Well, this might go well as stand-up, Fred; albeit for a crowd all too
aware of the ironies....
It's the being forced "to compare
one poem with another, and
what you have learned from it'
that really gets to me, although the afterwards in a listening limbo
also cuts...
Ah, onward & upward...
Doug
On 13-May-07, at 6:36 AM, Frederick Pollack wrote:
> The Sound of the Tone
>
>
> Poets get the advice
> Krishna gave Arjuna: “You’re *that –
> whatever you are looking at.”
> It sounds so moral. Don’t forget,
> however, the context and consequences:
> Arjuna is an archer,
> a warrior. Listening,
> he realizes he can kill
> his millions of enemies
> without qualm; they’ll all be back again,
> and in eternity they are he.
> Imagine a poet sitting at a desk,
> you on the other side. He takes out
> a gun, and holds it in one hand,
> turning with the other
> the pages of his oeuvre. Which
> he reads aloud, pausing
> often to ask you
> whether you like it, to compare
> one poem with another, and
> what you have learned from it.
> About yourself. – Allowed
> to leave, understandably shaken,
> you stagger into a Starbucks.
> There, at a table
> distant but never distant
> enough, is one of those invasive, all-pervading
> voices. It may be bass
> or treble, not even particularly loud,
> and oddly there are never two of them
> (if there were, would they hear each other?).
> The person or people
> it talks to appear undismayed, even
> appreciative; if they shun
> the voice when they can, if they hope
> to leave it forever, you’ll never know.
> When someone approaches
> that table to complain,
> which happens rarely, the response
> is bemusement or outrage, seldom
> apology; and the protester
> seems, in the eyes of the café,
> egregious, marginal – all the more so
> the more self-righteous. So
> you listen without choice
> to the details of the facelift
> or bypass, shower or point-spread,
> the cruise, the reorganization of
> garage or office,
> remarks of the boss and those let go,
> the custody agreement,
> the spiritual insight. Until
> it seems to you there’s a world
> you orbited without suspecting,
> or that the world you thought you knew
> had an unexpected center
> and that you too have such a voice.
>
>
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
Peace isn't even as good a sales item
as poetry.
W. H. Ferry
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