Poetry - A Subject as Precise as Geometry - but Wait for the Echo!

Photo Copyright Janet Cameron

People are always asking, "What is poetry exactly?" Recently someone even said, "Can't stand poetry. Why not just write an essay?" I explained this was a completely different art form. You might as well ask why a sculpture isn't a painting. But the lady didn't see that at all!   Hmmm...

Still, some thinkers do try and succeed quite well.

I always quote Philip Larkin, "The best possible words in the best possible order."

Here are some lovely allusions to poetry from my Oxford Dictionary of Quotations:

Boswell: Sir, what is poetry?

Johnson: Why Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is, but it is not easy to tell what it is.

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: It takes it origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity ~ William Wordsworth.

That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all. ~ John Keats.

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. ~ Percy Bysse Shelley.

Prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry. ~ Gustave Flaubert.

Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. ~ Don Marquis.

And finally, from the incomparable Wendy Cope:

I used to think all poets were Byronic.

They're mostly wicked as a ginless tonic

And wild as pension plans.

Well, in the end we have to try to keep our feet on the ground, don't we?

INVICTUS by William Ernest Henley

With all the chaos going on in the world at the present time, while the Brits fearfully contemplate the consequences of Brexit, while the US President appears to come closer day by day to being impeached, to the agony of Syria, of Africa, and the abuse suffered suffered by black, female politicians, (just to name a few items from today's news) I really need poetry.

Like this one, which inspired Nelson Mandela and provided the title of the wonderful film about him.

William Ernest Henley, Wikimedia Commons

INVICTUS by William Ernest Henley


Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Great Poets Shouldn't Have to "Dumb-Down"

Ezra Pound, Bing Images

This is what James I is claimed to have said about John Donne. It was recorded by Archdeacon Plume:

"Dr. Donne's verses are like the peace of God; they pass all understanding."

I often wonder if that's fair.  Great store is set by how accessible poetry is - the question always being, "accessible to whom...?"

When I was studying modern poetry at the University of Kent, I often felt frustrated at Ezra Pound, who wrote such stunning pieces, then wandered off into foreign snippets and allusions, so that you had to be highly educated in classical literature and language, including Latin, to understand his work. Or else you needed a very patient teacher with plenty of time to instruct you.

Some of his prose is even expressed as musical sheets. I love music, but only as a consumer. I can't sing. I can't play. I can't read music.

I was lost, stumped, angry. How dare he write stuff I couldn't understand? It isn't my fault I didn't get a great education. How would I ever catch up?  Why should these works be beyond my reach?

Ezra Pound wrote a wonderful haiku:

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

— Ezra Pound

What a beautiful, precise image, how full of energy in its very shifting-ness. It's both here and far away, both distinctive and fragile. You feel you might grasp this image only to find it shimmering away into the distance.

I feel differently now. I take what I can and I'm glad for it. I try to fill the gaps where I can't understand, but there's no use in fretting about it all.  How can we expect such intellects, with their great, seeking, reaching, unfathomable thoughts to dumb down so everyone can get a bigger piece of them.

No, we need to dumb-up.  Great poets should just carry on as they see fit.

Oh, and wasn't he so handsome? But I do so wish I understood more than I do.