Visions of Barcelona, etc.
Except of a write-up I did in grad school about a reading by the now late Philip Levine, 5/2/08:
Levine is one of two poets reading that evening; the other, Joan Margarit, in town from Barcelona as part of the PEN World Voices Festival 2008, is the featured reader. Levine, who later tells the crowd he spent time in Spain in the 1960s (where he came to be influenced by modern Spanish poets—Antonio Machado in particular), is there to read some translations he did of Margarit’s works for the benefit of the non-Catalan-speakers and, afterwards, a few of his own poems as well.
I don’t know what either Margarit or Levine look like so I devote some time and energy before the reading to scanning the room. I can’t find anyone who looks definitively poet-like, though (e.g., no black turtlenecks, etc.—a joke!). When finally the two of them appear out of a back room, I have no problem telling who is who: Margarit has long cheeks and small, deep-set wise eyes (almost like Günter Grass) and wears a blazer and scarf that indicate to me 1) he’s European and/or 2) he is self-consciously an artist (which on some level is okay because he’s European); Levine is the old one, though not quite as old as I expected, creased but not shriveled, thin, dressed in a pair of khakis and a faded yellow button-down shirt.
The poets are seated and a third chair on stage is left empty to represent, we’re told by the emcee, the persecuted poets and writers of the world (no comment). Margarit, before what seems to be a partisan crowd (never have I shared a room with so many Catalan speakers), classily takes a moment before he begins reading to give Levine his due: “I am just a small poet from a small country—he is a great poet from a great country.” Then, in Catalan, which doesn’t sound much like Spanish but with its rolled ‘R’s is quite pretty to listen to, Margarit reads the first poem of the evening: “First Love.” I read along in the chapbook and see that the poem is about a clasp knife the speaker received as a child; it ends with the speaker, aged fifty four, re-examining the knife: “I look at it again, lying open in my palm, / just as dangerous as when I was a child. / Sensual, cold. / Nearer my neck.”
When Margarit finishes the poem, Levine delivers his English translation. I’m surprised at first by Levine’s confident, strong, almost strident voice, which is not as pretty as Margarit’s and seems to come out of nowhere given how regular he looks (khakis, yellow shirt, old)—but as he continues to read I make a connection: If Levine is in his eighties then that places him in the Beat generation, and I remember seeing on YouTube an old clip of Jack Kerouac reading from On the Road on Steve Allen’s show. Though Kerouac came off as more of a renaissance greaser type, his voice was confident verging on strident and in that way almost hopeful in spite of the occasionally wry tone of the writing. I remember that now as I listen to Levine read his translation of Margarit: the strength and confidence intact, the implicit hope wilted or calcified into bitterness.
* * *
Margarit reads six or seven poems and Levine read the translations and then that part of the night is over and it is time for Levine to read his own work. Levine introduces the first poem, “My Brother, Antonio, the Baker” with a story about his twin brother—whom he says he resented growing up for making him one-half of two rather than his own independent self. Levine, as in my reading of “Belle Isle, 1949,” comes off as fundamentally unsentimental. In telling the story of the poem, which he says is not about his brother but told from the perspective of a working-class Italian American in Detroit, Levine tells about his past, how he worked in a factory in Detroit while he was going to college. His delivery is self-effacing and wry but, again, strong; you don’t get the sense that Levine is burdened by too much self-doubt or self-pity. The poem is at masculine and plain but romantic: “There must have been a wind, / a west wind. What else could have blown / the aura of forsythia through the town / and materialized one crow-town streetcar / never before on time?”
By the middle of the second poem I’ve drifted some. I struggle to pay attention at readings. I don’t know what the problem is—if I have too short an attention span or if I don’t deal well with the passively sitting there and being read to or what. Maybe what it’s that when a text is in front of me, it’s mine, and to some extent the author is too: I’m free to make both whatever I want and I don’t have the person looking back at me to tell me or otherwise communicate that I’m wrong. At a reading ownership of the poem is taken back. This can be instructive but distressing or even alienating.
For example, I read several books by Bukowski before I ever heard him talk. I was curious so I rented a DVD of the documentary about him. It was hard to watch, such was the extent to which he came off as a bullshitter with a romanticized notion of himself. I knew he was born and raised and lived most of his life in Los Angeles, but I was surprised that he talked like he was from there. I knew he liked women, but I didn’t imagine him to be a ladies man. I don’t know why I haven’t read anything by Bukowski since I saw that movie—maybe I got too old for him or maybe I’ve just wanted to read books by authors I haven’t read already—but I do think Bukowski lost something for me when I saw him.
* * *
I hadn’t built Levine up that much and hadn’t read many of his poems in the first place, so I can’t say, looking back, that I was disappointed or Levine was ruined for me. I remember only bits of stories he told between the poems—about bebop (“the perfect language of 1949 . . . [a] denial of so much of what America assumes to be true”), and about Barcelona, which isn’t as good as it used to be in the 1960s when you could hear jazz on the streets at night—but I do remember the voice he told them with, which felt old and true.
