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          Readings are complicated. For one thing, anyone can give one, so what does having one prove? For another, unless the poet has already reached the status of celebrity poet, most readings draw a humiliatingly minute audience of maybe a dozen or so of the poet’s friends, and if he teaches, students. The draw is larger if the reading is sponsored by a university and is a class requirement, but is a room full of student poets who are there because attendance will be taken the kind of audience the poet wants? The celebrity poet pulls them in sometimes by the scores, but is his audience really all that appreciative, in the literary sense?
          Excellent poetry is crafted down to the level of every perfect word in its perfect order. A truly appreciative reading of the poem takes as much attention as the crafting of it. And that is one reason the “poetry reading” is an inadequate means of sharing poetic experience. It engages us to some extent, but exquisite poetic craft and the true artistry of the whole, unified poem must be taken in slowly, more than once, with intense concentration, focus, and presence that are not possible at a public reading.
          A poetry reading cannot convey the structure of the poem. Words build phrases, which build sentences, stanzas, the whole poem. And not simply words built upon words, but the meanings of the words develop outward multi-dimensionally, literal conveys figurative, figures convey layered resonances involving symbol and archetype. The intricate texture of a great poem simply cannot be grasped at a typical public reading.
          Public readings are really more about the poet as personality. The poem, which appears to be at center stage, is the occasion for a poet’s performance. Even people who know better will critique the performance before commenting on the poetry. Poetry — the actual poem — is secondary; most attending the reading will never read it. Primary is the poetry reading experience. The poet is then tempted to write “performance poems,” and his work, instead of evolving, often becomes self-parody. But what does the poet care if his goal is name recognition?
          A reading is one way of witnessing to one’s love of poetry, but sharing in the collective “speech” of poetry cannot really impart the richness of a great poem.
          Certainly hearing the musicality of poetry is of primary importance. But music is not speech. A poem is no more talk, no more a “speech-act,” than a forest fire is a forest.
          In 400 AD, St. Augustine observed that when St. Ambrose was reading, “his eye glided over the pages, and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were at rest.” At that moment, silent reading was born, an advance as dramatic as the printing press would bring ten centuries later. Today silent reading has been disrupted by chatter. Most people claim that even when the tv is off, even in the silence of a private space, the chatterbox in their head never shuts up. So much for concentration.
          Francis Bacon observed, “Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.”  And chatter? It surely maketh a muddling man.
          A great poem, in all its expansive richness, exists at the top of the language pyramid. It must be read with the mind’s eye, heard with the inner ear, its complexity taken in through the highest levels of thought, feeling, and imagination.
          Private or classroom study honors a poem much more than a reading does. Again from Bacon, “Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be chewed, and some few to be swallowed and digested.” Excellent poetry belongs in the latter category. At best, a public reading is a book-tasting. And as poets know, few tasters buy.
          A public reading would be appropriate if the audience had weighed and considered the poetry ahead of time, and if the poetry were being presented by an excellent professional reader or actor. But even then there is the danger that that performer’s voice would stick in one’s mind and the inner “poem’s” voice would be squelched. The poem that can be spoken is not the poem.
          The goal, of course, is to share poetry in the fullest way possible. But the truth is, few have learned how to fully take in and appreciate the density of great poetry.
          Academics are not completely unjustified in complaining that the average poet’s range of literary knowledge is what they have gleaned from bathroom reading of Quotable Quotes, Cliff Notes, and back cover summaries, that experimental poets refuse to adhere to any grammatical logic while formal poets stick to the stilted brickwork grammar dictated by Microsoft spell check, that far too many workshop poems teem with vivid images, active verbs, imaginative figures, and terse syntax but have absolutely nothing even mildly provocative to say.