In Defense of the Slow Read
Yest
erday was a hectic day at Fireside Books. We were scrambling to finish our new website before the Febuary 1 deadline, gearing up for the Dana Stabenow booksigning and the Palmer-through-the-lookinglass event that's coming up. We had summer books to review and choose, advertising to schedule, press releases to write.
So when I finally got home, took care of the dog and settled in, I needed something to read that would help me shift gears. I needed a slow read.
Most of the reading we do in our day-to-day lives is quick reading -- scanning the newspaper or the web for specific information, searching for the best price on those new tires, reading someone's obnoxious letter to the editor. Quick reading is all business, all information. Quick reading is hockey. Slow reading is yoga.
I needed a slow read, so I picked up a book of poems by Seamus Heaney.
Now. Here's how I read a poem: over and over. Reading a poem once never works. When I start reading, it's as if I'm not really reading a poem at all. It's more like I'm playing hockey. So when I took up "The Forge" a poem by Seamus Heaney, it didn't become a poem for me until the 6th line. The word "hiss," I think, is what woke me up, reminded me that it doesn't do to crash your way through the poem the way we do during our day-to-day lives. It's not about data on a page, but sound and presence.
I stopped reading, and started over -- really feeling what it was like to hear the sudden "hiss" of the hot metal in the water -- and the contrast between that and the slow-motion action of the "iron hoops rusting."
Poets like Seamus Heaney remind us what a miracle language is -- the ability to form thoughts into sounds and signs, and to craft them beautifully, so that the language is a part of ourselves, and yet separate from ourselves:
I had to read this poem several times before I really took it inside -- that wonderful pause the smith takes, to look out and imagine a different world before coming back to the present. It's amazing that a simple moment, a moment that might have filled less than a minute, becomes so rich, so thick with meaning and longing in these lines. It was a great pause for me. Like the smith, we all work to "beat real iron out." But we all need those pauses, those moments of reflection. And poetry is a way to create those moments.
Seamus Heaney's "The Forge" can be found in the collection "Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996," published by Farrar Strauss Giroux and available to order at Fireside Books.
erday was a hectic day at Fireside Books. We were scrambling to finish our new website before the Febuary 1 deadline, gearing up for the Dana Stabenow booksigning and the Palmer-through-the-lookinglass event that's coming up. We had summer books to review and choose, advertising to schedule, press releases to write.So when I finally got home, took care of the dog and settled in, I needed something to read that would help me shift gears. I needed a slow read.
Most of the reading we do in our day-to-day lives is quick reading -- scanning the newspaper or the web for specific information, searching for the best price on those new tires, reading someone's obnoxious letter to the editor. Quick reading is all business, all information. Quick reading is hockey. Slow reading is yoga.
I needed a slow read, so I picked up a book of poems by Seamus Heaney.
Now. Here's how I read a poem: over and over. Reading a poem once never works. When I start reading, it's as if I'm not really reading a poem at all. It's more like I'm playing hockey. So when I took up "The Forge" a poem by Seamus Heaney, it didn't become a poem for me until the 6th line. The word "hiss," I think, is what woke me up, reminded me that it doesn't do to crash your way through the poem the way we do during our day-to-day lives. It's not about data on a page, but sound and presence.
The Forge
All I know is a door
into the dark.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
Inside, the hammered anvil's short-pitched ring,
The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
I stopped reading, and started over -- really feeling what it was like to hear the sudden "hiss" of the hot metal in the water -- and the contrast between that and the slow-motion action of the "iron hoops rusting."
Poets like Seamus Heaney remind us what a miracle language is -- the ability to form thoughts into sounds and signs, and to craft them beautifully, so that the language is a part of ourselves, and yet separate from ourselves:
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
Horned as a unicorn, at one end square,
Set there immoveable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;
Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and a flick
To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.
I had to read this poem several times before I really took it inside -- that wonderful pause the smith takes, to look out and imagine a different world before coming back to the present. It's amazing that a simple moment, a moment that might have filled less than a minute, becomes so rich, so thick with meaning and longing in these lines. It was a great pause for me. Like the smith, we all work to "beat real iron out." But we all need those pauses, those moments of reflection. And poetry is a way to create those moments.
Seamus Heaney's "The Forge" can be found in the collection "Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996," published by Farrar Strauss Giroux and available to order at Fireside Books.
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