Poetry Cast Before Swine

 

Poetry Cast Before Swine

 

So much so-called poetry today is prose that should have been ripped, rewritten a dozen time, then wadded up and pitched, but instead has been cut into strips in hopes that poetry miraculously emerges.

 

 Even the beauty of the The King James Bible a great and most famous work of poetry, has been whittled down to nearly inconsequential verbiage.  I recently heard a pastor read, not “Father forgive them for they know not what they do,” but, “Father forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing.”  Balderdash! I’m not a Christian, but that’s an insult to Christ, as well as every poet worthy of the name.

 

He might as well have changed Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” to “Shit, I Don’t Know Which Way to Go.”  

 

Frost had a deep appreciation for style, structure and rhyme.  He said writing free verse…unstructured and without rhyme…..was like playing tennis without a net.  For what it’s worth, I must agree. It mostly rambles without purpose.

 

Let’s look at some real poetry, the kind that makes you see the world in a different way, makes the dark clouds darker and the sunshine brighter.

 

Relook at something we all read in high school, Shakespeare’s most famous sonnet:

 

            Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

            Thou are more lovely and more temperate:

            Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, 

            And Summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

 

Read the full version online and sigh along with his most beautiful song of love.

 

Ever heard of The Oxford Book of English Verse?  Get a copy, read it often.  Granted, it’s not a book you read from cover to cover, but memorize portions and short lines that sooth you, and keep the book close to your heart. Used copies can be had for pennies.  Why on the cheap?  Poetry has diverged into poorly written scraps of prose. Especially musical poetry has descended into blasting, blaring screeches of nearly incomprehensibilities, the trite verses repeated until the mind is numb.

 

Compare today’s screeches to the lead-in lines of Stardust, one of the most beautiful examples of musical poetry.  “And now the purple dusk of twilight time, steals across the meadows of my heart.”  

 

There was a time when poetry meant something.  It no longer does.  You or I scratch out verse in prose, scramble the lines and only lift the reader to the mental edge of third grade.

 

Poetry is easily recognized, it melts into you, clings to you, begs you to wander and wonder.  Ever hear of English poet Thomas Carew (1595-1630)? Probably not.  Let me introduce you.

 

The Unfailing Beauty

 

He that loves a rosy cheek,

Or a coral lip admires,

Or from star-like eyes doth seek

Fuel to maintain his fires:

As old times make these decay,

So his flame must waste away.

 

But, a smooth and steadfast mind,

Gentle thoughts and calm desires

Hearts with equal love combined

Kindle never dying fires

Where these are not, I despise

Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes.

 

Think for a minute I’m going to turn English teacher and have you discuss the  “meaning”?  Hell no!  Poetry is not found in an absolute meaning, which differs from reader to reader, but in it’s effect on the mind, the soul, the unconscious emotion.

 

But, now let’s move from love to drink, with William Stevenson (1530-1575)

 

Jolly Good Ale and Old

 

I cannot eat but little meat,

            My stomach is not good;

But sure I think that I can drink

With him that wears a hood.

Though I go bare, take ye no care,

I nothing am a-cold;

I stuff my skin so full within

Of jolly good ale and old.

Back and side go bare, go bare:

Both foot and hand go cold

 

How about an American poet, Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965), the famous T.S. Eliot, and only a small portion of lines from his most famous poem, lamenting his voyage into old age.  The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

 

            For I have known them all already, known them all:

            Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

            I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

            I know the voices dying with a dying fall

            Beneath the music from a farther room.

                        So how should I presume?

 

Yes.  Read it again, more slowly this time. Let it soak into you, a memory of time, of things left undone, and wonder if you have indeed measured out your life with coffee spoons.

 

Poetry is not about the poet, although you might think so reading today’s gobbly-gook.  No, poetry is about life.  Breathe it deeply.  Don’t let the triteness of modern American English deter you.   Live a little through the depths of words that touch the soul.  “Forgive them father for they know not what they do.”