POETRY MATTERS

Be present to the moment, give yourself over to the rhythm and mystery of your own voice, lose yourself in the hum of the words, and you will find that quiet place within. – Kathleen Coskran

This past week found me at a most unexpected and achingly bittersweet task: writing the obituary for the son of our dearest friend.  Instinctively, I turned to the comfort of lyric and poetry to complement my words:

To An Athlete Dying Young, by A.E. Houseman.

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay…

My friend was touched, and asked me how did I know to use this poem.  The answer is that my mother, The English Teacher, pounded poetry in our heads from a very young age.  We were expected to memorize, and often the bedtime story would be poetry instead of children’s fiction.  Poetry frequently – a line, or if I’m lucky, a complete stanza – will course like a ribbon through my cortex during a seemingly unrelated experience.

Perhaps coincidentally, yesterday I read a charming guest editorial in our local newspaper, Dollar in Pocket Puts Poem Forever in Heart, by Kathleen Coskran.  Coskran is paying her grandchildren a dollar for each poem they memorize.  Her mother initiated the practice on a cross-country driving trip long ago, paying Kathleen a quarter for O Captain, My Captain – which, thanks to my mother, I know is Whitman’s mourn for Abraham Lincoln – and up to 35 cents for others.  No doubt it was a last-ditch way to entertain the kids, but the long term effect was a love for cadence and imagery that she is passing along to her grandchildren with a bit of de Reigniers:  “Keep a poem in your pocket/and a picture in your head/and you’ll never feel lonely/at night when you’re in bed.”

Coskran says the 5 year old, who can’t seem to get to sleep most nights, went at it with a vengeance.  He awakened his parents the very next morning with a proud rendition of Birdie with a Yellow Bill, by Robert Louis Stevenson – whose A Child’s Garden of Verses was regular reading at our house growing up.

All three of Coskran’s grandchildren weren’t so much motivated by the money as they seemed to enjoy adding to their repertoire.  The Coskran family was treated on Christmas Day to recitations of poems that I remember memorizing:  Jabberwocky (” ’twas brillig, and the slithy toves…”), Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (“whose woods these are, I think I know, his house is in the village, though”) and Tyger, Tyger (“burning bright”).

I thought of the talented ones who regularly visit PassingThru, and their brilliant poetic compositions:  Jannie Funster, whose breathtaking tribute to Sylvia Plath, a happier ending, stunned me yesterday, so that I could barely react.   Matthew Dryden, who is sharing his talent in live venues, and blogs about that, along with the rest of his amazing writing.  Writer Dad has paid eloquent tribute to his family.  And somehow, Ghosts flowed down my arm and through my pen.  I still know not how.

As I was reading Coskran’s splendid little column, Pete and I talked about poetry.  He gazed at the ceiling with a twinkle and a grin, and launched into “I’d rather be a could-be if I couldn’t be an are, for a could-be is a maybe with a chance of reaching far…”

We remembered that the most appealing part of Bill Bennett’s audio tribute to Ronald Reagan upon the late President’s passing was a poetry anecdote.  Bennett and the President ad-libbed to a group of schoolchildren while on tour for the Department of Education.  The selection?  The lengthy classic from Robert Service, the Bard of the Yukon, The Cremation of Sam McGee :  “There are strange things done in the midnight sun/by the men who moil for gold…”  Reagan knew the entire poem and Bill had to drop out after the first couple of stanzas.  Notably, Reagan also eloquently paraphrased poetry (“they slipped the surly bonds of earth”) in his tribute to the Challenger astronauts.

Pete and I used the classic poetry contained in hymns and Biblical text for our recent Christmas card series, with many in the comments section sharing how beloved they held the ones we chose in their own memory.

Poetry is universally revered.  We turn to the poetry of others when our own words fall short, as I did this week, knowing that my effort, clouded by grief and emotion, could only comfort so far.

Kathleen Coskran could be writing for me, and for us all when she says:

Like my mother, I too believe in the power of language to soothe and to heal; to inspire and to calm. Poetry is to be spoken aloud, learned by heart; a poem spoken in the music of your own voice becomes a part of you, and if you learn it when you are young, you will have it forever.

I hope, fervently, that all of society’s children revere, recite and recall poetry.  I think Coskran’s idea is a fine one.  When our grandchildren come, they’ll be subject to it.