"The Education of the Blind Poet" by Cameron Clark

Versecraft

Soundtrack to this episode

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Listen to my talk on Melville here

-Listen to my poetry reading with Dan Brown here

-Outsider poetry

-The Education of Henry Adams

-Metrical hijinks

-The inherent negations of blindness

-"Durer: Insbrook, 1495" by Ern Malley

-"Lycidas" by John Milton

-Forging a new sensibility in identitarian poetry

Text of poem:

The Education of the Blind Poet; Or, Ars Poetica Ending with a Line from Milton

When I was 9 they taught me how to look

at someone as they spoke though I could see

nothing: it's polite they said & I was, look

I'm staring at the nothing of you, see?

My Nothing reader, pelted in your silence:

silent in History I drilled my lack

of stare into the history-shaped silence

of the confidential blackboard's black.

The teacher, standing slightly to its right

scrawled her timelines onto its cold chalk down.

See, teacher, have I not been studious: "Write

what's on the board." & I noted nothing down.

My No-Thing reader, ear pressed to the board

of words, how has your face become hers? mute

light stained her hair as she addressed the board,

& I presided over absence, mute.

All blind things learn to cleave to absence:

stiff-uniformed moles shoulder their chalk-blank dome

of earth. O Teacher to you I was absence,

you who'd only bring yourself to speak óf me

asking always Does hé need help? in a voice

hushed & mailed by its pity, pitywords

cringing between your jaws. I

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My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight
Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug
List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)