POETRY AS PERFORMANCE

I think what Jack Miles said in “Slept Through Any Poetry Lately?” (Book Review, July 23) was that despite the current trend toward performance of literature, in general he favors the one-to-one relationship between reader and poem, novel, etc. If so, then I agree. I came away from this column, however, with sufficient ambivalence that I have to believe it reflects, at least in part, his own mixed feelings. Perhaps also my own.

I disagree totally with the concept of a poem whose only merit lies in its recited performance. I am equally certain that the well-written poem will also perform well. Not long ago I listened to David Whyte read, in his marvelous Yorkshire accent, Neruda (in Spanish and English), Rilke (German and English), Akhmatova, David Wagonner and Beowulf, Kabir, and his own poetry, in a setting truly a gift from the gods: at Esalen overlooking the cliffs, high above the Pacific, nothing between us and the next land but six thousand miles of water, sky, and poetry.

But all of those writers enriched mankind before Whyte, and will continue, though I consider myself blessed to have heard him. The writer’s commitment is to a sheet of paper, his inner world, and that of his reader. Whatever else follows is serendipity (or synchronicity). All the better, if they also sing their brilliance, not only in our mind’s ear, but at Cafe Largo or Esalen or the Pomona 20.

Miles said it well: “The great strength of fiction was that it contained its own set, lights, sounds, special effects within itself.”

BARBARA L. SAX

PALOS VERDES