I find myself mentioning poetry or poetic form when I talk about writing lately. For me this is odd. I know I am not a poet and never hope to gain that title. I rarely if ever even read poetry. It goes even deeper when I think of my time in college (this was the time after I was discharged from the Marines (honorably)). This was the semester of claiming to be an English major. The creative writing class I took was with the head of the English department, his name escapes me.
I can remember more details about the man himself than I ever will about his name. We could attribute it to my inability to remember names most of the time but with the impact of the memories I have of him I doubt that is it. He was a hipster long before they were even conceived, so yes, it was long before they were cool.
I suffered through this class, one I had originally had high hopes for. You have to picture some of the people present. There was one guy who refused to use capital letters because he felt no letter deserved more recognition than any other. There was another person who had issues with abbreviations because words didn't deserve to be treated in such a way.
This instructor, he understood little of prose; prose was not where he spent his time. But he did have a passion for poetry. Most of the class revolved around poetic metre. There is one line that stands with me today and it sums up any big function I see. I can't remember the poet or even the poem it comes from and I don't think this is even the first line but I love it just the same. The poem was about some official proclamation or some such. Here is the line "The mayor was there with his Grand Whereas's."
Isn't it odd how something so simple can stick with you? Is there a line from or thought from an unlikely place that you carry with you?
I only took one poetry class, but many fiction and nonfiction writing workshops. The poetry people were a totally different breed! I rarely write poetry, and on occasion I might read Whitman or a few other of my favorite poets. I do like watching spoken word videos on YouTube and amassed quite a collection when I was teaching high school. Ironically enough, poetry is my favorite thing to teach since it's the one time students will really let go and have fun with language.
ReplyDeleteI still have the poetry book from that class (the prose book was garbage). The main reason I saved the book was because I knew it was one place I could find the poem "Do Not go Gentle into that Good Night." It is the only Dylan Thomas poem I know but still such a powerful one that I can recite most of it from memory.
DeleteJon,
ReplyDeleteThere is a line that sticks with me but it is not from a poem. It is from Les Brown, heard him say once "you don't get out of life alive." I never forgot it and I say it often.
Jenn
Les Brown is a great speaker. I have one of his speaches printed out in one of my brewing folders.
DeleteI live in Australia. And on Queen Street Mall, there is a Hungry Jacks. A simple, but effective joint with lots of customers, and because it's right in the middle of the mall it's the unofficial meeting spot for folks on a day out. Anyway, there's a slogan or sign or something painted on the window, it reads:
ReplyDeleteWE NEVER CLOSE
This always sets my mind awandering. Early in the morning to late at night, that store is always open. So even when you're sound asleep at night, hiding from the monsters in your nightmares, there's a light on in the middle of the street. Even when every other store owner has shut up shop and switched off the lights, there remains this glowing symbol of the fast-food giant, a beacon to those lost wanderers in the night. A meeting place for even those nocturnal monsters . . . a place that never closes.
Thats a freaky image. Almost like a watering hole where predators go to feed, there is a light that draws in weary travelers.
DeleteWhat is the attraction of poetry to a lot of high schoolers and beyond? Could it be that poems can be very short, and very enigmatic to the point of being incomprehensible---all the while retaining respectability.
ReplyDeleteI remember a poetry course I took at Knox College in Illinois. Every class was spent trying to decode the poem that had been assigned at the end of the previous class. One really cool aspect of the class was when we had class sessions on the grass in front of Old Main. We felt so smart.
I have a feeling it is the romantic idea of poetry itself that is the draw. There is a hipster cool factor involved with the very idea of being called a poet (that goes beyond even todays standards of hipsters). Of course, growing up in the neighborhoods I like the ones I did, you would more likely get the crap kicked out of you than be able to carry a cool mystique.
DeleteThis post definitely got me thinking. The line that always floats around my head is from a poem by Philip Schultz called "The Silence" and it is:
ReplyDelete"You knew your angels loved you
but you also knew they would leave
someone they could not save"