Reading poetry aloud is my lifelong delight. A few lucky ones have an instrument to play around with, I have only my voice.

I read aloud an hour or so in the middle of insomniac nights, which are many. I read a short thing or two in the morning before work. And when I have the evening to myself, once or twice a week, I revel in something long and sustained. Like the good Mormon with their scriptures, I read poetry every day. My teacher along the way has been the late Harold Bloom, whose fascination for old-school Mormonism comforted me on the way out of LDSinc (23 years ago!)


I want to share here Harold Bloom reminiscing about May Swenson. I posted about her before. From Possessed By Memory: The Inward Light of Criticism:

~~~~~~
I BEGAN READING MAY SWENSON in 1954, but intensively only from 1963 on. Our mutual friend John Hollander introduced us in 1965. After that, she and I occasionally would drink coffee together at Chumley’s in Greenwich Village. We remained amiable acquaintances, as she seemed rather shy. Our conversations concerned friends in common but usually not her own work.

As a poet, May Swenson derives from Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore, and Elizabeth Bishop; she and Bishop formed a strong friendship. After her death in 1989, I made a number of attempts to stimulate the publication of her collected poems, but failed until my former student Langdon Hammer edited her for a Library of America edition (2013).

She is an authentic original whose genius is for surprise. Born in Logan, Utah, in 1913, she was the oldest of ten children of Swedish converts to the Latter-day Saints. Though she remained close to her family and respected their religion, her faith was in poetry alone. At twenty-three, she moved to Greenwich Village, and returned to Utah periodically for the rest of her days to see her family.

She realized early that her sexual orientation was lesbian, which remains unacceptable to the Mormon Church. But she would have left Utah in any case, as her passionate vocation was literary.

“The first poem by May Swenson that I fiercely loved was her homage to her father, “Big-Hipped Nature”:

Big-hipped nature bursts forth the head of god
from jungle clots of green
from pelvic heave of mountains

On swollen-breasted clouds he fattens and feeds
He is rocked in the crib of the sea
…
~~~~~~

The Library of America’s volume of May Swenson:

https://www.loa.org/writers/255-may-swenson

Short bio:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/may-swenson

Big-hipped nature bursts forth the head of god
from jungle clots of green
from pelvic heave of mountains
On swollen-breasted clouds he fattens and feeds
He is rocked in the crib of the sea

Stairways of the inner earth he crawls
and coos to us from the caves
The secret worms miracle his veins
Myriads of fish embellish his iridescent bowels
In multiple syllables the birds
inscribe on air his fledgling words

Swift and winding beasts with coats of flame
serpents in their languor black and blind
in the night of his dark mind express
his awe and anger his terror and magicness

Wherever we look his eye lies bottomless
fringed by fields and woods
and tragic moons
magnify his pupils with their tears

In fire he strides
Within the waterfall
he twines his limbs of light
Clothed in the wind and tall
he walks the roofs and towers
Rocks are all his faces
flowers the flesh of his flanks
His hair is tossed with the grasses everywhere
Stained by the rainbow every shell
roars his whispered spell

When sleep the enormous shadow of his hand descends
our tongues uncoil a prayer
to hush our ticking hearts our sparrow-like fear
and we lie naked within his lair
His cabalistic lightnings play upon us there.

—May Swenson—


Harold Bloom goes on remembering:

“I recall discussing “Big-Hipped Nature” with May Swenson sometime in the later 1960s. It was the only one of her poems we ever talked about when we met. I particularly admire the final stanza, where the child May Swenson and her siblings fall asleep beneath the enormous shadow of Dan Swenson’s hand. How much Kabbalah she knew I never inquired, yet the final image is true to the Jewish esoteric tradition. The protective father who is Adam Kadmon plays his emanations of light upon the sleeping children, who rest in the tragic moons of his tearful love as he broods over them.”

—Memory: The Inward Light of Criticism—

Nice. I mostly hate poetry but May Swenson is the exception to the rule. At least some of it.

Her best is "Bleeding". Cuts to the bone. Someone here turned me on to it.


"Stop bleeding you make me messy with this blood. I'm sorry said the cut. Stop or I will sink in farther said the knife. Don't said the cut . . ." as part of it goes.


I recently bought a book of poetry because of this line,

"Light drizzle as if the Atlantic
were examining it's conscience."
-----Adam Zagajewski

Luckily the book is very short as are the poems which seem to be more than words pulled out of thin air at random like some other self impressed poets do.


And yes. Helps to read out loud. Invites a second part of your brain to sit at the table.

Hey Done (hand wave)!

“And yes. Helps to read out loud. Invites a second part of your brain to sit at the table.”

It’s not poetry when not read aloud; but then a concrete poem like “Bleeding” comes along and visually slices you. Poetry contains multitudes and contradictions and is always waiting somewhere ahead of us.


If I may, on that “second part of your brain at the table”, I’d like to recommend a book by Bloom’s mentor, M.H. Abrams, “The Fourth Dimension of a Poem”. It begins:

“THE FOURTH DIMENSION of a Poem.” To explain that enigmatic title, I’ll begin by quoting the opening paragraph of a novel written while its author was teaching at Cornell:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

Humbert Humbert’s obsession with Lolita has sensitized him to a fact to which we are ordinarily oblivious; that is, that the use of language involves a physical component, the oral actions of producing the words we utter, and that by attending to them, we can become aware of the mobile and tactile sensations of performing these actions. The point I want to stress is that poets, whether deliberately or unconsciously, exploit the physical aspect of language. It is this component—the act of its utterance—that I call the fourth dimension of a poem.”

Thanks. So many poets make me want to scream, "Why can't you just talk like a normal person? You aren't as clever as you think you are." It's like you go to the bakery to buy a cake and they just give you some random ingredients and no recipe.

Luckily once in a while one of the ingredients is enough all by itself.

Perhaps I will check out the Fourth Dimension.

“The sky is a gun aimed at me.” —somewhere in Donald Hall. That’s ingredient enough all by itself. Imagine feeling that way while looking at the sky? That bit by Zagajewski brought it to mind.

My recommend was more a backing to the idea of orality in poetry than it was an actual recommend, although I do genuinely recommend it for everybody. My actual recommendation is to read that which comes closest to you. Life is short. Reading is difficult. Many a pleasant, fulfilled life is filled with no reading at all. I despise the idea that reading is “good for you,” like eating carrots or something.

If you love a song and hearing it makes you feel really good, is it safe to assume that singing the poem (usually) that comprises the lyrics makes you feel even better than just listening to it?

And you know how singers may often 'emote' as they sing, giving us visible cues as to emotions the lyrics embody, would you recommend this for us non-professionals?

Are you asking me if would recommend singing to one’s self? Yes, absolutely.

That is, if you can do it. I must restrain myself to nothing more than vigorous humming, lest I hurt my ears and heart.

Thank you.

Roy G Biv and his guitar gently weep.