I have a questions that's actually from me,
personally, about --
Is this allowed?
They don't get to tell me --
All right, there are no rules here.
I know that a lot of our readers and audience
on Facebook is experiencing this too, of hearing
you read poems that we might have read before or --
but hearing you read it, I was wondering if
you could talk about the difference between
reading a poem out loud and reading a poem
on the page?
Well, there's something to be, uh --
It depends on the poet. I mean, I've been
to my fair share of poetry readings,
and some poets read better than others.
Some poets do better justice to their work
than others, and I think, I don't know what
it has to do with exactly, except some performative
skills or attitude or just timing.
I mean often there's that thing I call the
"lifties" where people, they raise their voice
at the end of every line, they say --
[With a rising inflection] Either they just
die or they get sick and die of the sickness
or they get sick, recover then die of something
else.
And this is really a deadening experience
to hear one line after the other like that.
Other times, it's very revealing.
I know the first time I heard Charles Simic,
who's a real literary hero of mine.
I used to think his poems were very dark,
you know, completely somber and scary.
You know, you want someone to hold your hand
during the scary parts.
Then I heard him read and he reads with this
sort of half smile, and sometimes actually
laughs at his own -- and it's dark humor, and
I realized it's humor
and scary at the same time.
A little like Beckett, you know. Samuel Beckett's plays
are deeply disturbing.
I think when I was younger, I thought they
were horribly disturbing, and as I got older
I thought they were funny.
The Irish poet, Patrick Kavanagh said that
tragedy is just insufficiently developed comedy.
So, if you continued a tragedy, a Greek tragedy
or Hamlet or King Lear,
it would get funny eventually.
At least to Samuel Beckett. And maybe me.
