Life's too short to live without poetry...
If you'd the chance to see President Obama's inauguration yesterday, you'd have seen James Taylor, Beyonce, Kelly Clarkson, the Harlem Tabernacle Choir, and the President's Own Marine Band, as well as various politicians contributing to global warming. But we had a poet, too - 44 year old Richard Blanco read One Today, and as I eventually caught the rhythm, I really enjoyed it.
Poetry today is in a bind, as we hear it primarily in popular music: Hip-hop is everywhere, and it's poetry through and through, but it's driven by popular music tastes, which more and more is dictated by corprorate interests.
You Tube and other websites give poets a chance to get their art out there, but it's hard. Poetry has always demanded more of its audience than other art forms. It demands more imagination, careful listening, and patience. But like all art forms, its rewards surpass the efforts.
I read a bit of poetry every morning: A Year With Rilke, 365 snippets of my personal favorite, Rainer Maria Rilke, a German poet of the early 20th Century. He traveled through Vienna, Paris (where he stayed with the famous sculptor Rodin) and Prague, but his poetry is hardly ever evocative of those great cities - it's so personal, so internal, that it becomes universal: Everyone who can read can feel what he felt, see what he saw. He's just a great guy to spend a bit of time with every day.
My Irish poet is W.B.Yeats because he's the most famous, and I'm too lazy to explore further. I've memorized the Fiddler of Dooney, (just ask me sometime) and I'm working on "The Second Coming" because if any poem drew a picture of 21st Century American politics, it's that one. I love Seamus Heaney, a living Irish poet, but most of what I read of his is his translation of Beowulf, which is so ancient as to transcend national boundaries.
We celebrate this very week the Scottish poet Robert Burns, and I've memorized more of his work than any other, as I've sung his songs now for five years or more: My Love is Like a Red Red Rose, Ae Fond Kiss, Ca' the Yowes, A Man's A Man for A' That, and a few more. To read Burns is hard work - I am not Scottish, so that old Scots dialect does NOT roll off my tongue, but his insight, wit, charm and passion just pour off the page - it's just a joy to sing, to hear, to read...
Poetry fills the pages of the Old Testament. I'm surprised now and then that the New Testament did not ever include its own Book of Psalms, but I guess they made do with the old book. Folks think old Amos was the first poet to get his lines written down in one place, although he wasn't the first of God's prophets, he got published before the others. His words evoke in so much the same way...
He who created the Pleiades and Orion,
Who turns deep darkness into morning
and darkens day into night
Who calls for the waters of the sea
and pours them out on the surface of the earth
Yahweh is his name... (Amos 5.8)
Simple words to describe the created world, and find the Creator's fingerprints. We need poets to do such things, as ordinary people, doing ordinary things every day all day, we don't see it, and we sure can't say it if we do see it. We need other's words, sometimes, to make sense, and to describe the beauty we so often miss.
Poetry. Life's too short to live without it.
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