Essay on the Poem as Gift

It seems natural to think that the poet gives their poem to the reader as a gift. The poem connects with the reader by giving them something of worth through the poem – enjoyment, hilarity, poignancy, a life message. The reader receives the poetic gift – finds it in their Facebook feed, for example – and likes or even loves it, and maybe comments appreciatively in the thread, giving the poet the crucial sense that the reader has been touched.

There’s no reason to belittle this nice view of the poetic exchange, except for one thing, which all poets acknowledge: readers are not anxious to read the poems that poets generously make available. Readers mostly ignore them – except, interestingly, for a few readers, also poets, for whom the poet has performed the generous and somewhat onerous service of reading and responding to their poems – or at least some of them.

I want to say that it's not so much that the poem is the poet's gift to the reader (the reader didn’t ask for it and doesn’t want to stop what they’re doing to read it), as that reading the poem is the reader’s gift to the poet. The poem is a gift mainly in giving the reader the opportunity to give the poet the gift of reading the poem.

The poet might say that they did everything they could to figure out what the reader wants and enjoys and will find valuable. The poet wasn’t writing onanistically for self-enjoyment, but was always solicitous of the reader, knowing the reader’s wants and needs and fulfilling them generously and selflessly. But the poet’s assumption of knowing what the reader needs is actually a bit of an affront to the reader. How do we feel when a stranger or even a friend claims to know what we want and need? We feel that our space has been violated and that someone is exercising power over us. The poem as gift affronts both our sense of self-worth and our desire to be left alone. How dare the poet presume to know what I need, and then intrude on my time and privacy? I believe that this is why nearly all potential readers ignore the poem and refuse the poetic gift, unless the poet has created an obligation in them by reading their poems.

The poem, to repeat, is a gift mainly in that it gives the reader the opportunity to give the poet the gift of reading the poem. For the reader, it’s an opportunity to experience the pleasure of recuperating the poem (but, of course, the reader doesn't know at first that the experience will be pleasurable; in any case, the pleasure may require a lot of work). Once the reader has recuperated the poem, the pleasure is the reader's not the poets, and at this point the poem really is a gift. It belongs to the reader now. This doesn’t mean that there can’t be incorrect readings, only that reading is ultimately where the meaning, the message, the pleasure of a poem resides.

It's worth pointing out that the poetic exchange does not take place in a vacuum. There is a triangulation:

        the poem/poet

        the reader

        the language, including the history of poetry

The poet and reader must share a language; otherwise, the poem is unintelligible; this is what Milton meant by his “audience fit though few.” If the reader chooses to read it, the poem switches on the lights of the language elements that the reader and poet share. The poem can only be a gift to or from one who has learned its language.

The main point is that the poet does not present the poem to the reader as a finished item like a necktie, a completed message that the reader simply consumes. The reader has to finish the poem – the last step in the brewer’s art. The reader pours the poem into their own glass made of language and of the history of poetry. The reader’s enjoyment of the brew is their gift to the poet. But the reader doesn’t have to give this gift, and it’s better if the poet doesn’t solicit it (the advantage of conventional publishing over self-publishing). It’s fine for a poet to make their work public, but no reader has time to read all the poems they’re constantly barraged with. Reading a poem should be a free choice, not an obligation.

We Must Love One Another and Die

Terrible iron curtain years, don’t know how I survived.

Thought of running away, go to California, my brother-in-law Oliver did that, got a job selling clothes in LA.

Slept in my disgusting bed as my father called it, my dirty mags on a shelf in the closet.

Had to put toilet paper in my underwear to staunch the drip, one day stringing out of my gym trunks, thank God no one saw. 

What was his name who tormented me? Larry Bewley, big blond kid I fantasized about slugging in the jaw.

Football player could whup me with a finger, but how could he publicly murder me for slugging him? Beneath his dignity, I was safe.

What the hell?

Walks I took down west of Colo Blvd, why I never had the energy to walk to Cherry Creek I don't know.

Like I never had the stamina to write more than about eight lines of verse at a time, stoned late at night, what a wimp I was!

Whatever. I was a serious young man.

But I found out I talked like a faggot, I always knew my father did.

Some fucking faggot.

So I guess I changed my speech, or I thought I had, George H. W. talks like a combination of John Wayne and Mr. Rodgers, I didn't fool anybody but myself.

So, terrorized into gender conformity.

Fooled for fifty years.

Fuckin-a.

And I didn't go to Vietnam, a miracle for me, what a fairy I would have turned out to be there!

And who would punish me? sent down holes in the ground to scout for booby-trappers, I drill my access hole, I stand my look-out.

In here I'm a beautiful animal, but adored by myself alone, who knows how I'm regarded by others? by women I rule out men.

This was from early and not hard for me because I do love girls, especially myself as a girl, it turns out.

I have to add silly qualifiers, it turns out I thought I was.

I was never hot for Larry Bewley, I know that.

Took my driver's training from some guy who knew Larry, admired him, and kept talking about him between encouraging interjections: "There you go, you just committed a traffic violation," "Oh-oh, you just hit a pedestrian."

Fairy faggot.

I had a gay roommate in college who was not attracted to me.

We were with one another like two soldiers in a foxhole, sleeping separate, me in my bed he in his sleeping bag.

A very Spartan lad, didn't like sweets, if I'd shown myself to him in my true slutty colors he probably would have been disgusted, I never thought of trying it till now.

I had several more roommates, including Eldon, an ethically-minded psychology major with false teeth.

Eldon wanted to get married and was afraid he was just turning into a sugar daddy.

Eldon did get married, to a girl who, he said, smelled like the first girl he ever fucked.

She wasn't maximally his type, he frankly admitted, but she was the one provided to be his wedded wife.

March 2016

After My Death

Before my death, I was patiently awaiting

(in spite of the fear of the undiscovered country)

the refreshment of the blank page, surcease of pain,

and an end both to the importunity of living

desire and the discomfort of dying.

So that after I died it was a shocking surprise

to find that I was still alive, still bearing

the same morbid fetishes, never confessed,

the same awkward past life, painful to remember,

dangerous to own.

And I stood in my footsteps, naked, uncertain

before I didn't know what judgment,

bashful, hoping to be found serviceable, maybe

just to clean out the bathrooms and report back

when I thought I was finished.

My dying was like fainting during a long sermon,

oblivion fading gradually to reveal

the whole congregation staring down at me—

coming to myself reluctantly to accept

the embarrassment of my death.

February, 1999

After Ezra

After Ezra, the Jews who lived in Palestine
visited the Temple on each
of the three festivals.
And those unable to do this—
for the Jewish people was now
spreading more and more throughout the world—
spent half a shekel for the maintenance
of the Temple, and tried
to visit it as pilgrims at least
once during their lifetime. (Bernard J. Bamberger, The Story of Judaism.)

…

So there would be thousands of stories to tell
of men and women in Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt,
traveling to Jerusalem once in their lifetimes
and dying having fulfilled this duty.
Probably the journey was difficult,
with hunger, thirst, sickness, highwaymen.
Certainly many died while making the journey.
Probably they bought souvenirs
that rattled around in their houses, to be
inherited by children—
a ruby glass pitcher inscribed:
Maggie from Blarney Castle—1893.
One imagines thousands of ordinary Jews
with this journey as the climax of their lives.
One imagines an individual among the thousands,
in 300 BCE, say, and after her another,
almost indistinguishable—
a procession of lives
most not differing remarkably one from another
(from our perspective anyhow)
until 70 CE when the Temple fell.

…

From our perspective, why say
that these were separate lives? —

any more than a worker bee last year
is a separate being from this year’s specimen
in the same or in a different hive;
the significant structure of one life
is the same as another.
Isn’t the sole fact now for each of them
that they were pilgrims to the Temple in Jerusalem,
traveling there to pay homage
to Moses and the deliverance out of Egypt?
That’s all we know of them in history.

…

Before the world began, an almost
infinite host of souls
drifted, each one suspended
in an almost endless torpor,
waiting to be born.
For thirteen billion years at least they waited
(some are waiting to this day).
Or perhaps they slept, waking only
to squawk at the light
for a moment almost infinitely brief
beside those eons of waiting.
And now that the soul finds itself
alive in the world, it must
get to work; now is its time
to do or not do,
to do good or evil;
it will never have this opportunity again.
God, of course, disposed each soul’s moment;
and, of course, God would not waste even
one soul, so all are born in His
good time; and God foreknew
the infinitely improbable train of events
that would lead to each individual birth;
and each soul is born into
the special body that God intended
it to have—
everything provided for,
nothing left to chance.

Would it be comforting
to believe in this determined world?
 

…

Each May in St. Paul, Minnesota,
the Central High School orchestra presents a final concert.
Graduating seniors are recognized.
One or two popular members
subject the director to a gift-presentation roast.
The students play in
the hierarchy of their attainments.
Then the soloists receive flowers.
One year my daughter leads
the second flutes;
one year my second daughter
is principal oboist.
A year or ten years later,
another student leads
the second flutes,
another sits in the principal’s chair.
My brown-haired flutist is reincarnated
as a carrot-topped, freckled boy,
my red-haired oboist
as a wispy African American girl.
The structure, the roles, are the same.
Those who inhabit them —
are they different,
or are they the same?

…

My brown-haired daughter
would never have been born if I had
followed my first plan
and attended graduate school in Tucson, Arizona
instead of the University of Minnesota.
But Tucson lost my transcripts,
so I was able to meet my wife.
If I had gone to Arizona,
would I have had a child with another woman,
the child perhaps neither brown-haired nor female,
but possessing the same soul?—
None of this child’s thoughts or experiences
would have been the same; or, in another view,
they all would have been the same—
that is, human.

…

Seventy years ago, more than
six million descendants of the people of Ezra
were forced by terrorized bureaucrats
to depart on another journey.
All of the progeny they would have passed down
are absent today. None of them are here
to meet and chat with,
to marry and have children with.
Yet we don’t miss them.
We don’t miss them because they never were.
They only might have been.
And, though this doesn’t make up for their loss,
many descendants of the people of Ezra are here
to meet and chat with.
After all the happenstance,
all the sudden, unexpected arrivals and departures,
all the seed spilled upon the ground,
all the unforeseeable decisions
to go out or to stay home—
what is the probability of any soul
getting a chance on this hazardous field?

…

What's missing, then? What am I leaving out?
What’s missing is only
the pilgrims' self-awareness,
which the pilgrims share with me
and all other human beings.
They were proud, envious, and lustful.
They rejoiced in
union and increase. They begot
children who they hoped would surpass
other people's children. They acquired
things in the world around them. They tasted
wine and meat. They felt
the pull of the earth,
the grave force
that finally pulled them under,
as it will me.
What is not captured
in this vision of homeward travelers
is only what is deprecated by
the Law they abided—
sin: the attachment to self,
the exclusive self-regard
that cares for nothing but its own.
It doesn't matter if their progeny
extend to the present day,
or if they vanished like the unborn heirs
pf pogrom victims
(whom we do not miss).
Distance, time, and number
avail not.
After the extinction
of all that false consciousness,
their journey to the Temple remains
the pilgrims' sole blazon,
making the pilgrims in fact interchangeable—
a firmament of virtually
identical stars,
or one single star multitudinously shining
in different times and places.

Nice Twig Cinquain

Easy
to inhabit
this little span between
my non-existent periods.
Sweet perch!

Jesus Cinquains

How far
to Bethlehem?
Not very far. People
will help you find your way. Follow
the star!

OK,
Jesus is the
world savior, born in a
cave—God hologram floating to
the breast.

I see
Jesus on the
street corner, cardboard sign:
“Homeless. Cold. Hungry.” It isn’t
Jesus.

I see
a dog in the
alley, lame, whimpering,
howling, crying. Nope, not Jesus
either.

I come
to a saloon,
door barred against the cold—
abruptly opened, Jesus bounced
headlong.

This time
it really is
Jesus, body buckling,
sliding, teeth colliding with a
lamp post.

Any
desolation
counts as Jesus—homeless,
as we get up out of our graves
and walk.

Subject Kings

We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation.
We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation.

We are subject in our halls,
subject in our stalls,
subject in overalls,
subject up to our eyeballs,
subject.
We are subject in our homes,
subject in our rooms,
subject to our dooms,
subject in our tombs,
subject.

We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation.
We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation.

We are subject in our minds,
subject through our lines,
subject with our signs,
subject to our rhymes,
subject.
We are subject to our fears,
subject in our ears,
subject through our tears,
subject in our beers,
subject.

We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation.
We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation

We are subject to our gods,
subject holding rods,
subject bearing hods,
subject in our mod squads,
subject in our pea pods,
subject.
We are subject in our head,
subject into bed,
subject feet of lead,
subject without cred,
subject never fed,
subject turning red,
subject unto dread,
subject us instead,
subject live or dead,
subject.

We are subject in our hood,
subject to no good,
subject as we stood,
subject.

We are subject on the shelf,
subject to ourself,
subject.

We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation.
We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation.