For the Love of Poetry

 

I  thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. ~e.e. cummings

A fellow blogger posted the above bit of poetry on his blog recently, and it perfectly epitomizes what I have been feeling about this time of year. Despite the weather being a bit confused lately, the earth really is pushing forth with the idea of spring. The crocuses and snowdrops are blooming, choice shrubs are greening and leaf buds on the trees are beginning to swell, needing just a bit of steady encouragement from the sun to gain the confidence to open up.

I suppose the beauty of poetry is that the poet succeeds, with a few well-chosen and intuitive words, in expressing what we lesser mortals cannot. I can't say that I read a lot of poetry, but I do read enough to know its power.

I have been so busy lately, preparing for this weekend's events which I have helped to organize for the community, and my husband is just winding down a few weeks of work in which he, literally, spent more time on the job than he spent at home. The other day I had so much to do, yet in my tiredness I could not find my rhythm, nor create any real flow to the day. Another blogger expressed in one of his new poems exactly what I had been experiencing that day, and I was comforted by the fact that someone out there had been able to put form to my feelings, simply because he had felt the same way.

the day is passing too fast, forward, but jerky, stop motion clay-mation in the hands of an amateur. ~Brian Miller

When I was a child, I read plenty of junior poetry: A.A. Milne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dennis Lee, Shel Silverstein, nursery rhymes galore, and various illustrated collections, but it was not until I was introduced to adult poetry in my English Literature class in high school that I began to appreciate and understand poetry as an art form (although I am sure all that children's literature paved the way). Our teacher, Mr. Stephani walked us through Shakespeare, Pope, some Milton, Hardy, Wordsworth, Blake and Byron. I found I could understand and often relate to what these poets were saying about the world around them, and I was encouraged to carry on with my studies, which included Canadian and American literature, in college and university. 

I'm not sure if all college kids go through the same poetic phase, but I know I did. I remember another very romantic e.e. cummings poem which I had heard quoted in a movie. I was in the beginning stages of my first long-term relationship at the time, and after hearing the poem, I rushed to the college library, looked it up, copied it out and gave it to my boyfriend. I won’t quote the entire poem here, but the last stanza still takes my breath away, in a laughing, slightly cringing 'I can’t believe I gave him that poem' kind of way. In all honesty, I'm sure the poem described not how I felt about him, but rather, how I wished to feel at the time.

(I do not know what it is about you that closes

And opens; only something in me understands

The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

I never did find a poem that fit 'us' until after we had broken up. Perhaps that was a sign.

When I met and fell in love with my husband, I wrote him a poem. It had one line in it that I remember:

Our love is as light and unusual as feathers on the moon

My husband, a practical and steady sort of man (thankfully) was impressed that I had even written him a poem at all, and was deeply touched. Finally, for me, poetry and reality had met. I was happy.

Our lives read more like a to-do list now than a love sonnet, much of the time, but that's only natural after nearly twenty years of marriage. The important thing is that we write those lists together. As for poetry, well, it will keep popping up to help give shape and to make sense and beauty of this human experience. That is its special magical gift to those who are tuned to hear it.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

~Shakespeare~

The photo is of the walnut tree in our back yard.