2002-11-22 - 4:09 p.m.
When we arrived, a long line of cars already waited to turn into a packed parking lot. A quickly moving stream of people flowed down the sidewalks, toward the security guarded doors of a brightly lit auditorium.
Was it a rock concert? A sports event? .....No, it was a....POETRY READING.
There may still be hope for the world after all.
A local college (needless to say not the one we work for) hosted a reading by Billy Collins (the Poet Laureate) last night and hundreds of people showed up. First of all, I'm just so amazed by the turnout. This is the midwest, i.e. not exactly the epicenter of culture. I have been to many readings that only attracted the same handful of English professors and a revolving cast of disgruntled students assigned to write reports. But this was a real crowd, with little kids and old people and groups of giggling teens. The auditorium filled up and the program was delayed so that some more folding chairs could be set up in the back.
Collins was completely enchanting. He has a low-key voice, and a rather self-deprecating manner, and talks to the audience as though they were old friends. We are lured into the world of Collins' poetry first with humor. I have never heard so much laughter and applause at a poetry reading. And yet there is always something more in a good poem - a moment of insight, another perspective or maybe just an unbalancing of previously held notions. Collins poems are very accessible, which perhaps explains why he is so popular, but they are not simple.
I just sat there listening to the music of the words, closing my eyes and allowing myself to drift down all the deeper paths of thought to which the poems lead me. It is such an energizing experience. Whenever I go to hear a reading, I am reminded of why poetry is so important in our world. We need that other way of seeing and connecting that can never be quantified or qualified. We desperately need the aspect of our humanity that is not defined by the banker, the employer, the doctor.... or limited by fear, loss and death.
I think this was proven when so many people turned immediately to poetry for solace and remembrance after nine/eleven. There seems to be some deep human need to find the right words....
Actually, Jane Hirshfield (another favorite poet of mine) said what I am trying to say much better, so I will just offer this quotation:
"A good poem takes something you already know as a human being and raises your ability to feel that to a higher degree so you can know your own life more intensely. When you meet your own life in a great poem, your life becomes expanded, extended, clarified, magnified, deeper in color, deeper in feeling. I feel like almost all I know about being a human being has been deepened by the poems I've read. They have taught me how to be a human being."
It is a good thing to remember, that maybe the best antidote to all the meanness and stupidity in life is just to sit down with some good poetry and let your mind go there.
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