Letters From Little Rock

An odd little thing happened in my head about a week ago. Not to make too much of it, but it struck me rather forcefully. I was sitting in my chair listening to a little jazz and drinking a little coffee, basically following my after work routine as per my usual. I had picked up a book of Chinese poetry over the previous weekend and I was thumbing through it and enjoying the matter-of-fact expressions and descriptions of nature. I was drifting in the Zen zone when I was briefly interrupted by my dogs. Dogs have to go outside occasionally. When I got back to my chair, I picked the book up and realized with a start that I was in fact browsing through a copy of Raymond Carver’s collected poems. I had also picked it up over the previous weekend. Now, I know there isn’t much excuse for not being able to tell the difference between Raymond Carver and a comprehensive anthology of 3000 years of Chinese poetry, but in my defense the random opening of the book had put me in the middle of some poems that were not filled with telephones and automobiles or other obvious artifacts of modernity. Besides that the books are of similar heft and, though it’s hard to tell from the images in the links below, the dominant background color (especially on the back covers of the books) is a nearly identical light tan. Easy mistake to make.

I don’t know why this was such a total discombobulation to me, but it was. I guess the thing that bothered me so much was to know just how differently a person’s expectations could affect his reading of a poem. As a poet it would kind of bother me to know that someone who expects a poem noir experience might open one of my books and discover precisely what he expected despite the total absence of any intent or content of that type in my work. I understand how important context is, but without overstating it Raymond Carver’s poems really were ancient Chinese poetry there for a little while in my mind at least and I have a suspicion I might have performed the exact opposite feat of mental gymnastics if I had opened the Chinese anthology to Han Shan while expecting Carver. I’d like to think that the choices I make in diction and meter make a difference in the meaning of my poems, that the entire meaning of the poems I write is not dictated solely by a reader’s false impression and preconceived expectations. The very idea that I could be read as anything other than what I am distresses me. I don’t very much wish to be thought of as a beat poet or as a surrealist or as a post-modernist. I’m not sure why it would bother me to be misread so badly, but it would. So please don’t make the mistakes I have made, read the name on the cover twice before you crack the book open, and if you like a little splash of something-something in your coffee, at least splash it in after you’ve certified your reading expectations and reading material are cohabitating the same mental landscape.

On the other hand experience is real whether you understand it or not. In fact, I’m willing to state that Raymond carver is currently one of my favorite Chinese poets and probably always will be.