Poetry New York

There seems to be a lot of head-scratching that goes on in the poetry community regarding the boundaries of the art. What privileges the performer over their audience? How do we break down the fourth wall and embark on a true collaboration?

Something resembling an answer has been in practice for over two-thousand years.

Last weekend, my conservative aunt and uncle subtly coerced me into attending church with them. The only religious ceremonies I had ever hitherto been a part of were the occasional itchy-shirt Christmases my parents imposed during childhood and one particularly heavyhanded, aggressively Catholic memorial service for a nonreligious friend. I am a reasonably tolerant individual (I've stood up for the Mormons on a number of occasions) and settled into a pew prepping myself for nonjudgmentalism.

For a modest congregation in The Middle of Nowhere, Vermont, the proceeding was ritualistic, even cult-like in its execution. I don't say this for sake of provocation; everything spoken or atonally sung by the priests was met with eerie chants from the audience. The decoration of the church's interior was laden with esoteric symbolism and the clergy floated around in medieval-looking robes.

At the end of the hour-long Mother's Day/Pentecost-themed sermon, I was railroaded into receiving a blessing I didn't want while everyone else was taking communion. I walked up in a line, holding my arms crossed in front of my chest. When I got to the front, a man wearing a white polo shirt put his hand on my shoulder and said, "God bless you." I was disappointed, expecting some spooky Latin.

Despite the fact that I left the church in an air of mild violation, what stuck in my mind was not indignance but appreciation for the mechanics of the service. The congregants were almost as vocal in the worship as the priests; every single believer in the room was fully engaged.

What certain chapters of the avant-garde desire is the same interplay, conducted spontaneously, through the medium of art. The reason this may never happen is that synthesis requires mutual understanding. In the mass, the audience knows exactly what to expect, what role they play in the "performance" and all parties involved share a similar moral orientation and use identical vocabularies to express/explore it. The fact that the dialogue is mediated by ritual does not necessarily detract from its meaning. 

This principle can be seen outside of religion as well. Think midnight screenings of any beloved movie. Audience participation can't be expected until the audience has some conception of what it is they are participating in. Until this awareness is nurtured, the wall will stand.