Mr. Write's Page

‘Thought’ is still secreted in the brain; but then, to be sure, one could consistently conclude — an interesting fact — that poetry and religion are both products of the smaller intestines.

— Thomas Carlyle

———————

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about poetry. Namely, that I dislike so much of it.

When I was in school, they taught us the usual range of stuff. Many of my contemporaries rebelled on principle at that, but I never had a problem with it. To me, learning was a total blast. I still feel that way.

But oddly enough, even though I turned out to be a wordsmith by profession, there was one subject that left me as unimpressed in my youth as it does today: poetry.

Which isn’t to say that I disdain all poetry; just quite a bit of it.

In school, the teachers would introduce us to a famous poem and explain why it was so artful and magnificent. We kids were expected to agree — to get it. To my chagrin and discomfort, I usually didn’t.

Take, for example, this gem:

To a Skylark

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

———————

Forgive me if I don’t go on.

Or, consider this:

The Prelude

By William Wordsworth

Was it for this
That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved
To blend his murmurs with my nurse’s song,
And from his alder shades and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows sent a voice
That flowed along my dreams? For this didst thou,
O Derwent! winding among grassy holms
Where I was looking on, a babe in arms,
Make ceaseless music that composed my thoughts
To more than infant softness, giving me,
Amid the fretful dwellings of mankind,
A foretaste, a dim earnest, of the calm
That Nature breathes among the hills and groves.

———————

Wordsworth was describing the River Derwent and his childhood home in Derbyshire, and he continued at great length. But honestly, the more I labored to sift meaning from the lines, the more my interest waned.

Lastly — and you may have suspected this was coming — there is Shakespeare. His stuff is a curious blend of poetry and prose that I was never able to make myself appreciate. An example:

Hamlet

By William Shakespeare

From Act 2, Scene 2:

HAMLET: I have of late — but wherefore I know not — lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air — look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire — why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me. No, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

ROSENCRANTZ: My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.

HAMLET: Why did you laugh then, when I said “man delights not me”?

ROSENCRANTZ: To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what Lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you. We coted them on the way, and hither are they coming to offer you service.

———————

Whatever.

So. If the foregoing works are widely considered to be noble examples of artistic expression, why do they leave me cold?

It isn’t that complicated.

Most of us — especially we writers — have an ingrained tendency to be precise and literal when we communicate. We try to speak and write in ways that best convey our intended meaning to others. That would seem to be the point: to express thoughts clearly and precisely.

That is not the point of Messrs. Shelley, Wordsworth, and Shakespeare. That is not the point of most poetry.

Yes, poems come in all flavors and varieties. But most often, the point is NOT to be literal, clear, precise, and direct. The point, apparently, is to present an artistic experience in which deeper meaning is optional.

The experts suggest that when you approach a poem, you read it quietly, read it again, perhaps read it aloud. Spend time with it. Savor the words, let them roll around in your mind. Reach into that box of chocolates and see what flavor you get.

If you can’t extract any “meaning,” well, don’t beat yourself up about it. Just enjoy the experience. Perhaps, in time, a meaning will reveal itself.

You may find that perfectly acceptable. If so, go with God. But I prefer not to be the audience for someone else’s performance art.

I prefer this: if you have something to communicate, do it — with clarity and precision. Otherwise, you are whiffing the ball.

At this point, you probably have concluded that I am a Neanderthal, lacking in couth and sophistication, not at home in civilized society. You are shocked, perhaps offended, that I would diss great artistry and the great masters so callously.

But, as I said earlier, I don’t disdain all poetry; I disdain what my mind tells me is bad poetry. Pretentious poetry. Poetry that wastes my time.

What kind of poetry meets Rocky’s personal standards? Poetry like this:

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

By Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

———————

Annabel Lee

By Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love —
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me —
Yes! — that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we —
Of many far wiser than we —
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

———————

The Fish

By Elizabeth Bishop

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of its mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.

He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
— the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly —
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.

I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
— It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.

I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
— if you could call it a lip —
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.

A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.

I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels — until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

———————

To me, blithe spirit that I am, that’s the good stuff.