Posts Tagged ‘poetry’

About a million years ago – okay, in high school – I was fortunate enough to have been asked to participate in a test program in which students who showed an interest and some aptitude in writing were given the chance to take a first year university Lit course.  All without having to leave the (dis)comfort of the high school.

I had been asked to participate after my English teacher had submitted some of my writing to the professor that would be teaching the class.  He liked my work, and so I was put on the list of students who were invited to take part.

I was more than happy to participate.

It was a small class. There were perhaps twelve of us in total.

The professor was like no other teacher I had ever encountered – to be more precise, he was like no other person I had encountered to that point in my short life.

Walking into that classroom was like taking a trip forward through time, to a place where I was not bound by the shackles of being a teenager. We weren’t treated as teenagers. We weren’t told what to think, and when we spoke, he listened to what we had to say.  Unfortunately, this was rare in high school, which is far too often a place where kids are told what to think, rather than encouraged to think for themselves, and express their own opinions.

During one of the earliest classes, we entered the room to find Mr. G. perched on the side of his desk with bongo drums. Keep in mind that this was not a young man. In his early sixties to be sure, he looked as comfortable with those drums as I would have been with a walkman at the time.

He played for us as he read the words of others; the lesson of the day had been poetic rhythm.  And while the lesson had certainly been absorbed, there was another lesson that I took away that day.  The lesson was that poetry – like all forms of art – is something that we are able to bring ourselves into, rather than just be a spectator of.

Mr. G’s class quickly became something I looked forward to.  I always felt inspired, energized.  More than that.  I was moved in that classroom like I had been in no other.  Early one morning, he read – sans bongos – TS Eliot’s poem, The Hollow Men.

I sat, transfixed.  As he read, every word stabbed at me and left me both startled and longing for more. The harshness of the images pulled a sheet up over my head, blurred everything but the sound of his voice and the feeling of the words.

As the poem whispered to a close, I realized I’d been crying.

I’ve read a lot lately about what art is supposed to be. About what things a poem must have to be considered a real poem, and about all of the things that a piece of art must have before someone is going to consider it art. It must do this. It must have that. It must make this comment, or suggest this theme.

Only then, is it “real art”.

I’ve read some of those “real art” works and I’ve looked at some of those “real art” pieces. The ones that everyone says are art. The ones that I’m supposed to appreciate and look upon in wonder. You know what I feel?

Stupid.

Stupid, because I don’t like it, and I am supposed to.
Stupid, because I don’t get it, and I am supposed to.
Stupid, because I DO get it, but I don’t get it like I’m supposed to.

Some artist’s work seems to serve only to confuse me. I can’t make sense of the language, I get no feeling at all from the words. And that’s fine. I’m okay with not being able to understand some poet’s work.  I’m even more content to “get” a poem in a way that “the experts” don’t seem to think is the “right way”.

Art is in the eye of the beholder.  Poetry is in the heart of the reader.

Just don’t tell me what a poem is supposed to be. Don’t tell me that a poem that I might like isn’t really a poem, because it doesn’t follow some set of arbitrary rules that were set out by some poet that won an award once.  If it’s poetry in my soul, then it’s art to me.  And I shall treat it with the reverence that it deserves whether anyone else thinks it as deserving as I do.

Stop killing art with “supposed to”.

I refute the idea that art is only true art if it does certain things; if it falls into someone’s classification of [X] ART, yes sir.  I respectfully decline to agree with the experts.  I would much rather fumble my way to epiphany than be led to mediocrity by the hand.

When I wiped my tears away in that classroom many years ago, I realized that I would know when something touched me enough for me to call it art. I also realized that some poems that I might not like at first may become the ones that I treasure most.

I will not listen to the “experts”.  I will not be swayed by the “general consensus”.  I will listen to the voice that speaks the deepest, and reaches those parts of me that transport me to the place where art meets heart.  I will listen to my own voice, whispering the only words that need to be uttered.  “Yes…oh, yes.”

Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting.  And… Stop thinking!  Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to ‘walk about’ in a hitherto unknown world.  If the answer is yes, what more do you want?  ~ Kandinsky

Autumn is a bittersweet time of year for me.

I love the colours.  I love the crispness to the air; I love the crackling sound that the leaves make.

It’s just that here, at the knee of the mountains, sometimes autumn only lasts what seems like seconds.  One afternoon, the leaves appear to be turning colour;  overnight, a heavy cold will drop in to leave them frostbitten.  They drop quickly, without ever seeming to reach their full potential for glory; they leave the trees bereft of beauty.

I wonder if the trees mourn their missed majestic moments, as I do, in those years?

In the past two years, I have missed the fires of fall.  My mind was elsewhere and I failed to notice the passage of time, looking up only when the drifts of snow were too high to ignore.

This year, I made it my purpose to open my eyes.
To see.
And to feel.

I can’t capture my feelings, but I did take some pictures. I think I’ll just let them speak to you, as the scenery spoke to me. Whispering, crackling, rustling… Enjoy.

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.

~ Robert Frost