Readers Real and Ideal

posted by Katha Pollitt on 08/10/2009 @ 10:25am

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(I posted this at The Best American Poetry last Friday. I'm going to be blogging there regularly about poetry. I hope you'll take a look.)

I love the Gertrude Stein quip David Comiskey posted in response to my last blog: "I write for myself and strangers." that just about covers it, doesn't it? Another reader sent in a different version: "I write for myself and strange people." That's probably just as true. For some more portraits of the reader in one's head, I queried members of WOM-PO, a listserv of mostly poets (both sexes) devoted to discussion of poetry by women. Here are some answers: Emily Dickinson, YOU, "the me which is that feathered thing alive and barnacled on/as my soul," "people who need my words," a friend in Colorado with whom the poet has exchanged a weekly poem for the past 33 (!) years, "my former next-door neighbor, Joan, who didn't go to college, but who is a terrific reader," a longstanding poetry critique group, a local poetry listserv in Sebastopol, CA. Linda Rodriguez says she writes for "a literate, reading person somewhere out there in the world, someone curious who wants to see beneath the surface of life" -- a version of Virginia Woolf's Common Reader -- but others longed to reach people, including their relatives, who didn't read poetry and who might be electrified by something they wrote. "When I find a fifteen year old girl in a small town somewhere that has read a poem and gone on to the library filled with questions," writes Sina Queyras, "Well, that's what it's about for me." If that doesn't happen, don't lose heart. As Kate Bernadette Benedict points out "My internalized reader may not even be born yet!"

Mary Oliver agrees with Benedict. "I write poems for a stranger who will be born in some distant country hundreds of years from now," she wrote in "A Poetry Handbook." Of course, Oliver is one of the most popular poets in America right this minute -- it's not like she's waiting for posterity to catch up with her. Billy Collins, the other most popular poet, has a riff on Oliver. It's a funny poem, but I can't decide if he's making fun of her. Is he mocking her somewhat vatic claim on posterity, debunking the idea of posterity as anything special, ruefully deflating the concept of universality, or even comparing Oliver's poetry to a wet dog? What do you think?

To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now

I write poems for a stranger who will be born in some distant country hundreds of years from now. - Mary Oliver

Nobody here likes a wet dog.
No one wants anything to do with a dog
that is wet from being out in the rain
or retrieving a stick from a lake.
Look how she wanders around the crowded pub tonight
going from one person to another
hoping for a pat on the head, a rub behind the ears,
something that could be given with one hand
without even wrinkling the conversation.

But everyone pushes her away,
some with a knee, others with the sole of a boot.
Even the children, who don't realize she is wet
until they go to pet her,
push her away
then wipe their hands on their clothes.
And whenever she heads toward me,
I show her my palm, and she turns aside.

O stranger of the future!
O inconceivable being!
whatever the shape of your house,
however you scoot from place to place,
no matter how strange and colorless the clothes you may wear,
I bet nobody there likes a wet dog either.
I bet everyone in your pub,
even the children, pushes her away.

-- Billy Collins

Comments (26)

katha your blogs are by far the least interesting on The Nation. good grief.

Posted by urmygyro at 08/10/2009 @ 10:50am
Posted by urmygyro at 08/10/2009 @ 10:50am

So saith the Lord.

Posted by Mask at 08/10/2009 @ 11:31am
"saith" or "sayeth"?

Posted by urmygyro at 08/10/2009 @ 11:43am
Everyone here loves the 'wet dog'...

We just don't want to hug one right now.

Later on... most of us will feel differently...

...when our personal councilors and spiritual mentors tellus that we are needing to take in and befriend our 'inner wet puppy'...

Love these, Katha! Thanks.

Posted by ttr at 08/10/2009 @ 12:51pm
Its nothing to do with the dog. Its the wet that is avoided. Same reason people use umbrellas.

Posted by Extraneous at 08/10/2009 @ 1:01pm
Posted by urmygyro at 08/10/2009 @ 11:43am

Forgive me Blog Lord for my typo, as I forgive those who typo against me.

Posted by Mask at 08/10/2009 @ 1:35pm
take off your mask and seek forgiveness from within...

Posted by urmygyro at 08/10/2009 @ 1:42pm
Posted by urmygyro at 08/10/2009 @ 1:42pm

"from within"?....heathen narcissist.

None come to the Father, except through Urmy.---II Gyrations 2:19

Posted by Mask at 08/10/2009 @ 2:33pm
"heathen narcissist"--no wonder you have such trouble with simplicity

Posted by urmygyro at 08/10/2009 @ 2:34pm
When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road, but, doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet.

When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, but you will still get the same soaking.

This understanding extends to all.

- Hagakure: Book of the Samurai

The dog gets it (and the Ghost Dawg, for those in the know)...most cynics do.

Posted by snowball777 at 08/10/2009 @ 5:42pm
katha your blogs are by far the least interesting on The Nation. good grief.

Posted by urmygyro at 08/10/2009 @ 10:50am

That's whap happens when Bush stepped dow....the minds of Feminists just can't go after The One who so eloquently said: "You're likable enough!"....or The Wise Latina....:~)

Posted by Happy at 08/10/2009 @ 6:01pm
"That's whap happens when Bush stepped dow...."----Posted by Happy at 08/10/2009 @ 6:01pm

"stepped Dow"?....typo or Freudian slip, HAPP?

Posted by Mask at 08/10/2009 @ 10:13pm
Right you are, Mask...

I couldn't help but notice that one too!

Gaping ominously out at the world they created... they groped into the dark economic realities of post pointlesss wars and false imperialistitic assumptions... ignoring the homeland they had worked so hard to forget...

...and exclaimed upon arrival... "what an Obamanation"...

But... these hapless 'ideologues' were peering into the looking glass of their own purely fanciful 'reasoning'...;^)

Big suprize... people matter.

Posted by ttr at 08/11/2009 @ 10:37am
Posted by ttr at 08/11/2009 @ 10:37am

I'll bet, secretly, buried deep within his Ditto-head heart....

HAPP pissed as hell at Dubya for what what happened to his stock portfolio and not buying the "Dems were in charge of Congress...they did it!" spin.

Oh, he'll repeat it...here and to his friends...but wonder if down deep...he really believes it???

Posted by Mask at 08/11/2009 @ 12:21pm
Good point... yet again... Maestro!

They are shouting down a well... and so pleased with the 'excessive' volume...;^)

Posted by ttr at 08/11/2009 @ 2:18pm
HAPP pissed as hell at Dubya for what what happened to his stock portfolio and not buying the "Dems were in charge of Congress...they did it!" spin.

Posted by Mask at 08/11/2009 @ 12:21pm

Not at all, I am having my 2nd best year of the past 13....2003 was the top! Almost 20% year-to-date!

Posted by Happy at 08/11/2009 @ 7:41pm
Posted by Happy at 08/11/2009 @ 7:41pm

Really? So Warren Buffet lost money in the Market but you didn't?!??!?!?

Posted by Mask at 08/12/2009 @ 08:10am
Posted by Mask at 08/12/2009 @ 08:10am |

His losses from Nov '08 have fallen into the memory hole...all water under a metaphorical bridge.

And if you simply ignore the part of the graph before January, he looks like a genius, but so does anyone else who dove in at the bottom in earnest.

Posted by snowball777 at 08/12/2009 @ 08:16am
Not at all, I am having my 2nd best year of the past 13....2003 was the top! Almost 20% year-to-date!

Posted by Happy at 08/11/2009 @ 7:41pm | ignore this person | warn this person

Really? So Warren Buffet lost money in the Market but you didn't?!??!?!?

Posted by Mask at 08/12/2009 @ 08:10am

You're becoming less worthy of my time....Yo don't even pretend to understand English anymore!

What does it mean when I say "I am having my 2nd best year of the past 13"?

IF Buffet lost money THIS YEAR, as you believe, then he is one dumb ass. In case you don't know, the market is actually up low double-digits overall since Jan. 1st.

To give you some cover, you MAY mean both Buffet & I lost money last year, as in the year 2008!

Look, MASK, if you can't be more intelligent or funny w/your comments to me, you can go into jail. I'm way too busy right now, with a townhouse to work on and sifting through gobs of properties in Orlando and Vegas!

Posted by Happy at 08/12/2009 @ 09:05am
Hey snowball

Remember Kakuzo's Book of Tea? Lets see if I remember...

At age 10 man is an animal At age 20 a lunatic At age 30 a failure At age 40 a fraud At age 50 a criminal

Food for thought for some of these cretins.

Posted by Sorelish at 08/12/2009 @ 09:51am
Posted by Happy at 08/12/2009 @ 09:05am

So you lost money under Bush...and made it under Obama THIS YEAR?

Posted by Mask at 08/12/2009 @ 12:32pm
Remember Kakuzo's Book of Tea? Lets see if I remember... At age 10 man is an animal At age 20 a lunatic At age 30 a failure At age 40 a fraud At age 50 a criminal Food for thought for some of these cretins. Posted by Sorelish at 08/12/2009 @ 09:51am |

Haven't had the pleasure, but it reminds me of lyrics from the 'Porno for Pyros' song 'Pets' (as if to conjure the very same cretins you mentioned).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpkmtweNQ-U

Children are innocent and teenagers: f-cked up in the head, adults are even more f-cked up, and elderlies are like children.

Posted by snowball777 at 08/12/2009 @ 5:59pm
So you lost money under Bush...and made it under Obama THIS YEAR?

Posted by Mask at 08/12/2009 @ 12:32pm

Bush was a POTUS for 8 years and having one big down year on his way out, is no big deal.

The market is forward-looking and there is no question a big part of the drop in `08, particularly toward the end of the year was due to the expectation of a Dem take-over of ALL gov't.

Had McCain won, I'd be making money, probably even more, this year!

Posted by Happy at 08/13/2009 @ 09:21am
Posted by Happy at 08/13/2009 @ 09:21am |

Happy, once again belying his complete ignorance with respect to even the most basic of economics, but what do you expect from a fool who thinks, "Existence exists." is `heavy' philosophy.

Posted by snowball777 at 08/13/2009 @ 3:08pm
Pollitt is the only thoroughbred, among the many nags in the Nation's stable. Where they are stubborn and predictable she is spirited and brave. Where they are ideologues she is principled. She is a lefty and a feminist, and yet her own woman.

Posted by Hugo_Pirovano at 08/13/2009 @ 6:01pm
"...particularly toward the end of the year was due to the expectation of a Dem take-over of ALL gov't."-------Posted by Happy at 08/13/2009 @ 09:21am

Curious HAPP...when did "the Market" realize that Obama was going to win and react to that?

Posted by Mask at 08/14/2009 @ 08:48am