, he began to drift. Nothing much piled on and on, slightly garbled. Perhaps the Former Poet Laureate is nervous in front of crowds? "I was wondering how someone could be the Poet Laureate and have so much trouble speaking English," my companion later remarked. I began to wonder if this was the actual poem (the streaming of consciousness of an Old, which would have actually been amazing). Too New Yorkey, I noted to the Hipster. She agreed. Another bout of stifled laughter.
At length he started to recite "Shelley." The next day’s Collegian article would read, “’Shelley spoke of a mad, blind, dying king,’ he read, his voice rising with import. Then a new tone of conversational story-telling came." Nominally a tribute to the Romantic poet, the piece felt like a ghostly observer gliding through a world of discrete scenes. A hunchbacked shopkeeper. A three-fingered waiter. A man bloodied and half-conscious after a street fight steadies himself upon a lamp post. Every setting is slightly wondrous but vaguely threatening; behind the observer/narrator’s keen eye lies a restless fear of fully apprehending what’s around him.
His subsequent selections grew a bit lighter, often more ironic. "His poetic voice fit his accent," commented Hipster. "My Beloved," a love poem about the impossibility of writing a love poem, was, for this post-happy hour crowd, a bit easier to digest.
“In the fine print of her face/ Her eyes are two loopholes/ No, let me start again/Her eyes are flies in milk/ Her eyes are baby Draculas/ To hell with her eyes/ Let me tell you about her mouth.” Then her breasts. Then her legs. Then the carnal treasure between them, like the precious key to freedom for a jailed convict. It was a perfectly awkward metaphor, so much so that, amid the audience’s reaction, one laugh rose higher and rosier than all the others in Forum hall. "That was a naughty laugh," Simic remarked, his Slavic inflections leaning on naughty just so. That laugh came from Elizabeth Dodd.
He goes on to other poems. By and by I actually begin to like them, although he did offer another babbling introduction to "The Note." Too explainey, I scribble and show the Hipster. She rolls her eyes, exasperated but not acerbic. Of late she has remarked that I seem "happier," that my "eyes look different" these past few weeks, and I’m fairly sure the way she rolls her eyes at my (charmingly?) predictable jokes has something to do with this.
"The Note" turned out to be pretty good; a lighthearted persona poem, terse, but long enough for a story, with a surprise ending and a dead mouse (Ha ha, spoiler alert).
Simic finished up with a poem about a boy on a somewhat failed date. Dodd was the first to stand up. Flowery trousers notwithstanding, she affected the most Creedlike pose possible, holding us all in suspence for a good ten seconds for her cheery announcement.
"There are books! For sale!"
