Friday, June 1, 2012

Water and Stars


I like poetry. Ever since coming across those lines from A Child's Garden of Verses by R.L. Stevenson (about the pail by the wall being half full of water and stars) it has had a place in my life - been important to me. But I hardly get to any poetry readings these days. Mostly, this is because of restrictions imposed my neurologically-challenged brain that isn't easily able to give the kind of sustained concentrated focus needed. But I have to admit that my preference is also to have a particular kind of one-on-one relationship with a poem that you get when it is just you and the words on a page. I often hear it said that a poem only really comes alive when it is spoken aloud, and it is quite true that to speak it aloud often tests where a poem is or isn't working; and it is true that when a poet has the gift of being able to deliver their words well, then it is a fine thing to hear them. I know one of whom it is said that he could read from a telephone directory or a Tesco's till receipt and make it sound like poetry (and perhaps, for the duration of his performance of such, it might become so). But there are good, even famous poets who don't do this well, and then I would prefer to meet their work on the page.

Perhaps I am making a virtue of a necessity. However good the poem on the page, one doesn't have the buzz of conviviality that comes from a room full of people sharing the experience. I have recently been in rooms full of people because they were occasions which I couldn't bear to miss: the book launch of a dear friend was one and the wedding of my youngest brother was another. The commonplace business of engaging in conversation in a crowded room, especially where there is ambient noise, has become something I can - almost - no longer do. It does something to the wiring in my brain that is hard to describe, but many PeopleWithME will know and recognise. Clearly there was a time when I managed better than I do now. But for now I will (have to) carry on treading the path of acceptance. Does this sound boring?

I am not bored. I have almost never been bored, even as a temp when typing figures all day on a manual typewriter or sitting in a classroom listening to the depressed geography supply teacher drone about where we got our wheat, cocoa and meat from. I took in none of the facts (I seldom did) but I remember everything about the teacher: how carefully he combed the few oily strands across his bald head, the texture of his tweed-like suit that picked up on the colour of his ginger sideburns, the earnest expression, as though there might have been something hidden in the dreary litany of facts that he would have liked to reveal to us. I remember how dust gathered in the corners of the large classroom windows that you could only open by using a long pole with a metal hook at the end, and the blackboard where there was always the ghost of something written in chalk, even once it had been rubbed out. I must have been paying attention - to something or someone. I still do. And the other day I read Billy Collins who said, while the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly on the windowpane. I don't think the one activity necessarily excludes the other, and however many flies you watch there is no substitute for writing words on paper (or screen). But it did give me the sense, or remind me, that the act of witnessing and paying attention means something and gives power and substance. The pail is still full of water and stars.

***

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you seen this?

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do

You can listen in your own time without all the other distractions.

Reading the Signs said...

Yes, I've been there a few times, anon - great site.

Anna MR said...

I love your writing so much, my dear Schwesterlein. Thank you.

(More word ver weirdness, incidentally: I am now presented with one "word" (stresua) and one picture (a sign of some description which reads, "5". We need to consider the significance of the number 5, Signs…)

x

Reading the Signs said...

It is the Five Wounds, dear Schwes, and I am therefore very nearly Jesus Christ or going completely bonkers (the WVLs never lie). I kind of suspected this already, but it seems you have chosen as the one to whom this Sign is revealed. We can, for the moment, keep this to ourselves.

Mwah! and thank you.

Anna MR said...

Well of course! How totally silly of me not to have noticed your Jesus-Christness (evidently, I need to be the one to put my hands into His wounds, you know - was that Thomas? Anyway).

Yes, mum's the word, we won't tell anyone - for if They all find out, I foreseen more large echoey spaces full of people and a necessity for small-talk, for you - and we can't be doing with that.

The number thing seems to be with us forever - now it says, "10". It is the top grade at Finnish schools. Need I say more?

Mwahs as always…

x

Montag said...

I think a poetry reading should be a meeting of the maenads in the garden near the gazebo, and a brook nearby in which to bathe when our poetic enthusiasm has worked up a sweat.

Poetry is Botticelli's hair of Venus, which covers and discovers...

Reading the Signs said...

I think we can just take the Wounds as read on this occasion Schwes. With you about echoey spaces and small talk. Big Talk is of course always on the agenda.

Montag in my experience poetry readings are in hot, dark places - but even in the garden near a gazebo what I said would still apply.

Botticelli's hair of Venus? More like being caught in The Act!

'tis I said...

Wooooow.

What have you done, Schwestah? It's all kinda new and beautiful around these parts, with high cloud (I wandered lonely as a cloud. Or, perhaps, wondered. Personally, I like the latter more, in a sense) and blue skies. Tooootally lovely, like.

Um, yes. I likes. Thumbs up and respect for the redecoration. And mwahs, as always.

x

Reading the Signs said...

Glad you approve :) - have left all the labels as someone did say they looked like a (list) poem. But couldn't put labels on my last post as Blogger seems to have forgotten how to do that.

Anna MR said...

Do you know what? I really like this new thing where one of the word vers is a photo from what must be a street, somewhere or another, with a house number on it… I mean, where do they get the photos? Where are they taken? What houses do they depict? Whose? Where? What are their lives like?

They are like these intriguing wee windows into somewhere, somewhere, somewhere where I'll never be but just might have, and into where I'm just peeking now, I don't know, do you see what I mean?

But what - no labels?! That's no bloody good…

I see pale brickwork and a grey-blue sign that reads, in white, seventeen, and on the top left corner is a shadow or the beginning of a detail, something, a window perhaps with a window box, and maybe it's where someone's best friend used to live when they were thirteen, or or or

x

Reading the Signs said...

I've just had a peek, as you'll know, over at yours - yes, a door, but no detail or window. Still - one senses that the WV leprechauns are becoming more (what is the word?) sophisticated. This is 2001 Space Oddyssey, or something. A I. And I'm pretty sure they know something we don't. But I'm not paranoid. Yet. Except for the business with the labels.

Your take on all this is quite poetic, you know. Watch it.

x

Fire Bird said...

like the new look

Fire Bird said...

imersary3

Fire Bird said...

oh oops! these robot police are driving me a bit crazy

not a robot said...

I am watching it, honey.

I also have this sense that some people should come back, to this place they long since abandoned, because I believe they'd like the photographically-sophisticated leprechaun-work, the poetic possibilities of it. Nicht war, Schwesterlein?

x

Reading the Signs said...

Fire Bird - you're back! Well, I knew that as it happens, having been over to yours and looked at the lovely photos. Nice to see you here. Yes, the robot police - or are they something else entirely?

ooo eee ooo (quick view of Tardis disappearing into fiery vortex)

Yes, not a robot (but honestly, meantosay, I'd have just believed you anyway) - some people should just come back, with or without that particular 'because'. Huh!

Montag said...

I like the new look. It feels good.

I like the idea of "being caught in The Act!" But the dominant emotion would be cockiness and swagger, not embarrassment or uneasiness.
I guess the North Wind may have been "caught in The Act" in Botticelli's painting of Venus' birth, too.

Reading the Signs said...

I would agree, Montag - and say also that each time we engage in some real creative activity we are seeking entrance and come again, as it were, into The Act.

Honi soit - etc.

Anna MR said...

My number is on a white pillar today! So excited. And there's the beginning of a brown fence or, possibly, bench to the right of it, and you can make out some greenery behind all this.

No but seriously – where do these photos come from? Have the blogger weevils gone everywhere in the world and photographed numbers? So that they have this unending supply of stamp-sized wee miracle wonders for me to go unnecessary over?

A confession: I went blog-hopping yesterday, for the first time in about seven decades, simply to steal glimpses of more numerical wonder windows.

I know, I know: I urgently need to get a life. But man, I do love these things. Who knows whose home I'm stealing a look at? It could be someone I've known and loved, you know? Or some fellow blogger, whom I've never met in the flesh, as it were? Or or?

x