The Invitation Within the Poem

Contrary to what is ingrained in our schooling, the poet is just a normal person. Somehow in our education, we come to see the poet as the "Poet," something almost mystical, which means the poet's words take on a (superfluous) double meaning - there is what is written, and there is what the reader thinks is being hidden from the reader, the real meaning that is a puzzle, a riddle. But don't be so fooled.

Instead, the poet - lower case "p," please - is usually inviting the reader to walk alongside her, to see through the word-images that she writes and be a companion. In almost any poem there is an invitation. Some poets are more complicated than others, and expect more from their companions. But they are not difficult once the reader reads the poet, and by that I do not mean reads into but simply falls into line with the poem's melody, its thinking, and its rhythm, just as you might with any new acquaintance.

Here are two poems that contrast in levels of difficulty, but both, in some way, invite:

Visit

A.R. Ammons

It is not far to my place:

you can come smallboat,

pausing under shade in the eddies

or going ashore

to rest, regard the leaves

or talk with birds and

shore weeds: hire a full grown man not

late in years to oar you

and choose a canoe-like thin ship:

(a dumb man is better and no

costlier; he will attract

the reflections and silences under leaves:)

travel light: a single book, some twine:

the river is muscled at rapids with trout

and a birch limb

will make a suitable spit: if you

leave in the forenoon, you will arrive

with plenty of light

the afternoon of the third day: I will

come down to the landing

(tell your man to look for it,

the dumb have clear sight and are free of

visions) to greet you with some made

wine and a special verse:

or you can come by shore:

choose the right: there the rocks

cascade less frequently, the grade more gradual:

treat yourself gently: the ascent thins both

mind and blood and you must

keep still a dense reserve

of silence we can poise against

conversation: there is little news:

I found last month a root with shape and

have heard a new sound among

the insects: come.

This poem has no sense of urgency, no secret underpinning. The best guide to the place where the poet is, is a dumb man "the dumb have clear sight and are free of / visions" and once you have found the poet he will "greet you with some made / wine and a special verse . . . you must / keep still a dense reserve // of silence we can poise against / conversation . . ." poetry is always inflected with silence - with pausing through the middle of language. It is important to remain free of visions.

Here is a more complicated poem, but lovely, and also invites:

As One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat

John Ashbery

I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.

Elsewhere we are as sitting in a place where sunlight

Filters down, a little at a time,

Waiting for someone to come. Harsh words are spoken,

As the yellows the green of the maple tree. . . .

So this was all, but obscurely

I felt the stirrings of new breath in the pages

Which all winter long had smelled like an old catalogue.

New sentences were starting up. But the summer

Was well along, not yet past the mid-point

But full and dark with the promise of that fullness,

That time when one can no longer wander away

And even the least attentive fall silent

To watch the thing that is prepared to happen.

A look of glass stops you

And you walk on shaken: was I the perceived?

Did they notice me, this time, as I am,

Or is it postponed again? The children

Still at their games, clouds that arise with a swift

Impatience in the afternoon sky, then dissipate

As limpid, dense twilight comes.

Only in that tooting of a horn

Down there, for a moment, I thought

The great, formal affair was beginning, orchestrated,

Its colors concentrated in a glance, a ballade

That takes in the whole world, now, but lightly,

Still lightly, but with wide authority and tact.

The prevalence of those gray flakes falling?

They are sun motes. You have slept in the sun

Long than the sphinx, and are none the wiser for it.

Come in. And I thought a shadow fell across the door

But it was only her come to ask once more

If I was coming in, and not to hurry in case I wasn't.

The night sheen takes over. A moon of cistercian pallor

Has climbed to the center of heaven, installed,

Finally involved with the business of darkness.

And a sigh heaves from all the small things on earth,

The books, the papers, the old garters and union-suit buttons

Kept in a white cardboard box somewhere, and all the lower

Versions of cities flattened under the equalizing night.

The summer demands and takes away too much,

But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes.

Similarly, there is no secret meaning in this poem, it is all there on the surface. The title might be misleading, if it were "One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat" a reader might expect the image of that to pervade the poem, but the title is a simile, a comparing (in the abstract), so it is "As One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat." Everything that is to be determined about what this poem is about is on the surface, in the words.

"A look of glass stops you / And you walk on shaken: was I the perceived? / Did they notice me, this time, as I am / Or is it postponed again?" Those lines may very well be the speaker's own anxiety of his poetry, of being understood - or postponed from that understanding. He offers this to the reader.

The poem itself is engaged in the act of writing: "I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free" is the attempt to write. Then there is the invitation for you, the reader: "You have slept in the sun / Longer than the sphinx and are none the wiser for it. / Come in."

And then, as Ashbery always does, he whirls away from that invitation - alighting on the idea before whirling away from it. Ammons wants to sip wine with the reader, Ashbery wants to waltz. What is lovely about this is that it is your right, as a reader, to decide which poet you will accept the invitation from. And nothing about that is restricting.