on “what’s at stake” in a poem
“The poem’s power and authority reside within the notion that particular (and feel-able) risks have been taken by the speaker—something hard to say, something nearly impossible to say, is ventured. (This is what makes me sad, this is what I adore, this is what I hate, this is what I fear.) Once the hard thing is said (or suggested), then there’s danger on the page. It takes a special sort of nerve to spell (just enough) the connection between the imagery (symbols) of the outer world and what the poet wants us to take from that imagery about how that imagery enhances, reflects, refracts and intensifies the poet’s inner landscape.
How overtly drawn does this correspondence have to be? I think the answer is: just overt enough so that readers can feel the risk taken. Whether or not a reader actually feels the danger on the page depends entirely upon whether the poet has provided us with sufficient correspondence between description and metaphor on one hand, and what’s human, on the other. There must be that ineluctable tension between what we understand abstractly and what we feel concretely. Without that kind of correspondence (and corresponding tension) there’s no felt urgency. Without those risks, the description and metaphor, no matter how well turned, turn merely symbolic. Without sufficient evidence of that correspondence, a symbol is just a symbol, stripped, then, of its power, like an electric circuit whose wiring reaches a dead end: the light won’t go on. Sound and fury are fine, so long as they signify something. Within this correspondence—this levering—the real work of the poem gets done.”
–Jeffrey Levine, from http://jeffreyelevine.com/2011/11/16/how-resonant-diction-and-correspondence-propel-a-poem-part-1-in-what-we-look-for-at-tupelo-press/
Reading this Saturday, November 19, 7-11:30 at Cafe Hey in Tampa
Cafe Hey
1540 N. Franklin Avenue
Tampa, FL
More Info:
Come one, come all and join us for the very first Ubernothing art show and poetry reading, featuring the work of the very same artists who adorn the pages of our magazine! This event is FREE OF CHARGE with FREE COFFEE, TEA AND TREATS for the guests!! So join us in celebrating the artists and works that make Ubernothing Tampa Bay’s Premier Art Review and Literary Magazine.
VISUAL ART
Bradley Paul Valentine
CyberCraft Robots
Brad Kokay
Jon Ditty
Kym O’Donnell
Leah Renee Pecoraro
READING
Robert Annis
Wayne S. Williams
Wayne Mason
Meg Godbout
Louis Kern
Victor Florence
Jeffrey J. Skatzka
Featuring an appearance by the Bluebird Books Bus! http://www.thebluebirdbus.com/