The very fact that audio recordings of poetry are now readily available to the classroom can be turned to a great advantage and can at least temporarily change the relationship between teacher and student. It is surely the case that when my students and I in class together listen to sound files instead of reading poem-texts, our vocabularies tend to be on the same plane. I might have a subtler response to what we’re hearing, and certainly I know far more than they about the sound in literary-historical context, but they are never struck dumb by the terminology I bring to bear on the point I seek to make about the specific sound of the words, the poetics of it. The students notice this difference – between their talk about the poem on the page and their talk about the sounded or recorded poems – and their discussion of poetics generally becomes charged with it. If it is true of those who perform spoken poetry that (as David Antin has put it) ‘it was my habit to record my talks / to find out what i[’]d said’ then similarly, the disorienting and terminologically disruptive mode I am describing is the means by which we might find out what we are teaching.
I've prepared a document that might nicely serve as a primer to Paul Celan's wartime experience and early poems. It includes a page-long summary of his life c. 1941-45 and then five pages from Pierre Joris' excellent introductory profile to his Paul Celan: Selections, followed by the texts of just two early poems. Here is that document (PDF).
In my basement I found a water-warped address book dating from the period 1978-1985. This morning I went looking for a few old addresses, picked up the little half-rotted black codex and out fell a pink card, which brought back a flood of good memories. It's a researcher's card given to me on the occasion of my very first visit to an archive of literary manuscripts: the Huntington Library, December 1982. Virginia (Ginny) Renner was the readers' services librarian who immediately befriended me. Dave Wyatt took me there (MLA was in LA that year, I think); we visited his father in Laguna Beach and he escorted me around and across the LA of his youth. At the Huntington, as I read the unpublished correspondence of Wallace Stevens, I got to know Stuart Curran and Joe Wittreich, who were enormously generous and hospitable, knew the Huntington and Pasadena like the backs of their hands.
And I met Marjorie Perloff for the first time, who sat next to me reading Stevens' WW2-era letters for a paper she was writing arguing his social and political ignorance. Marjorie and I enjoyed several long lunches together at the researchers-only cafe to which at noon the readers were sent walking (they closed the library for an hour, partly to enforce the daily gatherings of the scholars). We walked past the building in which was displayed Blue Boy, through the meandering Shakespeare garden, had lunch, and walked back to our manuscripts by way of the Japanese garden with its giant hungry carp. Thanks, Dave; thanks Stuart; thanks Marjorie. Thanks to the late Holly Stevens who sold her father's letters to the Huntington in part because he and wife Elsie had stopped to see Henry Huntington's collection on the way back from their trip through the Panama Canal and up the west coast.
Yes, I did note that Marjorie sat next to me researching a paper on Stevens' wartime political ignorance (and/or obliviousness). What I didn't mention--but those who have read my scholarly writing will already know--was that I was beginning to write a book arguing precisely the opposite. This did not put Marjorie off. In fact, quite the opposite. It endeared me to her and was the basis of the beginning of our friendship. We argued, to be sure, but in a way I found utterly productive (and perhaps she felt the same). She was the first energetically open-minded member of my profession I had met. We were teaching each other the conflicts. I'm going back to that first book to be sure I acknowledged her in this way. It's been a while. And in any case, now I've done so here.
Speaking of Vachel Lindsay... Helen Sewell Johnson, one of the funniest and sharpest and kindest people I know, passes along a story of Lindsay, as follows:
Lindsay visited Agnes Scott College for a reading before I was there and I still remember one of my professor's description of the event. The college president at the time was a very small man, a Presbyterian minister, Dr. Gaines. He gave a flowery introduction to Lindsay and then pronounced, "and now, I present Mister Watson." Lindsay pounced up to the podium, shaded his eyes, assumed a semi-squatting position, peered from one side of the hall to the other and shouted, "Paging Sherlock Holmes." She further described his "lion's mane of yellow hair," which he flung about as he danced around the podium performing "The Congo." The audience, I gather, was transfixed.
I own a battered paperback copy of an unusual book: The Story of my Psychoanalysis, published in 1950 and authored by "John Knight," a pseudonym. (Published in New York by McGraw-Hill, and was 225 pages in hardcover.)
The jacket is dramatic. There's John, arm crossed helplessly across forehead, lying down, apparently on his shrink's couch.
It's a tell-all book, and the mode of confession is the revelation of actual psychoanalysis. The work purports to reveal all the dark secrets of the sessions--and, thus, of course, this man's sins and desires. Here are a few choice excerpts:
I'm envious of my father...I also have a vivid image in my mind of my boss's beautiful estate...I visited it last fall...he even has an artificial lake for his private fishing parties...I dreamed last night about an invention...I invented the zipper but someone stole it from me...I sued for ten million dollars...
Doctor Maxwell discouraged too much concentration on current events. He would not discuss politics or world affairs, and encouraged me to disregard current issues unless they caused fairly intense emotional reactions. As he pointed out, it is very easy to try to escape the unpleasant, buried, ancient memories by discussing everyday matters....
There's something here I don't like...the color of your walls annoys me...I'm tense...I'd like to get out of here...Where was Moses when the lights went out?...I'm a Jew...
John's problems seem to have much to do with politics and culture--especially careerism in the context of social conformity and consensus--but it seems to be the job of the shrink, and of the book (John comes round to seeing that the shrink is right), to dissuade us from concluding that national issues, e.g. cold-war tensions, are helping to cause his ulcers (his original reason for seeking help) in any way.
Teaching with sound
The very fact that audio recordings of poetry are now readily available to the classroom can be turned to a great advantage and can at least temporarily change the relationship between teacher and student. It is surely the case that when my students and I in class together listen to sound files instead of reading poem-texts, our vocabularies tend to be on the same plane. I might have a subtler response to what we’re hearing, and certainly I know far more than they about the sound in literary-historical context, but they are never struck dumb by the terminology I bring to bear on the point I seek to make about the specific sound of the words, the poetics of it. The students notice this difference – between their talk about the poem on the page and their talk about the sounded or recorded poems – and their discussion of poetics generally becomes charged with it. If it is true of those who perform spoken poetry that (as David Antin has put it) ‘it was my habit to record my talks / to find out what i[’]d said’ then similarly, the disorienting and terminologically disruptive mode I am describing is the means by which we might find out what we are teaching.
Celan primer (PDF)
I've prepared a document that might nicely serve as a primer to Paul Celan's wartime experience and early poems. It includes a page-long summary of his life c. 1941-45 and then five pages from Pierre Joris' excellent introductory profile to his Paul Celan: Selections, followed by the texts of just two early poems. Here is that document (PDF).
Dialectic at the scholar's paradise
Yes, I did note that Marjorie sat next to me researching a paper on Stevens' wartime political ignorance (and/or obliviousness). What I didn't mention--but those who have read my scholarly writing will already know--was that I was beginning to write a book arguing precisely the opposite. This did not put Marjorie off. In fact, quite the opposite. It endeared me to her and was the basis of the beginning of our friendship. We argued, to be sure, but in a way I found utterly productive (and perhaps she felt the same). She was the first energetically open-minded member of my profession I had met. We were teaching each other the conflicts. I'm going back to that first book to be sure I acknowledged her in this way. It's been a while. And in any case, now I've done so here.
Watson, Lindsay, what's the difference?
Speaking of Vachel Lindsay... Helen Sewell Johnson, one of the funniest and sharpest and kindest people I know, passes along a story of Lindsay, as follows:
Lindsay visited Agnes Scott College for a reading before I was there and I still remember one of my professor's description of the event. The college president at the time was a very small man, a Presbyterian minister, Dr. Gaines. He gave a flowery introduction to Lindsay and then pronounced, "and now, I present Mister Watson." Lindsay pounced up to the podium, shaded his eyes, assumed a semi-squatting position, peered from one side of the hall to the other and shouted, "Paging Sherlock Holmes." She further described his "lion's mane of yellow hair," which he flung about as he danced around the podium performing "The Congo." The audience, I gather, was transfixed.
From the annals of 1950s psychoanalysis
To be mentally healthy, don't worry about current events.
The jacket is dramatic. There's John, arm crossed helplessly across forehead, lying down, apparently on his shrink's couch.
It's a tell-all book, and the mode of confession is the revelation of actual psychoanalysis. The work purports to reveal all the dark secrets of the sessions--and, thus, of course, this man's sins and desires. Here are a few choice excerpts:
I'm envious of my father...I also have a vivid image in my mind of my boss's beautiful estate...I visited it last fall...he even has an artificial lake for his private fishing parties...I dreamed last night about an invention...I invented the zipper but someone stole it from me...I sued for ten million dollars...
Doctor Maxwell discouraged too much concentration on current events. He would not discuss politics or world affairs, and encouraged me to disregard current issues unless they caused fairly intense emotional reactions. As he pointed out, it is very easy to try to escape the unpleasant, buried, ancient memories by discussing everyday matters....
There's something here I don't like...the color of your walls annoys me...I'm tense...I'd like to get out of here...Where was Moses when the lights went out?...I'm a Jew...
A longer excerpt from the book is part of my 1950s web site.
John's problems seem to have much to do with politics and culture--especially careerism in the context of social conformity and consensus--but it seems to be the job of the shrink, and of the book (John comes round to seeing that the shrink is right), to dissuade us from concluding that national issues, e.g. cold-war tensions, are helping to cause his ulcers (his original reason for seeking help) in any way.