Two collections of poetry came my way during the holidays. This was unusual because I am not a very poetical person, but I browsed through both collections to remind myself what poetry is all about. One book came from my friend David Axelrod – no relation to the presidential advisor – who was poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island, a few years ago, and the other collected the work of members a university literary society. In other words one professional poet and a group of amateurs. There were real gems in both collections, and I was left wondering how many mute inglorious Miltons are living quietly in our midst out here in the suburbs. Their work is generally not high-flown and abstract but focusses on things we all know and care about like diets, winter storms, old age, dermatology, cats, and even Mr. Trump. On such mundane topics a skilled poet can say, with great brevity and economy, more than could be expressed in hundreds of words of prose.
We were made to read poetry at school, and we had to memorize and recite popular gems of the art. This was a painful experience for a small boy. But I quite enjoyed the rhythms and the rhymes, and I appreciated the fact that (unlike dates in history or formulae in mathematics) poems were easy to remember.
I wander’d lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills
On either side the river lie
Long field of Barley and of Rye
How do I love thee? Let me counts the ways
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day
Let me not to the marriage of true minds…
They’re all in my head, those lilting verses, stuck there forever until, some day, they will be deleted by the great hard disk failure that awaits us all.
After leaving school I heard a lot of horrible poetry recited at writers groups, and at readings in basements and bookstores. My then wife was very keen on the stuff, and our house was a regular poetry library. Sometimes I would discover a writer I liked a lot – T.S. Eliot, Philip Larkin, Matthew Arnold – poets with depth but not without humor. Perhaps in self-defense, I also developed a taste for really bad poetry. My favorite bad poet was William McGonegall, a nineteenth century Scotsman who became quite famous for his dreadful verse. His most celebrated poem was “The Great Tay Bridge Disaster,” based on a historical event.
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
And ending six verses later with the moral:
For the stronger we our houses do build
The less chance we have of being killed.
As a piece of poetical wisdom, you can’t really argue with that.
If bad poetry is amusing, the best poetry is intimidating. Poets are the high wire artists, the linguistic gymnasts of the writing profession. Those of us without the gift can only stand on the firm ground of prose and marvel at their verbal acrobatics. I simply didn’t understand poetry when I was young. After a lifetime of writing prose I understand it better. In a prosaic world, poetry is often just the thing we need. Can I write it? No. Can you write it? There’s only one way to find out.
Copyright: David Bouchier
