On communication

Dear poetry junkies,
I'm on a quest to find some poems centered around the theme of communication. I spent hours in the library yesterday and came up with very few options, so I'm desperate for some help.
I've settled on Muriel Rukeyser's Effort at Speech Between Two People as kind of the core of the collection. I want to explore things like different types of communication (it would be really cool if I could find a poem on non-verbal communication), how communication leads to truth... or lies, dependency on communication in order to feel connected with people, misinterpretations/ misunderstandings due to unclear communication, and even the effects of lack of communication. I really want to touch on the importance of how it shapes our thoughts and lives etc...
I'm shooting for more contemporary pieces, and it would be awesome if any of you knew any good Slam poetry that I could work in there. It's for oral interpretation, so varying rhythms and tones would be great.
Cheers you guys, and thanks in advance. :D

How about "You begin" by Atwood?

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16789

I'll look into it. Thank you!

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

How about "You begin" by Atwood?

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16789

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Certainly about the limitations of language - is that how you meant communication though? An insight about medium or message?

There's lots of stuff on the limitations of comunication. MacBeth's soliloquy comes to mind:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Also I'm sure there is stuff in Hamlet. I can't think of a formal poem on the subject. I bet Emily Dickenson has lots. If I think of something specific I'll come back here.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JBI

Certainly about the limitations of language - is that how you meant communication though? An insight about medium or message?

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Doesn't have to be quite so literal. If it's something on the science of communication, it would need to be a real hard-hitter. I was thinking in more of the psychological/ emotional/ or even philosophical sense. Whatever it's connection to communication may be, it needs to provoking, moving, touching, etc... Once I can gather a a bunch of lit, I can start to narrow it down.
Thank you, you guys! This is a huge help.

Blackbird, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot is perfect.

blackbird, I am too tired and too behind to give you specifics right now, but after reading your post, I immediately thought of poetry about the non-verbal in the disabled community. Gil Ott edited a few of these anthologies in more recent years. Vassar Miller did as well but her editions are a decade or so older. University bookstores nearly always have a crip-literature publication section, but trust me, disabled writers have a unique and original approach to treating silence and speech as if these were tangible objects, and some of us are smart enough to publish, take degrees, and engage ableist society, sometimes in anger, but the talented among us offer ways of looking through imprisonment.

Scheherazade, that's a nice suggestion.

My own would be Ernst Jandl's "Schützengraben" and Beckett's poem in Watt's addenda:

'who may tell the tale
of the old man?
weigh absence in a scale?
mete want with a span?
the sum assess of the world's woes?
nothingness
in words enclose?'

I recommend to you the poetry of Tony Harrison, especially the autobiographical poem 'Bookends', in which he explores the impossibility of communication between himself and his father on the day of death of his (Harrison's) mother.

It begins :

'We chewed it slowly, that last apple pie'

The Female Of The Species by Gauri Deshpande


Its about what is communicated, though unspoken.

Thank you all so much!