A Conversation on Poetry

I read this beautiful book on poetry called “How to Read a Poem…and Start a Poetry Circle” by Molly Peacock. The book explores several poems. It discusses the period in which a poem was written, a little bit about the author, and then it explores the poem’s meaning. Molly has this beautiful way of talking about poetry. I remember thinking, “I wish someone would talk about my poems in such an eloquent, loving way.”

At the beginning of the book, she says, “Sometimes I think we are attracted to a poem because it makes us feel as if someone is listening to us. This may seem like a strange reversal, because we are supposed to be listening to it, but the voice of the poem allows us to hear ourselves. It can be of great comfort to hear our own voices emanating through the letters of words that come from someone else.”

In this way, she discusses these poems. Some of which I immediately felt connected to, but many others which didn’t resonate with me upon my initial reading. Her exploration of each poem felt like a conversation. Although Molly will never hear my end of our conversation, her explanations commingled with my own feelings and thoughts about the poems and I felt like we examined the poems together.

To me, this is a great gift. There have been heated debates about the meaning of poems, some people including professors of poetry interpret poems as if there is only one way to do so. This completely eliminates the role of the reader. As writers, we couldn’t fathom the life experiences that a reader enters into the pages of our work with and we couldn’t anticipate what our words mean to them as a result of those experiences. I intend to write a post one day about the relationship between a writer and reader, but in short, the words of an author or poet are like tea leaves. You need them to make the tea, but the preparation of the tea and the time its left to steep can drastically affect the flavor. The tea leaves may be perfect, but the second part is equally important to the taste of the tea.

I don’t buy into there being one interpretation of a work. However, the discussion about different interpretations is invaluable. While many times Molly’s interpretations added depth to a poem or connected me to the poet’s words, other times I couldn’t figure out where she came to find a certain meaning in a poem. I felt she really had to stretch to come to a certain conclusion. But that was the great thing about the book, I didn’t feel like I had to agree with her.

One chapter that particularly spoke to me was about melancholy. Perhaps as a result of poetry being a way I’ve learned to process grief, her words felt particularly true. She starts by saying, “When we are truly sad, when we are deeply grieved, language lets us acknowledge–and value–that state. We don’t live in a culture that lets us grieve to the degree and frequency we need to.”

Near the end of the book, Molly addresses two questions about why these poems were written and who needs to hear them. As both a poet and a person who loves poetry, I appreciated her response. “The answer here is that the poets need to tell us. They make confidants of us. And we bother to listen because of the urgency of their voices. After all, falling captive to a voice is part of reading a poem.”

I don’t know if I feel more confident in interpreting poems on say an academic level after reading Molly’s words, but she made me feel so connected to the poems. She made the works accessible and put to words some of my own thoughts about poetry. And at the very least, I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.