Form & Alsadir

My housemate, who is a visual artist, told me the other day she was going to separate form and content in her process. Once she decided what her content would be, and entered into creating the form, she found herself questioning her original vision to the point of distraction and reconsidering her content. (Her current project involves stitching lines of prose into a canvas...) This got me to thinking about whether form and content can be divided in the creation of poetry—do we come up with an idea, or a collection of words and see how they tumble onto the page? Or is form integral in the planning/creation of a poem?

When I was working in letterpress last fall, I found myself constantly adjusting my text to fit within the boundaries of handset type. This line won’t fit into the typestick, or there aren’t any more g’s in 12 pt Garamond, etc. There was something very powerful about these limitations. Choices had to be final because there was so much tedious work to undo them (breaking down lines, letter by letter, into their appropriate cubbies). It made me consider how valuable each word was, and what it was doing (as a prose writer, I tend to overuse them). So, in this case, form dictated content. The poems I printed were not the ones I had originally typed up on my laptop or typewriter, or scribbled in my journal—but this was the only way these poems could be expressed in the form. And one could run your fingers over the page and feel the debossed letters—an experience far more intimate than reading a longer, or more explicit, line on an offset page.

So, that is my tangent, now to the texts at hand. I’ve been considering Nuar Alsadir’s use of couplets in all three of her poems. The first thing couplets make me think of is that each line needs to be paired with another, needs a partner. This is a consideration for a poet who is crafting the poem—everything that wants to be said must fit within the decided structure. I noticed in “Bats,” (which was so special to me, because I am seduced by the lives and secrets of bats, and feel they are such ill-treated, underappreciated beings!) that each set of lines served a dual purpose that could not be replicated had the lines been shuffled.

In “Bats,” each couplet offers a physical description or visual element (of the bat) and also a reflection, or connection to the outside world (often, the human’s world).

ONE:
description – wings, not like rodents
reflection – “—not like you” (the m-dash pointing to those words is stern and intentional, a warning about the tone of the poem.)

TWO:
d – clicking of fangs
r – “they are not ashamed”

By the end of the poem, the descriptive and reflective elements have merged; they are no longer easy to separate, their meanings overlap and enhance one another.

FIVE:
d – “swim the air”
r – rising from dreams to belief

SIX:
d – clap/applause, changing direction
r – not needing applause, changing direction

Another thing that came up for me with the couplets was a feeling of authority and calm in the voice. The information is supplied steadily, uniformly (in terms of space on the page). Reading the couplets makes the pace of the poem slower and puts me at ease with the poet. The lines are almost aphoristic in this manner, particularly in “The Riddle of the Shrink.” There is so much continued white space between the lines that we are invited to read between them, to add our own impressions within the poet’s observations and reflections.

Primarily the language and form, but also the content, made me trust Alsadir—I feel entranced by her words, and I want her knowing, poetic voice to guide me & accompany me from this point onwards!

hammad solves page v. stage

I’m feeling really lucky that I have to post this ahead of time (I’ll be in Alaska next week, have fun being videotaped in class!) because it means I get to be the first to write about Suheir Hammad.

I started watching Suheir perform on scratchy VHS tapes borrowed from a classmate who recorded the HBO Def Poetry Jam episodes for me. She has always been a really strong example, I think, of how page and stage can intersect and still be equally beautiful on both sides of the street. In her poem “Silence,” you can hear the narrator’s voice effortlessly and immediately. That first stanza is such an incredibly accurate transcription of the way it should be read aloud that it’s hard to remember I’m still holding a book. I tried to figure out how she was doing it (because I am constantly trying to figure out how I can do it) and I think it’s less about the breath and more about the change in pitch in your voice as you move your head from one side of the audience to the other. She breaks a line before the emphasis comes, so you are always moving forward, always rocking. “I wonder what he / heard as he ran / wonder what he / thought as the,” breath, “American bullets / flew from,” breath, “Israeli hands / through,” breath, “god’s air.” She follows the typical cadence of her generation of slam poets (one that our generation has made a fool of themselves in trying to mimic), but does so on the page. I can hear it and I’m so impressed.

Later on in this same poem, she uses the space on the page to not only pace the reader the same way she would pace her voice on stage, but also directs the reader’s eyes the way she, as a performer, would direct her eyes. Toward the bottom of page 108, we have “Palestine occupied / freedom denied / my people’s genocide,” stretched across the page. I read these as stage directions, as shifting focus throughout the room as the list is spoken. I had never thought of doing this in such a physical and obvious way on the page.

She does something similar in the poem “exotic,” as well, pacing the words across the page in the way in which one might deliver it to an audience. We shift left to right like a typewriter head, and I can hear where she speeds up, where she lets the tongue go loose & trusts it.

I’m also glad we have the videos (thank god for youtube, right?) because I’m always curious about how this page-voice translates to a stage-voice without losing its integrity. I have been watching Suheir for years and yet I’m always surprised at the flatlining in her voice when she reads off a page (as opposed to when she performs), a bone I’m always picking with page poets who are confused when no one comes to poetry readings, but there’s barely standing-room-only at poetry slams.

What would happen if we embodied the page more often? What would happen if page poets memorized their shit?