Poetry, it's good for me! Or, is it?

Poetry is the hallmark of exalted life--it is our intended/natural speech. It is because we are broken that we must speak prose.

 

-G.K. Chesterton

 

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Well, do you agree with old GK?

Why?...or, why not?

As for me...I'll let ya know tomorrow.



comments below.

(altho the Smothers Brothers sang, "Let's fuggetabout tomorrow, for...tomorrow never comes...here we are!)


Clearly, GK Chesterton had either a high view of poetry or a low view of humankind's current status...or both!

When I read good poetry, that is, something that's polished to a high sheen, not merely an ensemble of words that rhyme...it does beat prose all to pieces. Here's a fav:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

  by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold. 
Her early leaf's a flower; 
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf. 
So Eden sank to grief, 
So dawn goes down to day. 
Nothing gold can stay. 

Something that's got more than one layer of meaning, something where not only the words but the thoughts rhyme, now THAT is poetry.

I think of the scene in Lewis' THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH where the various eidola are descending into Ransom's house, and the humans are swept up into ecstatic utterance beyond their own capacity to utter or (previously) to even understand--now, that was poetry. "They all agreed that it was the most, the best..." if only they could have written down those words.

So, I agree with Chesterton...if our words flowed like those of the great poets, we'd need to be renewed, rejuvenated, somehow rebooted ... hmmm, sounds nigh-theological.

Tapestries, loose threads, and loose screws.

We here are on the wrong side of the tapestry. The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else.

--Chesterton, GK. Father Brown Mystery Stories.

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I wonder how often a writer, thru creative art, actually manages to crane their neck around to get a glimpse of "the other side of the tapestry"? And, is that the result of a bold and stunning imagination? Divine gift? Or both?

Does a writer lend meaning to the meaningless? Discover patterns that are truly present or merely imagined?

This, I think, is the delight and dilemma for the writer...am I seeing something real and making it more clear for my readers? Or, is this just, as Solomon said, a "vanity," the product of a fertile imagination?

To answer this question...well, I'm going to point in the direction where I think answers await...I suggest Narnia and Middle Earth. Whattaya think?

Did Lewis and Tolkien see something new? Or the old in new and exciting and memorable ways?

That's my question for the day...

PS: whilst I used the term "writer," perhaps better would be, "honest seeker of truth via the creative arts."

PPS: Tapestry--NOT the place to go tugging at loose threads. Art and littyature--oh yeah. Sometimes I think it's fun to go looking for a thread that, while not exactly loose, isn't quite aligned with its neighbors. Tug and run, what fun!

PPPS: Some creative pursuits may look like the loose thread isn't loose at all--it's the artist's screws that are a little loose! I think creativity and eccentricity and loosey-goosey-ness are pretty close together on a continuum that ends with --van Gogh? Jack Kerouac? Your candidate(s)?

PPPPS: I think sometimes "the other side of the tapestry" is hiding in plain sight, and we try to make things too complicated, look for "the big answers" when meaning and purpose and value is right in front of us...in the little things. Such as? Children and their absolute joy in discovering something new to them. A dog at play--is there a more clear and direct demonstration of joy than that? Sunsets, sugar maple trees bedecked in their regimental colors in September, a mountain range, chocolate, Bach, Beethoven, or Brahms! Ahhhhhhh.


There is no element of genius without some form of madness.
--Leonardo DiCaprio (I hated attributing it to him. Even though I found the quote attached to his name, I had a hard time giving a Hollywood feller credit...so I looked it up...shure 'nuff, also attrib to Seneca and Aristotle!)