All right, my fellow Americans. The Pill has had it with countrymen and countrywomen dissing what the world (rightly) calls football because it is, as they say, "boring." This is especially rich coming from a) fans of baseball (among whom I count myself), which might with more justice stand in the dock accused of the selfsame offense, and b) fans of things like symphonic or chamber music, avant-garde art, and, ahem, poetry.Why do I number the latter among this company? Because, Gentle Reader, I have heard the philistines calling each to each when the Superior Genre celebrated on this lyriophilic blog is mentioned (I do not think that they will call to me), and the sound borne on the breeze from where they gather before American Idol is this: "bo-ring, bo-ring, bo-ring."
Here's the thing: "boring" is always code for something else (typically the bovine refusal to
engage), and in this case (these cases -- what I'm saying of soccer I'm also saying of poetry) it's code for "I don't get it." And haven't we all, those of us who proselytize for soccer or for poetry (or both), confronted the dismissal of our beloved part of culture as boring by those who simply haven't yet learned the moves? Both matches and poems often offer easy surface pleasures, I think, and a moment spent absorbing those is fun enough all by itself. But both soccer games and sonnets open up in pleasurable and interesting ways when we spend the little time required to learn the basics, when we learn the pattern so that we can see the meaning in a deviation from it.And what's true of poetry in general, I think, is true of particular kinds of poetry as well. Am I the only one who has heard from readers who claim to enjoy the genre that they simply can't get into, say, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, because, unlike the poems of Shakespeare or Keats or Mary Oliver or Spencer Reese, it's "boring"? Isn't this, though, simply a way of saying (as those who complain about a goalless match full of brilliant midfield play will say) "I don't get it and am unwilling to put any effort into trying to get it"? Any reason why we should listen to such people, to say nothing of making them directors of the NEA or having them edit anthologies for classroom use?
Dear Pill,
ReplyDeleteDarn. You caught me. I have (in the past) called baseball boring. And I keep trying to swallow L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, and almost always ending up spitting it out as quickly as unbuffered aspirin taken without water. (No pun on the aka here). I don't label the genre boring, and understand that heavy lifting is going on, but I do glaze over, protectively, and keep wondering when we're going to get over it and move on. I'm ready for something new. I do better with it when in company, slowed down enough to linger over phrases, and forced to do the necessary Callanetics. Your walk through Ross's stanzas, for instance, was a helpful lift--like riding a rickshaw. You pedaled, I rode.
As for soccer, the same kind of glazing-over must be going on by American sports fans-- an unwillingness to enter in. I read recently an attack saying the liberal media was shoving soccer down American throats as some kind of PC gambit. That person suggested that there was no way American audiences were going to watch such a boring--maybe you read the article?-- sport for the sake of multiculturalism. Excuse me? The entire rest of Planet Earth is ready to kill one another over the World Cup and the only reason this person can think of to watch soccer is a kind of Amherstian bending over backwards? Clearly he has missed something, everything. Maradona, for starters, in his fancy new suit.
Okay. So baseball. Recently I've started watching The Red Sox. Went to my first game ever last year. And guess what? It's not boring. Mystery, athleticism, psychology, obscure reasons for this or that, near misses, great saves, elegance (if you overlook the occasional crotch lifting and constant spitting,) and puzzling discombobulation. And it's even better with a cold beer.
So I suppose, following my own reasoning, with what I know about soccer and baseball, and lest I miss the good stuff, I must keep giving the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E folks witness. I haven't tried it with a cold beer yet. That and continuing to keep an eye on your blog might deliver the mystery, athleticism, obscure reasons for this or that, etc, etc? I'm onboard and eyes open. Great links too! Thanks.
My Intro. to Lit. students, to generalize with outrageous unfairness, take the class mostly because it fills a humanities credit, and because, having the lowest number among the Literature offerings, they assume it will be the least demanding (imagine me here rubbing my hands and cackling evilly). And except for the occasional teenager who's just discovered the Beats or the ones who write poems with lines that center on the page, they most dread the third of the semester on poetry--at least the poems are shorter than the plays. I have to sell it. I have to guide them past the initial "I never get poetry."
ReplyDeleteHave they been badly taught by teachers in high school who didn't get it either and just passed along their confusion? Maybe in some cases, but I'm not willing to say that's always true.
More likely they are not yet practiced readers. It's like reading music. I can read music: show me a score, and I know what all the symbols mean. But I'm not practiced enough to hear it in my head. Even for a familiar tune without a title on it, I'd have to sit at the piano and laboriously work it out before I recognized it. My students, when they read a poem--or most anything else, I suspect--don't hear it in their heads. Like me with the notes, they understand the words, but don't feel the life in them. I'm not saying they aren't fluent readers, but that the reading is often mechanical and dutiful. As I might peck out notes, assuming there's something there I haven't yet heard, many of them will read the stuff and assume the significance will become clear in class.
They have to hear it performed--and not droned out, nor a Poetry Reading lilt? They have to hear it as something someone could, in some circumstance, in the stress of some emotion, actually say. Anything can become a sort of dramatic monologue, and in that instance, I find, my students can start to feel they're getting it. Real human inflection, rather than flat paper, seems to help. I flatter myself that I'm a pretty decent performer of poetry; anyway, I'm a ham, and they're my captive audience.
Thus the continuing popularity of Poetry Slams. (NO! It is not passé, I tell you. It lives!) Or the Poetry Foundation's recitation contests for high school students. People who ordinarily "don't get poetry" respond when someone presents it with a sense of performance, getting across that this is a real human being speaking. (Irony note: I'm currently hacking away at an essay on Robert "I HATE SPEACH" Grenier.)
Then the willingness to engage problem. I dunno, O'Hara insisted poetry can't compete with the movies, and he's still right--though I've got to say I find most movies boring. So what dragged me in? It wasn't anything in any classes I took. When I think of what made me as a teenager start to hunger for poetry, it was things I came across by chance on my own, not anything a teacher assigned for me. I have vivid memories of first bewildered but dazzled readings of Yeats, Ginsberg, and Eliot. I wanted more experiences like that. I guess we've got to just leave the stuff lying around, hoping someone might pick it up.