James Tate

Teaching the Ape to Write Poems
by James Tate

They didn’t have much trouble
teaching the ape to write poems:
first they strapped him into 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:
“You look like a god sitting there.
Why don’t you try writing something?”

 

Possibility is what jumps out at me in this poem. Teaching an ape to write poetry? It sounds absurd, and yet when i read the poem, it makes perfect sense.  At first the ape is a beast, but in order to write poetry the Doctor tells him to be more like a god. Constantly man is in a struggle between being a beast and a god, and he is typically somewhere in between which is when he is a man.  When we write poetry, we are no longer a beast that is not in control because we are the writer; the poem is in our hands. Transcending the physical world of being, writing poetry is spiritual in that it is not being, but a re-presentation of our being.  I think we all have a part of the ape in us (after all, something like 98% of our DNA is exactly the same); we can all rise above that beastlike nature within us and rise to be something greater. Transcend, Transcend!