(fleeting)

A few weeks ago, fellow Microblogger Richard Leis had a reading coming up and he asked about memorizing poems. I chimed in with a few thoughts. But I got rather rambly, and I severely edited my reply before posting it.

Smokey thought I should convert it into a real live blog post, and save it from being a reply lost in the endlessly receding timeline. So here it is, along with at least some of those further divagations added back in.

There are lots of different ways to memorize things, but if you haven’t done much memorizing before and you want to quickly get “off-book” as the actors say, I’d recommend a variation of the following:

First, copy out each poem as prose and break it into smallish chunks that will sit in your mind as discrete phrases. If you already compose in something resembling stanzas or verses, you could go with that, I suppose — but longer phrases sometimes span shorter stanzas, and sometimes a single stanza may be several phrases long. So I suggest ignoring whatever line- and stanza-breaks you originally composed in, and instead look for phrases that don’t require more than one or two lungfuls of air to say aloud.

Second, copy out each poem by hand several times, reciting it aloud as you write. You’ll start to see it and hear it in your mind. Third, look and listen for a few prominent words in each phrase. There should probably be no more than two or three, and they’ll start to jump out at you on each reread/rewrite. These are the beats you’ll move between as you walk through the poem. So you’ll really be memorizing the progression from keyword to keyword, beat to beat.

Fourth, there’s no shame in having cards with you — especially if you’re hoping to memorize a lot of material in a short time. So, copy the keywords down onto index cards. Keep each card sparse, only a few phrases — say, ten or fifteen words — per card at most. Otherwise your brain will expect to see the whole poem there, and might choke when it can’t fill in the missing bits. You want to rely on the cards, but not depend on them.

Think of it this way. Instead of a page filled with text, you’ll have a little index card with only a handful of words — so when you glance down, your eyes won’t be swimming around looking for your place on a crowded page of poetry, but simply spotting the next keyword, and you’ll be on your way. You’ll be able to keep your eyes up and out at the audience longer, and your page-glances will be quicker and more economical. The audience may not even notice, and may even forget you’re not reciting completely from memory.

Okay, so let’s say I wrote a sonnet. I think it’s pretty good, and I want to recite it from memory. I’ve copied it out a bunch, I’ve recited it a dozen or so times, and I’ve got it mostly down. But just in case of mental vapor-lock in front of the vast throng of my adoring fans, I might have two index cards with me that I can glance at — you know, to kick-start my brain if I’m distracted by all the screaming, helpless weeping, and errant under-garments being flung onstage.

So, my index cards might look something like this:

Card 1:
summer’s day … lovely … temperate
Rough winds … summer’s lease
too short … too hot … fair from fair

Card 2:
chance … changing course
eternal summer … possession … fair
Death brag … shade
men breathe … eyes see

Also, if you decide not to memorize your poems, you may want to at least consider completely memorizing parts of the poems, to strengthen the impact of the performance.

Reading a poem aloud is a performance. Each person who recites a poem is interpreting how that poem can be performed; the meaning and impact of the poem shifts depending on each interpretation, each performer.

I wish more poets listened to their own poems as things composed for the human voice, the human lung, the human ear. I think it’s crucial for us to engage in the orality of our work throughout the composition process; we can discover patterns and rhythms that might otherwise remain hidden from a purely visual engagement.

But then, my bias — probably because I was a musician and actor before I was a composer of texts — is to think of poems principally (though by no means exclusively) as transcripts of oral/auditory events. Sometimes, in fact — when I’m in a particularly judgmental, even cranky mood — I find myself thinking: if a poem cannot be read aloud, then it’s not a poem. Sure, it’s still a language event, and (potentially) every bit as valid a work of art as anything else composed of language (story, play, song lyric, novel, oracular utterance, news article, magic spell, essay, judicial ruling, etc), but it’s not a poem. Conversely, anything that is composed for the human ear, a human’s lung capacity, and a human’s appetite for rhetoric — that can be called a poem, or at least “poetic.”

But like I said, that’s just me when I feel like I’m reading prose that’s been chopped up into lines for the sake of appearances. I’m not sure it’s fair to draw such a hard line through the definition of “poem.”

Hope this helps — break a leg!

I’ve been reassessing my “Finished” program, and I think it’s time to make a few changes.

First, I’ve long been aware that I tend to re-read books in the fall more than I read new books, so I am anticipating a decrease in my willingness to tackle new work. I’ll still be reading some new/unfinished things, but not at the expense of re-reads.

Also, I feel as though I have achieved the root reason for doing this: my poetry TBR shelf is now just over a third of what it was at the end of 2018.

And instead of weekly updates, I’ll be going back to a monthly update, like I did in April. And maybe I’ll finally find some time to write a few more “hot takes.” So, this will be the last update until the end of September.

Boiler Room is located in the basement – sorry, garden view level – of The Castleton, a red-brick, pre-war apartment building in Stevens Square in Minneapolis.

(I know this building well. Nearly thirty years ago, an old friend used to live in an apartment just through the ceiling and across the hall from where I’m sitting right now. Nearly all the songs I wrote or co-wrote with him during the four years he lived there were recorded in that apartment on his Yamaha cassette 4-track as we hunched over our SM-58s. I was so much older then…)

The coffeeshop is very comfortable, and larger than it looks at first. A scattering of tables; several booths at one end, couches and an Ikea shelf packed with books and board games at the other. Dispite seeming almost empty, with a weekday siesta vibe, I gradually noticed there was a constant flow of people getting to-go orders. Boiler Room may roast their own coffee, and if so, they know what they’re doing. Their house blend was smooth, rich, and sweet.

Okay. Since this is the first of what I hope will be many posts about coffee and coffeeshops, I need to mention a few things.

First, I am absolutely not a coffee snob. I will happily drink any kind of coffee, from single-estate pour-over to truck-stop robusta. I can obviously taste the difference; I let my surroundings inform my palate. How we define something is always a matter of context. My at-home morning coffee has been exactly the same for nearly eighteen years, but if I’m out somewhere and they serve coffee, I’ll drink it, whatever it is — usually black, but sometimes light & sweet. Dark roast, light roast. Whatever.

Second, if I stop in at a place that I really dislike, you’re probably not going to hear much about it. A nice place with meh coffee is one thing, but if it’s a deeply inhospitable or uncomfortable space, I probably won’t waste my words or your reading time on it. Life is too short for that kind of negative shit. This is just a blog, this isn’t Yelp. Besides, I think there’s something much more compelling about hearing someone’s positive impression of something you may dislike, than hearing someone’s negative impression of something you like.

And third, I have no intention of trying to visit a different place every day for a month or anything like that, so please temper your disappointment when there isn’t another coffee post tomorrow.

All right then.

Here are some pictures, and I’ll be back with another coffeeshop visit soon, hopefully with a lot more coffeeshop and a lot less meta.