Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets

The Burden of Seed, the Seed of Burden: “Repetitional Schemas” & Pace in Terrance Hayes’s “Sonnet”

101 The Burden of Seed, the Seed of Burden: “Repetitional Schemas” & Pace in Terrance Hayes’s “Sonnet” Metta Sáma Recently, on two electronic mailing lists, “performing poetry” was a popular topic. Not performance poetry, but performing (one’s) poetry. Members on both lists lauded Auden, Yeats, Eliot, and Dylan Thomas & (genially) harpooned slam poets. I take it that the great difference between “performance ” and “performing” has a lot to do with the poem itself, as well as the poet herself. A performance poem (aka slam or Spoken Word) is often defined as a cutout pattern—think McCall’s: the pattern is factoryapproved , designed by someone with supple fingers and a general sense of shape but who remains faceless; she gives you wiggle room by suggesting fabric (rayon and polyester-cotton blends are highly recommended; use silk and linen at your own risk) and leaving color choice to you. The so-called standard slam poem has been called formulaic: political or social situation as topic; assonance, consonance, and internal rhyme to provide a stage; a few quiet pauses to show gentle compassion; and a steady rise and fall of pitch to keep the body & the audience rocking. By contrast, then (since we are in the dichotomous realm of assumption), what is a (regular? normal? traditional? conventional? non-slam?) poem? If a slam poem is said to rely on sound elements, what does the () poem rely on, if any elements at all? Let’s allow me to suggest that a () poem uses the tools of poetry-making to create an image (a poem on the page is, in fact, a visual image) that can be lifted from the page, entered into the body, and (silently) uttered. No, that can’t be right. Perhaps a () poem is one in which, asWordsworthintimatedin“FromPrefacetoLyricalBallads,”theeveryday is made extraordinary by “tranquil recollection,” “spontaneous overflow of emotions,” & “language of the every man.”1 Is the () poem designed to sit )DOFRQHU&KLQGG $0 metta sáma 102 idly, dead, on the page? Is it designed to be “yowled”? Are some () poems written for the page, while some are written for the stage? Can we (do we dare?) hold () poems up to the same standards as we hold the slam poem? In other words, if the slam poem fails because it doesn’t “hold up on the page,” does the () poem fail if it doesn’t “hold up on the stage”? It’s with these (engaging, frustrating, adventurous) conversations that I enter. If a performance poem is one that is constructed merely for vocal, onstage theatrics, what is a () poem? In what tradition does it rest, particularly if a () poem is, say, experimental, quiet, & provocative? Did you, by any chance, read the New York Times article about chamber music looking for a new direction, taking the chamber from the music? Literally. Playing this music in bars and clubs and hotel lobbies. Changing the name to “ensemble music.” Changing the venue to better articulate the heart of the music. Take the chamber from the musicians & what do you get? Take the poem from the page & how many ways can you, then, see/ hear/experience “moon”? With all the discussions around me about performance in poetry, I’ve found myself living inside of one poem that has never quite evicted itself from my mind. More than the images (watermelons, seeds, slices), the potential of the vocal performance has wrapped around me; think: strangler tree; think: that lover whose legs always found a home around your waist. How (& has he?) does Terrance Hayes vocally perform “Sonnet”? I’ve had the luck of seeing Terrance Hayes be poet Terrance Hayes. I’ve not had the luck of hearing Terrance Hayes read this poem. Has he ever read this poem to an audience large? Hayes’s “Sonnet” consists of fourteen lines. Ten syllables per line. Iambic , really. It’s a sonnet. Its fourteen lines (seven burdens, in a way) all say the same thing: “We sliced the watermelon into smiles.” Why am I so eager to hear Hayes read this poem? Because the poem is fourteen lines that say the same thing. How does one read fourteen lines that say the same thing, in order to make the same thing not the same thing but some thing entirely different fourteen times? Where are the inflections, the intonations, the pauses, the pitches? Where oh where is the sound barrier? Is there a sound barrier? (Have you, dearest reader, by now thrown aside this essay...