I've written and broadcast almost thirty commentaries so far, and I hope to keep doing them for a long time. Aside from my poetry, they've proven to be some of the toughest composing I've had to do. In fact, the commentary has, for me, become a kind of poem, a concentrated language in a small space.
The premiere requirement of a commentary is that the commentator have something to say. This may seem self-evident, but it's not always true that a commentator who speaks is a commentator who says something. I'm thinking especially of those hired commentators for the network news programs, or the self- appointed howlers on The McLaughlin Group. They appear to be saying some thing but what they're often really doing is posturing and harrumphing, soaking the air with bombast or annoyance.
But I commiserate with them a little; it's not easy to always say something. For me, having something to say means offering a thought that is, in some way, different than the received opinion floating in the air. If I write about spring, I want to avoid the usual Hallmark puffery about it. Instead I want to explore the various "springs" between March and May (and pun like mad on the word). If I write about living in the country, I don't want to give the usual paean to the simple life; I want to concentrate on the costs of living away from the many amenities of civilization. In short, I look for a new way of seeing what is often taken for granted by our eyes and our minds.
But this "angle" is severely limited by one constraint: time. In two-and-a-half minutes I have to say some thing intelligent, and say it in a way that is clear and direct. Like any writer I love to gab, love the sound of my own voice making it self. But in a commentary there's no room for meandering. I spend two to three hours composing a commentary, the bulk of that time deleting words so that it can make weight. But for me a magical thing happens when I do such cut-throat editing: I find out what it is I really want to say, as opposed to what my voice thought it was saying as it went around posturing and harrumphing. I find that phrases, even whole paragraphs, I thought non-negotiable disappear as I refine away the fat hiding the lean thought. "Having something to say," then, does not always come at the beginning; it sometimes only appears after deliberation, struggle, waiting, decision.
I suppose after all is said that that is what I want people to get from my commentaries: a sense of someone thinking something out in a deliberate effort to see in a new, or at least different, light. Perhaps, then, what I write are not commentaries but "visionaries," propositions about seeing the world with fresh eyes. I like that better; after all, what other purpose in the world does a poet have?
Street People
Children As Aliens