One of my insane fears is that I will some day dive into water (even fresh water is under suspicion) and at the last minute see the wide open mouth of a shark as I go in, head first. My mother, she is afraid of poetry. Not that it will eat her head, but that it will humiliate her, make her feel stupid. Ciardi used to say "how does a poem mean" as opposed to "what does a poem mean" - it has been a while since I read the piece, but I think he was angling for an approach to reading poetry that calmed some of the anxiety people can feel about poetry, a view that tried to ease them away from worrying so much about what the poem was trying to say and focused on the music, language, rhythm. I thought of all this as I talked with my mom about poetry a night ago - about her wishing she could "get it" but never feeling like she "got it" - which is why she does not read it.(The recent conversation at John Gallaher's Blog about "accessible" poetry comes to mind as well.)
I shared some poems with her that I thought might help demystify poesy:
1. WCW's cat stepping over the flower pot
2. Lorine Niedecker's You Are My Friend
3. Yeat's When You Are Old
4. Rolf Jacobsen When We Sleep
5. Harry Martinson's No Name for It
6. Robert Graves' Down Wanton Down (just kidding about that one)
7. Denise Levertov's The Batterers
Also, I told her there were plenty of poems I did not 'get' which delighted her a little too much. I read some Geoffrey Hill to her which I love, but do not always 'get'. In the end, the deal we made was this: I would put together a collection of poems (very fancy photocopies expertly stapled together) that won't humiliate her, and she agreed to give them a try. That is where you come in (if you care to).
If you wanted to put together a list of poems to share with someone who had spent the last 40 years of her life convinced poetry is beyond her, which poems would you gather?
Send me poem titles, or the poems themselves if you have access to them. I thank you. My mother thanks you.
