Down With the Laureates!

Before we go back to my poetry saga there is some other ground I’d like to cover. That is: What makes a good poem?

Answer: You like it. (If it is your decision) or, I like it if it is mine.

A poem, like a song, like a painting, is art. Different types of art appeal to different people. Some professor or editor may tell you Edmund Spencer’s The Faery Queen is fabulous—a classic—a masterpiece. I can’t even get through it. I’ve tried more than once—and I won’t be trying again. I simply don’t like it. But you might.

If you don’t enjoy all the “classics” there are those who may classify you a cretin. Fair enough. I’d rather be a truthful cretin than pretend to like something I don’t. Once after a pretty snooty “looking down the nose” lecture on why I should like John Milton more than I did, I wrote this bit of doggerel:

(A Brief Reflection on John Milton)

‘Tis incumbent on me to confess

I like the whole of Milton less

Than any piece of balderdash

Sprung from the mind of Ogden Nash.

(Actually I recited it on the spot to my antagonist and wrote it down later.)

Once I decided not to give a hoot what someone “insisted” I must like and just liked what I like, I began to enjoy poetry more.

Then I discovered a couple of things that surprised me. Poems read from a book pale in comparison to poems read aloud—and all the more so when read by the writer.

One of my favorite poets is e. e. cummings and one of his poems I particularly like is, Darling!, Because My Blood Can Sing. It is a good poem when read, but to hear cummings recite it gives it a life that it never has when just words on a page.

The best example of a poem coming to life when read by the author, in my humble opinion, is Maya Angelou’s And Still I Rise. It will likely, if you have not heard her read it before, send chills running up and down your spine.

Note: You can purchase CDs or download poetry from I tunes if you want to hear the difference. Find a recording of one of your favorite poems/poets, download it and listen. You will be amazed.

If you don’t have access to a recording of the poet reading, enlist a friend to read. Even that will give the poem more power—assuming of course that your friend is a good reader.

Here is the second thing I discovered: I much prefer shorter poems. 

Again I compare a poem to a painting. When I see a painting I immediately get a “feeling” about it. It grabs me or it doesn’t. It might be the subject, the colors, or composition itself, but I know almost immediately whether I like it or not. Short poems do the same thing to me.

 This is a painting by a local artist, Heather Houser. It is called Chicago in Black. The moment I saw it I told the gallery owner I would buy it.

A short poem with a punch, or power, stays with me. I feel it as much as read it. I soon abandoned Homer and the Iliad, for less lengthy fare; Frost, and Dickinson and others (although I reserve the right to love Carl Sandberg's Chicago). It was then I discovered Japanese poetry; in particular, Haiku. I was hooked.

Japanese Haiku is generally explained as being a three line poem with the first line having five syllables, the second seven and the third five.  That is a great over simplification as Haiku is much more than that, but to go into all the technical details would soon drive you to another blog, so we’ll leave it at that.

I found Haiku after purchasing a used paperback by Harold G. Henderson, called, An Introduction to Haiku: An Anthology of Poems and Poets From Basho to Shiki. The name of the book was longer than the poems it contained! But I loved the poems--and I paid all of fifty cents!

I’m going to give you two examples, each from my favorite poet, Issa Kobayashi (1762-1826)

My grumbling wife—

if only she were here!

This moon tonight . . .

And this poem, found on his deathbed:

There are thanks to be given:

this snow on my bedquilt—

it too is from heaven.

The poem that opens the blog is a Haiku of my own. Not so good as these, but with the same intent—to make a maximum impact with a minimum of words.

In case I have tempted you to take another look at poetry, let me suggest a book or two you might look at: but first this piece of information—It is beyond the realm of probability that you will like all the poems of any one writer or all the poems in any book. Don’t expect to and you won’t be frustrated. The last book of poetry I purchased I liked just three poems in the entire book. I still think the purchase worthwhile . . . I really like those poems.

The list:

100 selected poems, e.e. Cummings; immortal Poems of the English Language, Oscar Williams. (This book has a zillion poems by a million writers. It is a good place to begin a search for poets you might like.); The Spring of My Life, Issa Kobayashi (Sam Hamill, translator):This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems, Wendell Berry; The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Vol.1, 1921-1940:   Rilke’s Book of Hours, Rainier Maria Rilke; Poems, Emily Dickinson, Castle Books; and of course, the Henderson book mentioned above.

These are just a very few. Buy them used if you can, check them out, and then do what you will with them. I can always suggest more!