Much Ado About a Tempest

"I just don't get poetry."

Benedick & Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing (1984): “Serve God, love me, and mend.”

I hear it all the time: “I just don’t get poetry.”

Ok, I don’t hear it all the time.

I don’t tell every soul I meet I’m a poet like some kind of mad evangelist for discomfort. But it is a refrain my ears have grown accustomed to. Even among friends and acquaintances who by all other measures are cultured, well-read citizens of the empire, poetry is, if not reprehensible, at least…dubious, shadowy, obscure.

Over the years I’ve dealt with these earnest confessions in a number of obnoxious ways. If the person was well-educated I would often feign astonishment, assuring them in the most pitying tones that this oversight was indeed very odd for someone of their station, and that they might even consider this a serious moral defect worth examining and correcting with some urgency.

On the other hand, if the person resembled a sports fan I might point out that the Baltimore Ravens were named after the Edgar Allan Poe poem. Then, when they’d acknowledge this fact, I’d reply triumphantly something to the effect of, “see, you get it!” They’d often believe me (as a side note: a surprising number of Americans, when pressed, can recite at least a line or two of The Raven, and in my experience the discovery of this hidden power almost always delights them to no end).

Or, if I were a few drinks in, I could well have berated them, insisting that poetry is not something you “get” like Latin verb conjugation, it was something you caught, like chlamydia.

None of this was particularly helpful, which was entirely the point.

I’ll give my former, and hopefully more obnoxious, self some credit. There are many things that one simply can’t “get” or “figure out” until properly prepared, tilled, tickled, roughed or sweetened up, depending on personal history.

Recently, I’ve taken a new approach. I recommend movies. Shakespeare movies.

And I’ll say, “don’t try to understand the words; literal mental defectives “got” Shakespeare’s plays in his day without understanding all the words.”

A lot of poetry is like that.

Here’s a few clips from some first-rate Shakespeare adaptations.

Of course, there are limitations to movies. I’ve always said the biggest difference between seeing a play vs. a movie is that with the play you at least have a shot at getting invited to the after party. Heck, you could crash it. So seeing it performed live by a good company is better than a movie but not an easy option for everyone.

This past week the Woods Family watched Much Ado About Nothing (1984), which I thought was excellent, and The Tempest (1979), which I thought was OK, on BritBox.

I was struck by how hilarious and eviscerating Shakespeare could be while playing out the battle between the sexes on one hand, and how outlandish yet restrained he could be pulling out the pathos from The Tempest. None of this was diminished by the fact that I couldn’t always follow along, after long work days, every syllable or verbal flourish. And I’m someone who’s read and watched these plays more than once.

All of this is to say, it seems to take some aback but also makes complete sense when you suggest poetry isn’t something you read merely on the page.

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Silver Door updates & The Manifesto

If you’ve read post about the poetry website Scarriet you should know that the follow up post, which will include something like a How-to-Navigate-Scarriet-Guide, will likely still be several weeks down the road.

This is in part because I’ve begun working on The Substack Poetry Manifesto, which will be published at the end of the month.

As poetry develops on Substack, what practices or features would you like to see implemented or cut out by poets? What do you see that you already appreciate?