Thank God for poetry!

I leaf through an old poetry textbook, looking for a muse and find, instead, notes I took in a Children’s Lit class, years ago. “All poetry should make one think and feel—except nonsense rhyme which gives a release.” Interesting concept. Idly, I continue turning pages.

Past the nursery rhymes:

When I am the President

Of these United States,

I’ll eat up all the candy

And swing on all the gates.

Hmmm. We won’t go there.

I page past Sinclair Lewis’ poem entitled CAT:

This is a cat that sleeps at night,

That takes delight

In visions bright,

And not a vagrant that creeps at night

On box-cars by the river.

This is a sleepy cat to purr

And rarely stir

Its shining fur;

This is a cat whose softest purr

Means salmon, steaks, and liver.

This is a cat respectable,

Connectable

With selectable

Feline families respectable,

Whose names would make you quivver.

This is a cat of piety,

Not satiety,

But sobriety.

Its very purr is of piety

And thanks to its Feline Giver.

And this is how it prays:

“Ancient of days

With whiskers torrendous,

Hark to our praise,

Lick and defend us.

Lo, how we bring to Thee

Sweet breasts of mouses;

Hark how we sing to Thee,

Filling all houses

With ardent miaouses,

Until it arouses

All mankind to battery.

Thou of the golden paws,

Thou of the silver claws,

Thy tail is the comet’s cause,

King of all cattery!”

(A rather different rhyme scheme. And I’d forgotten that two of Mr. Lewis’s dearest loves were poetry and cats.)

Continuing to turn pages, I find THE HIGHWAYMAN, a poem of love, betrayal and selfless loyalty that’s high on my list of best-loved rhymes. It sings of a dashing brigand, the half-wit who in a fit of jealousy betrays him, and the innkeeper’s daughter who gives her life to protect him.

And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,

When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

A highwayman comes riding—

Riding—riding—

A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;

And he taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred:

He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there

But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

As I read, I clearly see a galleon moon tossed on cloud-flecked seas of night, a heather-covered moor, an ancient inn with its locked shutters, the daring highwayman and Bess, plaiting love-knots in her long, wavy hair. And suddenly I’m transported back through the years to the schoolroom of my childhood where I first heard not only that poem but many others like it. Wonderful poems. Singing poems. Poems that carried me to distant lands and climes.

  

It is a little country schoolhouse, worn and old with single-pane windows rattling in a fierce November storm and only a small coal-oil stove to warm the drafty classroom. Penmanship posters showing proper placement of each letter of the alphabet line the walls. They are flanked by framed reproductions of famous paintings; Millet’s The Gleaners, Bonheur’s The Horse Fair, Sully’s The Torn Hat, Boughton’s Pilgrims Going to Church—the latter particularly appropriate to our current study of the first Thanksgiving.

It is late on a Friday morning. The weekly spelling bee is over. (Tom went down on ‘dolichocephalic’ but Cynthia spelled it right, making her this week’s winner.) The quiet, fierce concentration dominating the room slowly dissipates, replaced by growing anticipation. Now is the one time during the week when we forget the icy drafts, the whistling wind, and the driving snow. Spelling, reading, social studies, arithmetic all fade into the background as each student takes a turn standing in front of the stove to recite poetry.

“All poetry should make one think and feel—except nonsense rhyme which gives a release.”

Startled laughter sweeps the room at little Becky Ann’s nonsense version of an old nursery rhyme:

Hickory, dickery, dock

Three mice ran up the clock

The clock struck one

The other two escaped with minor injuries.

Even our teacher, who prides herself on keeping a straight face, is hard put to resist Becky’s white-blond curls, wide blue eyes and patent innocence. Everyone knows her father taught her that ‘verse’.

Some of the students choose the shortest poems they can find:

An open foe may prove a curse,

But a pretended friend is worse.

(Benjamin Franklin — Poor Richard’s Almanac)

“Short and sweet and can’t be beat,” Doug mutters under his breath. He’s chosen a much longer poem; one appropriate to the season. As he stands to recite, the shrieking storm outside our little school building heightens the atmosphere and we are transported to a distant place and a former time. We hear waves crash against a rocky shore. The scream of an ocean eagle shrills as icy foam flies through bracing salt-brine air.

“The breaking waves dashed high,” he begins

“On a stern and rock-bound coast.

And the woods against a stormy sky,

Their giant branches tossed;

“And the heavy night hung dark,

The hills and waters o’er,

When a band of exiles moored their bark

On the wild New England shore.”

Pausing momentarily, he looks around the room.

“Not as the conqueror comes,” he explains,

“They, the true-hearted came;

Not with the roll of the stirring drums,

And the trumpet that sings of fame;

“Not as the flying come,

In silence and in fear;—

They shook the depths of the desert gloom

With their hymns of lofty cheer.

“Amidst the storm they sang,

And the stars heard, and the sea;”

His voice rises

“And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang

To the anthem of the free.

“The ocean eagle soared

From his nest by the white wave’s foam;

And the rocking pines of the forest roared—

This,” he pauses, dramatically, “was their welcome home.

“There were men with hoary hair

Amidst that pilgrim band;

Why had they come to wither there,

Away from their childhood’s land?

“There was a woman’s fearless eye,

Lit by her deep love’s truth;

There was manhood’s brow serenely high,

He again pauses, touching his chest.

And the fiery heart of youth.”

“What sought they thus afar?

Bright jewels of the mine?

The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?”

He shakes his head, his voice firm.

“They sought a faith’s pure shrine!

“Aye,” he pauses, once again, “call it holy ground,

The soil where first they trod;

They have left unstained what there they found—

Freedom to worship God.”

(Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers — Felicia Hemans)

From those Friday morning poetry recitations, we learned to laugh, to imagine, and to feel a fierce reverence for the sacrifices of our forefathers. Thank God for such an education.

And thank God for poetry!

What's with 21st century poets?

In my last post I mentioned the 'hope' of the judge who awarded me second place in the recent League of Utah Writers rhymed poetry contest - as well as my reaction to his comment.
Why, you ask, would I be uninterested in 'modern' poetry? 
Good question.
I suppose the initial reason is that I hold poets such as Wordsworth and Shelley in reverent esteem. From the time I entered grade school until the day I graduated from the eighth grade I memorized and recited a poem each Friday as part of my English Language class. Each student in our little one-roomed country school did the same. Because of that requirement, I became familiar with everything from doggerel verse:
(There was a lady
Loved a swine.
"Pig-hog,
Wilt thou be mine?"
Can't remember the stanzas that followed but the mental image of a woman declaring undying amour to a snorting swine tickled my fancy then and has ever since.)


to the rhythmic refrains of Edgar Allen Poe:
(Hear the sledges with the bells - 
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells - 
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.)

to the immortal poetry of Longfellow:

   ( By the shores of Gitche Gumee, 
By the shining Big-Sea-Water, 
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, 
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. 
Dark behind it rose the forest, 
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, 
Rose the firs with cones upon them; 
Bright before it beat the water, 
Beat the clear and sunny water, 
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water. )

and the beautiful imagery of Robert W. Service:

(There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee.)

I loved poetry then and I still do but I find myself totally unable to understand the rhythms and nuances of modern poetry.  Much of it doesn't make a lot of sense and even when it does, I find myself completely uninterested in the themes so often used by my contemporaries.

Several years ago, when I was a member, I attended a workshop in writing poetry sponsored by a nearby chapter of the Utah Poets' Society. The presenter - a poetry professor from a local college - read her favorite composition glorifying sex in every way she could think of and ending with the sentiment that, if there wasn't sex in heaven she wasn't going there.

TMI imho!

I don't care to know all about someone else's sex life. That's their business. I have my own to take care of, thank you very much. But she wasn't the only 'poet' of my acquaintance who seemed to think modern poetry could focus on nothing else.

Of course, there were other themes presented at our monthly poetry gatherings. Poems glorifying magpies and ravens (two of my least favorite birds) etc., etc., etc. 

These poems were attempts at writing in various forms of modern poetry, forms far removed from the sonnets of Shakespeare or Elizabeth Barrett Browning or the incomparable forms used by Longfellow, Poe or Service. 

When I was challenged to write something other than my much-favored doggerel verse, I borrowed a book from the Society's library so I could learn more about different popular poetic forms. My personal opinion of many of the forms demonstrated therein could be summed up in a single word: pretentious. 

I did, finally, write a totally tongue-in-cheek sonnet. Not a  good sonnet, to be sure, but one mentioning poetry forms that any modern poet would recognize. 

SHOULD I TRY MY HAND?

Should I, a fledgling poet, try my hand

at writing sonnets, odes or villanelles —

word pictures left like wayward waves on sand

to tease and tantalize cerebral cells?

                                                           

Perhaps a terza rima or a glose

would be a better style for my rhyme.

I start out well - but am not even close

To making my feet fit required time.

My fellow poets say I should not use

such archaic words—or phrases trite and true.

They seem to think free verse the only muse

and favor rambling form to clerihew.

I try them all but don’t know which is worse.

Perhaps I’d better stick to doggerel verse.