Reading Poetry

[Chester]

In an essay on modern poetry, literary critic Adam Kirsch says this:

Our encounter with such poetry can be described in two distinct ways, what might be called the theoretical and the phenomenological. The theoretical level of communication proceeds, as it were, directly from poet to reader over the head of the poem. On this level, the opacity of the symbol is intended as a statement about the limits of communication. It demonstrates that language itself fails before the most important information, that the profoundest truths can only be gestured at.

But this kind of theoretical statement is always secondary, in our experience and in importance, to the phenomenal experience we immediately have when reading the poem. First and foremost, we respond to the poem’s music and its literal meaning; these are the bedrock of any poem and must be sound if the theoretical superstructure is to hold. To put it another way, it is the phenomenal level on which we read a poem, the theoretical on which we “do a reading” of a poem, in the academic phrase. To read is to allow the poem to shine out as what it is, to take in what it presents; to “do a reading” is to apply to the poem a technique, whose product hovers above or alongside the poem itself as a ghostly presence.

(Excerpted from The Modern Element, Adam Kirsch, p 25-26)

I found this a very interesting and neat summary of how we end up reading poetry these days. Is it fair to say, as Kirsch seems to imply by his application of the “theoretical” and “phenomenological” specifically to modern poetry, that this is something relatively new to poetry? That is to say, was there a desire by the reader of poetry before, let’s say, the 20th century, to “do a reading” (in Kirsch’s words) of a poem, to really get at what was behind it, to really get at what the poet was trying to say? Or does doing so assume a secondary level of depth really only found in more modern poetry?

[JBI]

Secondary depth existed before the modern period. Blake is loaded with that sort of stuff, where the sick rose becomes an infinite symbol. Still, I see his point, and would need to read the whole essay to contradict it further.

[blazeofglory]

Poetry is essentially an expression that is more implicit and closer to truth as we know through history that ideas that are generally inexpressible can be expressed through poems.

[Chester]

Secondary depth existed before the modern period. Blake is loaded with that sort of stuff, where the sick rose becomes an infinite symbol. Still, I see his point, and would need to read the whole essay to contradict it further.
Well the idea about secondary depth being unique to (or more prevalent, might be a better way of putting it) modern poetry was more from me than Kirsch. He seems to imply it, which is what got me wondering, but his major point in that particular essay (and The Modern Element is a collection of his essays) is about the necessity of having a phenomenological aspect to a poem. The essay was actually a critique of the poems of modernist poet Jorie Graham and he really slams her lack of such. Her poems, suggests Kirsch, are more like equations to be solved. He takes one apart and is able to adequately discern some meaning from it, but the task is arduous and even after doing so he’s not entirely sure he’s got it. But the point seems to be that, absent a phenomenological aspect, absent some, at least, literal meaning, and some kind of beauty or imagery or something that grabs a hold of the reader, what’s the point in solving the puzzle and looking for the theoretical? Why should we take our time to do so?

He puts it like this: Her poems are obscure because they seem unfinished, because they reside in the privacy of the poet’s mind and not in the public realm where poet and reader discuss things in common.

It’s a good point I think and a common problem with modern poetry. On the other hand, I like the secondary depth. I don’t want to have to solve a puzzle but interpreting the meaning of a poem, rather than being beaten over the head with it, is a much more satisfying way to read. It allows you that “aha!” moment. Maybe there’s no real difference in this regard from the modern period and what came before. It seems like poems were “prettier” then – they rhymed, they had rhythm, etc. – but it also seems like, even with the presence of Blake-like symbolism, they were much more obvious. There were less “aha!” moments.

[JBI]

I think though, that one must distinguish elaborate metaphor with irony. Poets like Robert Frost seem to rely mostly on irony, as their metaphors are quite easy to understand on the first read-through, whereas poets like William Carlos Williams seem to rely on the hidden meanings, and not so much on the irony of the poem, but on the metaphorical interpretations.

Irony is generally, in my opinion, the prevalent force of pre-Modernist poetry, whereas metaphorical depth becomes the fuel afterwards. Still, the irony of a poem, such as, to use a cliché, Frost's Road Not Taken can be interpreted as a form of concealed meaning, though I would disagree with the categorization the essayist puts forward.

Kirsch seems, from the essays and reviews I have read of his, too rooted in the 1980s-1990s New Formalist movement, with quite a limited and dated perception on poetry. The argument seems to place poetry as some sort of puzzle which it is not. Take for instance this cutting from the end of a short Housman poem,


That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

The meaning is quite clear, but that doesn't take away from the power of its words, or the impact they have on the reader.