If you write poetry, your first poem began when you first opened your
eyes, or when you first became aware of sound, or touch, or the scent
of your mother's skin. Poetry and the urge to have fun with
sounds are inseparable, so that the instinct to play, common to
kittens, puppies and humans, is the basic reflex of poets. "Bababa" and
"Dadada" and Mamama are "rhymes." Clapping hands is rhythmic.
That's the raw material: joy in the senses.
So then what's left?
Almost everything. Recently, a friend of mine told
me he recognized "the real stuff'" by the "tingle'" it gave him. Other
people would describe it as the chill on the back of the neck, the
flushing of the skin, even the creeping of the scalp. The odd
thing about true poetry is that there is sensuous pleasure in the play
of the words, but the aim of it is to express that which is wordless,
indefinable, elusive, inexpressible.
The glorious (and sometimes terrible) world of the
senses is the starting point, the place where the poet places a foot,
but there is no finish line, only the edge of a mysterious forest, the
shoreline of an inscrutable sea. Poetry is the search for God: in
good and evil, in sadness, in joy, in charity - and even in baffled
rage. As long as the transcendent is the aiming point, poetry is
possible.
But there's a paradox here: Poetry searches for God, but she hunts
for Him mostly in the world of the senses. She rarely utters His holy
name, yet she glorifies Him. Poetry is a craft as well as an art. You
learn it by doing what the masters do. Most importantly, you learn it
by doing what they do, not what they say about what they do. As with
any other true craft, you dedicate your life to it.
|
|
A student once asked Robert Graves which poets she ought to read
that were the best poets. He told her that actually great poetry (in
fact, he said "poetry") is very rare in every generation, that it isn't
found very often anywhere. Neither is great painting, great music,
great architecture.
It can be a pleasure to write verse. Clever rhyme and meter are
fun to invent and to share. It's a pleasant pastime. A hobby. But
poetry is both a pleasur and a desperate struggle, like Jacob's
wrestling with God. Copy the masters, like a toddler paddling in the
shallows. Then one day launch out into the rolling sea. You'll either
sink or you'll swim. Come up for air and start again.
You could do worse than start with Shakespeare, to learn the feel
of the words as they're put together into long rhythms. Listen to the
sense, but also listen to the music of it. Read Raleigh, Herbert,
Blake, Donne and others - not that everything they wrote is worth
remembering. But even one authentic poem qualifies a poet as a citizen
of the kingdom of literature. Write in the style and form of the
masters at the beginning, but then search for your own voice.
That voice is the one in which you will glorify God and His creation in a poem.
| Pavel
Chichikov lives in Washington DC. He was received into the
Catholic Church in 1988. As well as being a writer, Pavel is a photographer,
and he recently exhibited his photographs at Mount Saint Mary's
University in Emmitsburg, Maryland. His poetry is available at his website. He is also the poetry editor of the web site Catholic Exchange. |
|
