April is Poetry Month: Day 4

Londonderry, VT.  May 2017, Jean Doolittle

Today I continue the exploration of my eclectic collection of poetry books.  I find that a number of volumes I've collected combine poetry with fine art; a natural pairing actually, that can expand our understanding of the inexpressible emotions and ideas that art in its many forms attempts to reveal.

While we wait anxiously for spring, we are more attuned to the sun and the clouds and the movements of the weather.  This awareness is age old and is beautifully expressed in this poem from the Hottentot people of Africa.

  Song For the Sun That Disappeared Behind the Rainclouds

The fire darkens, the wood turns black.

The flame extinguishes, misfortune upon us.

God sets out in search of the sun.

The rainbow sparkles in his hand,

The bow of the divine hunter.

He has heard the lamentations of his children.

He walks along the Milky Way, he collects the stars.

With quick arms he piles them into a basket

Piles them up with quick arms

Like a woman who collects lizards

And piles them into her pot,  piles them

Until the pot overflows with lizards

Until the basket overflows with light.

From: Talking To The Sun: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems for Young People, Selected and Introduced by Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell.

Kenneth Koch was an inspiration to me as a teacher; his book, Wishes, Lies and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry helped me through some of the pitfalls of writing instruction and I believed helped many children find their voices.  He had a fresh take on poetry that was invigorating.  In the wikipedia page about him (linked above) it explains that Koch asked in his poem Fresh Air (1956) why poets were writing about dull subjects with dull forms. Modern poetry was solemn, boring, and uneventful. Koch described poems "Written by the men with their eyes on the myth/And the missus and the midterms..." He attacked the idea that poetry should be in any way stale. I'd agree with that completely.

    The introduction to this book articulates the connection between art and poetry.  It's worth mulling over as the snow melts.

    Everyone has feelings, thoughts, wishes, instincts, and sensations that seem almost impossible to talk about or to express in a way that seems absolutely complete and true.  Even supposedly ordinary, everyday things can be secretly very important but hard to talk about.  

    Think, for instance, of trying to describe exactly the thrill of riding a bicycle down a breezy hill, the peacefulness of holding your cat..., the strangeness of your first memories of your house or street, the happiness of discovering something--a stream in the woods or the first tree buds of spring.  Think of trying to explain the confuse excitement of feeling secretly in love with someone...the mystery of language, of color, of beauty, of time going by; the funny wildness of dreams, fantasies, daydreams and the loneliness, sometimes of wondering about yourself and the whole universe in a way that you can't explain...

    Everyone's experience of the world is mostly private and not quite like anyone else's, so it is hard to communicate that experience...The urge to express the absolute truth about the way things are in one's own, private, inner world of thoughts, feelings, and imagination s one of the reasons why poets write poetry, painters paint pictures, and composers write music.

    The arts are natural and exciting expressions of these things.  People count on the arts to tell them the truth about what it is to be a person in the world--a world that we are always wondering about and never completely understand.

    In a way, the pleasure of a good painting or sculpture or poem is a little like the pleasure of seeing through the eyes of someone who can see in a way that no one else has ever seen before, the excitement of imagining with someone else's strange and brilliant imagination, or the surprise of remembering with someone else's memory.