The Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep

Dear Children:
Our politicians don’t quote poetry any more. Senators Everett Dirksen, Robert Kennedy, Alan Simpson and Robert Byrd were about the last of those who could be counted on for appropriate verse.  We’re not sure whether this state of affairs is a result of current politico's assessment of our capacity to understand the art form or if they’ve taken an assessment of themselves. Either way, the loss to political discourse is profound.

Granted, poetry requires learning a short glossary. Let’s be confident, though, that anyone who can learn fo’ shizzle, gym hares and ROFL can learn metric foot, consonant cluster and synecdoche.

Nor is poetry inaccessible. It doesn’t have to be snooty. Consider Ogden Nash,

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true --
I love April, I love you.

Or Louisa May Alcott

Little shadows, little shadows
Dancing on the chamber wall,
While I sit beside the hearthstone
Where the red flames rise and fall.
Caps and nightgowns, caps and nightgowns,
My three antic shadows wear;
And no sound they make in playing,
For the six small feet are bare.

Or that master of the clerihew form, the champ

Who floats like a butterfly
And stings like a bee?
It is me
Ali

Poetry celebrates paradox and recognizes ambiguity as natural. Maybe that’s why we don’t hear it so much. The holding of paradox in one’s mind might be the definition of maturity; to at once adore the beauty of God’s creation and recognize the importance of competing responsibilities. Robert Frost inspired a generation of political leaders on both sides of the aisle with words like these:

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.

As the mouth fills with stunning sound and the mind fills with the ache of  contradiction each of us knows so well, we have the stuff of poetry.

This is just a thought: Poetry requires carefully chosen words as well as an appreciation for carefully chosen words. Maybe we should settle for a little thought before we demand that any of it rhymes.

The opening ceremonies of the 112th Congress had a certain – let’s say – inanity the Sominex people would love to bottle. If the words were carefully chosen, they were arranged leached of all soul, promise and meaning. Wallpaper music, stripped of melody, drooled from the podium of the House to form a puddle of vapid insignificance. There was no poetry and nothing quotable.

I’m Just Sayin’

Poppy
http://www.poppylbs.blogspot.com/