The Immortality, Humanity, and Creative Power of the Poem and the Recorded Oral Performance:
A Close Listening of Alden Nowlan’s “Fireworks”
By Michelle Tang
***Originally submitted 30 October 2019 to Dr Jason Wiens, in part for credit, for ENGL 372: Canadian Literature at the University of Calgary***
***Not only is this essay subject to copyright, but any unauthorized use without citation is considered academic misconduct (plagiarism). You are welcome to consult this paper if you provide the appropriate citation(s)***
If we were tasked with writing a poem about fireworks, we would likely describe their temporal beauty, or comment on their explosive, awe-inspiring power, or perhaps write lengthy stanzas about the celebrations they symbolize. Alden Nowlan’s “Fireworks” does none of those things—instead, the fireworks central to the poem are a negative force, which we come to find are at odds with the speaker and with poetry itself. As this paper will demonstrate, a close examination and comparison of the oral and written versions of “Fireworks” can offer a commentary on poetry that arises from the juxtaposition of poetry with fireworks, which has significant implications about the immortal, far-reaching nature of poetry, as well as the importance of poetry as an expression of human creativity that allows for human connection. Additionally, this paper will also examine how oral recordings are valuable and will further explore how oral performances differ from written versions of poetry in relation to the thesis stated above.
Firstly, we must acknowledge that there are multiple variations between the oral and written versions of “Fireworks.” “Fireworks” was first performed and recorded at Sir George Williams University in 1967—at the time, it would have been one of the “recent, unpublished poems” that is referred to on the SpokenWeb page (“Margaret Atwood and Alden Nowlan at SGWU, 1967”). “Fireworks” would then later appear in Nowlan’s The Mysterious Naked Man, a poetry collection published in 1969, two years after the performance was first recorded. Thus, while we may initially assume that changes in between the two versions are reflective of impromptu alterations for performance (and this is still a possibility), we must also consider that these differences could potentially be deliberate changes that Nowlan made during the two years between the performance of his poem and the publication of it. Keeping this in mind, let us now take a closer look at these differences with an appreciative understanding of their significance.
The differences between the two versions are mostly within the first stanza. Of these variations, perhaps the most significant and substantial one is the addition of a certain line. In the recording, after “and because I don’t like explosions” (which is already altered from “and because explosions scare me”), an additional line is added: “I can’t concentrate on my poem, which is not about fireworks” (Clip 1, Nowlan ,“Fireworks”). This essential line is what opens the door for an interpretation of “Fireworks” as a poem that commentates on the experience of writing and reading poetry itself, as the fireworks are directly set up in opposition to the speaker’s poetry. The fireworks antagonize the speaker by taking away their ability to concentrate and directly inhibiting them from writing their poem, creating a conflict between the fireworks and the speaker-poet, thus setting up a juxtaposition between fireworks and poetry itself. Typically, the word “fireworks” has positive connotations, but this is not the case in Nowlan’s poem: the speaker writes them as reminiscent of the larger, more harmful “explosions” from the “past seven or eight hundred years” that mankind is responsible for, and even God himself is said to be “sick of them” (“Fireworks”). Rather than symbolizing celebrations and festivities, the fireworks are a reminder of the wars and destruction that mankind has long been perpetrating. In contrast to the fireworks symbolizing the destruction that human beings are capable of, poetry is instead depicted as symbolic of the creativity of humans, and serves as a testament to their potential to create beautiful things.
With this juxtaposition between fireworks and poetry in mind, let us continue to find evidence that supports our reading. In the written version, the poem begins with “Fireworks are being set off / from the highest point in the city” (Nowlan, “Fireworks”). In the recording, there is an entire additional line: “Because it is my country’s centennial” precedes “fireworks are being exploded at Fort Howe” (Clip 2, Clip 3). Firstly, this difference is of interest because it situates the recording in time and space: geographically, the speaker is not writing from the vague “city” that is so ambiguously described in the written version—rather, they are located specifically near Fort Howe in New Brunswick. Similarly, the mention of “country’s centennial” also works to situate the poem in time: one hundred years after Canadian Confederation would be 1967, the year this performance indeed took place in. Thus, this line draws our attention to when and where this poem was performed, allowing us to think of the poem and its recording as a preservation of a specific moment in history. This is where an additional opposition between fireworks and poetry can be observed: there is a comparison that can be made between the impermanence and temporality of fireworks and the longevity of poetry. Fireworks may be louder, flashier, and more attention-catching than any poem can hope to be, but they are also fleeting, leaving behind no trace of their brilliance. In comparison, poems, as well as their oral recordings, can be preserved. Part of the power of poetry, whether preserved on a page or in a recording, is that it leaves behind something that can be experienced and enjoyed by others far in the future. Fireworks may be louder and more spectacular, but they are fleeting; poetry may be quieter and less flashy, but it can be immortalized.
So far we have established that poetry is powerful in its ability to be preserved and in its power to express human creativity. Together, this allows poetry to create timeless human connections. Let us return to the line of “my country’s centennial” and explore how these lines indicate to us the speaker’s identity, and what implications this has for our reading. Knowing that “my country’s centennial” refers to Canada reveals the speaker’s nationality in the oral version; without the mention of “my country,” there is nothing in the written poem that indicates any aspect of the identity of the speaker (Clip 2). The speaker is not necessarily the same person as the author, but regardless, the line subtly reminds readers that we should consider the speaker as a complex human being with an equally complex identity, and to remember that a human being exists behind the poem. This then allows us to perhaps feel a sense of connection to the author.
Having discussed the juxtaposition between fireworks and poetry, the next portion of this paper will discuss how the aforementioned aspects of poetry also apply to oral recordings and performances of poems, as well as explore the differences between oral performances and written poems. One of these differences may be that, in written form, it can be in the author’s best interest to write a poem that targets a more generalized audience (which explains the vagueness of words such as “city” in the written version). In contrast, there may be pressure for an author to tailor their performance to their specific audience when they are performing: if this is the case, then the previously discussed lines of “my country’s centennial,” could be an inclusion Nowlan made specifically for his performance at Sir George Williams University (Clip 2). By mentioning his Canadian nationality, his Canadian audience may be more inclined to establish a sense of connection to Nowlan and his work, and this may lead to a more positive reception of his poem.
Similarly, another unique aspect of oral performance may be pressure to elicit a positive response from the audience. The performance of a poem places the author amidst their audience, and they are susceptible to immediate feedback such as booing or laughter. In this case, we may theorize that Nowlan’s sarcastic tone near the poem’s end is an intentional decision that makes the poem more humorous (rather than serious, or sad). His deadpan delivery of the line “that’s it, I’ve had it, they’ve gone far enough” is certainly effective at raising laughter from the audience (Clip 4). At this point, it is worth mentioning that one of the benefits of having an oral recording is that recordings can allow us to examine prosodic elements of poems, like tone, that may be unclear in written versions. For instance, even though authors can employ diction and make deliberate decisions in the composition of their written poems to set the tone, the interpretation of tone may still vary between readers. In contrast, in oral performances, we can clearly hear the author’s tone of voice as they speak: Nowlan’s sarcastic, humorous tone in delivering the last lines of his poem is much clearer than it would be to readers looking at only the written version (Clip 5). Another example of an observable prosodic element is the way Nowlan stresses the word “bang” in the last line—the usage of onomatopoeia is present already in the written version, but without the recording, readers would not necessarily know that the word is intended to be stressed (Clip 6). Additionally, being able to hear background noises like the audience’s laughter or Nowlan’s breathing, which I have intentionally left at the end of Clip 4, is also an aspect of recordings (specifically an oral performance) that simply does not exist in a poem’s written form. While a poem on a page may feel impersonal, these background noises that are secondary to the poem itself (but are nonetheless a part of the recording) can serve to remind us that an author is just a fellow human being, reading to other human beings. We may initially struggle to connect with an author when we look at words on a page, but the poem becomes less impersonal and more human when we listen to a recording of the author’s voice and can hear all the background noises of their breathing, or of the audience, or even of just thumps and bangs in the background, such as in Clip 7.
Lastly, recordings of poems can also provide valuable insight by making more apparent literary devices that we may otherwise have difficulty noticing. For example, the consonance in the line “I sit here sullenly, bracing myself for the next one” is much more noticeable when heard spoken aloud (Clip 8). While it is not impossible to notice the usage of consonance when examining the written poem by itself, it is much more apparent when we can hear the “s” sounds in succession— looking at words is not comparable to hearing the sounds in them. Oral recordings may allow for a lesser focus on the words themselves, and a greater focus on the sounds of said words.
When comparing the written and recorded versions of poems, we may notice differences that can be attributed to decisions made for publication, but which may also be alterations made for performance that are reflective of an author’s desire to elicit a positive reception from their audience. “Fireworks” can be read as a poem about reading and writing poetry itself, and the juxtaposition between poetry and fireworks that is established suggests that poetry is powerful in its ability to be immortalized, in its tendency to create human connections, and in its function of expressing human creativity. Similarly, oral recordings themselves are also expressions of human creativity that can be preserved, which we are able to connect with even far into the future. Oral recordings also have inherent value in how they contain prosodic elements that can aid our understanding of poems.
Works Cited
Nowlan, Alden. The Mysterious Naked Man. Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited, 1969.
Nowlan, Alden. “Fireworks”. 13 October 1967. Sir George Williams University, SpokenWeb. https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-atwood-and-alden-nowlan-at-sgwu-1967/. MP3.
“Margaret Atwood and Alden Nowlan at SGWU, 1967.” SpokenWeb Montreal, https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-atwood-and-alden-nowlan-at-sgwu-1967/. Accessed 25 October 2019.
