Inspired by How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch
Admittedly, it was an impulse purchase. It isn’t as if I had been visiting with the book, as a friend so delightfully puts it when she is agonizing over whether to buy a book or not and, so, she makes several visits to the book store to pick up the book and examine it again and again. I have done enough poetry reading not to really need another book on the subject, but I like collecting them. It’s a harmless enough hobby. I looked at the title, “How to Read a Poem and fall in love with poetry” and thought that it might make a good addition to the technical side of my poetry library. The author, Edward Hirsch, is regular contributor to poetry magazines and I believed I would enjoy the book.
I should add, I did glance at the sleeve notes and the (of course) praisings lavished on the book and thought it might make a worthwhile read. One of the extracts, written by Charles Simic, reads “If you are pretty sure you don’t like poetry, this is the book that is bound to change your mind”. Another from The Baltimore Sun commences: “If you begin with his straightforward book….” Were they ever wrong!
What should have tipped me off was the “readings from around the world”
I did anticipate that, if not a primer, the book would be an introductory or intermediate canter through reading a poem. I think it was the fall in love with poetry subtitle that gave me this idea.
So what is wrong with the book?
In one sense, not too much is wrong with it. If this were advertised as a collection of essays on poetry, then I doubt that I would have been annoyed. But, it isn’t, it is entitled “How to Read a Poem and fall in love with poetry”
My principal objection is the extent to which translations feature. Hirsch himself says in Chapter Two: “It goes without saying that each poem lives most fully in its native language.” An eminently sensible statement with which I can readily agree. So why, I wonder, are so many of the poems he chooses to consider throughout the book translations from their native language?
Now don’t get me wrong, I read and enjoy many translated poems from classics through Neruda but each time I read one, I know that what I am doing is reading somebody’s interpretation of the original. If I read a poem by Shelley, Ode to the West Wind perhaps, I can understand the quality of the poet through understanding and appreciating the poetic devices that he uses: the rhyme scheme, alliteration, I may infer the nature and true subject of the poem through some of these mechanisms. These are denied to me first-hand in a translation. I am relying on the translator’s skill to bring me both the poetic nature as well as understanding.
A comparison I am fond of using is this comparison between two translations of Horace:
John Dryden 1631 - 1700
Translating Horace Odes, Book III, XXIX
Happy The Man
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour
As a contrast, here is another, far more literal, translation of the same
extract.
A happy life and mastery
over himself shall be his who daily
can say: "I have lived: tomorrow the Father
may fill the vault with dark clouds
or brilliant sunlight, but he will not render
the past invalid, will not re-shape
and make undone whatever
the fleeting hour has brought."
In the absence of a good enough knowledge of Latin to be able to read the original to gain a real appreciation for the poet’s methods, I cannot really see which of these bears the closer relationship to the original. Bearing in mind that the classical languages do not use stressed meters and so a conversion to English is always going to be quite a leap, I suspect that Dryden has produced the more poetic translation and one that Horace might approve of as being closer in spirit to the original.
What I am laboriously leading up to is that it seems an utter nonsense to me to fill a How to Read a Poem book with translations. What is being read is another’s interpretation of the original and to then analyze these reduces the poem to content alone and, at that, content that may, or may not, be fully reflective of the original. The reader may never understand how certain poetic devices were used to emphasize important points. Personally, I find it instructive, for example, to consider where a poet chooses to break an otherwise regular meter to bring attention to a particular line. Consider The Sick Rose by Blake:
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm.
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
This is metrically regular until line 7 when the hope that has existed up to that point is snuffed out and underlined by metrical substitution of a spondaic foot. The poet has used the meter to help his argument. How might we understand this in a translation?
I don’t believe Hirsch is actually arguing that content makes a poem, but he might as well be. I could hardly agree less. A poem is a combination of many things and of these a good few are unlikely to make their way into a translation. By confining himself in this way, he has lost both an opportunity and a potential audience. This book is not a primer; nevertheless, I do believe that the title suggests that it would work for relative newcomers. In fact, I believe many would be repelled by the nature and style of the book. A whole chapter on Polish poetry may well provide a fine opportunity to admire the intellect and modernity of Hirsch, but as an essential inclusion for a book subtitled “fall in love with poetry”, it is of dubious merit.
To return to the quotes, that from Charles Simic, reads “If you are pretty sure you don’t like poetry, this is the book that is bound to change your mind”. Another from The Baltimore Sun commences: “If you begin with his straightforward book….”
This is not the book that is likely to change your mind and it is far from straightforward. If you have already studied the critical art, then you may find this of interest, I suspect, though, that you really have to be Hirsch fan - maybe a student at the University of Houston - to really enjoy it.
Buy this book at your peril; it does not reflect the title.