| Why no time for rhythm and rhyme? This article is not for advanced poetry readers or writers. It is for those of us who have had medium to little experience with poetry but do enjoy what we once knew as poetry--traditional, formal poetry. Recently I listened to person after person on a talk show complain of the so-called poetry the east coast elite poet read at the Presidential inauguration. I was surprised, but delighted, to see poetry garner that much interest among my neighbors. And even better, I realized that, like myself, many people wonder why it is we are no longer allowed by the poet police to like the things in poems we all once recognized as poetry—meter, rhyme, alliteration, assonance, imagery, and etc. I was introduced to poetry as a child by my grandmother. She loved it, and she loved to share poems with me. When I brought her a “poem” I had written myself, she would act as if I had strung together a string of precious pearls. She would smile and look lovingly at me while as she held the gift to her chest for a moment, then read it aloud. Amazingly, I never wrote a bad one, according to my grandmother. They were all precious and meaningful and fully indicative of my assured fast track to literary fame and glory. Our greatest challenge would be to choose a mysterious pen name lest my adoring fans would begin pestering me at home all hours of the day. After all, I was the man of the house and we had a lot to do since my grandfather died. The adoring fan thing has not turned out to be the problem we had anticipated, but certainly that early exposure, in conjunction with a few great teachers in college, helps me enjoy poetry and gives my life many moments of pleasure spent with my favorite writers. I just love to read it, especially the formal style that is not too popular with the academics and the literary types right now. It is hard to say where "appreciation" comes from, but I really don't think it just nostalgia. I’m not sure why it is that there is such a vehement feeling in the literary community against formal metered and/or rhymed poetry, but it is there. One professor told me that many writers think "free verse," verse without formal meter, is easier to write than formal metered and rhymed poetry. But, in reality, a good poem in free verse is not "easier" except perhaps in that sense that it is less restricted. In fact, there are those that would say the greater choice of words makes the free verse more difficult. There are far fewer word choices if the poet has to rhyme or use the right syllabic accent. I don't think level of difficulty is much of a factor in free verse or formal. But I agree with my professor (I'm sure he would be much comforted) that it is not the genuine level of difficulty, but the perceived difficulty that is behind much of today's preference for free verse. Many writers think free means they can say anything they want and call it poetry, some add that it must have some extreme social or psychological sentimentality in it, but essentially it is just any verbal expression of their emotions, usually in a format that looks like poetry. But, unfortunately, it's not so. Free verse poetry is a lot more than just feelings on paper. To some degree this anything-goes attitude is in the universities, but even more in the “elite” publishing and literary community and the poetry slams popular in some clubs and the so-callled work shops and chat rooms on line. Some "poets" seem to believe that if you slowly tell people in a limited number of lines that you feel bad or that your parents were mean, that is somehow poetry. Well, I would disagree with that, but what the hell, to each his own. if I don't like it, I don't have to listen to it. As far as I'm concerned, let them say whatever they like and let them call it poetry if that is what they want to call it. Still, that does not explain their contempt for formal metered poetry. Where does this intense contempt for simple rhyme and simile and metered poetry comes from? I kind of understand it in academia. Those people have read so much, for so long that they are very sensitive to what they are reading and, I guess, can only derive pleasure from very esoteric work in the most up to date forms. (Although, I had some very open-minded professors that loved the formal stuff as much as I did.) But if you enter the on-line workshops or poetry chat rooms, the folks in there are often very clearly not academics, nor in many instances, even well read. But damned if they don’t gang up on a rhyme or meter as if it was some kind of deadly virus they have to stamp out before it spreads. It just seems so exaggerated. What is this all about? There seems to be no room or compromise or any allowance for personal preference. The commentary is as vitriolic and mean spirited as I have ever heard. I don’t understand such intense hatred of a literary style or form. I shudder to think what this does to someone just beginning to play with writing poems or verse or prose. I have a degree in “journalism.” I learned hard lessons in college where it becomes clear that personal agendas color the perception of professors. One short story I wrote that my femi-nazi professor scorned, my tenured professor loved and it actually made it into the undergrad literary magazine. You have to be very discerning when deciding what criticisms to take to heart. Still, these reactions are so angry and intense that it makes me wonder. Why the heck it is such a big deal if a writer wants to play around a little with meter and rhyme. What is behind all this anger towards, and rejection of, poets past? It’s as if finding fun in poetry is forbidden or, at least, not very much in vogue these days. If you log in to any of the poetry sites and talk about your love of “The Tiger” by William Blake or “Daffodils” by William Wordsworth or “Lincoln” by Nancy Byrd Turner or “A Book” by Emily Dickenson or “The Panther” by Ogden Nash or any of the thousands of poems my grandmother and I read for just for fun when I was young, chances are you will be laughed at and driven from the site by the “sophisticates” as a fool and a child. I call them the poet police; they are all business and seem to despise having fun. Sophisticated writers and readers have had fun with verse and poetry since verse and poetry have been recorded and probably for many more centuries before. But according to the "intelligentsia" in this little flicker of time, all the traditional elements of poetry that people, grown up and intelligent people, have enjoyed for many millennium such as meter or rhythm or alliteration or assonance or any of the many traditional elements of poetry are now for some reason taboo. These elements are far too numerous to list. If you are familiar with the analysis of poems, you know them, if you read poems just for enjoyment, then the terms really don’t matter to you. Essentially, they are the things in poems most people enjoy. The greatest taboo of the poet police right now is rhyme and meter. They feel it is so old fashioned that it can only be appreciated by children or fools or as a spoof of poetry past. Somehow the millions of people that had enjoyed these poetic tools in the past were just not as advanced, and this generation of pompous asses is superior to all the previous generations of pompous asses that, ironically, once told us that poetry was childish and foolish if it did not contain elements like meter and rhyme. But now, they tell us, our latest batch of elites have it right, and all the things in poetry that mankind has loved for hundreds, probably thousands, of years, are simple and silly as are we who still enjoy those poems. Why is that? Why don’t we have a right to like what people have liked for many centuries before us? Anthropologists tell us that the human mind has not evolved in thousands of years, and that “cave men” were probably just as smart as we are. But, we are to believe that folks like Geoffrey Chaucer, Robert Burns, Emily Dickenson and countless others just are not able to measure up to the keen insights and revelations of the geniuses putting pen to pad, or digits to desktop today. We should trust them when they say, those ancient traditions and insights and rhymes and rhythms are beneath us now. Why? Why must we like what they like and read what they read and write what they write? Why do we have to suffer their denigration and disdain to a point that would be considered inflammatory were we responding to them in the same fashion? And even if academics really are more contemporary, why should we who enjoy something else be blackballed from the universities just because we enjoy what our ancestors did more than what today’s poets have to offer? Why do we let the poet police have such power today? Now I do admit that classics like “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer sometimes use a meter that catches a reader’s attention when maybe it shouldn't’. And, even people like Ogden Nash, whose work I love, have made note of the simple meter and simile in “Trees.” But, so what, the poem is beautiful whether you have read it once or a hundred times. And if you have never read it before, it’s a new poem to you, a poem that has always been a fantastic experience meter and all. Why not let new readers enjoy the poem? If you have something better, then offer it and let the reader decide what he or she likes. Why does the literary community want to bully people into liking what they write to the exclusion of formal poets? The meter in Trees is Iambic, which, if you don’t pay attention to those kinds of things, and most people don’t, you may never have even noticed. Most of the poet police now say iambic meter is so outdated that its only use is in farce of days gone by. An “Iambic foot,” simply means that the foot, or predominant unit of sound is two syllables; the stress is on the second syllable. (Most people know that much of Shakespeare is written in iambic pentameter, which is five iambic feet.) Many of us don’t even think of meter when reading a poem, but we may well enjoy meter without even realizing its there. Moreover, scanning meter seems confusing at first, but the basics are really not hard to understand. If I say, “He is upset that he will no longer be a starter for the team.” the accent is on the second syllable set so here upset can be an iambic foot—a two syllable unit with the first syllable unstressed and the second syllable stressed. Oddly enough, many words change the accent depending upon how you use them. For example, if I were to say, “In an upset, the Milwaukee Brewers won and made the playoffs.” Of course that’s an example of the fantasy genre, but more on point, here, the word upset becomes a noun and the stress changes to the first syllable so it is no longer an iambic foot. Recall, an iambic foot is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed. “Trees” is almost completely iambic tetrameter, which is four iambic feet. Recall, an iambic foot has two syllables and the emphasis is on the second syllable. It’s important to remember that the foot is determined by the syllabic stress, without regard to whether the foot is contained in one word or two. In “Trees” you’ll soon see very few of the iambic feet are one word. In fact many are two words and in some instances a word is divided into syllables with one of its syllables part of a foot and another of its syllables part of an adjacent foot such as: I think that I shall nev er see. Iambic tetrameter is the most common in English verse, simply because it’s the most like spoken English, and its easiest to listen to and what most of our ears like the most. That is, of course, unless the poet police have gotten to us and made us ashamed to like it--to like what fun loving, smart people have liked since people have begun to speak. Here’s the poem: TREES Joyce Kilmer I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth's sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree. Some people, like academics, have to teach, and therefore may have to read, this poem, or poems like it, hundreds of times. I can see how for them it gets a little old and that level of familiarity will breed contempt. But, if you have never read the poem before, or you don’t live in a world of poetry, this poem can be a beautiful experience. Unless, of course, one of he poet police has already told you that you are a fool if you enjoy it. I hope people will not listen to the poet police and go back to enjoying these wonderful and entertaining poems. Even if you don’t think about things like meter; if you read this poem thinking about the accents, you will soon hear the iambic tetrameter beat. Incidentally, we so love the syllabic stressed verse in English that contemporary “rap” style has developed in the void created since the poet police have convinced white people that we should be ashamed of our love for syllabic stressed verse. Of course, these same people that don’t think a moment before they break the spirit of a Caucasian poet, won’t dare impose their arrogance on a black rap artist. First, it wouldn't’t be politically correct, and second, they might get what is coming to every phony, pompous, elite jerk that deliberately demoralizes and undermines the creativity of an innocent poet or the attitudes of that poet’s potential readers of his poetry and verse. I would ask you to ignore the people that tell you what you should or should not enjoy, that tell us we can only like what a small group of jaded “experts” like. Find those teachers that are open minded enough to appreciate all forms of prose, verse and poetry. If they love English and writing as much as you, they will not discourage you from exploring every corner of it. It is usually the academics with the underlying agendas that will deliberately debilitate you--or those who just don't know what they are talking about. Many times they have not even read the Dead White Male poets they profess to hate. You need to get as far away from their hate as fast as you can. There are wonderful teachers out there. I would encourage you to find them or become them. Joyce Kilmer’s poem is interesting and beautiful. It personifies the tree, or gives it human characteristics. The tree is suckling at the earth’s breast, and lifting her leafy arms to pray, elevating it to a spiritual plane. She has snow on her in the winter, a beautiful image we all have enjoyed and can reference. The tree intimately loves the rain, the source of all life. As she suckles and needs nurture, so she nurtures, with robins nesting in her in branches. This poem is timelessly topical and the only reason it is not as loved today as it was when Mr. Kilmer wrote it is that young people have been convinced by the poet police that we should not like poems like these. By the way, while I will never understand why the academics that are jaded and tired and see poetry from down the ages as tedious feel compelled to shoot down the delight others feel. I do understand a little ribbing. For example, here is the poem by Ogden Nash that makes a little good-natured fun of the simple meter, rhyme and simile in “Trees.” Although, I like to think it was more of an homage than a detraction. Ironically, despite that Mr. Nash may be spoofing the simple rhythm and rhyme of Trees, Ogden Nashs’ verse has become more and more topical with time in its allusion to man’s encroachment on nature. Mr. Nash may not have intended it so, but that does not matter. It’s interesting to note that poems exist in a cultural, temporal context; it is as much the reader’s right to interpret new “meaning” it as it is the poet’s right to write it with his intended “meaning.” That’s one of the wonderful things about the very personal exchange between a reader and writer. Anyway, this bit is part of “Song of the Open Road” by Ogden Nash: I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Indeed, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all.[38] It is hard to read Ogden Nash’s work without smiling. (Unless, of course, you’re one of those academics that have studied themselves into an esoteric black hole.) So, here’s another one I love to read myself or share with my grandchildren: The Panther Ogden Nash The panther is like a leopard, Except it hasn't been peppered. Should you behold a panther crouch, Prepare to say Ouch. Better yet, if called by a panther, Don't anther. Ogden Nash died in 1971. He was once considered a hip poet and writer of humorous verse among the literary elite, but now has joined the ranks of the “Dead White Males” or “DWM” which are so despised by many of the “socially conscious” feminist poets and he is often mercilessly maligned in today’s “literary community.” Those poets of the past that so many socially conscious academics scorn are men and women that brought the world joy and political relief, sometimes at the cost of their lives. The attitudes of these academics are so ridiculous and self serving they would be funny if they didn’t break so many spirits with their bigotry. I suspect a great deal of their reluctance to let students enjoy traditional formal verse and poetry is that they know their own work is so uninteresting it would be all but ignored if they didn’t force it down their student’s throats while denying them the experience of more accessible or formal traditions. I will never understand why people who don’t like x-rated movies just don’t go, why those who don’t like TV just don’t watch and why those who don’t like formal poetry simply do not read poets they don’t like. Why are they compelled to take it from everyone else. If they want to uncover great sociological or psychological mysteries or enter the depths of philosophy, more power to them, if their senses are so refined that pure imagery and esoteric symbolism is all that titillates them, wonderful; if they are so sophisticated that they experience things at a level far outside or above or below or anyplace else than we who are average readers, great. But why are they so compelled to condemn anyone who actually likes reading the “DWM” or anything else. Why can’t the elite just revel in their hate of everyone and everything that doesn’t think and talk and walk like they do and leave us alone to like what we like. Why do they have to rain on everyone else’s parade? Worse, why do they feel they have to destroy burgeoning writers and readers before they begin to have a chance to follow their own road? It could even be a road of metamorphosis into to the same kind of pompous asses they are and that would give them one more ally in their never-ending desire to belittle and berate anything that the rest of humanity enjoys. But at least give us a chance to enjoy the ride. Why don’t these people remove their arm bands, brown shirts and boots and let people enjoy the formal poetry people have enjoyed for centuries? Most of the poet police are bluffing anyway. Take a random list of concrete nouns; put them in a form that looks like free verse and attributed it to a well known poet. Offer it to any of the poet chat rooms. The experts will rave about how wonderful it is and attack you mercilessly if you suggest that their Emperor has no clothes. Or turn it around and take a little known work of someone they all rave about—Oliver, Dove or any of them and put it out there as the work of a dead white male. Most of them will tear the poem to pieces until the one of very few of them that has actually read a lot of poetry or really knows anything will recognize it from one of academia’s many “English Lit--Hate of all white men 101” classes and will tell them it was really written by one of their goddesses. The point is, it just does not have to be taken so seriously. Poetry is fun. Robert Burns was in Church and saw a louse on a lady’s bonnet. He wrote a poem about it. It was fun. And these old poems can be not only fun, but they can have simple but relevant meaning. Like this rough translation of his most famous line when a poem’s persona is turning a field and sees he has destroyed a mouse nest : “The best laid plans of mice and men have often gone awry.” How can that ever not have relevance? And who would say that the subject of Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” was a childish subject? Just in case you are one of the few people on the planet that didn’t have to study this poem in high school as one of the best “carpe diem” or “seize the day” arguments in English poetry, it is about a guy trying to convince a woman to relinquish to him her virginity before they both grow old and die. The same argument is going on all over the world as I write this and as you read it. And it is now as much as it was then, relevant. Note that it is also in the iambic tetrameter that only rap artists have permission from the poet police to write in today. To His Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love's day. Thou by the Indian Ganges' side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow; An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart. For, lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found, Nor, in thy marble vault shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity, And your quaint honor turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust: The grave's a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life. Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run. Of course, it was written in the seventeenth century so there are a few things he talks about that are a little hard to understand. But, if you don’t understand the meaning, just enjoy what you can about the poem—the sounds or whatever. One thing I like when I don’t really understand the poem is the meter and the rhyme. It’s like a song. You may not even know all the words, but it still can have a nice rhythm or melody, and you can appreciate the lyrics you do know until you understand the entire song. It can even be fun to break down a poem like a puzzle. Often you know more than you think you do. The first four lines in To His Coy Mistess are easy—especially if you have read the title of the poem. Then you know this is an English poem, so he is talking about wiling away the day, her by the “Indian Ganges side.” Even if your geography is not up to snuff, you know it sounds like what it is, a river in India. We know that England occupied India for many years, and if they occupied it, they must have gone there first, so this is either before or while England occupied India. The idea that rubies would be laying around for the picking up is far fetched, but maybe that is it—it is very rare that it happens but they would have all the time in the world so much time that she would find more than one. Rubies probably have some significance it India. I don’t know that for sure, but you often see a ruby in the turban of pictures of Indian royalty and etc, so from that we can infer that rubies have some significance in India, at least the value as a rare, beautiful jewel, and probably more. From a writer’s perspective, Marvell’s perspective, it makes sense and is a good image. It talks about until the conversion of the Jews. Well, the Jews had been around since the beginning and had not yet converted, so I’m guessing that the thinking was that Jews never would convert. Maybe there was a frustrated effort at the time to get them to, so this had special meaning then. I don’t know. But it would be fun to research. The “vegetable love” part, I thought at first was an allusion to his penis. Unfortunately, I offered that explanation in an English Lit class in the eighties and it was not too well received except for its comedic value. The professor said that in the cultural context of the time their “vegetable love” was emotional love. I didn’t ask what fruity love was. I had already suffered embarrassment on the penis comment, I wasn’t going to invite any response to a question like what was “fruity love?” All the rest is pretty self explanatory with only the smallest effort. The marble vault stumps some of the kids I have tutored, but surely it must be her burial chamber. The worm allusions are obvious, although about as grotesque as it gets if you ask me. Poets are always so graphic about death. But, “worms trying that long preserved virginity.” Is about as repulsive an image as I have ever come across in a poem, and I could have lived without that one. But, the poem is still enjoyable, not only for its humorous subject and important "seize the day" theme, but because of its meter and rhyme. It is a great over all experience that people have enjoyed for centuries. That is until this century when a small group of people got together and decided they no longer liked rhyme and meter, and anyone who does is stupid. Well, poet police, that's just stupid. SenescentSun |