For lunch hour today, I went with a friend to a reading by John Matthias at UCB's Lunch Poems series. It still takes my breath away to be in the presence of great writers like Robert Hass (who gave the introduction) and John Matthias (who stole my breath away with all his clunking, eliding, grinding, swishing, consonants and vowels). Listening to them, I can't help but feel humbled, knowing that they are these great icons who will never know that I existed. My breath hitches, just a little, when Robert Hass stands nearby, and when Matthias signs my copy of his new book (Kedging: New Poems).
For Hoanganh, With all possible best wishes, from John Matthias
Their language, their poetry, their lives -- all that makes me feel so humbled. Inspired. As if I too could do that one day with language, with words. That I too could get some great audience to listen attentively (sleepily?) to my voice rolling out those consonants and vowels, those dipthongs and those diacritics. It feels good. It sounds great, and I want to sleep with the sound of the poems going on and on in my ear.
He mentions Transtromer, and I remember that Mark Cox used to talk to us reverently, and irreverently, about Transtromer, telling us we need to read him. Listen to his words, pick up his language. Listen to how he weaves and breaks and tortures words and then puts them back together again. Listen to how the bits of history and narrative and wordplay are being co-mingled together. That's how you do it. That's how to make mellifluous lines into real lines -- verses that have weight and which you can't just fling out into the audience, but words that the audience has to grab hold of with all their power. Those are words with tentacles and they hook into you and you fall, and falling put your whole body and soul into it, willingly. Those are the words. Kedging. I love the sound.
2 comments:
and i've just been reading Transtromer tonight. totally feel you on sound. i've been chasing something through about 7 different books. have you read Coming Through Slaughter? the music in that is so good.
haven't read CTS, but will put that on my list (which grows and grows). thx!
chasing the sounds is the hardest thing, but easiest, too, right? your ear hears that this word or that word or this combo or that combo of words won't work, but it's so rare to hear when the right sounds are sound -- it feels as if you're constantly hearing absence, the absence of what you're looking for is always there and what you're searching is never, always absent. it's vicious, really. but it's such an adventure.
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