I came across this video of William Stafford reading one of my favorite poems of his, “The Star In The Hills,” while looking for examples of his work for a friend. The poem is one to which I have returned over and over for years. I love the combination of quirkiness and spooky mysticism and the political commentary implied by the speaker’s attitude, but, in all honesty, until I watched this video, I never thought of the poem as funny.
As I’ve moved back into participating in poetry slams again after ten years away, I’ve had to relearn how to perform poems. When I began practicing and preparing my work for the stage, I found that, overwhelmingly, I scored better with slam judges, and connected more reliably with my audiences when I read from paper than when I memorized and “performed” the poems. I began paying attention to the poets around me whose writing and performances I admire and find powerful, and re-realized that reading is a performance, and that the reason my readings off paper were more powerful and effective than when I had poems memorized is that, with the memorized poems, I was trying too hard to perform, whereas when I read off paper, I feel less inclined to do so, and I sound more like myself.
That’s the irritating thing about the false dichotomy, supported by both sides of the divide, between so-called “page” poetry and “stage” poetry. Poetry is poetry. I expect that it’s because many “page” poets don’t want to take the time to become good at performance that they like to distinguish the two, and I think the same might be true of performance poets, who find it easy to win over audiences, but more difficult to do the difficult work of editing.
Those of us who have chosen both work to become better writers, participate in a largely arbitrary, fickle, nepotistic process of getting published; and also work to become better performers of our own writing, participate in a largely arbitrary, fickle, random game of chance that is the poetry slam. I cannot, of course, speak for all practitioners of performed poetry. For myself, I find that each informs the other and becomes part of the writing process, for the better, I think. It is most often the case that what a poem needs to work well on the page is also what it needs to succeed well on stage.
Reading is a performance. There are some incredible writers who are just awful at it, and I don’t believe that makes what those writers can do as writers less effective or interesting, just like when I don’t enjoy reading on the page the poems of an excellent performer whose writing is not as polished doesn’t make that performer’s work any less interesting. For myself, I hope to do well at both, because I believe that an audience deserves the respect of my bothering to pay attention to both of those modes of delivery.
Which brings me back to William Stafford, who has long been one of my favorite poets, but who, for obvious reasons, I have never seen perform his work — until I stumbled on this video. Stafford’s performance of this poem, which works so well on the page that I have read it if not a hundred than at least dozens of times, reveals something by which I was taken aback — how funny the poem is.
The humor becomes a part of the poem’s meaning, and underscores the political dimension of the poem at the same time. Stafford’s delivery, charming and somewhat folksy, makes the speaker out to be a certain kind of character — a likable fellow, which is important for the poem, since the subtext of the poem could make the character seem self-serving rather than eager. Stafford also feels the music in his poem and convey it well. All told, this was a pleasant surprise — giving a long-beloved poem a new, interesting dimension. Which is what performances of poems should be doing.