A poet talking to a philosopher

Listening to three Polish poets trade poems on PR2, I am mind-boggled. They exchange comments such as that “reality is perceived more by eyes than by ears”, and that “poetry is like breathing in (experiencing something) and then breathing out (talking about it)”.

I listen with my jaws agape: both the momentous significance of these observations (yes, and the sun also rises, usually in the East); and the aesthetic pleasure of the poems they trade – completely and utterly escape me.

Yet, I am not unmusical – just because I find nothing special to Wagner does not mean I do not enjoy – intensely – Mozart, or Mondonville, or Monteverdi, or – indeed – Ligeti (yes!). Nor am I unpoetic – this very morning I writhed with pleasure reading the Piotr Kochanowski translation of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata from 1618. (“Widzicie roza, co wpol wychylona” etc.) (Rhyme, melody, alliteration, original and surprising sentence order, surprising metaphors which nevertheless are not hermetically obscure, varying sentence structure within a more or less constant, but – and this is also an important point – not entirely, meter).

Nor are the three poets idiots: two out of the three I have known, and followed, for years as brilliant, insightful, immensely well-read and eloquent conversationalists about new books (“Magazyn literacki”). Their discussions of Esterhazy, Pamuk, and Hartwig have impressed me immensely; as well as their own form of this very underwhelmedness (“this is so predictable, so overwrought”, said one about a book only last Saturday); yet this is the very underwhelmedness which now I experience while listening to their own poetry.

My central thought here is that, clearly, I am missing something. I am missing something so utterly, that it can only be explained one way: I must be missing the integrated circuit for this stuff. Mildly clever ideas – unless they are really, really clever – just don’t seem to stimulate me. Especially if they are no expressed beautifully. Mildly clever ideas are just not pretty in and of themselves. Concepts, to me, are simply not aesthetic enough to please.

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"A poet speaking to a philosopher" is a title of a new book just out in recent weeks in Warsaw. I have not read it yet, but thinking about the title has suggested to me a comment on this post (written several days ago): that today's poetry has become a species of a reflection on life; it is perhaps sincere, but if the poet has not been taught to think rigorously, then the results are bound to be embarassing.