Two-Way Mirror: Poetry Notebook

David Meltzer is, in his late seventies, an institution as well as a poet. One of the last of the “beats,” he continues to give readings throughout the San Francisco area and to write articles and books about his days as a musician and oral performer with the likes of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Rexroth, and Gary Snyder.  

Two-Way Mirror is not, to be fair, a new book. It is a re-issue (with a very brief update at the end) of an old one he self-published over 40 years ago. While the publishers suggest this odd and endearing compendium of Meltzer’s thoughts about why and what poetry is, might be used as a teaching tool, I suspect most students, old or young, will find it more curious than illuminating.

Which is not to say it isn’t also delightful. Especially for those who’ve read widely or are willing to pick up and pursue the tempting crumbs Meltzer drops in the course of his meandering, associative discussion of the poetic impulse. These crumbs take the form of brief quotations from esoteric (to put it mildly) sources. In fact, the book’s footnotes look like they belong to a doctoral thesis: There are citations from pre-Columbian Mexican literature, original Druidic documents, the Rig Veda, ancient Shamanic and Cabalist texts, American Indian prose, Zen Buddhist scripture, Greek philosophy, and more.

Coming from a man who’s not only a poet but also a scholar of Jewish mysticism, this wide-ranging book feels like the natural outcome of Meltzer’s childhood goal to write a “History of Everything.” It’s that ambitious—and that unwieldy. Beyond a vaguely chronological progression (from ancient pre-verbal grunt to post-modern groan), the glue that holds the book together is the poet’s private collection of artwork from old grammar books he’s scavenged from thrift shops.

Engaging and funny, these black and white illustrations add just the right note to ensure that we don’t take anything written here too seriously. If there’s one “message” Meltzer seems to want to pass on to wannabe bards, it’s that there is no “gospel,” no “expert” advice that can create or even define poetry:

“Sometimes I think I understand it all. But when I try to put the secret into words there is no secret. My words look curiously foolish on the page, useless.”

The most forthright and effecting section of the book deals with the poet’s childhood and his coming to poetry. He was eleven years old, he tells us, when he had “this strong feeling to express something inside that had no face and seemed to defy language.” Fortunately, his teacher told him a poem didn’t have to rhyme (“God bless Mrs. Callahan”), and so he proceeded to write a ten-page opus on the subway system. Without planning it, without even consciously writing it:

“I say the poem ‘came through me’ because I had no clear idea of what I wanted to say or how I was going to say it. Everything happened suddenly.

I just started writing the poem and automatically began to think in a different way about words, repetitions, meanings, the sound of language. . . . When I was finished, I knew I was finished. I sat back in amazement at what I had done.”

So if you’re looking for a poetry how-to, look elsewhere. But if you’d enjoy a flipbook-fast romp through the history of man’s inclination to name and sing, then this funhouse mirror is for you. After all, when push comes to pen, you’re on your own anyway. But first why not read someone else’s disconcertingly honest attempt to pin down the ineffable:

            “The word. You say it slow enough and two birds’ wings flutter out of your mouth.

            The word. I’ve said it loud enough to make you cry.

            The word. She never said it, not even on her deathbed.

            The word. He looked for it through every library in the world.”