The Words

Performance and Literariness in Poetry

The ending of T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”

I had the pleasure back in April of listening to poet Brendan Constantine deliver his featured presentation as part of the Village Poets monthly reading series in Sunland-Tujunga, California, north of downtown Lo Angeles. (I’ll be a featured reader in August.) Brendan is not only an inventively talented poet but a compelling performer of his poetry as well. He got me thinking, as I often do, about the differences between performance and literariness in poetry. That isn’t actually an accurate observation in relation particularly to Brendan, because among his impressive skills is how he combines both those qualities. The son of actors – Michael Constantine was his father – Brendan is a compelling performer of his work. As a performer, too, he is different from so many performance poets, who offer, repetitively, the same cliched tone of emotional urgency and rap-influenced beats.

Brendan’s performance style is all his own, and it reached a peak in…