A poem, said A.R. Ammons, embodies a motion that may be "lumbering, clipped, wavering, tripping, mechanical, dance-like, awkward, staggering, slow," or something else entirely, but my students won't feel that motion unless they hear the poem out loud, and even then the motion might elude a clumsy reader.
So I read to them. In American Lit Survey at this time of the semester it's all poetry all the time, so we're lumbering and wavering, dancing and staggering through lines by Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth Bishop, Amit Majmudar, Gwendolyn Brooks, and more. Today we discussed Yusef Komunyakaa's great basketball poem "Slam, Dunk, & Hook," and I wanted them to hear the "hot / Swish of strings like silk" and the blackjack pounding the palm of personified Trouble, wanted them to see the bodies rising as they "spun / On swivels of bone & faith / Through a lyric slipknot / Of joy," so of course I had to read it out loud.
But I can't read every poem out loud, so when we do group work I often ask groups to choose a few lines or a stanza to read to their classmates. A few students don't mind but many resist, perhaps fearing stumbles or unfamiliar words. Feel the motion, I tell them. Hear the words. Savor the sounds. But they're too busy packing up their books and notes so they can dash off to the next class. Poetry may be lumbering or staggering or slow, but students are always in a hurry to close the books and move on.
I'd like to live inside the poetry one day, spend my days reading beautiful lines to an appreciative audience, but where will I find one? Shall I go to the woods and read poems to the birds, embodying the motion appropriate to each poem? They're unlikely to be appreciative, and my bursts of enthusiasm might scare them away.
So I savor the days when I can read poetry out loud to students, even if they're not always listening. I feel the words move through me and I spin through that "lyric slipknot / Of joy" and for a moment gravity releases me and I am free.
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