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There has always been a great deal of heated debate about the value of poetry. For me poetry has always provided a very useful service. It abstracts life in such a way that it is possible to stand back a few feet from immediate experience and see it anew through the unparalleled beauty of poetic language.
All too often we speed our way through life without giving much thought to why we do what we do or why we think the way we do.
The way I see it, the absence of reflection is the cause of much of the divisiveness that characterizes American life these days.
By that I mean that each of us is so deeply embedded in our own well fertilized and fortified belief systems that the thought of a competing ideology having any value at all is anathema. That is a shame because if evolutionary theory teaches us anything at all it is that incest is not best.
We pay lip service to discourse and diversity, but it turns out to be a difficult task for most people.
When I read a strong poem it always makes me see things differently. It forces me to wrestle with perspectives that might never have occurred to me had not the likes of a Frost or Keats seen fit to couch ordinary experience in an extraordinarily unique way.
I find the challenges that strong poetry offers to be of immeasurable value. I use the term `strong’ as a way of setting it apart, frankly, from so much of the self-serving, incoherent gibberish that all too often passes for poetry these days. The best poets among us need not, as a former mentor of mine put it, ``put on a show.’’
I bumped into Frost’s poem ``Putting in the Seed’’ the other day while idly thumbing my way through a well-worn paperback collection that is always at the ready on the table beside my reading chair.
As a lifelong reader of Frost, it always surprises me when I happen on a poem I have not read before. As it happened, I had planted our peas several weeks before and every morning on the way back from getting the paper had stopped by the lower garden where they are planted in raised beds to see if their little heads had popped up out of the soil yet. In the poem Frost writes that we gardeners are slaves `` to a springtime passion for the earth. / How Love burns through Putting in the Seed.’’
Frost characterizes that first appearance of seedlings in this way: ``When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed, / The sturdy seedling with arched body comes/ Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.’’
I love the notion of tarnished soil, of that seedling’s lust for life being so strong that it arches its body so as to gain enough force to push its way out of the earth’s dark womb into the light.
As is the case with any good poem, it has planted a seed in my mind that, as it shoulders its way into consciousness, provides me with a new way of seeing and thinking about the miraculous nature of life itself. A poem that is worth reading always asks that we think differently about something. That is the value of a new or competing idea.
To be afraid of that which is different, be it a poet’s perception of seed planting or a political position opposed to one’s own, is an admission of weakness. An unquestioned, hidebound commitment to any ideology is a dangerous thing.
Poetry, if given a chance, can help each of us toss off the blinders that so often tarnish our vision.
Hawthorn Hill
Up on Hawthorn Hill: Poetry and planting seed
- Hawthorn Hill
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Up On Hawthorn Hill: Bird Feeder?
Bird feeder is a relative term. At least that is the case around here. A few mornings ago we spotted the first rabbit to visit the feeders. Normally, all we see during the winter are rabbit tracks crisscrossing the gardens.
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Up on Hawthorn Hill: Making sense of things
A book I have been reading investigates the various ways over time that we have made sense of the world. It carries the reader through to the present via several seminal classical texts and ultimately aims to suggest a strategy for “ finding meaning in a secular age.”
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Up on Hawthorn Hill: Of birds and faith
I watch birds quite a bit. Every five days or so I send in a report to Cornell as partof its annual Project Feeder Watch program. The data, collected from volunteers from all over the country, enables scientists to track population trends. I would spend quite a bit of time checking out the visitors to our feeders anyway. Participating in the feeder program makes a personal pleasure that much more meaningful. It is rare that aesthetical and scientific endeavors work in tandem.
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Up on Hawthorn Hill: Circularity
When she was a puppy my dog Gabby would run in what I described then as “circles of joy.” She celebrated her15th birthday a few weeks ago and despite the inevitable frailties that old age imposes upon all of us, she is doing pretty well.
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Up on Hawthorn Hill: Irony abounds
These are querulous times. Dissent and disagreement, as uncomfortable as they sometimes are, are essential components of a viable democracy. Democracies are always messy because everyone has a right to speak his mind and because whenever a majority is able to gain the numerical upper hand it pretty much runs the show. Several political philosophers have written quite persuasively of what they characterize as the “tyranny of the majority.” Get enough people on your side and you have the opportunity to get your way so long as you are able to maintain power. I suspect that most thoughtful people would agree that wisdom is hard to come by.
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Up on Hawthorn Hill: Of kinglets and mortality
This is that transitional time of year when fall begins to take its final bow and winter starts to seep into our lives not always with a great deal of subtlety. It is also a time when body seems quite willing to step aside and let mind have dominant sway for a while.
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Up On Hawthorn Hill: Wisdom
I do not know about anyone else, but I tired of selfcongratulatory political talk a long time ago. Fact is, I have never liked it much. One candidate interviewed yesterday had nothing at all good to say about the present administration. In the process of lambasting its record on just about every front, this individual never once offered any specifics as to how he would go about creating jobs, ending Medicare fraud, or terminating these idiotic wars that we seem intent on embroiling ourselves in.
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Up On Hawthorn Hill: Rights
There is a lot of chatter these days about rights. It gives one pause. Several weeks ago I heard a politician claim that it is time to win our country back. I was not aware that we had lost it. I wonder who stole it. If you ask a rabid conservative, the answer will most likely be those bleeding heart liberals.
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Up On Hawthorn Hill: Looking for diversions
It has been a long, psychically trying winter. I always feel more comfortable knowing that I am not alone, so when friends complain openly about cabin fever and wanting “to get the hell out of here” for a while I know exactly what they mean. We are planning a trip to Costa Rica in March, so in order to keep one’s head above the darkening inner clouds, it is necessary to look for diversions that have, as Wordsworth put it, a renovating virtue. Luckily for me, Redpolls fit the bill.
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Hawthorn Hill: Quietness
I want to make a case for quietness. Thoreau writes that he never found a companion as companionable as solitude. It is a sentiment that I share. As I sit here looking out over the snow-covered hills I am struck by the absence of movement. I am awed by a stillness unstirred by wind or activity of any kind. There is no noise, neither human nor animal. How nice that is.
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Up On Hawthorn Hill: Bird Feeder?
