Lord of Misreading

My most extreme act of misreading has been to stop eating mammals for 19 years because I misunderstood J. M. Coetzee’s novel Elizabeth Costello. I knew at the time, or nearly at the time, that I didn’t have it right, but a deeper part of me had found a meaning that resonated and didn’t care that it was not actually located in the text. I really like that novel and would recommend it to anyone—you will probably find it pretty different than I did.

I have kicked of my More Poetic 2025 with some poetry and some thinking about why the struggle with poetry. I think that maybe it is because readers are expected to supply so much more meaning in poetry than in prose—by interpretation, by inference, by context clues, by sheer personal guesswork—and that is for some exhausting, for some intimidating, and for some, maybe, impossible. Either the meaning is stated or it is not. I think about the narrow little column of many poems versus a fat page of prose and we all know there’s as much meaning in each, or even more in the poem sometimes—so all the rest of the words have to come from the reader to make up the difference. That is actually a lot to ask. I guess I understand why sometimes people do not want to do it. Sometimes I do not want to do it. My favourite types of prose are not all that spoonfeedy unless of course sometimes they are, but either way it is still lines that carry you all the way to the other side of the page.

My father was a big T. S. Eliot fan and used to recite “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock” to us. Looking back, I think that’s a pretty good poem for kids, certainly compared to some of the weirder content we consumed (I watched Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the wrong age, for example). He never read us Eliot’s one true children’s book, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, possibly because my dad came to Eliot as an adult and didn’t know about it—I had that book recommended to me by a fellow child, my friend Kim, and thoroughly enjoyed it in early high school. Imagine my surprise to put together, at some point in the years since, that that book is the basis for the musical Cats—that Novel Laureate T. S. Eliot wrote most of the lyrics for one of the most loved and reviled musicals in existence. Talk about a misreading—I’m sure the original author never intended his original cats to enter a singing derby to go to space. I finally saw the stage show somewhere in my early thirties and liked it—I went with a patient friend and bought a cat-shaped cookie. But early in the first act, a man sitting in the first few rows stood up and strode briskly up the aisle muttering, “I can’t f&cking take this,” never to return. And I sort of got it. As ever, the book was better.

A joke I am sure others have made, but not often enough for my taste, is that the Cats musical is pretty good but just wait until the Four Quartets musical hits stages. Four Quartets is my favourite Eliot, mainly the first one, “Burnt Norton.” And you know what? I don’t understand a lot of it. I don’t even know what the quartets are. Is that a poetic form? Are they meant to be sung? Who is Norton? I studied The Wasteland in university, so even though that is denser I know quite a lot about it because someone told me, but Quartets didn’t come up and I’ve been left to my own devices. I could easily choose to read about it or ask one of my smarter friends but it is so great just as it is, I don’t think I need to (if someone reading this wants to volunteer to tell me something, that is also great—I’m happy to hear from you, but don’t feel pressure if you don’t want to bother helping me in my obtuseness.)

I have always thought of “Burnt Norton” as a love poem even though I know it isn’t. I think it is about the nature of time and memory, which is also kind of romantic in a sort of more general way. T. S. Eliot was not writing about a human, huggable beloved in the same way that J. M. Coetzee did not care if I ate a ham sandwich but I don’t care what either of them cared about it. I mean, of course I care, and if I either of them were hear right now I would listen to them but they are not and I am free to be an unruly reader because that is the point—the space on the page is mine to do what I like with, and in the case of poetry, it is so vast. Even if I am dumb and clearly wrong, it’s still mine.

I went to a Robbie Burns Night party on Saturday (come to think of it, it was Kim who introduced me to Burns Night, his poetry, and my favourite of his works, To a Mouse, also when we were kids. Huh! Kim, if you’re reading, thanks for all the great foundational texts!) At such a party, you read RB’s poetry aloud to the group, but also maybe you read some other poetry if you are so inclined. The gang let me read the first chunk of “Burnt Norton” and were very kind about listening and I swear if you read it aloud in silvery voice while thinking very purely of your beloved, you too can learn to wildly misinterpret this poem. Here, I’ll get you started—I think this is the most famous bit, but I guess for good reason. It just puts my heart in my throat.

II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

<3

RR