Accents
Poetry: beyond classroom memorization
Back in the 18th century, Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet of the Romantic Period, said the poets are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind. Smilingly standing by you, composed and unobtrusive. "You need me? I'm here--to assuage your pain, flesh out in words the surge of joy if joy be it you're feeling, or to dispel the dark clouds that hover and shower your world with sunshine. Unable to express yourself? Let me say it for you." The poet speaks thus to all of humanity.
I was enamored of this topic when on our way to Redding in northern California, our grandson Rap-Rap called our attention to the sunset. In the horizon were mountains of faded blue and the sun was about to bid goodbye. It was a sunset out of the usual because it was caught in a haze of fog. Straight away I told the grandson, "Give me the sunset in a cup." No answer, no reaction. "That's the title of a poem by a famous American poet," I said. His Dad and Mom had no idea as to the author's name. "Walt Whitman," I finally said.
From the nursery rhymes about Jack who forgot the warning to be nimble and got burned by jumping over the candlestick, you have the poet--kind of overseeing, counseling, well, legislating. Then there were the poems studied in grade school. "All things bright and wonderful/The Lord God made them all." Early on, we were taught to appreciate the beauty of nature, and as we behold the scenery before us--whether it is the snow-capped Alps mountains or the mist-covered Madia-as--the poem memorized in Grade IV comes to mind.
How many times do we draw from lines of poetry discussed in the classroom years ago to apply to the conversation of the moment? Take this news on the current investigation that some U.S. soldiers were put in harm's way by their own Iraqi allies. Somebody blurted about "ignorant armies [that] clash by night." The line is from Matthew Arnold's historic Dover Beach, a poem we took up in English 1. The poet drowns the inanities of war by the love he and the beloved hold for each other. On the raging Iraq war that finds no end and keeps body bags arriving, Tennyson says of the future: "The worst is yet to come." Didn't we borrow that from the poet so that the parties involved in the conflict would get down to the table--discuss, compromise, settle, or be damned? On a different setting, we could always overturn Tennyson with "The best is yet to come."
Hope springs eternal in the human heart. How often do we hear that soothing encouragement. Ah, the glass is not half empty; it is half full. We brim with optimism, and like Shelley in his Ode to the West Wind, we ask, "O Wind, if winter comes can spring be far behind?" Suffer a little, monsieur/mademoiselle. Persevere and endure. Longfellow reminds us that "Into each life some rain must fall/Some days must be dark and dreary." Indeed. So, bear the vicissitudes of life. Bear John Keats' "the fever and the fret." Never ever give up to the discomforts along the way.
You hear another, oh, so brutally frank, dead set to pull a fellow from drowning in an emotional quicksand, or you get an earful from one spewing out a bitter criticism of a blunder even though, at bottom, the aim is to edify. He/She is being "cruel to be kind." We got it first from Shakespeare's Hamlet who berates her mother for her infidelity to the memory of her dead husband. And of course, there is Hamlet's classic soliloquy quoted thousand times: "To be or not to be--that is the question." The biggest decision/indecision in our life confronts us. To be or not to be... The consequences are awesomely daunting, and we are held in check in paralyzed inaction.
After an enthusiastic reunion with a dear classmate or a long-lost friend or in many a departure area before the farewell, how conveniently we quote Juliet as she tells Romeo, "Parting is such sweet sorrow." Sweet in the case of the young lovers thinking that comes the next night, they would see each other again. Sad when you'll be seeing your loved ones only after a long, long time of being far apart, and devastatingly sad when you know you'll never see each other again. Perhaps, one may seek solace in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet, "How do I love thee/Let me count the ways..." that ends with "If God choose, I shall but love thee better after death."
The morning after at Redding where my daughter Raileen is a practicing pediatrician, we woke up to a very bright sun. I told grandson Rap-Rap, "Give me the splendid silent sun," quoting the title of another poem by Walt Whitman.
(To be continued)
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