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bagleywrightlectures · 7 years

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Q&A after Timothy Donnelly’s lecture, “Sighing: Audible Breath and Its Relation to Poetry,” November 6, 2015 at University of Montana, Missoula, MT.

Audience: You said: “sighs aren’t intended for communication, but they still have this communal undertow to them”...did I get that right?

Timothy Donnelly: Yes, that’s true–what’s interesting though, is it remains to be seen whether or not sighs are meant as communication. I believe very often they are not, but it’s almost impossible in a communal setting for them not to be taken as communication–they’re sort of open to interpretation, yet not necessarily intended. I think there are times when we can manipulate the sigh, or our ability to sigh, in order to get our point across, like “ughhh” [demonstrates]. I think maybe Al Gore knew what he was doing, to be honest. I do know that there’s such a thing as a sigh that’s almost autonomic, that is operating from a low-level–I think of it as registering as a kind of complaint, sometimes as a sort of protest. I feel my sighs mean, “not this, no, not this.” So, anyway, I know I have to clarify that. I need to continue to think about this. The problem is–and you know this is what poets often have to do–I don’t want to have to come down on one side too firmly. I want to believe that it can be both, you know? And like, why do I want to feel that–is it just because I get excited by ambiguity? And then I think, “no, it’s because I think that’s true,” you know?

Any other questions? Or ideas?

Audience: I’m really intrigued by this idea that the sigh can be potentially connective because I’m an actor and we study ‘nonverbals’ as a way to more accurately imitate natural human behavior. If an actor doesn’t sigh at all, he seems like a robot. And also, often as a form of exercise for actors, we breathe together. That’s how I teach in acting class; we start by breathing together in the same space–

TD: Oh, that’s so cool.

–and the sigh turning into an “ahhhh” is the most pure form of human expression.

TD: I...think I agree! [laughter] That’s so great: the sigh turning into an “ahhhh.” Oh, man…that’s like my cave poet!

Audience: The cave poet sounded like an ‘introduction to acting’ studio.

TD: Wow! All right–acting. I’m very excited. Thank you for saying that.

Audience: Would you read a poem?

TD: Yeah, I can read a poem, sure! But–while the sighing is still fresh in your mind, if you want to ask me another question before I read the poem–I don’t want to, like, wipe it away...

Audience: How does a sigh become a poem?

TD: I think a sigh is probably always a poem. Or–I’m really drawn to this idea, and I shouldn’t put it that way. At this moment, I’m excited by the possibility of the way that a poem makes a different use of the rule-driven denotative kind of language. It uses it differently in order to sort of capture or present experience in ways that don’t necessarily privilege the instrumental use of language, but that speak perhaps more evocatively, or more bodily, or more sensuously–or can gesture beyond our preexisting kind of confined understanding of how language works, or how the world does. Since a poem is going about using language that way, so a sigh is going about using breathing differently–in a way that is expressive, without necessarily having a specific denotative meaning, do you know what I mean? So I find an analogy there that got me as far as this. Do you know what I’m saying? I think of the first time my cave poet–who I totally feel very close to at this point–when it (I call it ‘it,’ I’m not sure if it’s a man or a woman), when it sighs, it’s using it’s breathing to express that deep feeling. To me, that was kind of like the first time when something–I’m sure it’s happened other times, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s the first time that something that you were given–to do something particular with–was put to new expressive use. Which is what I think is what a poem does. You take that language, and show me, like, what else you can do with it, you know what I mean? And so, okay, so you’ve got breathing. What else can you do with that breath, you know? “Ahhh” [demonstrates].

I’m drawn, too, to the idea that–take Mallarmé, who is a poet I love, always so frequently dramatizing the idea of the ineptitude of language to grasp at the ideal, and the idea that language can never really get to this other thing that it’s (he’s) desperately trying to access–call that ‘express.’ So, he has a poem called “The Sigh,” which is actually sort of relaxing into a way of using language a little bit differently, in order–not necessarily to get to the ideal, but to provoke the reader’s sense of the failure of getting to the ideal. Which itself can be a form, if done a certain way, of beauty and triumph.

Do you know what I mean?

Audience: Sort of...

TD: Sort of, yeah. [laughter]

Audience: I think of Chris [Dombrowski’s] introduction, and the idea of ‘barreling’ versus slowing time, and I’m curious about the relationship between the notion of you as a ‘barreller’ and your focus on the sigh, which is more...stillness.

TD: I think that’s a well-observed point. I am a lifelong sigher, and I think–you know what, I’ll go there–I’m a Gemini. I think I’ve got both, and what has brought me frequently to the table to write the poem has been the barreling impulse. Truth be told, think about it–if there’s a part of you that wants to be the barreler, that wants to barrel, that feels...well, I don’t want to be the barreler, but I feel that way, you know what I mean? And I feel like, when I get going, a certain momentum kicks in. But that’s not the only way I am, you know. I do think that those poems where I’m accessing that way of feeling or of being in the world–they take up a lot more space. And the poems like the one I read here is a little bit more like a sigh. So there’s going to be like, this little [poem], but it’s this big one that caught someone’s attention.

I think that another way to answer that question is that many of the poems, when I was writing [The Cloud Corporation], I thought of as trying to break away from the personal into the public, and I think the minute I started thinking about being in the public I, I, I panic–no, I get chatty. It feels like it’s a more public use of language. Or, the sigh in me is quiet, or contemplative and solitary, and when I have a public in mind I think maybe I go, ‘oh, I’ll investigate that [quiet feeling, or sigh] later.’ [laughter]

Alright, well I’m going to read a poem–I thought I’d read a new poem–it’s call “Diet Mountain Dew,” and this one is probably a barreler. I drink too much caffeinated stuff and I don’t sleep well. This is one of the things I want to say I used to drink, but I still do; I find it delicious.

[You can read and listen to Timothy Donnelly read “Diet Mountain Dew” here.]

#timothydonnelly sigh breath poetry

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