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Migrations
March 31, 2006    File under: Steganography

As I have said, everything in my life is in motion right now, much of it extremely personal, too personal to blog about, I think, though it seems a little strange to say.

The story is one that comes from the deepest, strongest, most enduring parts of my life, which are also those parts that have too often been convoluted, hidden, steganographed — and knowing this opening in my life, this great explosion and outward migration from the secret center of my everything, I feel I should talk about everything, though at the same time I am feeling that this story best unfolds in conversation, that it should be told.

Which is to say that I've come to think of blogs, of the blog (or is it just because of the way I've conducted this blog) as too public or too simply public or, when opening what's private, too simply private.

Which is to say that there are things to say and that those things must be said delicately, carefully.

I would want you to hear all that in my voice. To hear in tone what can't travel in the central, semantic stream. What can't travel well.

To know when you hear a particular trill outside the 5am window, the first light easing through the curtains and into bed that something special has arrived, something rare has moved into the territory, that you are in the middle of a great migration. A great re-location.

...

Let me say a few things simply.

I have struggled with Denver.

I have struggled with Alabama.

I have struggled with being from. With being toward.

Suddenly it has become possible not only to imagine living in Denver but, more importantly, to live in Denver. To be in Denver. To be for Denver.

To look at myself and see that I have moved.

And to be moved further by that realization.

The accent stays the same. The ears are different.

And now there is a complementary song.

And what in me has been hidden is now unfolded, now riding these consistent winds.

This is right where I want to be.

...

There is more to say about that, as it comes.

Some of it must remain for the ears from the throat, however.

Come closer and you will hear it.

...

I've been thinking, for a long time, about National Poetry Month, which opens tomorrow with something of a joke.

I've spent most of my professional life thinking about the grim pronouncements and suggestions Dana Gioia made 15 years ago in his essay "Can Poetry Matter?" It was one of the first pieces of criticism of contemporary poetry as a discipline and as a culture I can recall reading. My mentor gave it to a class, said we should consider arranging some readings, getting active. We did. I did. It all made me a better writer.

I let some of that go when I was in graduate school, but in my dissertation, I considered how American poems could have generated resources for helping project poetry into a public sphere.

In my work here in Denver, I have considered how literary community could help project poetry more widely, how it could amplify an appreciation for or how it could create a larger place for writing, for literature.

I have been pleased. I have been frustrated.

I have been thinking about the 2006 Denver Poetry Festival, something that has remained more conceptual than actual, in large part because I inherited much of the coordination over the last few years and this year, because of all the internal migration, I have been unable to arrange the flock of myself enough to arrange anything. But also because of my own ambivalence about community-building efforts.

It's hard to know if they work. It's hard to know who's reading. What they're getting out of it. What people want when they come to readings.

Sometimes I see that people are listening. Sometimes I see people waiting for their turn, impatient. Sometimes I see another kind of hunger.

I started thinking, as my own involuted self began to unfold, about how the public events we plan obscure a bit one of the things that is most important about my own relationship to literature — the actual book in my hand, the quiet of the world around me as I become tuned to another language, as I begin listening to another voice, how everything fades beyond the margin.

I started thinking that I'd like to do a "read out," a public unfolding in silence of poetry books. Maybe 1000 or so of us readers along the 16th Street Mall or some other street. One on each corner, with a book. Or enough so that you could look and see us all with our slim, explosive volumes. So you too could hear that fading out.

So that something that roots pleasure in quiet intimacy could be shown in a way that would encourage others to seek it out.

Like seeing two lovers, hands clasped, and forgetting about all pornography of all time.

You feel something larger unfolding within you. Your sympathy connects you without requiring some burlesque.

...

I'm not saying that public reading is burlesque.

Not exactly.

But I am saying that some things are for more intimate dispositions.

Come closer. You will hear.

Posted by Jake Adam York at March 31, 2006 12:57 PM