Poetry: An Essay

[Brandon]

Poetry is that art form whose medium is sound of concepts

Copright 2006

Brandon Cropper

Poetry’s Virtue * or * On the Nature of Poetry

A Poem and Essay

By Brandon Cropper

What sanctifies poetry?

What is its virtue?

What brings a good line to life?

What makes a good rhyme ring true?

Music is sugar for the ear;

A poem is sweet in this way;

Rhyme is sugar one hears;

Meter is words’ joyful play.

A poem with no rhyme

Or time in its verse

Sours the ear,

And approaches perverse.

the end

*****

What if I said e e cummings had no value as a poet? Assuming I were not hung from the nearest lamppost on a meat hook, I would add that John Donne was a tremendously valuable poet. Such an evaluation goes against every basic assumption of the modern art culture. It is assumed today that all art is sacred. Art, by modern definition, is anything that anyone says is art. I say this definition is nonsense.

How could I so arrogantly elect myself the final judge and pronounce who is and isn’t a poet? I believe it is justified and here are my reasons.

Poetry’s Musical Nature

Poetry is unique: it is a form of communication, and simultaneously a form of art. It is my contention that the essential characteristic of poetry, which differentiates it from all other written communication, is the quality of music, including rhythm, rhyme and meter. There is no other form of writing which mixes the qualities of music with the qualities of prose. When the properties of music are divorced from writing, then the remainder is no longer poetry by definition.

The question may arise: “Why can’t a set of powerful, memorable lines be called a poem, even if they don’t rhyme?” To this I must say I have written “poems” that didn’t rhyme or have rhythm or meter, but they aren’t a finished product until they have been forged into a poetic form. Sometimes when I am writing down inspirational lines for a possible poem, I get a line or set of lines or phrase that is so powerful and inevitable that I can see no way to change it for the better. The language or cadence may grab my attention, or it may be some more elusive quality, accountable only to my own tastes. But for whatever reason, the lines sometimes don’t want to lend themselves to recasting. When this happens I set those lines aside, sometimes for months or even years before trying again to find a poetic form, a workable rewording. So I regard such “poems” as the beginning notes from which a truly poetic statement may be formed with some effort.

Here is an example of a poem which I liked and was unable to alter at first:

A Human Romance

She was with me but not mine -

Her eyes were sleepy with beauty.

I had her; I did not own her.

I was a captive of my captive -

and she felt she was too.

The skin on her body reminds me of milk

While her delicate voice recalls for me silk.

Her beautiful eyes burn a hole in my sole.

Why did I have her? I still do not know.

I woke on a morning when she was with me;

I sat up to ponder her morning physique.

No make-up and puffy eyes;

a red crease on her cheek.

But her beauty transcended

my scrutiny.

I saw only perfection in her visage.

end

I loved that line “captive of my captive - and she felt she was too.” And I loved the part where she was “sleepy with beauty.” These lines expressed my feelings on the subject so perfectly that I left them unaltered for almost three years. Then one day, reading the poem, I decided it was just too good to leave unfinished, so I sat out to get more rhyme. Here is my revised version, with changed portions in italics:

A Human Romance

I had her; I did not own her,

But this did not make me blue.

I was a captive of my captive -

And she felt she was too.

She was with me but not mine -

Sleepy with beauty, she was supine.

Her skin’s complexion reminds me of milk,

While her delicate voice recalls for me silk.

Her beautiful eyes burn a hole in my sole.

Why did I have her? I still do not know.

I woke on a morning when she was with me;

I sat up to ponder her morning physique.

No make-up, puffy eyes, crease on her cheek.

But her beauty transcended my scrutiny.

I saw only perfection in her visage.

the end

What had seemed inevitable and unchangeable turned out to be good material for an even better version. Here is one more example of a poem which hit home for me, and was hard to change:

Your Softness

(On missing Marta)

You are fading into the past

And I’m scared.

You are going where memories dim

And your face will be clouded by time.

And yet I cannot stop you

Because you do not hear me.

I scream from frustration

But softly, because I know it won’t help.

And besides, softness reminds me of you.

end

I was stalled for over two years on the above. Each time I read it, the language was so potent in reviving the feelings that went into the poem, I couldn’t believe it could be improved. So it remained unchanged until...

Your Softness

(On missing Marta)

You are fading from my mind.

The process frightens me.

You’re withdrawing into the past,

Through time’s shroud soon not to be seen.

You are going where memories dim;

Your face will be clouded by time.

And I cannot travel with you -

For you are no longer mine.

How can I stop you from moving away,

Into shrouded clouds of time?

I scream your name - its all I can say -

Frustration is God’s cruelest crime.

I scream softly - soft for three reasons:

Deep sorrow dampens my voice;

I know you don’t want to hear this;

And I know all this was my choice.

And besides, softness reminds me of you.

The end

What was before a terse nine lines has become, with some effort and pencil grease, a well-structured sixteen line poem with a finishing declaration, left unmatched so as not to detract from the feeling of desperate sorrow in the speaker’s voice. I am very happy with the revisions.

Working and reworking the lines to get a workable rhythm and rhyme means that the poet must comb over every syllable and carefully choose every word, especially if he has a particular word he wants to use in a given place. This leads to the astounding conscientiousness of every syllable in a well-written poem. Changing one word, even one syllable, can wreak havoc on a finished product. Inversely, the poem may be rough in a spot because it has a single extra syllable, or lacks one, or a word the poet wants to use doesn’t fit. But once this is overcome, the result feels like a law of nature: one feels the poem couldn’t have been otherwise. This repeated editing to get the words to fit the poetic form is certainly responsible for the purposeful and inevitable feel of a good poem. A good poem had to be this way. But the task can be daunting. How does one get started?

Getting in the Mode of Poetic Writing

I have found a very useful tool that I often use when writing a poem: I read poetry beforehand. Good poetry, almost anything from before the year 1900, and never “free verse”. Reading poem after poem, all with rhyming, rhythmic qualities, gets one’s brain into a mode of thinking that automatically tries to form sentences and phrases with a rhythmic beat, or rhyme. Its like forming a short-term habit, giving your mind the instruction: think like this. The joy and delight I get from writing a good poem, then reading it over and over, is irreplaceable, and the qualities of music are indispensable for this end.

Prose as such is simply the organization and presentation of ideas, concepts. Poetry is prose plus music. If you have ever read a line in a poem and thought it didn’t quite work, and read it again, shifting the emphasis or stress on a certain syllable or word that made it conform to the rest of the line or stanza, you have experienced the musical quality of poetry. Note the delightful qualities of music in the following classic poem:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know,

His house is in the village though.

He will not see me stopping here,

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer,

To stop without a farmhouse near,

Between the woods and frozen lake,

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake,

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep,

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

-- Robert Frost

Take note of the pattern Frost forces upon your handling of the word ‘promises’. It is not significant in itself, but it demonstrates the delight your mind takes in the musical qualities with which he has infused the poem. This musical quality is like the tongue's delight with sugar, like sex for the sex organs, like a beautiful woman for the eyes - it is pure sensory pleasure, music to the ears.

Grammar

A note of caution to would-be poets: Don’t break grammar to make a line work. Sure, its been done, even by the greatest poets, but it detracts from the quality of the work. Interrupting grammar in order to make a line correctly rhyme is an interruption of the poem, and has the effect of a speed bump or stop in the wrong place. This is not to say that every line needs to be a complete sentence or thought, but the ideas in the lines must match the beat or rhythm, so that one can keep the beat and still get the idea. Pausing at the end of a line for the next line can cause a loss of the thought if the grammar fails to break in the same way as the poem’s rhythm. An example follows, taken from a poem by Emily Dickinson, self-titled “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died”:

I willed my keepsakes, signed away

What portions of me I

Could make assignable, - and then

There interposed a fly.

In this example, the poem’s beat demands a small pause after “I” in the second line, but the grammar demands that “I” be read with “Could make assignable” and will not permit a break. This causes the stanza to read awkwardly. It is not irredeemable death for this to occur in a poem (note that Dickinson is widely published) but popularity does not mean quality or profundity (note that Hitler was elected to office and Picasso’s paintings sell for millions of dollars).

Reading Frost’s “Stopping by Woods” one is not halted for grammar breaks, and there are no half-rhymes like food-good or ran-town. That is what makes it such a classic and pleasurable read. I have heard “Stopping by Woods” derided as “sing-songy” as if the essential musical quality were a detraction, a vice. I believe that the evidence is available for anyone’s ears: good poetry exhibits the qualities of music. The public at large still understand this - just listen to the top 40 some time. This is because the joy of poetry, of rhyming, is a sensory pleasure. One doesn’t need to study some philosopher or attend a lecture on the qualities of good poetry - one can hear it. Note that it is mostly in the universities today that they read e e cummings and James Joyce. This is no coincidence: an appreciation for tempo and melody comes naturally to the human brain. It requires active indoctrination in subjectivism for people to start believing that e e cummings is a real poet even though he has dispensed with poetry.

To say that this musical quality, this one essential that is unique to poetry, is not necessary to make a good poem, is to declare that your definition of poetry is not the same as mine. Rhythm, rhyme and meter make poetry what it is. A poem without these is not a poem, by definition. And a poem with them is a most delightful pleasure for the ears and soul.

The End

Copyright 2006

Brandon Cropper

[159753]

A poem with no rhyme

Or time in its verse

Sours the ear,

And approaches perverse.

I second that.