How to talk about a poem: a Charles Simic poem (9.26.22)

Another installment in the series, "How to talk about a poem." 

Let's say that the poet Charles Simic visits our Wednesdays@One salon with a poem to share and discuss. Simic has published some 25 books of poems, starting with 1967's What the Grass Says. He's published at a 2-4 year clip, so, a pretty steady output of single volumes, collected editions, and has won the Pulitzer Prize. 

The poem he's brought along today is from his latest book, Come Closer and Listen, published by Ecco. You can be sure that, to Simic, this poem is "last year's cold," as the poet Anne Sexton used to say of her published work. That is, he's over it. Any advice we're likely to give him about improving this poem will fall upon deaf ears.

Still, he's brought the poem along for discussion, so the least we can do is to discuss it.  Here is the poem:

Some Birds Chirp

Others have nothing to say.

You see them pace back and forth,

Nodding their heads as they do.

It must be something huge

That's driving them nuts--

Life in general, being a bird.

Too much for one little brain

To figure out on its own.

Still, no harm trying, I guess,

Even with all the racket

Made by its neighbors,

Darting and bickering nonstop.

Where to begin a conversation about this little poem? Do we talk about it in technical terms? Or maybe in terms of style? Or perhaps even more literary terms, as in how the poem arises from/shows an understanding of literary history? Maybe we should talk about it as art, that is, as a "making" made from words that moves from a beginning through a middle to an end? That would be the conversation Aristotle might encourage! Or maybe we could talk about this poem as a social construct; you know, taking into account the race, gender, politics, religion or creed implied in the speaker, of the author and/or the reader (i.e., you, in particular).

Each of these is an "approach" to the poem that lies on the page before us or reverberates into the air around us as it is spoken aloud, twice, through the voices of two readers, as we do at W@1.

What we won't do is to talk idly about the poem. We won't let ourselves rest on statements like:

I really like this poem!

I've seen birds behave just like this in my own yard!

I can relate to this poem!

This poem has nice page real estate!

Spare!

Every word contributes, and not a word out of place!

Funny!

But WHY do you like this poem? So WHAT, you've seen birds behave this way? HOW do you relate? What do you MEAN by "nice"? WHY is "spare" important? HOW does the word "with" contribute to the poem? What MAKES the poem funny?

What I mean is, we should talk about the poem not through vague impressions of "like" or "dislike," but in terms of its parts, how it works, its literary lineage, the figures it deploys, its "voicings," its plot (or, if you prefer, not THAT it moves, but HOW it moves from beginning to end).

Suppose we begin our discussion with the poem's figures and how they are deployed throughout, for this is a poem of figures of speech, as many of Simic's poems are. In fact, somebody in our group, who has read many of Simic's books and maybe an essay or two about his writing, might contribute that Simic is not American by birth, that English is his second language, that, like Nabokov before him, Simic has gone to great lengths to Americanize his speech and vocabulary, even if he still speaks with a distinctively Serbian accent (he was born in Belgrade). As you will no doubt hear when our visitor reads his poem aloud. So much is his commitment to language, all language, as a poet. And given this personal history, it won't be a great leap to infer (and so much of our discussion of any poem will depend on the quality of the inferences we make!) that Simic is attracted to American speech patterns, colloquialisms, sayings, ways of speaking, and often builds these into his poems in the form of figures of speech.

The birds of this poem "pace," nodding their heads as they do. Something's driving them nuts. Maybe it's life in general. Whatever it is, it is probably too much for one little brain. Still, no harm in trying, I guess. The speaker watches the silent birds "try" even with all the racket made by the birds that do sing (or bicker). 

Each of these phrases/words derives from common American speech. Even translated into Serbian, they will not ring with the same flatness that they have in common speech or this poem. They come across, in their flatness of tone, as idle chatter. And so there you have it, a poem built of the idle chatter (thoughts) of somebody observing birds "trudge" about before him on the ground. You have to admire expressions like "life in general" and "I guess" as Simic uses them in this poem. Outside of the construct of the poem, these are expressions that any one of us will use at any point in any conversation in which we are not particularly invested, are unwilling to devote much thought to, haven't the time or the energy or the interest to think more deeply about.

And yet. In this poem these markers of idle chatter carry the artistic load! Idle thoughts about birds that chirp and birds that don't. Now who would write a poem about that? Charles Simic, that's who. He is a poet of the idle, workaday consciousness beneath which lurks comedy and terror and a very deep unease. Simic is a Surrealist. His poems acknowledge that we live on two planes: a quotidian and a dream world, a world of logic and a world of disconnection, and they find irony, humor, tragedy . . . humanity . . . in that dual existence.

So now we have talked about one part of Simic's poem, its figures. We could dive in another direction or go deeper. We could talk about the poem's metaphorical structure: how the birds are like people, described in terms of people we've all seen and heard (or not heard, ha-ha) at one time or another. No doubt, some of us have already made this connection between pacing people and birds walking around on the ground while other birds sing in the trees. And no doubt at least some of us have noted that there seem to be two kinds of people in the world, those who trudge around with heads down and those who seem to celebrate, lifting their voices.

We could go on and talk about point of view as a key element of the art of this poem. Who is seeing all this drama unfold among the chattering and silent birds? From what vantage point is the seeing done? A park bench? A window? And, given that the speaker dwells on the subject especially of the birds that (seem to) pace, might we infer (there we go again!) that the speaker identifies with these birds that "have nothing to say"? That the speaker's thoughts are fulfilled through such idle chatter suggests so. Ironic!

And there you have it. An hour and a half nearly used up talking substantively about Charles Simic's poem. And we haven't even talked yet about how "good" the poem is, or whether it might be improved, or how it reveals a certain style of writing, thinking and feeling.  

That's for another ninety minutes.