2007-07-07
Poetry Afternoons.
The last two afternoons have been spent in a languid pleasantness.
Computer screens, black font and size fourteens. I missed the sound of poetry being read. Not the mere rabblebabble of rushed words, but being read. Out. With the tongue all twisting over each syllable, vowel, constanant. I hadn't realized till I had been stunned, near entranced by the pause, the dip of voice, the tone a-wisp.
Professor Edwin Thumboo, despite his almost intimidating title and the stereotypical hrrrmph that comes with most professors, was a most enjoyable company for the meandering afternoons.
I had more of envisioned him as a tall, thin, balding caucasian, and so got only a quarter of my guesses correct. Yes, he was balding, but not of the towering height I had half-expected, slightly plump and, if I'm not mistaken, Chinese (he had dark skin, but said that his grandchildren called him Kong Kong). As we wandered wordfully into the rest of the afternoon, we found that he had a hoarse, almost soundless laugh, an open mouthed smile and a habit of grinning at us over his glasses.
Of course, I liked him. It goes without saying that the rest of the class liked him too, with his portly belly and fatherly demeanour, hinting jokes and easy laughter. I remember him reciting a joke from somewhere, although I can't quite remember the content, and at the end of it we all laughed (politely, I think, although at the time it seemed pretty funny), after which he confessed it was a flat joke, but thanked us for laughing all the same. Yes, fun. He was a nice man.
I must say that without a doubt, Professor Thumboo has a lovely theory on the language, and not to mention poetry.
We learn the language and its rules, with grammar, pronouns, adverbs, vocabulary, spelling, et cetera. And when we're ready we can begin to break the rules, twist a word to contrast, rephrase a grammatical, verb a word. It is this way that we use poetry to bring about the different emotions, to insult or to soothe, to create a different atmosphere altogether.
I have also learnt that Professor Thumboo looks at similes with a slight sort of disdain. He didn't exactly like the way we went "the something was like a thingy" (ah, along those lines), but corrected us to think metaphorically. A soul becomes a lily. The trees become the sunlight.
And one of the considerably important rules of poetry: it should sound nice. Because that way when it's read out by someone with a nice voice, it'll sound even nicer. I can testify for that with Professor Thumboo's reading himself. He has a fantastic way of reading out poetry, the way he doesn't announce it out, seeming to keep it to himself to enjoy the words, dipping and slowing at the right places.
One thing I exceptionally enjoyed during the poetry afternoons (yes, I shall call them that. It sounds less professional and warmer compared to Mentorship) was that we didn't have to try to decipher any poem. We didn't have to take them apart and put them in the right order, figure out what it said and why it said that, we didn't have to dissect the paper hearts and the font-ed spinal cords, we didn't have to understand. We just read, enjoyed the words, let them loll over our tongues and irises and eardrums, we just listened and we read and we drank it in without asking why. No need for questions.
Yes, it's been a lovely two days, and another drawn out period before we see Professor Thumboo again (he's going overseas come Monday). I look forward to it. Without a doubt.
abstracity at 2:07 p.m.