by Neal Whitman the Poetry Prof.
It’s odd what poetry can do for us, and doesn’t do. It can save lives individually, but not collectively. [Charles Wright from his Introduction to The Best American Poetry, 2008. Scribner Poetry, 2008.]
Welcome back to this feature inaugurated one month ago. If you are new, a caveat: I am not an English professor, but a writer and reader holding deep beliefs about poetry. Today I am professing my belief that we can live without poetry, that is, until we lose a loved one. I was prompted to speak to this belief by my friends George and Kristina. When I sent an email last month, encouraging them to visit Getting Something Read, George replied that they had just returned from a memorial service of friend where poetry was read: “I was again forcefully reminded how poetry, like music, can condense and vivify reality and form memory.”
Two years ago I attended a memorial service held at the Ken Sanders Rare Book Store in Salt Lake City for Utah’s 2003 Poet Laureate, Kenneth W. Brewer, who died of panreatic cancer on March 16, 2006, at age 64. In a SRO recital in the bookshop, friends read selected poems from a book he had written, but did not live to see published [Whale Song: A Poet's Journey into Cancer. Dream Garden Press, 2007]. After his diagnosis in 2005, Ken began to work on this book to chronicle his living with the certainty of death. In the Foreword, he observed, “When we are confronted with immediate crises, we seldom write novels or short stories: we write poems, or we sing, or we pray.”
Poetry. Songs. Prayer. One heart speaking to another. Some say the meaning of poetry is to give courage. That might be so (though, late at night, a dark, smokey, single-malt whisky might do). Of course, it’s not all about Death and Dying! We read poems when we fall in love. But, ah, that’s another story. Will keep you posted. Let’s visit in a month.
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Neal,
You are right, poetry and death have been hand in hand throughout the ages of our language. And, of course, a theme used judiciously by Jeffers:
Here is the poem, dearest: you will never read it nor hear it.
You were more beautiful
Than a hawk flying. But the ashes have fallen
And the flame has gone up; nothing human remains.
You are earth and air; you are in the beauty of the ocean
And the great streaming triumphs of sundown;
you are alive and well in the tender young grass rejoicing
When soft rain falls all night,
and little rosy-fleeced clouds float on the dawn.