Field theory of poetry

I run a Poetry Circle at the library. People sit around a table, taking turns reading poetry to each other. Mostly they read their own poems, but I lay out in the middle of the table a few anthologies and will open one now and then and read at random. I like to discover a poem as I read it aloud. I’m good at cold reads. One night a few years ago three different people who tried out a cold read, each opening an anthology at random and reading what their eye fell upon, voiced a poem by Edward Field.

Field has long been a favorite of mine. His poems sound like someone talking to you. I read an interview with Edward Field recently and snipped out a bit of ars poetica. Field says poetry isn’t “about language,” even though he’s just said, “It can be anything.”

 

“I’ve always seen poetry as therapeutic. … [Writing poetry]* is absolutely a tool. It’s a tool for staying focused, for remembering your feelings. … They always say, ‘Poetry isn’t therapy.’ Bullshit. It can be anything; it’s so many things. For me it’s a way of life … One thing it is [is] prayer. … Somehow poets get the idea that poetry is about this and not about that. So poets don’t often let out their political feelings in their poems. I’ve always included it some, but lately more.”

“The thing is that poetry, as presented to us, is supposed to be airy-fairy, up-there, philosophical, religious, abstract. And now the cant idea is that it’s about language. That’s one of the pernicious ideas about poetry. The second is the stricture against sentimentality. That is so evil! Every feeling you have is, of course, sentimental. We are sentimental. … I don’t like … differentiating between good feelings and bad feelings. … Why should we sneer at our feelings? … You have to tell the truth. If you’re telling the truth, you’re not going to be false. … [W]hen our world is ruled by liars, we have to stand up for truth and speak the truth. Even if no one is listening. You still do it for yourself. … That’s what poetry is about.”

*interviewer’s brackets

source:

Our Deep Gossip: conversations with gay writers on poetry and desire

by Chistopher Hennessy

2013. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison WI