Despite the quiet and contemplative sadness that permeates some of his most well-known poems, James Tate was one of the few poets who dared to mess with joy and wonder on a regular basis. He unbuttoned the top button of Poetryâs Oxford shirt and kissed it on the mouth.
The fact that his book Worshipful Company of Fletchers won the National Book Award and that his Selected Poems won the Pulitzer seems so beside the point. He somehow managed to tap into the great mysteries of the world without making such a big fucking deal about the whole thing. His poems made poetry and life seem a little more possible, approachable, enjoyable.
I mean, for example, when itâs time to pick a new pope, who else can you turn to besides James Tate? His poem "How the Pope Is Chosen" is a great example of the associative, jokey style he pioneered and played with over the course of more than 30 books. Iâm searching for a few lines to excerpt and talk about, but itâs so hard to do without diminishing the awesomeness of the poem. Itâs like trying to talk about the greatness of that chicken joke by only quoting and talking about the line âTo get to the other side.â This un-excerptable quality reveals one of the geniuses of Tate. The poems sound so casual that you forget how carefully theyâre constructed. He finely tunes the tonal shifts and sneaks in little jokes and paradoxes so that you notice something new after second, third, and even 13th readings.
As a professor at UMass-Amherst and as a prolific poet, Tate influenced tons of contemporary American poets. Without Tate, you donât have Heather Christleâs wild-eyed wonder or Zach Schomburgâs narrative surrealism. You donât get the whimsical worlds of Wendy Xuâs You Are Not Dead or the personas of Jaswinder Bolinaâs Phantom Camera. You certainly lose some of Mark Leidner.
He influenced me, too. There was all kinds of stuff tacked to the door of the office I had during poetry grad school. Posters for readings, a rainbow sticker, some old tape holding nothing. There was also one poem, which was hung up right at eye level. It was written by James Tate, and it was perfect for someone who was about to attempt a career in writing, teaching, or anything else for that matter:
Teaching the Ape to Write Poems
They didnât have much trouble
teaching the ape to write poems:
first they strapped him to the chair,
then tied the pencil around his hand
(the paper had already been nailed down).
Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder
and whispered into his ear:
âYou look like a god sitting there.
Why donât you try writing something?â
In nine short lines this poem presents one of the great paradoxes of writing. You need ego to writeâto do anything, reallyâbut your ego is also the thing that holds you back the most. Watching a writer trying to strike a balance between the beast and the god within is what makes reading poems so fun. Tate struck that balance often, and he made you laugh while he was doing it.
Maybe the best thing you can do right now is the thing that I just did, which is accidentally get caught up reading Worshipful Company of Fletchers while youâre supposed to be working on something else. If you donât have time to browse, check out âAutosuggestion: USS North Carolina,â âA Missed Opportunity,â and âLittle Poem with Argyle Socks.â Why not take a few moments to read some poems? You look like a god sitting there.