BOOK: APPRECIATING CONTEMPORARY ART

‘The horse is the white of the eyes…’(!)(Twin Peaks S03E08)

Great Poems #6

The mantra poem begins to work its magic. (Screenshot from Twin Peaks.)

The most obvious and straightforward way a poem engages with its audience is through the carefully orchestrated positioning of words and phrases, but there can also be other less conventional and more surprising methods; a handful of which are a joy to encounter. The mantra poem in Twin Peaks (S03E08) is one such.

Performative poetry is a specialist realm in its own right, and we can’t hope to do more than point out, in passing, a few key aspects of its distinctive nature. What we’re talking about here is poetry which either achieves a noticeable enrichment in being publicly performed or, in rare instances, is entirely dependent for its worth on its incorporation into a spoken word setting. For example, a John Cooper Clark reading can easily become a declamatory assault; a Gertrude Stein recording, on the other hand, can bring an uncanny sense to what would otherwise just be absurdist words on a page.

Which brings us to the bizarre interlude towards the end of Episode 8 of Twin Peaks Season 3, in which some darkened figures appear literally out of the ether; one of whom heads — with an uncertain intention — towards a seemingly remote radio station KPJK, located in the Los Alamos region…