"Thing Language"

Thing Language

by Jack Spicer

This ocean, humiliating in its disguises
Tougher than anything.
No one listens to poetry. The ocean
Does not mean to be listened to. A drop
Or crash of water. It means
Nothing.
It
Is bread and butter
Pepper and salt. The death
That young men hope for. Aimlessly
It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No
One listens to poetry.

-----

Does anybody, nowadays, really listen to a poem, being read out in front of you, by someone you know, by a poet, who wants his poem to be listened to as much as to be read?

According to poet Jack Spicer - twice - in his poem here: No one listens to poetry. He likens a poem or, rather, poems, to “this ocean”. Like it, poems have their shortcomings, when compared with other media now available to us, like the TV, movies, videos, music, and many more of those 21st century mode of entertainment. Most of us would rather stick a pair of tiny earphones into our ears and lend them (as Shakepeare wrote "lend me your ears”) to the services of an iPod than to an actual poet, a live one.

Also, like this ocean, poetry has many, many guises. No matter, poetry, through the ages, is still surviving, still “Tougher than anything”. Still, “No one listens to poetry”, says the third line.

A dramatic pause there. Then, the subject from the first line is repeated, with emphasis, after that pause and ending at the end of the line, as a run-on to line four, which agrees that it – take it whichever you will, ocean or poetry – “does not mean to be listened to”.

Really? Not meant that?

Another dramatic pause, within the third of the line. The vast ocean is now strained of its “disguises”. We are given, now, “A drop” – at last, a poem! One poem, which is so loud, when read out, that it’s “a crash of water”.

Alas, it still “means/Nothing.”  The run-on here is strong, and the line it runs to end-stops just as powerfully, when it is the only word standing and with a full-stop into the bargain.  The new line, a word by itself, after this, is also solitary. “It” is another strong run-on.  

Those two one-liners are placed, strategically, in the middle of the poem.  The first has five lines before it, and the second also five lines, after it.  They are like mirrors: "Nothing" = "It"; "It" is "Nothing". Perfect symmetry. By the way, symmetry - and it cousin, parallelism - plays a major role in most good poetry.

To some poets, like Spicer, “It” – poetry – is their “bread and butter/Pepper and salt.” Big pause, again: it is “The death/ That young men hope for.”

Does the poet, or the poem, have a point or is he or it waxing “Aimlessly”, pounding the ocean’s (poetry’s) “shore”; merely “White and aimless signals.”

Is that why “No/One listens to poetry.” ?

Thing Language is from My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poems of Jack Spicer , published this year by Wesleyan University Press.

Jack Spicer was born in 1925, in Hollywood, but lived only to 1965, in San Francisco.