As we hurtle headlong towards St Valentine’s Day – named after the Patron Saint of florists and Hallmark cards – I was struck by a particular radio ad urging men to spend vast amounts of money on something (obviously not a very effective ad) because “flowers are boring and poetry is lame“. Poetry is lame? Hello? Are you kidding me? A young ‘suitor’ wrote me a poem in Year 12 and I still have it tucked away. It didn’t do him any good but that didn’t mean I wasn’t impressed with the gesture! Writing to and about the person you love has been a romantic staple from time immemorial and given a choice between a poem written especially for me or a stuffed teddy bear embroidered with “Be My Valentine” or a dinner shared with dozens of other couples staring soulfully into each other’s eyes, I know which I would choose. His dedication began, “You are a new colour in my rainbow, a different shade of me I have never seen before.” A little schmaltzy, maybe but lame – never. (Unless it’s along the lines of “Roses are red, Violets are blue, Nobody loves you like I do”, in which case it had better be accompanied by some serious jewellery….) And obviously I am not alone in my thinking. Just out of interest, I googled “poetry sites” and was rewarded with 67,300,000 results.
Anyway, after hearing the ad, it occurred to me that over the past couple of weeks, poetry and its various incarnations had been bobbing up and down in my line of vision as if to say, “Talk about me! Talk about me!”. So, to honour its persistence, I will.
Its push for attention started when I recently found an old exercise book of mine from 1972 when I was all of 14. Not only was it full of my own brilliant, adolescent poetic creations (Please visit my last post at https://livinglifeat56.wordpress.com/2015/01/30/back-to-the-future-me-1972/ ) but also those of ‘real’ poets. Obviously my teenage hormones had commandeered my brain as most of them, predictably, involved love and longing except for one notable exception by the wonderful Dorothy Parker which showed the take-over hadn’t been complete. I don’t know if it would be considered ‘proper’ poetry but it must have tickled my fancy at the time as it still does:
By the time you say you’re his, Shivering and sighing
And he vows his passion is Infinite, undying –
Lady, make a note of this, One of you is lying.
When I visited the sites of bloggers who had liked “Back to the Future”, I was surprised and delighted, in equal parts, to find poetry very much alive and kicking in the blogosphere which shouldn’t really have been a surprise as poetry has been around since those party animals, the Babylonians, when the Epic of Gilgamesh was written in about 2000BC. For some of us, our only contact with poetry would have been in High School or University and having breathed a sigh of relief when those were over, moved on without so much as a backward glance. For others, it becomes a life-long companion. Whilst easy to technically define, its attraction is less so but one of the best attempts I can offer is, “Poetry is like taking a blindfold off and starting a new world.” Indeed — whether it be creating your own or immersing yourself in someone else’s.
I’m sure a great many of you have seen “Four Weddings and a Funeral”. It caused a frenzy, not over Hugh Grant (as if) but W.H. Auden, whose poem “Funeral Blues” was read during the eulogy. Read it and weep. From the first , the sorrowful imagery of each line compounds that of the one before until, in the span of four short stanzas, you are left with a world decimated by grief. And its impact never diminishes, no matter how many times you read it. http://allpoetry.com/Funeral-Blues
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Then I heard that Rod McKuen had died. Poet, author, song-writer, he was a staple of my adolescence and his words took up most of the pages in that exercise book. His poems were about love, nature and spirituality. Some would label him a little “mass market” but his poems were uncomplicated and accessible but I imagine these are the very reasons he had such great appeal.
Love I wear
As open as a wound,
a mad mistake I know
but love, like Lent
only comes to those of us
who still believe.
On top of all this, my son is doing his poetry module in English so you can see how the universe was prodding me in a particular direction! And for those of you still not convinced of poetry’s value, I give you this. And Happy Valentine’s day. I hope you get a poem.
