William Slaughter

 

Caught in the Act: Reading Ishmael Reed's
"Beware: Do Not Read This Poem"

There is a kind of poem that especially interests me. I call it the demonstration poem, because I find it useful in explaining—demonstrating—what poetry is, what poetry says, and what poetry does to me as I read it. Roy Harvey Pearce, in his foreword to The Continuity of American Poetry (Princeton, 1961), says: "The American poet has always felt obliged, for well and for ill, to catch himself in the act of being a poet." That reflexiveness, that turning back on one's self, applies to the reader as well.

A while back, an essay of mine, "Eating Poetry," appeared in Chicago Review (Winter 1974). I was much taken, at the time, with Mark Strand's poem of the same name, "Eating Poetry" (from Reasons for Moving, Atheneum, 1968), and I teased out of it a controlling metaphor for reading poetry. By eating the poem, taking it into himself and making it his own—muscle, blood, tissue, bone—the stuff of his life, the reader transforms himself. "I am a new man," Strand's eater (reader), having eaten (read), says. The poem nourishes and sustains the reader. He needs it, as his body needs food. "When I read poetry," quoting myself, "I read as if my life depends on it, because it does." But there is more to the eating poetry metaphor than I suggested in my "Eating Poetry" essay.

The reader's angle of vision, his slant of light, matters greatly. Come at differently, the eating poetry metaphor has another dimension, in which the reader and the poem exchange places. Let me demonstrate what I mean by summoning up Ishmael Reed's poem "Beware: Do Not Read This Poem" (from Conjure, Massachusetts, 1972).

tonite, thriller was
abt an ol woman, so vain she
surrounded herself w/
     many mirrors

it got so bad that finally she
locked herself indoors & her
whole life became the
     mirrors

one day the villagers broke
into her house, but she was too
swift for them. she disappeared
     into a mirror

each tenant who bought the house
after that, lost a loved one to
     the ol woman in the mirror
     first a little girl
     then a young woman
     then the young woman/s husband

the hunger of this poem is legendary
it has taken in many victims
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr feet
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr legs
back off from this poem
it is a greedy mirror
you are into this poem. from
     the waist down
nobody can hear you can they?
this poem has had you up to here

     belch

this poem aint got no manners
you cant call out frm this poem
relax now & go w/ this poem
move & roll on to this poem
do not resist this poem
this poem has yr eyes
this poem has his head
this poem has his arms
this poem has his fingers
this poem has his fingertips

this poem is the reader & the
reader this poem

statistic:  the us bureau of missing persons report
                that in 1968 over 100,000 people disappeared
                leaving no solid clues
                    nor trace              only
   a space           in the lives of their friends

Reed's poem teases me, as I did Strand's poem, out of thought. Working and playing my way through it helps me, once again, explain how I, as a reader, connect with poetry—or rather, how it connects with me.

A friend of mine told me, after he had read Strand's poem and my essay, that he had always felt the poems he liked most were the ones he wanted "to crawl inside of and spend the night with," sleeping and dreaming there. He was on to something, and Ishmael Reed is on to it too. His title, his caveat, "Beware: Do Not Read This Poem," guarantees his poem will be read. Who still reads poetry, in our time, is the forbidden child, growing or grown up. Reed's poem, whatever else it is, is a parable of reading poetry intended for children and adults only.

That "thriller" is—was—a television show seems worth mentioning. Its voice, like the poem's voice, is disembodied, an air-wave drifting in, being received from outer space. The vanity of the "ol woman" is not particularly at issue, inasmuch as it is generic, the vanity of human wishes, my own as well as hers: to disappear into a mirror, to become an image, a memory, light.

The "ol woman" artfully dodges the villagers who break into her house. She escapes into a mirror, where she is safe, beyond them. Magic is with her. Entering, forcibly or not, the poem, the reader—like the villagers—is always at a disadvantage, helpless, unless he realizes what the poem is: a mirror that gives him back himself. Not reflected but refracted, different somehow.

By design, the "ol woman" becomes the presiding and attending genius of the house. And each tenant who lives in the house, after her, loses—sacrifices up—a loved one (the reader) to her in the mirror, her poem as it were. Which of the muses is the "ol woman," or is she? The house is a circus of mirrors—"she / surrounded herself w/ many mirrors"—in which illusion becomes reality.

Suddenly Reed leaves his "ol woman" behind, as she did the villagers. His accounting of her, it turns out, is preamble to the real business of the poem, the same business Strand is transacting in "Eating Poetry." I repeat myself. In "Beware," Reed is writing a parable of reading poetry.

Off I go with him, following his lead. "The hunger of this poem is legendary." The reader who is taken in by the poem is used up, Reed says, its "victim." But the flip, or antonymous, side of victim is "product," and Reed's reader is both product and victim. The poem, for Reed, is made of implied (metaphorical) sand, which is quick, cwic, in the Biblical and Old English sense. Alive. The reader, who sinks in, is beyond the reach of his loved ones, his friends. He is at the poem's mercy, gladly. The poem is "a greedy mirror" and removes the reader, forcibly or not, from his element. "Nobody can hear you," can they? "You cant call out frm this poem," can you? In Reed's parable, the poem asks of its reader everything; it requires the stuff of his life.

The reader enters Reed's poem feet-first, not head-first. What kind of willing, or unwilling, suspension of disbelief is that? The reader is pulled (lured, sucked) into the poem "from / the waist down"—appropriately, if improperly. The poem gratifies itself and its reader.

belch

How unmannerly! "This poem aint got no manners." It takes in, and digests, its reader, but not without difficulty and sound effect. The poem insists on itself. What the reader must do, his only imperative, is "relax now & go w/ this poem / move & roll on to this poem / do not resist this poem." If the reader does, in fact, let himself go, then what will happen to him? Where will he be?

There is a pronoun problem, either in Reed's poem or me. Something is missing between "yr eyes" and "his head." But what? Has the reader lost, or found, himself? How near, or far, is he? These are perplexing questions. I can only ask, not answer, them. But I am comfortable with the asking. Caught in the act, the reader auctions himself off. And who will bid higher for him than the poet, Reed, who bids his poem. Going, going, gone.

this poem is the reader and the
reader this poem

The end? Not quite, not yet. In my "Eating Poetry" essay, I concluded: "The reader is not like the poem he is reading; he is the poem he is reading. He changes and grows into it, so that its body becomes his body—its life, his life." Reed says much the same thing in "Beware," but says it from another, the opposite, direction. The poet needs his reader every bit as much as the reader needs his poem. They depend on each other for their very being.

A "statistic" remains. There is no ignoring it. "The us bureau of missing persons reports," etc. I know who some of the missing persons are. I do not have "solid clues" as to their identities, but I do have airy evidence. I have the poem, which presumably includes all of them. Us? The "ol woman," she, the adept, who performed the original disappearing act, is a missing person. Not the villagers who broke into the "ol woman's" house, who trespassed against her, not the tenants who bought the house from her and lived in it, but their loved ones, lost to the "ol woman" in the mirror, are missing persons. And I am a missing person too. The reader always occupies a different space; his reality is elsewhere. I am on the other side of the "ol woman's" mirror. Looking for me, you will find me, my trace: an image, a memory, light.

Either the reader eats the poem or the poem eats him. It is that simple, that clear. Robert Penn Warren, in his essay "Pure and Impure Poetry" (Kenyon Review, Spring 1943), has something like a parable of reading poetry. He says:

The poem is like a monster, against which
the critic does battle. There is only one
way to conquer the monster: you must eat it,
bones blood, skin, pelt, and gristle. And
even then the monster is not dead, for it
lives in you, is assimilated into you, and
you are different and somewhat monstrous
yourself, for having eaten it.

In my "Eating Poetry" essay, I substituted reader for critic in Warren's parable and ended up with Strand's poem. But Reed's poem suggests an alternative possibility. The sub-text of "Beware" goes like this: Reader, give up. Let yourself be eaten. Surrender to the poem. Then, and only then, will you find yourself, as if by magic, on the other side of the "ol woman's" mirror. With me. Not reflected but refracted, different somehow.

Reed's "statistic" is a kind of postscript to his poem. I have a postscript of my own. Ventriloquy. The word has always intrigued me. Its root meaning is "speaking from the belly." One projects one's voice—I, mine?—from one's belly so that it seems to come from the mouth of another, the mouth of the poem one is reading. Ishmael Reed conjures me, ironically, to read his poem, "Beware: Do Not Read This Poem," freely, self-indulgently, and unapologetically. I believe I have caught myself in the act of doing just that.

 

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