The Beast in the Space

James McBey

The Beast in the Space

Shut up. Shut up. There’s nobody here.
If you think you hear somebody knocking
On the other side of the words, pay
No attention. It will be only
The great creature that thumps its tail
On silence on the other side.
If you do not even hear that
I’ll give the beast a quick skelp

And through Art you’ll hear it yelp.
The beast that lives on silence takes
Its bite out of either side.
It pads and sniffs between us. Now
It comes and laps my meaning up.
Call it over. Call it across
This curious necessary space.
Get off, you terrible inhabiter
Of silence. I’ll not have it. Get
Away to whoever it is will have you.
He’s gone and if he’s gone to you
That’s fair enough. For on this side
Of the words it’s late. The heavy moth
Bangs on the pane. The whole house
Is sleeping and I remember
I am not here, only the space
I sent the terrible beast across.
Watch. He bites. Listen gently
To any song he snorts or growls
And give him food. He means neither
Well or ill towards you. Above
All, shut up. Give him your love.

W.S. Graham 

 

Sitting down to write, and sometimes even before that, I feel this Beast, this Resistance.

There is always a Something that fights me trying to speak truly.

"The beast that lives on silence."  What clear description!

There is Something that wants to shush me. A beast of prey, as Graham writes.

Do I hunt him? Do I hide? How do I get by his lair?

 

Me, I dash in blind. I run at the writing. As fast as I can, I get it down, and run back to safety.

 

Maybe I'll learn a better way, when I'm stronger.

 

I'm building up my strength.

 

 

 

Spell

Frederick C. Frieseke

Spell

If, at your desk, you push aside your work,

Take down a book, turn to this verse,

and read that I kneel here, pressing

my ear where on your chest the muscles

arch as great books part, in seagull curves,

bridging the seasounds of your heart,

and that your hands run through my hair,

draw the wayward mass to strands

as flat as scarlet silk-thread bookmarks,

and stroke my cheeks as if smoothing

back the tissue leaves from chilly,

plated pages, and pull me near

to read my eyes alone, then you shall see,

silvered and monochrome, yourself,

sitting at your desk, taking down a book,

turning to this verse, and then, my love,

you shall not know which one of us is reading,

now, which is writing, and which written.

Kate Clanchy

"Read my eyes alone, then you shall see...yourself". And there you are - in the poem.  Wait, did she just write you? Are you a person in a poem? Have you been created? Are you part of an enchantment? Did she just put a spell on you?!

The Voice You Hear

Dmitry Ageev

The Voice You Hear When You Read Silently

The voice you hear when you read silently

is not silent, it is a speaking-

out-loud voice in your head; it is spoken,

a voice is saying it

as you read. It's the writer's words,

of course, in a literary sense

his or her "voice" but the sound

of that voice is the sound of your voice.

Not the sound your friends know

or the sound of a tape played back

but your voice

caught in the dark cathedral

of your skull, your voice heard

by an internal ear informed by internal abstracts

and what you know by feeling,

having felt. It is your voice

saying, for example, the word "barn"

that the writer wrote

but the "barn" you say

is a barn you know or knew. The voice

in your head, speaking as you read,

never says anything neutrally--some people

hated the barn they knew,

some people love the barn they know

so you hear the word loaded

and a sensory constellation

is lit: horse-gnawed stalls,

hayloft, black heat tape wrapping

a water pipe, a slippery

spilled chirr of oats from a split sack,

the bony, filthy haunches of cows...

And "barn" is only a noun--no verb

or subject has entered into the sentence yet!

The voice you hear when you read to yourself

is the clearest voice: you speak it

speaking to you.

Thomas Lux

I’ve got a little collection of poem poems – that’s what I’ll call them – poems about poetry itself, writing, or in this case, reading (poetry, I’m going to say, because poetry is the voice I am most aware of), that I’m going to be posting in the next while. This could be considered overkill – like songs about singing or writing about writing, but think about it a moment: a man sees something in his mind, he makes little black squiggles on a piece of paper, another person scans these, and “hears” himself seeing the things in the other man’s mind. It’s crazy. How on earth is this possible? It’s not just that we see what the other man sees, it’s that he has become our voice, which is to say, he has become part of us, and we a part of him, we begin to hear ourselves through him. A part and yet apart. Add to this the fact that this person might be 100 years gone, and yet be spilling the treasures dearest to my heart, the secret thoughts I recognized the moment I heard myself speaking them. Extraordinary. Something to write poems about. 

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