by Eli Rarey
A poetry reading I recently attended at Clio’s Books in Oakland began with the poets and the audience all sitting in silence together for three minutes. Three minutes is a long time. None of the poems we heard took as long as three minutes to read. It was, you could say, the epic poem of the evening. Sitting in silence, known to many as “meditation,” is one of the foundational spiritual practices of Zen Buddhism. This literary event, called The Poetry of Zen, The Zen of Poetry, included poet Norman Fischer, who is also a Soto Zen Buddhist priest, as well as three other poets whom he had recently also ordained as Zen priests: Stefany Anne Golberg, Denise Newman, and Pearl Kan. A poetry reading with Zen priests who also happen to be poets.
At a poetry reading, we intend to listen to poets read poems. Silence is negative space. But at a Zen poetry reading, this relationship becomes unstable. Even the relationship between “poet” and “audience” becomes uncertain. Sitting in silence, there is no audience. If that silence is part of the reading, then the poetry of the silence is one of which we are all the author. As Pearl Kan said in response to a question about Zen and poetry, “I don’t think poetry is particularly Zen.” Poetry is about wanting to express yourself, wanting to make something. Zen is about releasing attachment to self-expression or definitions. Embracing doubt. That suggests that these poets’ work emerges from an expansive space of not-poetry, a field of silence from which they speak. Yet at this reading poetry and not-poetry were highly indistinct. Even this supposed opposition between Zen and poetry is itself in doubt. And doesn’t all poetry emerge from not-poetry? And isn’t that supposed opposition always in doubt? We imagine a poet as someone for whom the experience of their lives is somehow inherently poetic, in the same way we imagine a Zen priest as someone for whom the experience of their lives is inherently Zen. The poetry reading at Clio’s, appropriately, was not just a reading but also a kind of panel discussion about Zen, even a kind of absurdist performance art happening.
After we sit in meditation for three minutes, Stefany Anne Golberg calls out to the audience, “Question number one!” Someone responds immediately, calling back: “What is Zen?” This response comes from Susan Moon, co-author with Fischer of a book called What Is Zen. So Fischer’s answer to the question is to reference the book. Thus, the answer to “What is Zen?” is What Is Zen. Zen is difficult to define because Zen itself encourages us to doubt definitions and disrupt distinctions. As Fischer says, “The only thing that is not in doubt is that we doubt.” A poem follows, and then “Question number two!” Someone from the audience asks, “What is poetry?” In the same way that Fischer’s answer to “What is Zen?” is very Zen, the poets’ answers to “What is poetry?” are very poetic.
The poet/priests also offer canonical Zen koans for the others to respond to. This Zen practice I had not been exposed to before. An example of one response: Denise Newman takes the tiny mallet used to ring the bell for meditation and strikes herself on the top of her recently shaved head. Later Golberg asks for more questions: “Question number four!” These questions had been organized beforehand, but someone in the audience organically joins in the process. The poets answer seamlessly and then Golberg asks for “Other question number four!”
To me it seemed that the spirit of lightness and improvisation was part of the demonstration of Zen principles and practice—as if the poets had assembled both the poems and the poetry reading somehow by accident. We all happened to arrive there at the same moment, and then some of us happened to sit in the front of the room and happened to say some words in a particular order that created meaning and/or inspired delight. This is an illusion, of course. The writing of poems, the studying of Zen, even just sitting quietly in a room together—it all requires effort. But Zen, as I understand it, invites us to question whether our perception of a fixed reality is not itself an illusion. The poems really are just collections of words, the poets really are just people who happen to have written them down.
At one point, I tap a friend sitting next to me after Fischer finishes reading one of his poems, and I whisper, probably too loudly, “That was a good one!” They are all good ones. I find myself wondering what it means for a poem or a poetry reading to be “good.” Are not all attempts at self-expression good? What would be a bad poem or poetry reading? And yet almost anyone who has been to a good poetry reading has also been to a bad one. The experience is viscerally unpleasant. As the Buddhists say: Life is suffering. Once we want to make something “good,” we immediately run the risk of becoming pretentious or portentous. Predictable even. As soon as we want to make something important, we begin to imitate other so-called important things, and we create something derivative. A copy, disposable. The same dilemma appears in other artistic traditions as well. Before attending the poetry reading, I spent the day at SFMOMA. Once the painting reaches the museum, my way of seeing it has already become canonically fixed, dull. The paintings are both more valuable for being elevated by the institution and also somehow used up. We want to find Basquiat in the streets, not at the museum. If I had sat quietly for three minutes before I looked at the paintings by Matisse, could I have seen them as if for the first time?
This is, I think, part of the art of curation. We place work next to other work, and next to empty space or silence, in order to encourage new discovery, new ways of seeing. When done well, this feels like a kind of enlightenment. In this way, the poetry reading was excellent curation. What is Zen and what is poetic were set next to each other in such a way that both became suddenly available to me—an expansion of consciousness. The reading gave us an experience of Zen rather than information about Zen, which is to say it invited us to enter deeply into the experience of the poets. This is also just another way of saying: I went to a poetry reading and the poems affected me deeply.
The poetry reading became a testament to the power of language and, just as much, to the power of silence—this is a possible definition of poetry but also perhaps a description of Zen teaching. The reading itself was a kind of Zen meditation, and the Zen meditation was a kind of poetry. While each also, unmistakably, remained itself.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.