Many
poets nowadays tend to be as obscure as possible. Individual
preferences differ, but I have met poets who contend that meaning
doesn't matter at all; poets who eliminate prepositions and
connecting verbs, or who want the listener to "feel" the
work rather than comprehend it. Playing such mind games is all right
as an exercise, I suppose; I find the individuals themselves
entertaining (and I mean that in a positive sense); I enjoy them as
people, but when they finish their reading and look around the small
group expectantly, I panic. Each obviously expects some comment.
What reaction is best? To say,"I
haven't any idea what you were talking about" seems rude, even
when true. "Impressive imagery" can be used only a few
times. "Wow" or "Fantastic" rarely measure up to
even low levels of sophistication, and are too likely to invite
further questions.
But whatever happened to meaning?
When I take the time to travel to a writers' group, the literary
equivalent of strobe lights or aroma therapy aren't enough to satisfy
me. I want something I can retain and ponder, perhaps even recall
word for word while I use my exercise bike, or lie awake in the
night. Meter and rhyme used to have purpose, not only for any
pleasure they bring in themselves, but as a means to imprint the
poetry on my mind, to be recalled days or years later.
A poem need not have meaning,
meter, and rhyme, all three, to make it memorable. Like the body's
physical sense of balance (derived from inner ear, eyesight, and
awareness of body position), one can be removed without loss. Remove
two out of the three, and the mind in the one instance, or the body
in the other, begins to stagger.
The
time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things;
Of shoes and ships and
sealing wax, of cabbages and kings.
And why the sea is boiling
hot, and whether pigs have wings.
(Lewis
Carroll, Through
the Looking Glass.)
Utter
nonsense, unless you suspect satire about pompous professors the
author, Lewis Carroll, may have known. But Carroll descends further
into meaninglessness in his poem
Jabberwocky. It
starts:
'Twas
brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the
wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Even
though there is little meaning in the words, the mind constructs a
picture, carried on by the perfect rhythm and rhyme of his lines. The
poem goes on to tell the tale of a man sending his son to kill a
forest monster, and the poem became so famous that it has planted
several new words in the English language (e.g. chortle, galumphing,
beamish.)
Ancient
Hebrew poetry, translated into English, has no rhyme, and no definite
rhythm,but depends instead on a repeat of a phrase in different
words. But the meaning has inspired readers for three thousand years:
Whither
shall I go from thy Spirit?
Or whither shall I flee from
thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven,
thou art there.
If I make my bed in hell,
behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the
morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand
lead me, and thy right hand shall guide me.
(Psalm
139)
Contemporary poetry, on the other
hand, is easier to remember because the similarly inspiring thoughts
also scan and rhyme. Consider:
Though
the cause of evil prosper, still 'tis truth alone is strong.
Though her portion be the
scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong.
Yet that scaffold sways the
future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the
shadow, keeping watch above his own.
(Lowell,
Once
to Every Man and Nation)
Finally,
poetry can be simply enjoyed for its wit and humor. Starting as
nursery rhymes long ago, limericks were made popular by Edward Lear
in the nineteenth century. He, however, usually ended the first line
and last line with the same word, robbing the verse of any surprise.
Later limericks are more imaginative, greatly improving their
popularity:
The
humor may be gentle:
A
Canadian fisher named Peck
Fell through the ice
up to his neck.
When asked, "Are you
froze?"
He said, "Yes, I
suppose,
But we don't call this cold
in Quebec."
Or merely ridiculous:
There was a young lady from
Natchez
Whose garments were always in
patchez.
When comment arose
On the state of her clothes,
She would drawl, "When
ah itchez, ah scratchez."
(author
unknown)
In
our writers group in Kellogg, Idaho, there is a man, Jeff Simonson,
who can produce original limericks almost without effort - sometimes
as a narrative poem of five or six verses, each verse a faultless
limerick, expressing his mood or a recent event. I envy his skill,
but poetry is not my major literary interest. I have rarely tried to
compose any poetry since high school class assignments long ago.
My favorite form remains the
limerick. It permits satire, surprise, rhythm and rhyme, and is brief
enough to memorize. Mind games and cross-cultural poetry have their
appeal, but I still treasure the traditional forms that can be easily
recalled and retained in the mind.
