Think a rural community lacks
poets or cannot support a poetry group? Think again! A Novel
Experience hosts a poetry group that meets six times a year from 7 –
8:30 pm at the store to support local writers and readers of poetry.
Currently we support one another by listening to and appreciating members’
work. But we also encourage poetry lovers who do not write,
or who may as yet be loath to share their work, to bring a favorite
poem and read it for us. We gather simply to appreciate each other’s
efforts and indulge our love for language, especially in poetic form.
Do join us!
“It’s
too bad that words are our best means of communicating because words
are so subjective. Words I write are meaningful to me but may
be nothing to you. So, I must recognize that the words I write
are really “Just For Me!” So writes Lee Flynn, a founding
member of our group who confided during our last meeting his amazement
that he’d actually shared his poetry with us, since he’d never before
read it to “another living soul.” His ballad follows.
JUST FOR ME
--Lee Flynn
Mystic winds felt long ago,
to
sounds I shaped to hear,
the meaning soft, the meaning
low,
that
made me feel secure.
Sounds washing over me in waves
of
meaning, clear and bold.
I held them up, measured, shaved,
trimmed,
til they fit my soul.
Now words I write fit me alone,
that’s
what they’re meant to do.
Only I can hear the tone,
and
know the meaning true.
To others, these, my magic
words,
are
simple, dry and dead.
And that’s the way it’s
meant to be,
The
key is in my head
To me, they burn, they fly
up high,
or
suddenly plunge deep,
They pull the strings sewn
around my soul
and
when they do—I weep.
I shaped these words, exact
and fine,
to
fit my heart, my soul.
They cause my heart to melt
like wine,
or—make
my blood run cold.
If others read them, others
doubt,
no
reasons, others see,
But, I must write them, get
them out,
that
means so much to me.
Of love, of war, of murder
foul,
a
final king’s despair.
The powers of a priestly cowl,
Medusa’s
awful hair.
All worthy of the singing lines,
or
words that drip with blood,
That tipple easily from my
pen,
burst
forth in sudden flood.
Yet the same fire inside you
burns,
you
grasp for words that speak
To the blood inside that feeds
your soul
and
makes your knees go weak.
And, oft a tiny
thought or so,
a
word, a glance, will be,
Enough to force
your words to flow
to
say, “Here’s what I see.”
The
ways of enjoying poetry vary. Like music, the words may pleasure
our ears. We may simply love its rhythms. For readers who desire
a more in-depth understanding of it, there’s scansion, a way of analyzing
poetry by giving names to its combinations of accented groups of syllables1
and meters. For example, how did I know that Lee’s poem is a
ballad? Well, each stanza2 is composed of four lines,
composed of eight, then six, eight, then six syllables, with the second
of each pair of syllables accented— all characteristic of ballads.
Two-syllable groups accented on the second syllable are called “iambs”
(da da, or unaccented accented). Because only one of each
two-syllable group is accented, the lines with eight syllables have
four accents, and the lines with six syllables contain three, and the
number of accents in a line of poetry determines its meter. As
a result, we call the first and third lines here iambic tetrameter or
four iambs (da da da da da da da da); the
second and fourth lines we call iambic trimeter (da da da
da da da). I’ve bolded the accented syllables of
the last stanza of Lee’s poem to demonstrate how to read in this way.
But good readings don’t mechanically force the words to fit the accents.
Expect some variation, as in music. Scansion merely offers a guide
to the form, a way of categorizing.
Many
of us think that Lee should look for a musician to put music to his
words. We’ve been struck with the universality of his ideas,
and how they’ve engendered rich conversation; but we also simply enjoy
his writing and his use of ballad form (which lends itself to musical
interpretation). As I read “Just for Me,” stanzas three
and four expose the poem’s central idea, a lament for the narrator’s
inability to communicate his own experience absolutely. To the
line “Only I can hear the tone/and know the meaning true,” he juxtaposes
a stanza beginning, “To others, these, my magic words,/are simple,
dry, and dead.” (No less a person than Wittgenstein shared Lee’s
astonishment about language—not that it occasionally creates misunderstandings
among speakers, but that its speakers ever understand one another at
all.) At the heart of Lee’s poem’s dilemma or concern, then,
is the I/thou split—the same division that engenders language.
We feel the need to communicate to the other, but have difficulty adequately
communicating. While Lee laments his inability to communicate
adequately to others his own experience, he has, nevertheless, effectively
communicated a universal human dilemma. Even as he bemoans it, we recognize
the common experience of perceived human lack, the recognition of imperfection:
that commonality separates us, but also joins us! The ways we
experience that lack vary, each of us being utterly unique. But
so gathered, we can join and empathize with one another in grieving
the incapacity of language.
The
act of writing anticipates a reader, an audience, outside the writing.
Writers must attempt to bridge that gap. Always, something is omitted—lacking—even
in non-fiction. If that weren’t so, perhaps the act of reading
would be impossible because we’d be unable to penetrate the text.
In addition, every reader brings to every reading that unique set of
experiences and understandings that plays into her reading of anything,
including poetry. Readers bring to text endless variations of imagistic
and musical experiences and tastes, and so I believe it not merely possible,
but probable that readers may find in my (or any) writing what its writer
did not intend—perhaps never imagined—and that adds life to the
work. I’d love to know what you “see” in my poem, “King Oliver’s
Rag.”
King Oliver’s Rag
King Oliver ragtimes us two
stepping fools.
Marsalis of Winton floats feet,
urges flesh,
bawls from Mustang windows
ribboned rivers of red satin
woman
boiled over her stays.
Strutting hard on her heels,
jazz-infected, we
fox-trotters moon in the shine,
bump hedgerows and tarmac,
sally forth syncopated
bodies ageing.
Bale-eyed Angus and his barb-wire
babes
glare, drool, chew cuds.
They cut the mustard; we cut
the rug—
two stardusted revelers
gladdening.
Possessing
a unique set of human experiences doesn’t mean the reader can impose
her idea on the writing; rather, a reader’s uniqueness endows her
with an unusual ability to see a text through the prism of such experiences.
That possibility of finding something unexpected and helping others
to see it is part of the adventure of reading, especially reading literature,
and engaging others in conversation about it. What might you or
I discover in a text that no one has seen before? Holly Smith
discovered in a season “in heat” what you and I might have missed!
See if you agree I’ve saved a treat for last.
in heat
springtime in Georgia
doesn’t come on
with soft clouds
silly flowers
doesn’t sweep in
gracious
offering tea and lemonade
a proper southern belle
she come on—
yeah, comes on
all suggestions
hinting
smacking lips
the back and forth of hips
swollen wet heat
and a rising colour
she opens up
to beginnings and propositions
understands she’s a moment,
a quickening, a wink
springtime in Georgia
knows what she’s about
& knows how to get there
I’ll never experience spring
in the same way again.
One
last word about reading: though we must read through the prism of our
intellects and our experiences, and cannot help but bring these to our
reading, we use them merely as a lens that helps us interpret the text
more clearly, not as a substitute for the text, of which we must never
lose sight. My Aunt Bertha might bump and grind her way into my
mind as the absolute personification of the spring Holly’s poem represents;
but Aunt Bertha (with her mode of dress, manners, and idiosyncrasies)
is not in the poem, even though a reader might see her there and know
she belongs: Spring is in the poem, as the poem represents her.
Aunt Bertha helps us recognize “her.” And oh, how glad we
are!
Comments?
Questions? Suggestions? Contact us at anovelexperience@gmail.com. Come join us. We look
forward to meeting you!
Share
your love for reading with a child. Joy.
Karen
Lacey and your friends at
A
Novel Experience, Booksellers on the Square
