How Poetry Works with Paul Tran
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- Опубліковано 31 тра 2022
- Poet Paul Tran takes us through Robert Hayden's Those Winter Sundays to explain the power of poetry, and how close reading can unlock a multitude of meanings within the form. Order Paul's debut collection All The Flowers Kneeling here: amzn.to/3NLFFdX
Visceral and astonishing, Paul Tran's debut poetry collection, All the Flowers Kneeling, charts the rebuilding of a self in the wake of extremity. How, it asks, can we reimagine what we have been given in order to make something new: an identity, a family, a life, a dream?
These rich, resonant poems of desire, freedom, control and rebirth reach back into the past - the tale of Scheherazade, US imperial violence, a shattering history of personal abuse - to show how it both scars and transforms. Innovative poetic forms mirror the nonlinear experiences of trauma survivors, while ambitious sequences probe our systems of knowledge-making and the power of storytelling as survival.
At once virtuosic and vulnerable, confessional and profoundly defiant, All the Flowers Kneeling revels in rediscovering and reconfiguring the self, and ultimately becomes an essential testament to the human capacities for resilience, endurance and love.
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as someone who's always wanted to get a better understanding of poetry and never took the time, this was beautify done. Thank you
I was taught how to write poetry at school but no one ever taught me this much about form and all its hidden meanings. Seeing beyond the words and syntaxes. Simply amazing!!
I'd love to take one of his classes. I learned so much from this 15-minute video about one poem. I can only imagine how much his students learn in a semester, but I'm guessing it's a staggeringly impressive amount.
I had the privilege to be Paul's student two years ago, and it was an incredible experience.
This is a lovely and deep reading of Those Winter Sundays. One thing I'll add is that while Paul Tran captured a meaningful essence of this poem, there's a bit of subtlety that I think is worth mentioning: Hayden was around 50-years-old when he wrote this. He was an adult well into middle age, with the time and experience that can often allow one to reflect more coolly on indignities and traumas suffered. In this spirit, I think Hayden was not just capturing the emotional trap that women and children sometimes suffered in homes dominated by violent men; he was also voicing compassion for the father. Violent men and abusive fathers are not villains in a vacuum. They come from a context that made violence a reasonable and even respected tool wielded by "responsible" men. While this is wrong, and never to be excused, it is also a trap that men have fallen into perennially and trying to understand that cycle is superior to simplistic demonizing.
what an insightful comment. Thank you for that.
I need more of these lectures from Paul.
Facts
What a beautiful serve. Oh my gosh.
I love how subjective all forms of art are. As long as a piece has not been clearly defined by the artist, it can mean anything to anyone. It can be relevant and powerful and moving.
So refreshing to hear someone speak so naturally and eloquently, and indeed extempore, about a favourite text like this - and, crucially, about the world around and behind that text. A good poet is so often not just someone who has written good poems, but one who brings the same passion and care to their reading of the wider world of poetry, of which their own contributions are just a few of the many blooming flowers. Many thanks for the passion shared.
Paul Tran, if you were my teacher my life will be much easier to express my feelings. Want more video like this!
More of this erudite and honest person please. Such an eye opener to this poem
And use of this poetic form.thanks
Oh my god, This was so beautiful I almost started crying at some point.
Great , really great, Thank you ~
Thank you, Paul! Your interpretation of this poem probably hits home with a lot of people, for various reasons.
I finished listening to the "Legacy of War" series, a BBC presentation of life after WW2 for families ( narrated by Sean Bean) over Memorial day weekend, and your interpretation of the poem reminds me of many soldiers from that generation, and the many others from wars /conflicts since, who've come home unable to fully assimilate back into life; how it changed them and the quality of the relationships they tried to build with others. The 'kindness cage' makes a lot of sense to me now.
Fascinating, thank you Paul for your take on the poem.... that is the point and beauty of all art.... it's not prescriptive and open to interpretation
Fantastic video! Thanks!
Great video, thank you!
Wow! Just wow!
this was incredible.
Awesome!
Wow, I've learned a lot ❤️❤️❤️💖
Finally, I've found something really helpful in improving my poetry. Thank you 💓
What a wonderful, breakdown, thank you.
This video is amazing!!
Thank you, Paul! I bet your classes are amazing. :)
That was soo deep and valuable..
Recommend Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast as well. Love his enthusiasm for poetry.
Lovely reading also:)
Extrange it's the destiny
In my time
In a time long ago
I decided?
Tho he forgot me?
Dispose me?
Time ago I was someone
I almost don't remember me
We used to walk hand to hand
Locked in each other eyes
Tought at tought
We sleep together me and my versed verses
Our love to each other
Was pure was unique
We claim the universe
To ourself we create
My word was my soul
And just like the day
It comes to end
I did ended I did died
And I still died
Furtive fortitude
No fortune has ever
Console me or find me
Anymore
I was a giant I was beautiful
I was
Who and ever dream under me in me
Explode in horizon of lafter ever lauder ever happy!
Where I'm
Who I'm
What it happens
I died
I still died
I used to write
It's been a while
I need myself
I may resurrect
Do I ever be walk again
To you
My ever love
My verse
My word
The blood I walk
When I fallow my primary steps
I may walk again
I may resurrect again
I may write you again.
My mind has been blown. He has dissected the poem so beautifully and passionately. Just a thought: the poem's title is incredibly remarkable as well. With winter being associated with harshness, and Sundays as a peaceful and restful day. Very insightful video, and I'm definitely checking out this incredible man's book!
I love writing poetry but have no idea what Im doing. This is a great video.
So I was completely with you until the end when I'm guessing you recited the poem which was different from the poem you used in the beginning. Wouldnt the "extended" version you recited would undo a lot of the hidden structure you taught in the beginning? I'm so confused lol
This was fabulous! How I wish I could enroll in their beginning poetry course because I was fascinated by this bit of poetic form was taught.
I need Paul to do this with every poem I read. If he had a channel I would never stop watching.
Not sure if I agree with Paul's reading of the poem, but I really appreciate the knowledge he has to offer on the reading of poetry in general. Great video.
yeh explain
This was fabulous!
Wow... That is chicken soup for the artistic and damaged souls in the world
Tell me you have daddy issues without telling me you have daddy issues. 😂
Good grief, this is IMAX-levels of projection.
Ouch. This is much more about painting your own beliefs onto a poem, like adding graffiti to someone else's work, than it is about understanding the poem. Approached like this, anyone could paint anything of their own into any poem, and that is not the point of poetry. If you're looking to develop your understanding of poetry, compare this view of the poem with some other views.
You're right that this is a way to read poetry, but you're as wrong as can be in suggesting that this is THE way to read poetry. Some poets, and artists in other traditions, create their work with clear intention. Others impose much less intention. For poetry or other art that was created per the latter, the point, and the joy of the work is in how others use it as a mirror through which to view their own lives. For poetry that was created after a clear intention, the same is essentially true: while the poet writes with an idea, once that work is released into the world, it is still the privilege of readers to make of it whatever they will.
If you are suggesting that there is a right way to read poetry, you've missed its essence.
I'll add that Tran's interpretation of Those Winter Sundays is very different from how I've read this poem the hundreds of times I've read it before now, and I'm a better human for absorbing their thoughts on it. I'd not thought much about Hayden's biography and upbringing before now, and as I reflect on it, the menace in this poem aggressively jumps off the page.
this is what everyone does, though
I'm afraid I disagree with the conclusion. Thank you very much for an education in poetry here. What's also insightful is how your own life experience has given you another interpretation, but one that may not be what the writer intended. Without looking at other work or the original author's life story, you may be labelling the father an abuser when it's not clearly said where, or from whom, the anger in the house stems from.
The father works hard, does this labour of love (and the shoes), and the author is belatedly appreciating those acts, with the hindsight that later in life they realise they didn't know (in childhood) how selfless acts of love could be lonely or taken for granted.
Poetry, like song lyrics, means many different things to readers, but to take it that the father is a violent man or abuser, without further evidence, possibly does the father and the poet a disservice.
fearing the chronic angers of that house
then again, what's the opinion of someone who's afraid to disagree worth ?
...learn... free... master... object
Im here to bash my head against a wall
Pending example
*vomits
It's great to see this poem getting this kind of attention, but some of the reading here is fundamentally inaccurate. Hayden wasn't a queer poet. This poem is about Hayden's adopted father, not his biological father. And suggesting that all sonnets are to do with love is a highly reductive way of thinking about that form. There are plenty of sonnets that have nothing to do with love!
ughhhh
This is a 'woke' interpretation of this poem...I am not sure if this is the original intent/meaning of the poem....
there's no 'woke' interpretation or perspective for people who are minorities though. It's a perspective for people who are not minorities.