Of Poetry Podcast, Language as Ethics, and Carl Phillips' interview of Geoffrey Hill

Have you tried recording yourself? Not only reading a poem, but speaking extemporaneously? These are great skills to practice as readers and speakers of poetry, especially during a time of Zoom and digital/online readings. I love practicing with a voice memo, and being able to hear myself apart myself—something I haven’t done in a long time. But, as I have been recently editing Of Poetry Podcast episodes, I found myself so annoyed by my vocalized pauses! So this little recording was to practice not using my “um…yeah” speech filler.

More generally: so much about being a language practitioner is about intentionality and choosing our language with great care. Language is an ethical practice, and even how we fill silences with meaningless sounds is ethical. Who is not speaking during those moments? What silence are we not allowing to happen?

Yesterday I went back and read Carl Phillips’ 2000 interview of Geoffrey Hill (Art of Poetry, 80) in the The Paris Review. I was once again astounded by the tenderness and the generosity of Hill’s critique of himself…so I’m closing with a couple beautiful quotes that I think absolutely (ha) belong in conversation with thinking about our own self-revision and poetry:

The instrument of expression and the instrument of self-knowledge and self-correction is the same.

I have come to see that the closest approximation of truth requires that the shortcomings of the self shall be admitted into the most intimate textures of the work.

The world is full of noise, the noise of Opinion. Are you going to be able to master some small aspect of it, and use it in the making of your own voice? Or is it stronger than you are? Do I mean stronger or just louder?

Geoffrey Hill, Art of Poetry 80