[2024-01-17] What is a poem?
Further to my recent posts on poetry—The power of poetry and The Poetry Pharmacy—I finished watching The Power of Poetry this evening. This 2018 video, hosted by the BBC's Sarah Montague, features expert views from publisher William Sieghart and author Jeanette Winterson as well as poetry readings by actors and presenters Helena Bonham Carter, Sue Perkins, Jason Isaacs and Tom Burke. This post presents excerpts from the 90-minute poetry reading.
What is a poem?
More than halfway through the 90-minute program, host Sarah Montague opens the floor to questions, the first one being a simple but important one: What is a poem? William Sieghart says: "to me, a poem is what you choose is a poem," noting that a wide range of writing—from Shakespeare to modern-day rap music—can be considered poetry. Jeanette Winterson calls a poem "a snapshot of an emotional moment" that is distilled into the tightest possible language. Sue Perkins says that a poem "contains a beautiful truth within it...a sentiment that rings true for you emotionally, that you can take with you...that expresses a common conceit, elegantly and beautifully, and...elevates your thinking." Helena Bonham Carter states simply that a poem "expresses what we can't."
Earlier in the discussion, William Sieghart discusses the therapeutic benefits of poetry. "The great thing about a poem, if you find the right poem for the right state of mind, you have a sense, instantly, of complicity—a sense of somebody else feels like I feel," he says. "You feel understood. And because you feel understood, it helps you evolve and move on."
He says that many people are intimidated by poetry. Somewhere at about age 11 or 12, he suggests, people lose their confidence in being able to read poetry, or start to feel that poetry isn't for them. He points out that sometimes readers don't get the meaning of a poem on the first read through. But this is true of other art as well. "A really good painting, or a really extraordinary piece of music—you don't decode it on the spot," he maintains. "You look at it, you listen to it." He recommends that people read a poem out loud, if only in their heads, and that they read it again on successive days and in different moods. "You'll get something completely different from it every time," he adds.
In the spirit of The Poetry Pharmacy, I chose four poems from the program that spoke to me and that might bring comfort to some of you as well.
If you're worried and can't sleep...
The Peace of Wild Things
— Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
If you're pining for love...
Your Task
— Rumi
Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find
all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.
If you've erred...
The Mistake
— James Fenton
With the mistake your life goes in reverse.
Now you can see exactly what you did
Wrong yesterday and wrong the day before
And each mistake leads back to something worse
And every nuance of your hypocrisy
Towards yourself and every excuse
Stands solidly on the perspective lines
And there is perfect visibility.
What an enlightenment. The colonnade
Rolls past on either side. You needn’t move.
The statues of your errors brush your sleeve.
You watch the tale turn back – and you’re dismayed.
And this dismay at this, this big mistake
Is made worse by the sight of all those who
Knew all along where these mistakes would lead –
Those frozen friends who watched the crisis break.
Why didn’t they say? Oh but they did indeed –
Said with a murmur when the time was wrong
Or by a mild refusal to assent
Or told you plainly but you would not heed.
If you've gone through a breakup...
Failing and Flying
— Jack Gilbert
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
