The Sense of a Sensibility: On Being a Poet

'To be a poet  is a condition, not a profession.' ~ Robert Frost

I've been thinking a lot recently on what it means to be called a 'poet.' To be a writer and to be termed a writer is a very different thing from being a poet. Writers write, poets... wander lonely as clouds, through dales and daydreams (!) Poets pen poems of course, but to majority opinion, they exist in a state of bemusement, in a dreamy airy-fairyness. If you imagine a writer, it's a person sitting slavishly at a typewriter, surrounded by reams of pages; imagine a poet and it's a vague ambling figure, eyes to the sky, mind gallivanting betwixt the real and the imaginary. If a writer's profession is seen to be a strange one, then a poet's is far more surreal, and unsure in the eyes of many. 

The term 'poet' not only describes what you do, but more so, who you are. It's not just the act of writing poems that defines a poet, it's the general disposition that goes with that. The poetic disposition or sensibility, the enabler of poetry writing. There is truth in what Robert Frost said that to be a poet 'is a condition, not a profession'. I agree. It is more trait than talent, more a way of being than of writing. Most poets will tell you that to have a career writing poetry is almost impossible. But to be a poet, is reward in itself, for you are blessed with an unique way of seeing the world. 

'Poet' is really a word for a person who pays close attention to life. A life-observer. Note-taker.  Poets see things minutely, miraculously. We are attentive to every little detail, every nuance of emotion, every shift of light. To be a poet is to be continually aware of life - the emotions that eddy and swirl, the strata of the  physical, natural world down to the slightest movement of a leaf in a breeze. As Mary Oliver says in one of her poems: "Instructions for living a life: pay attention, be astonished, tell about it." And that's what poets do. To be a poet you work in the realm of astonishment, where every little thing is a wonder, a wonder that demands the right words to translate it to a wider audience. You have sensitive antennae that are always feeling out situations for poetic inspiration. I always think the mind of a poet is like a coral reef, alive with colour, opening and probing in an endless unfurling of brilliant blossom, vibrant with life. We have a kind of built'in periscope in the heart, to see not out of the deep, but into the deep.

  
I saw an advertisement for a writing job recently with one of the requirements asking for a 'high emotional intelligence.' Granted, all writers have this of course. How else could you write credibly about people without an innate understanding of the emotional psyche? But poets, well they excel in this realm. Look how precisely we can identify and analyse emotions, pin them like strange underwater specimens to our blank page and dissect them into fragments of many metaphors and similes, symbols and images. Our area of expertise is emotional terrain. We are more equipped there than anywhere else. It's not just a keen sensitivity (we feel - a lot), but we can dive into the depths of those feelings and emerge with a new knowledge, a newly gleaned wisdom  that is poetry's greatest attribute.  


And contrary to some popular opinion, we poets do not live in a grandiose world of our own making. As a poet, you are intrinsically attuned to the world as it is, not removed from it. We render it in language that shines a light on its silent secrets, illuminates and releases its burden of unnoticed glamours. Poetry is an expression of living, a testament of being here and feeling alive, a 'life-cherishing force' as Mary Oliver notes. And it is not the pursuit of the dreamy, or the airy-fairy, or a part-time past-time. It is a worthy discipline. I love how Mark Strand put it that: 'life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.' In our finer moments, poetry is what we all do, what we all feel; that which quickens out heartbeat and bestows on us a true sense of being alive. Poets are just people who pledge their lives to this course, who take the time to record in verse (to seek, as Coleridge said 'the best words in the best order') the amazement of life they witness.  How can any of this be sometimes looked upon with smug derision by certain people? (Cynic, thy name is critic!)

Writers are concerned mostly with the search for truth in their writing. For poets, it's something else. Our holy grail goal is akin to Beauty, which is always to be found lilting over the horizon, stepping in and out of our wordings like a mirage goddess. To some people success is money, status, fame. To a writer, it is recreating Life in fiction; to a poet it is the skillful capturing of the Muse, the transformation of ordinary matter into the extraordinary. Poetry is a kind of alchemy, gilding precious gold the most commonplace of things. A poet  is blessed with a vision that sees the world as it innately is: a kind of Wonderland of experience and inspiration. 

How to spot a poet? Well maybe it's that person staring off into the distance with a glint in their eye, someone who takes an impish delight in their surroundings.  People who mutter words aloud - Yeats was often caught at this while out walking - no doubt the locals thought him mad, but my, how we of the poetic disposition would disagree! I often speak words aloud to hear their trill (and thrill.) To sound out how they fit together, how they sieve through air for a soft feather finish. As WH Auden says, 'a poet is first and foremost a person who is passionately in love with language,' but I beg to differ. A poet is first and foremost a person who is passionately in love with the world. As Wallace Stevens put it: 'a poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.' And it is this love that leads to ingenious feats of language craft. 

In a book I'm reading now by Irish author Niall Williams ('History of the Rain') I was struck by the lines on the first page about the personality of a poet: "My father bore a burden of impossible ambition. He wanted all things to be better then they were, beginning with himself and ending with this world. Maybe this was because he was a poet. Maybe all poets are doomed to disappointment. Maybe it comes from too much dazzlement." 

Dazzlement. Yes! The very thing. That's the occupational consequence of being a poet, being constantly dazzled.  And it can lead to a lot of things: gratitude, luminous verse, a magnificent sense of the joy of living. But also it can mean disappointment and disillusion and that distinctly Irish trait implied here of melancholy. 

I realise I'm lucky to be Irish and live in a country where poetry is respected so much. To be called a poet here is a term of endearment and respect. We have always celebrated poets in Ireland, right back to ancient times when a 'file' or bard, was one of the highest esteemed members of society. They were seen as a kind of magic practitioner (I love how Seamus Heaney echoed this when he said that he 'dabbled' in words), and were revered for their work. The file was the person who had a say in the running of society, one of its wise council, not to mention a mirth maker and almost soothsayer. The written word was held in the utmost regard, and still is. Today, poets enjoy a respectful presence in the land. Poetry competitions, readings and celebrations are rampant and our legacy of great poets such as Yeats and Heaney always something to be proud of despite other national problems. In a way our national character is infused with a sense of poetry, which manifests itself in wit and melancholy and a 'gift for the gab.' Our language is rain-soaked, dew-fed, a warm mixture of Gaelic and English, a cadence of mirth and woe, chiseled on the rhyme of sing-song greetings and the rhythm of jaunty dialects. 'We are all born with the gene of poetry', but I think this is particularly true of the Irish. And I'm glad to be an inheritor of that heritage. 

I've been thinking about this recently I suppose as I am becoming more aware of it all. How I pay attention to the world. How each day is a mass of colour amid a volley of words and bright bouquets of inspiration that manifest in the most ordinary of situations. Sometimes, there is sensory overload - too much to take in. The whole day shifts and shimmers as a wild rough draft and I struggle to lasso the neurotic subject  matter and pull it all into shape. 

I love that I see the world as a poet. As a place of plentiful inspiration. On good days, every little thing sings for notation: trees, skies, the petal of a flower, the memory of a song, the flutter of an eyelash, the wing of a bird, a smile, a word, a phrase, a food, a feather-light passing feeling. It is an exuberant, almost invincible feeling, a feeling that can trump every other negativity that crops up along the way. Instant heart highs. I have the power to shapeshift it all onto the page, and once there, some sense is made, but more than that, some significance, some semblance of worthy recognition emerges. Anything is worthy of poetry - as Flaubert said: 'There is not a particle of life that does not contain poetry within it'. And you find that to single out a subject for poetic incarnation is to enlarge the experience of it. To present it on a epic scale. And the result is that life accelerates into a momentum of mattering. It's almost a kind of superpower, really.

Being a poet may not be practical in today's world. It may not get you a 9 to 5 job or a moneyed up lifestyle. But it will make you rich with other gifts. Because of being a poet, having a poetic disposition, I find treasure everywhere I look; I can create my own riches. And I suppose I'm writing this post to acknowledge that fact, to express my heartfelt thanks for this 'condition' of being.  To accept it more fully. To understand it. To know my place in the grand scheme of work/life/career/vocation. And maybe mostly, to remember that there is something that I do that will always remain... hidden I suppose. Partly invisible.  But it is still there nonetheless. Pulsing quietly like a galaxy of stars. And it may not matter to some, but it matters to me. It may not be a way of proving my worth in the workplace or 'real' world (let's face it, in most jobs, poetic sensibility or 'high emotional intelligence' is not a required must), but is a way of proving my worth as an all-seeing, all-feeling human being, as a way of paying (awed) dues for my stay on this planet. I thank all my lucky stars that I have been bestowed with not just a knack at arranging words but this way of seeing, of being. This profound delight in taking note of living. I think this line sums up the feeling of a poet writing a poem most brilliantly: 

                                                       

 "And what I was feeling was the wonder, of being more than me. I had become a shining star, a burning nova. Exploding with love." 

~Walter Myers  

To put it simply, a kind of magic.

And a big-up salute to all you poets reading this! We may have it tough at times contending with practical pedanticness and cynical critics, but do remember, the goodness, the giddy gladness that accompanies our profession, and condition. 

~Siobhán

Yeats 2015: Lines to Remember

Here in Ireland we're in the midst of a Yeats frenzy. This year sees the celebration of our esteemed national poet's 150th birthday (13 June) and a series of events and publications to mark the occasion. (You can check out the content with the hashtag #Yeats2015). 

Yeats is our great national poet, the poet responsible for the forging of the national character in letters. We owe him a great deal. Yeats the smiling public man, Yeats the learned man, the politician, the arts and culture activist who was involved in the Anglo-Irish Literary movement and more, who campaigned for the place of the arts in our new national consciousness, Yeats the Nobel-Prize winning poet whose skill sharpened as the years went on, Yeats the lovelorn suitor forever in love with Maud Gonne, his greatest muse, his unrequited love, Yeats the dreamer, the romantic, the believer in fairies and magic. I like this last persona of him best I think. The story of how his neighbours in Sligo would see him out walking, muttering away to himself, 'talking to himself' as they put it, or 'away with the fairies', as locals were wont to say, is one I always think of first when I think of Yeats. Of course as every poet knows, he must have been only testing his lines, trying out their rhythm, measuring and moving the words until they were pitch perfect. A man whose profession was a projection of who he was, and vice versa.

Truthfully, I must admit that Yeats wouldn't be one of my favourite poets.  I admire him greatly, but a lot of his poems for me seem either too coded what with all the allegories and references both classical and mystical, or, too vague. (It was with a certain degree of glee alright that I debunked his rural idyll construct in an essay once, preferring the realists of contemporary writers.) But I do love his language. All the lyrical ardor of it. And I love his romanticism ,even if it is misplaced at times. I especially love the descriptive word 'Yeatsian' for all that it implies: the dreamy, romantic, magical, lyrical world in which his poems are set and scripted, the lyrical, finely-wrought verse that pleases the eye as well as the ear, the heart as well as the head.

I find that I love specific lines from his poems more than the entire poems themselves. I couldn't really name you a favourite poem of his (there's a few that wrestle for attention), but I could joyfully recite many favourite lines like: "Come away oh human child, to the waters and the wilds, for the worlds's more full of weeping than you can understand," or the beautiful and evocative "the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun," or that dramatic tragic declarative refrain of Easter 1916: "All changed,changed utterly, a terrible beauty is born." In all historical accounts of the 1916 Easter Rising I've read, nothing has so effectively summed it up as those terse lines.

I love Yeats's lines as they are so condensed: so much is said in so short a space and said so eloquently. They are resplendent with deep reverie. Feelings, theories, politics, lessons are mashed down into a compact pulp that carries all the meaning of the poem, and can relay a lengthy thesis into a bite-size caption, one that will stick in the head and heart. Truths are coined and contained in the concrete of his sentences: 'The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity' from 'The Second Coming' is a simple way of explaining the complex problems inherent at the heart of all world crises. Yeats has so many of these lines and it is them that I think of when I think of Yeats' poetry.  Lines that lap on the shores of my mind with syncopated loveliness. Lines that  rhyme just enough to be easily remembered.  Lines that soothe and swoon. Lines that shine the bright light of epiphany. Lines that demand recitation, that long to be spoken aloud, sounded on the breath. Lines that are like words from a spell, incantations of dreaminess. Lines as fragile as dew drops that loop an ethereal idea. Lines that are hearts ease. Lines that are stepping stones to a different plane of existence, that transform and transcend.

Yeats' lines are famous, not only on the tip of tongues but in popular culture too. Did you know that Cormac Mc Carthy's book (and the subsequent film) 'No Country  For Old Men' took its title inspiration from that very line in 'Sailing to Byzantium'? And that Spielberg's film 'A.I.' about artificial intelligence used the refrain from 'The Stolen Child' as a way of illustrating the young robot boy's wish to be human? And I remember once reading a book which took its whole premise and plot from the main character's remembrance of the poem 'The Song of Wandering Aengus'. 

For my marking of #Yeats 2015 here, I'm going to share some of these lines here. I hope you enjoy them and, if you feel so inclined to, share your experiences or favourite lines or poems of Yeats. 

~ Siobhán  



*WB Yeats at 150 The Irish Times Supplement

 

"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree...

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes

dropping slow...

There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple 

glow...

I hear it in the deep heart's core."

~The Lake Isle of Innisfree

"And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun."

~ 'The Song of Wandering Aengus'

"From our birthday, until we die,

Is but the winking of an eye;"

~'To Ireland in The Coming Times'

"A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught."

~'Adam's Curse'

"How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

~'Among School Children'

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst

are full of passionate intensity."

~'The Second Coming'

"Too long a sacrifice 

can make a stone of the heart."

~'Easter 1916'

"An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing..."

~'Sailing to Byzantium'

"Irish poets learn your trade,

Sing whatever is well made."

~ 'Under Ben Bulben'

"I shall have written him one

Poem maybe as cold

And passionate as the dawn."

~'The Fisherman' 

"I must lie down where all ladders start

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."

~ 'The Circus Animals' Desertion'

"I have spread my dreams under your feet;

tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

~ 'He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven'

"Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric, 

out of the quarrel with ourselves, 

we make poetry." 

Someone Great

 To Paul

1982-2015

There is something I need to write here. Something I need to acknowledge with words. Two days ago, someone I knew, someone so young, so good, so great, died.

All of a sudden. Just like that. Since, I have tried to put words to the devastation of it, but it's been impossible. Billy Collins was right -"how feeble our vocabulary in the face of death/how impossible to write it down..." A boulder of disbelief rises up so big that every little word is throttled by it, too trivial and weak to compete, not near enough to attest to the colossal shock that these last few days have been.  Like a bad dream that you can't wake up from. Surreal and so terribly real at the same time.

But somehow I feel I owe it to Paul to say something. Even though I did not know him as a close friend - just a classmate, a revered peer, an acquaintance, a familiar figure while growing up. He's always been someone I've liked and admired, someone I've held in the highest regard. He was always there, in the periphery of my thoughts as top of my most esteemed list. I have always thought of him fondly, and always will. 

I'm thinking now of all the times when some famous person of note died and Paul was always the first to acknowledge it on Facebook, no exceptions, with a few sincere words. He never missed actually! And now, well, now he is gone. And I want to lay down some words to honour his passing.  And I want to post it here, as Paul was someone who stopped by my blogs and commented in - for which I was really  grateful - (a post on The National - he had the greatest taste in, and love for, music :) It's not easy getting people to read your work, out of their own free will! But Paul did, acquaintance that he was. That was the kind of him. Considerate and thoughtful.

Paul was always one of my favourite people. You know those? People who you hold in the highest regard, have the utmost admiration for, who are good, decent, genuinely nice, interesting and interested in worthy things, with impeccable taste, someone whose views you whole-heartedly share and agree with, someone synonymous with your own journey in some way, someone who to you, shines that little bit brighter than everyone else. Anytime he liked a link or anything of mine on Facebook I would feel a little flush of pride - (as I'm sure others did.. ) well if it's good enough for a thumbs-up from Paul, then it must pass the muster!! He was an authority on all things from culture to current affairs to politics and was actively, articulately interested in them - his posts on social media upping the calibre of it considerably. Someone whose field was science (and brilliantly so) but who was also a clear lover of the arts - music, film, books, poetry, art. Someone who was acutely aware of the world around him and engaged with it intellectually, creatively, compassionately, fully.  Someone, who cared.

I've always felt a kind of affinity with Paul ever since we were young. He is the same age as me - our birthday 3 days apart (I've often been regaled by my mother and his of how we shared the same room in the hospital for a while at birth.) We started school together and he soon became my first crush. I still remember to this day the two of us swapping sloppy kid kisses at my 5th birthday party! (Another event that my mother and his often likes to chuckle about...!) I thought he was the bees knees then and to this day, I think my kid self was a discerning one alright to see something special in him right off.


We were in many a same class then for the next 13 years.  Paul was one of the most intelligent people I have ever known (intimidatingly so), always top of the class, an easy feat for him. He excelled at every subject, not just academically, but with real talent. I was especially always in awe of his artwork in Junior Cert which would be brought in by our clearly wowed teacher as an example of pure genius-at-work. (It was at that moment that the rest of us amateurs knew we were screwed...). He was also one of the most modest and humble intelligent people I've known, never bragging or boastful or one to shine a spotlight on his achievements - I suppose, the trait of a real genius.  Not to mention clever and witty, even from a young age. One of my most abiding memories from primary school is while in 4th class sitting at a table beside Paul, and him entertaining us all with the many adventures of his wooden ruler named 'Steel Tips', which he'd colored in with pen at both ends to give it its defining namesake. It kept us in the giggles during many a boring lesson. Always full of imagination and verve. 

Post-school days, I haven't seen that much of Paul. But I remember all the times I did. He would always make a point of saying hello and talking, no matter what the situation, or number of years passed. I remember one Christmas when he went out of his way to come over and say Happy Christmas in a crowded nite-club. I was disarmed by how really nice a gesture that was at the time, still am. Or how he took time to post a thoughtfully-selected song on Facebook for a birthday once - maybe one of the loveliest songs I've ever heard - in what felt like a genuine birthday wish. How often do people you know on an offhand basis do things like that?

It's strange really though what the people from your school year mean to you - it's like you're always 'together' in tackling the world; troops sent out in the same brigade to the frontlines of Life. Even though our lives may run on parallel lines now, you're still always acutely aware of them. Aware of who they are and how they are, and cheering them on. Now, when one of them dies, it's like the whole brigade is affected and takes a stumble. We're all connected and feel the shudder of the loss irrevocably. Especially when it happens just as life is getting into gear. Especially, when it's one of the very best of us.

I've had many experiences with death but this time it is a terrible fact that makes my head, not just heart, hurt. Everything rebels against the accepting the fact of it. How can someone so great, so engrossed and involved in life, just stop?  I can't believe it, no matter how I try. It is a cold hard truth that trips you up every minute, normality shot to pieces.  The world spins madly on, when it feels like it should stop. I've always felt W.H. Auden's 'Funeral Blues' poem was spot-on; but never so much until now when every line is a tolling truth. The sheer incomprehensibility of it: one day there he is engaged in all the issues of the day, specifically passionately conversing on our recent political situation in Ireland - the next day, not. An abrupt silence. And now the void of disbelief. The terrible O-gape of despair of grief. The utter utter unfairness of it. Like a contract broken harshly. And we're all in the sheer shock of the aftermath, hearts agape, still stuck and wondering on the marauding questions - What? Why? Why? A tremendous, terrible loss. You think you have a handle on the certainty of what has happened, almost accepted the anguish of the fact, but then - no, it comes around again, a new wallop, over and over again, the blow never lessening.
 
I once wrote a poem in Irish about a tragedy that affected our local area some years ago. Its main line has been ringing in my head the past few days: 'Dobhrón - tá sé cosúil leAigéan/Aigéan lán de ghortú agus de dheora/ 'S ní féidir linn snámh'('grief is like an ocean/full of hurts and tears/and we can't swim...') Now I think yes,  and each and every wave a new realisation of what has happened, crashing over and over again on the consciousness (..."It takes an ocean not to break..."). An unrelenting undulation of sorrow that can't be consoled, can't be subsumed into normal daily life. Land some place far far away. 

For people who knew Paul, there is a horrible gash in our world now. Nothing will be the same, because it will be without him: a vital person missing, to his family and friends, but also even, in some way, to all of us, the people who only half-knew him, whose life ran parallel to his, yet, will miss him too. He was that kind of person. I thought that in these wordless few days, if I could just find some words, I might be able to make some sense of it, apply a kind of compress of verbal comprehension. But no. How to navigate grief, how do people do it? When I think on Paul's family and friends who loved him so much... I understand that what I feel is just a mere tiny iota scrap of what they are suffering. I can't imagine it. And my heart goes out to them, breaks, for them. Paul was such an unique and special person, truly, so clearly treasured among them. I pray and hope that they find some comfort, some solace, to help them through. Memories that are made of light and a buoyant strength in each other. 

The epitaph 'a great guy' has been the tribute on everyone's lips in these days since. Said in a tone that implies - we were so lucky to have known him. We were. And in this case, the epitaphs are in no way inflated, not even a smidgeon: death has not cast a grander glow on his life, no, it has only magnified our sense of loss, for Paul really was 'great', in every sense of the word. A great student and academic, a great mind and talent, with many great accomplishments to his name. A great friend by all accounts and person to be around, great craic, a great entertainer, brilliant and keen musician too.  Someone who possessed a great inherent goodness and sensibility, a keen sensitivity and curiosity, a grandiose thoughtfulness. A genuinely affable and 'good' guy, really, incredibly likeable.  What we would say in the highest terms of local endearment and what his father professed most belovedly today: 'a wee gem.' Truly. He was one of the best - not just the best in everything he did, with superlative attributes, but best as in one of the best people you could ever know.  And I hope that his loved ones are continually reminded of that and uplifted by just what a credit and joy he was to them. Let that be another means of finding land in the coming days. 

I like to think of Paul now in the great starry cosmos, looking down on us all, taking scope of Everything, getting to examine the inner workings of the universe first-hand, maybe cracking a witty joke along the way. As Paul Durcan noted in his poem to the recently deceased Seamus Heaney, maybe Paul, like our great poet has 'become the spaceman I've always longed to be - In flight - breaking the sound barrier out in the cosmos - which... Has always been my dream, my home, my Elysium.'  I like to think of him even rubbing shoulders with Heaney, and all the other greats lost to us, settling in with an array of like-minded thinkers as well as passed family members. Maybe The Man Above/The Powers That Be were in such desperate need of  some real good wit and intelligence up there, that out of the entire world - Paul was the only candidate perfect enough to fit that bill. Or there was some pressing universe issue that needed immediate attention from the absolute best there was. As I can't, for the life of me, think of any other reason as to why he had to go so quick, so soon, so much to the loss of all around him. 

A son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin, an uncle, a boyfriend, a best friend, a friend, a colleague, or just a fond acquaintance, a kindred spirit, an admired person: to know Paul was a privilege, and he will never be forgotten in the minds and hearts of those who did.  He has made a mark that won't easily be erased. It's so desperately hard to believe he's gone; but hopefully not so much to believe that - as the song says - there is a light that never goes out. And his is a bright and beautiful one. A melody that has lodged itself in our hearts, to stay forever. 

It must be true - the best really do go first.  You were the first of us to go Paul, undaunted pioneer. You are and will be missed by so many, and so so much.   
Safe home now, friend. 
Rest in starry peace xx

Pocket Poems for Poetry Day

Today is Poetry Day here in Ireland, an event created by Poetry Ireland to bring poetry to the attention of the nation.  One of the initiatives on the menu is 'pocket poems' - literally a pocket sized  poem to take with you and keep in your pocket. On Poetry Ireland's website there are a number of 'pocket' poems to choose from to download and/or distribute for the day. (You can see them here: Poetry Ireland Poetry Day) 

Pocket poems as a venture have been doing the rounds for a while in America. And I just love the idea of them. They make poetry so accessible. And personal. And keepsake-able. So I've decided to post some of my own choices of pocket poems here for you to enjoy (and even print out and keep, in your pocket if you like.) Poetry Ireland's pickings are slim, so I thought I'd add to them. I would love to distribute them, but don't really have the means or copyright licensing! But I fantasize about the day when poems are handed out as leaflets in the street to passers-by. Imagine! 

Because that's exactly the medium that poems excel in of course - one that can be carried around, in your pocket, casual, accessible. Words to smooth the rough road of routine. Words to remind you of what really matters. A sort of note-to-self with a wisdom agenda. A memo from the heart reminding us to stop and pay attention to life as it buzzes on around us. Poems that can be committed to memory to comfort and assure. Poems that are are short but say so much. Poems that will orbit us all day, little satellites of meaning, flashing neon insights of extraordinary alighting in the ordinary.

My choices here today are some of my favourite short poems. They have all three things in common: they are short, not just pocket-sized but maybe even palm-sized; they are simply rendered but laden with miniature life-lessons and reflections that I hope will bring a smile to your face; they are all products of attentiveness to the ordinary world around us and from that that awareness, offer advice and wisdom and surprise observation. In modern day lingo, we would maybe call it mindfulness. Perhaps poetry's greatest attribute and side-effect.  Try it :)

Happy Poetry Day! 

~ Siobhán 

*Join in Poetry Day on Twitter by tweeting your favourite poem with the hashtag #PoetryDayIrl or on Facebook & nominate 3 friends to share theirs :)

~ Billy Collins

~ Raymond Carver

~ May Sarton

~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

~ Ted Kooser

~ Maya Angelou

Poems On Paintings (Repost*)

'The Poet' - Marc Chagall

*I'm reposting this post as it was recently featured in an art website: www.upandcomingart.co.uk of which I am really chuffed. I have added to the original post which appeared here a few years ago. It's such a fascinating subject! You can check out the link: here


'Painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting that speaks' Plutarch once said. Maybe that explains the interconnectedness of these two genres and why there have been so many poems written about paintings throughout the ages and of course, vice-versa, so many paintings inspired by poems.

As I write this I'm just back from a gallery visit, where I have spent a lot of time as a silent spectator, like most visitors, trying to glean what each painting has to say, trying to put words into its mouth so to speak. 

And I'm not the only one. I see that the gallery runs creative writing days where members of the public are invited to come in, notebooks in tow, pick a painting of choice and write about it. Sometimes there are workshops to direct this writing, sometimes it's just a solitary activity. I must admit I'm fascinated by the blending of these two artistic mediums, the putting a voice to the 'silence' of the paintings so to speak.

And I'm not the only one to feel like this. Many writers throughout the decades have taken inspiration from famous paintings and written poems as 'odes' to the painting, verbal narratives to the 'silent story', or penned philosophical and often personal musings on a piece of art dear to them. An 'ekphrastic' poem is the technical name for such a poem. The poet Alfred Corn states in his essay on the history of ekphrastic verse* (You can read more about ekphrastic poetry as a genre: here) that "once the ambition of producing a complete and accurate description is put aside, a poem can provide new aspects for a work of visual art."

Poetry on art does not seek to describe accurately what is there, but to add to the understanding of it. It does indeed provide new aspects for a work of art. It heightens our experience of it and adds dimensions that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. A veritable viewfinder.

'The Lady of Shalott' - John William Waterhouse

From as far back as Homer and Dante, there have been many famous examples of poems written specifically on paintings. As there is also many a painting that has had its origins in a poem, or even a line of a poem. John Waterhouse's painting 'The Lady of Shalott' is a representation of a scene from Tennyson's poem of the same name, as was his 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', inspired by Keats' poem. Indeed there are many painters who have been described as 'poets' and poets who have been described as 'painters'. Marc Chagall and Dylan Thomas are two that spring to mind. And then of course, there are also poets who are painters too (William Blake for one), and painters who are also poets (none other than Michelangelo.) Poet Mark Strand went to the Yale School of Art and Architecture intending to become a painter, until he found poetry and switched to a different course.

It is safe to say that poets who write on art have an affection for it, some are even connoisseurs. It's not as if they're making a random imaginative leap in the dark but rather an informed meditation, even though feeling is foremost in it. Some poets like John Berryman even have had an extensive background in art - making his living as an art critic before becoming a poet. Edward Hirsch, poet and art enthuse, has collected poems and writings - what he calls 'imaginative acts of attention' - on the entire art collection of The Art Institute of Chicago in his book called 'Transforming Vision: Writers on Art'. (You can read the interesting introduction: here)

Perhaps the most famous example of a poem written on a painting is WH Auden's meditation on Breughel's 'The Fall of Icarus'. It provides not only an accompanying narrative to the painting, but a powerful psychological and memorable commentary on human suffering too. Auden has used the painting as proof proper of how the world always goes indifferently on in regards to suffering and death:

 

         'The Fall of Icarus' - Breughel

Musee des Beaux Arts -W. H. Auden 

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. 

This last line is a verbal echo of what we see in the painting. Auden has amplified the painting's meaning in his poem so much so that it seems almost necessary complementary reading.

American poet William Carlos Williams was a poet very much inspired by art. In fact he has written a whole volume of poetry on Breughel's paintings. He too has written a poem on 'The Fall of Icarus', a poem which in its very structure mimics the composition of the painting. In the painting, the fall of Icarus is not the focal point, it happens on the sidelines, as a footnote almost to the main picture. The mention of Icarus only in the very last line of the poem reflects this defining aspect of the  painting quite astutely:

Landscape With The Fall of Icarus - William Carlos Williams

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

Breughel seems to be a popular artist choice for poets. His 'Hunters in the Snow' painting has also garnered a lot of poetic responses. American poets John Berryman and Wallace Stevens have both written poems on it. (You can read them both here: The Poet Speaks of Art). 

Wallace Stevens was another American poet intensely interested in art. (See: 'The Problem of Painters and Poets' article here). His poem on Picasso's 'The Old Guitarist' is one that shows just how much of a muse a painting can be. It is quite lengthy so I won't post it all here, just an excerpt:



'The Old Guitarist' - Pablo Picasso

The Man With the Blue Guitar - Wallace Stevens
I
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said then, "But play you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are...

In this poem the poet imagines the mind and voice of the figure in the painting and takes off from there into a vaulting imaginative meaning of the painting and philosophical reflection on life. Stevens applies a robust imaginative and intellectual take to the painting creating a world from it that can only be briefly glimpsed or guessed at by looking at it. Poems on paintings broaden the horizon for interpretation - reading them you feel your own synapses open up to just what exactly a painting can mean. It is not tethered to any boxed definition, but rather much like a poem, is wonderfully open to immersive speculation.

My favourite poems on paintings  are the ones that seem to say exactly and eloquently what the painting expresses visually. I love Wislawa Szymborska's short take on Vermeer's 'The Milkmaid.' Her quiet language simply but effectively states the grandeur of this painting, emphasizing the point of art's redeeming qualities. It is a poem that places so much importance on the place of art in our lives and one that invites a second look at the painting in question, not to mention a second awed and appreciative look at art in general:

'Vermeer' - Wislawa Szymborska

So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum
in painted quiet and concentration
keeps pouring milk day after day
from the pitcher to the bowl
the World hasn’t earned
the world’s end.

Other poems on paintings are welcome translations of complex art. So many things can be read into abstract and modern art that it can be daunting. I love X.J. Kennedy's description of Marcel DuChamp's 'Nude Descending a Staircase.' It helps us see what is there and in such an entertaining way. The language is vivid and precise - 'she sifts in sunlight' - how accurate a description is that of what we visually see? And how about the perfectness of the word 'thresh' to describe the broken planes of lines in the picture?! For me, this poem brings the painting to life, so much so that I can see this 'one-woman waterfall' in flamboyant manner. The poem enlivens what we see with language that provides a 3D quality to the painting. It is a chant which brings its still self to buoyant life:


Nude Descending a Staircase - X. J. Kennedy 

Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh,

a gold of lemon, root and rind,
she sifts in sunlight down the stairs
with nothing on. Nor on her mind. 

We spy beneath the banister

a constant thresh of thigh on thigh--
her lips imprint the swinging air
that parts to let her parts go by. 

One-woman waterfall, she wears
her slow descent like a long cape
and pausing, on the final stair
collects her motions into shape.

Poets are well up to the task of providing worthy words to a visual masterpiece. Anne Sexton's 'Starry Starry Night', a poem on Van Gogh's famous painting of the same name, is another such example. The night 'boils with eleven stars', it is beast-like, a dragon. This poem is also indicative of how a painting can reflect a personal emotional state. How we can project on a work of art our feelings, and how a work of art can take on our feelings, a permeable acquiescent witness. This particular poem shows how one interpretation of a painting can be so unexpected and we may marvel at how different it may be from our own, the wonder of art reall:

The Starry Night - Anne Sexton

The town does not exist

except where one black-haired tree slips

up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.

The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.   

Oh starry starry night! This is how

I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.

Even the moon bulges in its orange irons   

to push children, like a god, from its eye.

The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.   

Oh starry starry night! This is how   

I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,   

sucked up by that great dragon, to split   

from my life with no flag,

no belly,

no cry.

Have you ever seen a painting and wondered however you could express in words the image that accosted you, the light that was rendered so real, the colour that melted into your soul? One of my favourite poems on paintings takes an Edward Hopper painting as inspiration. Hopper of course, was a master at depicting light. The sunlight in his paintings is like a mirror-image, photographically precise, of the real thing. There is nothing else quite like it.  Just how to describe looking at it?! Even as a writer, I falter. But Anne Carson manages quite well in her poem on the painting 'Room in Brooklyn' to evoke its effect:



Room in Brooklyn - Anne Carson

This
slow
day
moves
Along the room
I
hear
its
axles
go
A gradual dazzle
upon
the ceiling
Gives me that
racy
bluishyellow
feeling
As hours
blow
the wide
way
Down my afternoon. 

We wonder - what is this 'bluishyellow' feeling exactly? The feeling that is created in the painting of course. One lends expression to the other. Here, as with other poems on paintings, there is a perfect symbiosis state of being.

For me, poems written on paintings elucidate the painting that little bit more and bear witness to its 'silent story' that is etched out in colours and figures, brushstrokes and lines. For the casual art observer like me who often finds it hard to express what effect a painting has or to really peer into its soul, poetry is a helpful guide. Better than a gallery guide or catalogue, a poem can divulge a hidden story to the painting or hit on a personal meaning that resonates greatly with us, the viewer or reader - yes, that's exactly what this painting is about/makes me feel/is saying.  Now I get it!

In other words, a poem opens a secret door to let us into the painting. It draws our notice to the inherent stories woven there. Poems written on paintings offer the reader a verbal expression of the inexpressible feelings emanating from the artwork. They are explanation, realisation and intimation. In some cases they are welcome translation, and in others, imaginative transcendence. In every case, they are illumination. Some paintings I've never felt any great affection for I have looked at in a new light after reading a particular poem on them. In basic terms, poetry can be effective PR for a painting, and vice-versa. That symbiosis again.

What ekphrastic poetry does above all I think is demonstrate how a painting can be harboured so intimately in one's mind and heart. Essentially, how visual art is an ever arresting and affective medium. And how awe and affinity for it can be filtered not just via head-tilts and sighs and acquiring poster-prints, but in words.  For if words are indeed to be put to a painting, to speak its silent story, who better than a poet to do it? Art historians do it through fact and technique, poets do it through imagination.

Art and poetry may seem like two entirely different genres, but ekphrastic poetry begs to differ. Every art touches upon another and in doing so, broadens appreciation mutually. This has certainly been the case for me.

Below are some more poems on paintings to enjoy.

To read more poems on paintings click: here

~ Siobhán

 

  

'Bedroom in Arles' - Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh's Bed - Jane Flanders

is orange,
like Cinderella's coach, like
the sun when he looked it
straight in the eye.

is narrow, he sleeps alone,

tossing between two pillows, 

while it carried him
bumpily to the ball.

is clumsy,
but friendly. A peasant
built the frame; and old wife beat
the mattress till it rose like meringue.

is empty,
morning light pours in
like wine, melody, fragrance,
the memory of happiness.

To Marc Chagall - Paul Éluard

Donkey or cow, cockerel or horse
On to the skin of a violin
A singing man a single bird
An agile dancer with his wife

A couple drenched in their youth

The gold of the grass lead of the sky
Separated by azure flames
Of the health-giving dew
The blood glitters the heart rings

A couple the first reflection

And in a cellar of snow
The opulent vine draws
A face with lunar lips
That never slept at night.



















Number 1 - Jackson Pollock

DIGRESSION ON NUMBER 1, 1948 - Frank O' Hara

I am ill today but I am not
too ill. I am not ill at all.
It is a perfect day, warm
for winter, cold for fall.

A fine day for seeing. I see
ceramics, during lunch hour, by
Miro, and I see the sea by Leger;
light, complicated Metzingers
and a rude awakening by Brauner,
a little table by Picasso, pink.

I am tired today but I am not
too tired. I am not tired at all.
There is the Pollock, white, harm
will not fall, his perfect hand

and the many short voyages. They'll
never fence the silver range.
Stars are out and there is sea
enough beneath the glistening earth
to bear me toward the future
which is not so dark. I see.