Dave's 'How to Read a Poem' read by Brenda

This afternoon I recorded a reading of a prosepoem of Dave Bonta's, and found a 23 sec clip of chimes by morgantj on ccMixter, which was slowed, split, re-arranged, pasted, joined, and enrichened by a multivoice filter and other auditory magics until it became a rendition of what I was hearing in my mind when listening to the reading.

The reading wasn't planned. I read his series of images of poetry for reading poetry and turned on the voice memo of my iPhone and recorded. While I did do another take, the first one had an openness, and as the spoken recording was my second reading of the poem, the sense of discovery remains, I hope, within it.

How to read poetry (notes to self), by Dave Bonta

As if it were any other kind of communication that means what it says, not some kind of code to be deciphered.

As if it were code, where a single mistyped letter can change everything, and turn a webpage into the white screen of death.

As if you had nothing else to do: no news to skim, no email to hurry through, no other work, no purer entertainment.

As slowly as a lover performing oral sex: forget about me, what does the poem want?

As fast as a sunrise on the equator, so the mind won’t have any time to wander.

As if each line were an elaborate curse in some nearly extinct language with only four elderly speakers left, all of them converts to evangelical Christianity.

As if the stanzas were truly rooms, and not houses lined up on some quiet street.

As if the spirit killeth, but the letter giveth life.

As if it were perfectly useless and irrelevant to the cycle of discipline and indulgence we think of as real life.

As if each poem were an oracle just for you: a diagnosis from a physician, an interview with Human Resources, the suggestions of a therapist, the absolution given by a priest.

As if the real poem were buried like a deer tick ass-up in the flesh of your ear.

I like the edges of surrealism in How to read poetry (notes to self), the variety of images, all quite rich and meant to evoke the reader's imagination, that the only extended metaphor is the poet who is dreaming up a series images of the world that emerge with a cadence of similes, analogies, that, if followed, bring the reader (who is reading or speaking) back to the poem, the poem's reading.

And the touches of humour, as in the last line.

If you were inclined to record this poem, I'm sure Dave would be delighted!