Why You Should Read Poetry...Yes, Poetry
In May of 1944, the poet Anna Akhmatova gave a reading at the Polytechnic Museum, the largest auditorium in Moscow. It was her first appearance in the city since World War II, and the room was packed. The poems she read had rallied Russians throughout the war, and her voice had broadcast through the streets of Leningrad to steel the city to the approaching German Army. When she finally closed her books, she received such thunderous applause that Joseph Stalin asked who'd organized the ovation. The man knew power when he saw it.
If you grew up in America, it might surprise you to learn that a poet has ever had that sort of impact. Poetry here is best known for the simple, sentimental verses found in Hallmark cards and the lyrics of pop music. The word "poet" probably calls to mind some weirdo in a beret. And poetry's power to influence American politics is, at best, a fizzle--if you heard anything about the anti-Bush anthology Poets Against the War, then you listen to a lot of NPR. The truth is most Americans have lost touch with the best of what poetry is: a record of some of civilization's greatest writers--and wisest people--taking on the questions and emotions that define us.
Certainly, the world has changed a lot since Akhmatova. Time once devoted to reading books now goes to TV, movies, and the Internet. When people do read, most prefer to pick up something they can relax with like John Patterson or Augusten Burroughs. But one only needs to look down the aisles of inspirational books at Barnes and Noble to know that the search for meaning that has always driven the great poems still resonates. Classic themes like love, despair, life, death, and hope still infatuate us. Heck, you can find them all in one episode of "Grey's Anatomy." Yet the poems of faith John Milton wrote after he'd gone completely blind, the atheist Percy Bysshe Shelley's passionate explorations of a godless world, and Sylvia Plath's struggle just to hold her world together all go under-appreciated and under-read.
So why aren't we reading poetry? Here are some reasons I often hear that will probably sound familiar. Here, too, are some reasons to reconsider.
Reason 1: I've never understood it.
Poetry can be difficult. Learning to read Shakespeare is difficult, and I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone take on T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" without some guidance. But most poets are far more accessible than Eliot or Shakespeare. Also, it's important to note that your expectations for a poem should be different from your expectations for, say, a newspaper or a novel. A poem often has multiple layers of meaning that will unfold over a few readings--and it's important to give a poem that opportunity. It's a good idea to read a poem more than once in a sitting or go back and reread it over the course of a few weeks or even a lifetime. Remember that the process of exploring a great poem should be part of the reward. As Walt Whitman asked in "Song of Myself":
"Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? Have you reckon'd the Earth much?
Have you practic'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?"
Reason 2: I can't get past the whole rhyming thing.
Rhyming verse can fall a little hard on the modern ear, which is why most contemporary poems are written in "free verse" with no set meter or rhyme scheme. Rhymes are a part of poetry's music: the rhythms and sounds of words from which a poet draws power. Like a great soloist or orator, a poet with a good ear can infuse what he's saying with emotion and immediacy. If you're reading a poem with end rhymes and they're bothering you, ignore the line breaks and try reading the poem as if it's prose.
Reason 3: Poetry is for angst-ridden teens, hopeless romantics and the aforementioned weirdos in berets.
Sure, you run into a few aspiring poets at your local coffee shop that fit this bill, but I guarantee you couldn't pick a practicing poet off the street. We're surprisingly normal. Just like you, we're obsessed with things like fantasy football and I Love New York 2. I was on track to be a doctor before I stumbled on poetry (yes, my parents were real happy about that one). That's not to say that your experience with poetry will be as all-consuming as mine, but for all that poetry has given me, I have no doubt that it has something to give you.
So how should you begin? I'd recommend you start with an anthology. You can't go wrong with the Norton Anthology of Poetry, which covers everything from medieval English verse to Bob Dylan. When you find a poet you like, buy a book of his or her work. Volumes of poetry aren't as daunting as the word "volume" implies. In fact, they're relatively small. And you can read through most poems in a fraction of the time it takes to finish a Sudoku. You should also check here each week, where I'll be posting a great poem as a blog. Think of it as a weekly cultural aperitif.
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The Snowman
Wallace Stevens
----
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
only in America would someone not be embarrassed to make this their headline. The rest of the World aspires to read/study
I'm biased in favor of live, performed poetry; it's a rite of passage for a poet, and it's best if the poet can perform without reading, from memory.
"And I'll know my song well before I start singing" - Bob Dylan, 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'.
Sometimes poets make poetry, sometimes they use it.
Years ago on PBS there was a group called the The First Poetry Quartet. The show are on CD.
Claire Bloom, LeVar Burton, Robert Culp, Ruby Dee, Henry Fonda, Will Geer, Fred Gwynne, Valerie Harper, Jack Lemmon, Vincent Price, William Shatner, Irene Worth. I still remember Shatner
doing a reading from "Spoon River Anthology"
Vincent Price did a poem about lost vintages of wine, I cna't remember the title.
http://www
Nothing that cultural on PBS nowadays because fo all the corporate sponsors and pandering to the contributors.
I was moved by Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize in Literature lecture: http://www
It's a searing indictment of U.S. hubris, greed and bellicosity. Here's a piece of it -
I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.
Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?
Who was the dead body?
Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?
Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?
Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?
What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?
Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body
When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.
I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
The video recording can be seen at: http://nob
If...
Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
Wonderful poem.
My Dad introduced me to this piece a long time ago.
Do the X Box generation know what they are missing or sadly, do they care?
Fortunately, I have two sons that DO appreciate good books and poetry, my younger one actually writes his own. From time to time I'll print out something really good and tape it up in the kitchen where I know they'll run across it; it inevitably starts a good conversation, which is priceless.
poetry is dead long live poetry
A little overflowing word
That any hearing had inferred
For ardor or for tears,
Though generations pass away,
Traditions ripen and decay,
As eloquent appears.
~Emily Dickinson
--- MASTERS OF WAR ~ BOB DYLAN ---
Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain
You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins
How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead
*************
.... greatest song/poem of all time
Absolutely. Too bad it's still relevant.
Best Song Writer/Poet .... = BOB DYLAN
TOP 5 Poets of all Time (in my opinion)
1. Emily Dickinson
2. Walt Whitman
3. Edgar Allan Poe
4. Langston Hughes
5. Amiri Baraka
Try some Rumi my friend.
I have ... I would put Rumi in the top 10 ... but I only did top 5
Those are a good 5. Here are mine:
Rimbaud
Eliot
Pound
Whitman
Shelley
Wyatt, Marvell, Donne, Herrick, Tennyson, Browning, Dickinson, Frost, Yeats, Thomas, Hopkins, Robinson, Jeffers, Wilbur, to name a few.
And that excludes Shakespeare, the greatest of them all, treating him as a dramatist.
This blog is a wonderful addition to Huffington Post -- thank you. I use poetry in my animation class. Poetry is very fruitful & inspiring for creating visual meaning and narrative in short films. Thank you to the person who posted Forgetfulness, by Billy Collins -- it has been made into a beautiful animated film by Julian Grey for the Sundance Institute - it may be on their website or youtube. The poem is recited by Billy Collins -- the film is perfection!
maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and
milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea
eecummings
Yeah, cummings too.
Poetry....
Words that speak of love and hate
Words that warn of mankinds fate.
Words unread by leaders blind
Words ignored and much maligned.
Words accepted by nodding head
Words rejected and binned instead.
Words mere whispers upon the wind
Words recording all mankinds sins.
Wires
The widest prairies have electric fences,
For though old cattle know they must not stray
Young steers are always scenting purer water
Not here but anywhere. Beyond the wires
Leads them to blunder up against the wires
Whose muscle-shredding violence gives no quarter.
Young steers become old cattle from that day,
Electric limits to their widest senses.
Philip Larkin
And Larkin.
If you listen to selected music very carefully, you may discover that modern poetry reaches mass audiences via music. I have found masterful poetry in a great many songs. No snob appeal, but...
Paul Simon comes to mind... also Joni Mitchell. Just two of many.
"Scoundrels"
sounds comfortably roguish
like old hounds
snuffling in their sleep
over cherished errors
of distant youth
dreams flavored by once-dominant appetites
which linger only in memory
and lightly there
like the one-time exultation of physical exertion
or the egotizing lust for acceptance
teeth rounded and yellowed
embarrassing, not threatening
but these old men, snaggletoothed,
are devoted to the bite…
these old bastards
wondervoid, sharkhearted
continue to hunt
confounding emptiness with hunger
to simultaneously cringe and strut
grabbing with both hands
stuffing what they see of the world
the gold and the terror
into their pockets
into their mouths
Head, Perhaps, of an Angel
limestone, with traces of polychromy, c. 1250
Point Dune was the point
he said, but we never came close
no matter how far we walked the shale
broken from California
Someone’s garden
had slipped, hanging itself by a vine
from the cliffs of some new Babylon
past Malibu.
Drowning the words,
the wind didn’t fling back in our faces,
the Pacific washed up a shell:
around an alabastron
of salt water for the dead
seaweed rustled its papers, drying them out,
until it died. Waves kept crashing
into the heart
of each shell
I held to my ear like a phone,
but they were just the waves of my blood.
And through it all
I heard him say,
how could it be nine months ago
his grandson had taken his own life,
somewhere back east?
He was fifteen.
O Pacific, what good is our grief?
Something screamed at the sandy child
who poured seawater
into a hole.
Child, you’ll never empty the ocean,
Augustine said. How can I believe?
The wet fist of a wave
dissolved in sand.
Like a saint, a seagull flapped down the beach
in search of something raw--an angel
with an empty pail?
No, a teenage boy,
hands big as a man’s, held a sea slug
quaking like an aspic. Under a rock, another
drew into its body
a creature
larger than itself. Live, said Death
to child and childless alike, indifferently.
I am coming.
--Debora Greger
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