Going into a bookstore to hear a famous poet, coming out depressed. Was this all that I got from the reading? The words came and went but sadness stayed, like a fully soaked sponge.
Was it the skill of the poet that put me into such a depressed state, or was it something else? Most poetry readings are like social gatherings. There are the good, the bad, and the ugly. The variety brings highs and lows into the realm as the audience tune in and out; and by the end of the evening, after everyone has his/her share of fame, we go home semi-drunk.
The person sitting next to me was fully engaged with the poet’s delivery. nodding, making agreeable utterances now and then. I carried something else. Maybe the poet’s burden.
Photo by Sharat Ganapati.
I wrote this about the book from which the poet was reading: “Melancholy, death, vague regret haunt everything in this book.” These are some lines from the book: ““This is my past where no one knows me, / These are my friends whom I can’t name.” The poet’s reading was animated, full of charm, interesting comments. It was this that most people reacted to. I think you saw through that into what the poetry actually named. Most people were happy after the reading. They’d heard a famous poet read; they’d enjoyed the reading. You saw through the presentation into the heart of the poetry: “the poet’s burden.” You were perhaps also experiencing, for you, something new in the presentation of poetry–and your realization of that had something to do with your depression. It isn’t true that “most poetry readings are like social gatherings,” though I think it’s true that the ones you’re used to are like that. (The ones you host in your home are like that.) This presentation was more like a concert than like a social gathering: there was no open reading in which everyone participated. There are just as many poetry readings-as-concerts as there are poetry readings-as-social gatherings. But here was another world of poetry you were entering–without the assurances of the social interactions you were used to. What would it be like to be in this world, especially since the poetry here dealt almost exclusively with what an ancient poet called “lacrimae rerum”–the tears of things. What is it like to experience THIS sort of “change”? “The tears of things.” –Do these comments resonate?