Physically, the throat lies roughly between the cerebellum and the mouth. It is the point of origin for sounds, literally where thoughts become words.
During a lecture in Uris Auditorium April 5, former three-term U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky used the throat as a central metaphor for the connection between the psyche and poetry. Part of the Department of Psychiatry's Grand Rounds and sponsored by the Faculty Council, Pinsky's lecture, "The Word 'Thing,'" discussed the art of poetry and how its creation and performance relate to the psyche.
Phenomenologically, speech is one of the ways in which self-awareness can be ascertained. By speaking, we can hear ourselves and see our effect on others — these effects of speech help define who we are. Speech, in Pinsky's words, is "the way one feels the 'self.'" And poetry, as an art of sound, is a unique entry point into the psyche.
"The reason poetry is never extinguished has to do with the intimacy of the medium, and the medium for a poem is the audiences body, the reader's intimate breath," Pinsky said.
This unique intimacy gives poetry some of the attributes of the soul, and this is the point at which sounds become art. "A work of art is something one makes that has a human element to it," Pinsky said, and the medium of poetry — the actual or imagined voice — makes it inherently personal.
Pinsky's most recent collection of poems is based on the idea of writing about everything he touched, ultimately yielding poems with names such as "Book" and "Other Hand." In one of them, "Jar of Pens," Pinsky mused on the tools of his trade:
Sometimes the sight of them
Huddled in their cylindrical formation
Repels me: humble, erect,
Mute and expectant in their
Rinsed-out honey crock: my quiver
Of detached stingers. (Or, a bouquet
Of lies and intentions unspent.)
Following his reading, Pinsky showed videos from the Favorite Poem Project, a project he founded shortly after Congress appointed him Poet Laureate in 1997 that films individuals reading their favorite poems. The first, a reading of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" by a Boston construction worker, touched on a common theme: the ability of poetry to seem to speak directly to an individual across centuries and continents. In it John Doherty, the construction worker, says, "In the last six lines, Whitman tells you what you're thinking. You probably didn't understand what you just read, but stay with it and you will, and you'll love it. So that felt like it was speaking directly to me."
During his lecture, Pinsky mentioned a similar idea, that "a poem is a thing that one can incorporate; it makes people not less themselves, but more themselves." It is the idea that sounds define us and help shape self-consciousness, that the vocal moment is central to the development of the self. And following that, Pinsky cleared his throat and created a poem on the spot about the color of Uris Auditorium's red chairs, providing a demonstration of just how sound and psyche mix to make poetry.
May 1, 2006
