It's a talk about why poetry is important to us, given by literary critic Stephen Burt. I won't go into too much detail on it, he explains it far better than I could - but I do want to highlight one specific aspect of the talk. He refers to a poem's ability to communicate something from within us that we didn't previously understand, how poets of every category (alive, dead, male, female, old, young, imaginary and real) have emotionally tangible links to us in the present. I believe this is absolutely true - I'd even go one further, and say these links don't even have to be conscious decisions; That W. B. Yeats, 'He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven' could allude to my own sense of creative vulnerability, and yet to someone else's destitution simultaneously, without being aware of it; That Roland Barthes was right when he said that the author is dead; and that I myself might have inadvertently written a poem about someone else's life, whilst simply responding to a piece of art (which you might have noticed, I like doing).
Overall, the greatest lesson I've come to understand regarding art is that there are no correct responses to it. A writer/painter/actor/etc. can put all of their skill into a single project, trying to approach a theme or question, a representation or interpretation, and come out with something entirely different - and that's absolutely okay. It is not the responsibility of the artist to make up your mind, that's your job. That can be rather daunting, especially if you're new to poetry or don't have a degree under your belt - I found it intimidating that I hadn't read much poetry, which resulted in me staying away from it for a long time. Sadly, whilst it shouldn't be, this is more often the case.
I'm getting to the point, bear with me. I want to capture that casual approach to poetry. Frank O'Hara is my favourite poet; Lunch Poems is such a brilliant embodiment of how we should look at poetry, and art in general, and he was so laid back about it! Stephen quotes him in his talk, 'If you don't enjoy poetry, bully for you.' So I'm going to start doing that - once or twice a week, I'll take a poem, and just talk about it. I'll do some research on the poet, possibly a couple of other poems by them as well to compare, and I'll just go through it. Just because it's great, not because I want to be pretentious all over your face.
So come along, grab a coffee and a sandwich, and lets just go through some poems!
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