Writing last week’s post, I was thinking that I like readings better than the alternatives, like listening to broadcast radio. It’s not that I enjoy a bad reading better than, say, a rerun of Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, but most readings are at least alright.
Of course, as with anyone, there are a few poets whose work bores me so completely, I’m offline within the first few minutes, and there are poets who seem a little uncomfortable reading, a little too shy, though at times on reflection, this may be appropriate for a work, and there are other times when the poet loves the work more than anyone else in the room ever will and all the air is gone; the audience is passed out on the floor.
But, again, for the most part, it seems that any reading, any format might work.
I enjoy the fast-moving readings that are common in the evenings during the AWP conferences, in which a long list of poets (8, 10, even 30) reads, each for five or ten minutes, sometimes just a single poem. It may seem that variety of brevity ensure the success of these events, but there’s something in being moved to a kind of dilation in which one can, in a relatively brief period of time, take in a range of styles and ideas—like being in a full gallery. One can briefly focus on something but also has to save a part of one’s concentration for what’s next—and sometimes this is like writing a poem, concentrating on the line on the page but also reaching out into the blank or the silence ahead to see what’s about to happen.
Just so, the longer reading, which requires not dilation but an unusually extreme focus, as you might have to push past the point where the poet’s voice has become too familiar, past the point at which one poem might seem to repeat another, toward the point at which the fine differences, both in the performances and in the underlying texts, become perceptible—this kind of listening, which for me only seems possible in the context of a longer reading, this is also like another kind of writing, in which you’re looking at a point of difficulty, trying to find the way through, becoming progressively more sensitive to a problem you probably want to ignore on your way to taking a nap. So, I like a long reading, too, and I think I’d be hungry if I didn’t have one of these once in a while.
The festival setting, in which dozens and dozens of readings will happen in quick succession manages to combine these experiences and add another dimension, challenging a listener to remain open to the next utterance, to remain capable of listening to another reading. The easiest thing to do in these circumstances is, of course, not to listen to anything too closely, but there’s something to be gained in trying to listen hard to a closely kinned variety of performances for a long period, as you push again and again past a point of fatigue into a new moment of concentration, as one does in revising anything worth revising, moving from one kind of familiarity to a more demanding knowledge.
All this to say, I like the idea of eliminating the stuffy reading, but sometimes the reading itself isn’t the problem.
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After my days on the road have settled in, Brian Barker’s poems have knocked some poems from the boughs, so it’s time to settle in for a weekend of writing. I wish the same for anyone who’s reading this on a Friday.