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Zero Point Zero: Following the Poem
Morris Stegosaurus is swinging through the Northeast on tour at the moment, prior to his relocating to our area. I’m profoundly grateful for this little burst of absurdism; his patch of surreal estate (to quote the equally wonderful Ryk McIntyre) is a good place for me to be taking a vacation at present, at a time when I’m buried in the daily grind at my day job and struggling hard to pull together a number of poetic projects that aren’t all feeling much like fun at the moment.
In poems like “Four”, an exquisite mythological piece about the origins of language, poetry, and reason itself, Morris uses a cosmology of his own devising (with figures like Father Tractor Brush and the slyly named Princess Telephone) to deliver images that on the surface seem strange as all hell but, when viewed within the world of the poem, make the improbable seem not only possible, but obvious and necessary.
That’s what I want to talk about this week…trusting the sense of the poem, no matter where it leads you, and trusting the audience to stick with you wherever you end up.
I’ve recently been working on a piece (“As Slow as Possible”) about the word “hate” attempting to redeem itself. It would take way too long to explain it, so I’ve posted the current version of it below for your perusal as you see fit; please keep in mind it’s still very much a work in progress.
AS SLOW AS POSSIBLE
Sept. 5, 2001:
A group of musicians and philosophers begin to inflate the bellows of a church organ in Halberstadt, Germany, in preparation for a performance of John Cage’s piece, “As Slow As Possible”.
Hate’s eyes pop open;
he gets up, dresses,
steps outside.
Hate finds that while most people do not want to talk to him,
there are still others who embrace him, taking him to mean something
he never wanted to be;
and all Hate can do is numbly
submit, for no does not mean no,
when your name is Hate.
Although he’s dragged it with him for so many years,
Hate does not understand his own baggage.
In idle moments, he tries to pretend that his name is
meaningless. He tells himself it’s
simply a breath
pushed through a half smile, ending in a full stop
behind his tongue.
Every other thing it carries
was added by others along the way.
Hate thinks of himself as having had
so much potential.
It’s all their fault
for having robbed him.
“As Slow As Possible” was originally written in 1944, at the end of WWII, as a piano piece that would last a half hour or so, based on the natural decay of the notes being played. This organ arrangement virtually eliminates the possibility of decay, and creates the space for the performance of an indefinitely long piece of music.
Hate prefers silence.
Assuming that to be a disability, everyone who meets him
offers Hate
a voice to speak through.
When he does attempt to speak on his own behalf,
Hate’s throat cracks.
The edge of his own meaning salts his tongue.
Nothing green can grow there.
The vision of those who now inflate the bellows is that this piece will be played beginning to end, and that the distance between the beginning and end of this performance will be 639 years. The people who will play this music will die before completing their service to the piece. The people who will complete the service are not yet born.
In slack moments Hate tells himself:
“If I were to change careers, I’d be a baker.
All the loaves I baked
would split open at the far end
and grow larger as they were eaten.
You’d never want for more,
would never get to the end of a loaf.
If I were to marry
I’d pick a partner named Bread Dancer.
If Bread Dancer and I were to have children
they’d be named Easter and Breakfast.
Bread Dancer would dance the bread dance
for each person
who bought bread.
After many years
I would leave the business to my children,
and they would bake for others’ children,
and that’s the way
it would go for as far out
as I can see.”
The church that holds the organ was purchased strictly to house this organ and this performance. It was unused for years, and is now refurbished as a place for the longest music to stretch out. There are still pipes waiting to be installed. This organ cannot even yet play all the notes necessary to complete the piece.
Hate finally moves from his home, burning it
behind him, leaves in the dead hour before dawn,
taking little with him, no ID, no passport.
Hate becomes a monk
on multiple roads,
plays at pilgrim and tinker,
but always ends up a soldier,
always regrets,
turns away,
always, always,
always.
Feb. 5, 2003:
The first chord of the piece is struck upon that organ. Lead weights hold the keys down, and the notes will sound for the next year and a half.
Hate, after poisoning
many years
with his wandering,
discovers the Halberstadt church
and enters to pray
for amnesia.
Everything must be possible, even if it has not yet been imagined.
I’ll be honest: looking at this right now, it kinda makes me wanna sink back into simple, direct, and angry political poetry. Even though I see this poem as an integral part of a suite of politically influenced poems I’m working on, I’m weary of the work and the unbelievable convolutions this particular poem is taking me through. It would be much easier to simply say, “Bush bad, war bad, hate bad, make peace now…” or some such thing.
I think, though, that would be cheating myself, and the reader…the links and the imagery I’m working with here seem to dive deep in that shamanistic way I was talking about last week, and I think that work needs doing.
Even the Bread Dancer reference, which came to me suddenly, and which I think is not related to anything I’ve ever read, seems right; I know by the simple fact that she appears in the poem that there’s got to be a Bread Dancer out there somewhere, and that she’s the perfect soulmate for the reformed Hate.
You pick your content, or it picks you, sometimes; but you have to trust your process to take you to the places where that content dwells.
As for trusting the audience: the poem’s gotten really good feedback on the two occasions when I’ve read versions of it publicly. And I’ll be honest, that surprises me a bit…not because I think the average audience is dumb or stupid, but because such work is not all that common these days.
To my eyes, performance poetry has not been very welcoming to conceptual complexity of late; we’ve moved into simpler territory as a whole. A lot of the poems I hear at the open mikes I attend may seem complex on the surface, but it’s easy to hide the essential simplicity of an argument or concept behind big words or contorted language, even if you’re not doing it deliberately.
Hip-hop influenced work seems to have its own issues with this as well, with numerous poets playing apparently clever word games that obscure meaning or disguise the fact that there’s far less going on here than meets the eye. (In other words, don’t lose the point for the sake of the rhyme…)
Because of these trends, a lot of the time I find myself working hard to make work like this “accessible” … and while readability and intelligibility and coherence are critical to a poet (or should be), I find myself sometimes doing what I would call “dumbing down” the poem…easing the audience’s need to work for the meaning, so to speak.
How arrogant is that? What ego need of my own am I trying to fill by making sure everyone “gets the poem”? There’s a fine line between writing well enough to be understood and slipping into something almost – condescending, I think; maybe the dynamic has to do with looking for the unmitigated approval of the crowd. I think it’s crucial to remind yourself that you gain nothing by not taking risks with your work.
I find myself pushing myself to trust my audience far more these days, and to resist the fear that I will lose them; my only service must be to the truth of the poem, and I have to trust that if I discover that truth and make it as clear as I can for myself, others will get it too.
If I can get half as brave as Morris Stegosaurus around that, I’ll be a poet indeed.
Submitted by tony on Friday, October 10, 2003 (00:00:00) (752 reads)
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Re: Zero Point Zero: Following the Poem
by Anonymous on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 (00:41:23) |
"There�s a fine line between writing well enough to be understood and slipping into something almost � condescending, I think; maybe the dynamic has to do with looking for the unmitigated approval of the crowd. I think it�s crucial to remind yourself that you gain nothing by not taking risks with your work. I find myself pushing myself to trust my audience far more these days, and to resist the fear that I will lose them; my only service must be to the truth of the poem, and I have to trust that if I discover that truth and make it as clear as I can for myself, others will get it too. If I can get half as brave as Morris Stegosaurus around that, I�ll be a poet indeed."
Amen to that indeed , what more does a poet seek or for that matter a writer or an actor or any artist seek ?
Is life always about ego ? Must we as humans always justify what we do ? And who defines the ego and of whom ?
Maybe we all need to find our own ways to ride the rainbows to our dreams , buried at the other end .Maybe we are our own selves leprechauns and our art leads us on to what we desire to seek .
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