We're Not Fooling!

A little while ago Kym came up with one of her great ideas and asked Kat and I if we were interested in coordinating some poetry posts for National Poetry Month. She thought that since we all post poetry fairly regularly, we could do something together. We've figured out some fun things to do on Thursdays this month, so we hope to provide you with some questions, answers, poets, themes, and of course, poetry.

We're starting National Poetry Month off today with our answers to "Why poetry?" What purposes does poetry serve? Why do we like it and what do we get out of it? 

Those are some deep and personal questions, but I would agree with Robert Frost and extend his quote to include "Reading a poem is discovering." I had the usual exposure to poetry in school. This included memorizing a few lines of well-known poems and learning how to write haiku in elementary school. In high school English we had units on poetry that included endless analysis of poems, and my teachers were most often concerned with their students arriving at the correct answer that was given in the teacher's edition. It was enough to suck any life, joy, or celebration out of the poems we were reading, and it definitely had that effect on me. 

But one day in 2007 I was making the bed and listening to NPR. There was a piece about the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska in which she read her poem "A Tale Begun". She captured my attention immediately and I stood by the bed, mesmerized and spellbound. This was a poem that seemed to capture many of my own feelings, and she expressed them better than I could myself. That is probably one of the main reasons I enjoy poetry; it can express things I might not have even known I was feeling. It can unite people in feelings, language, and words. Poetry can provide delight, expose us to the unexpected, and show us details of the everyday. Poets give us economy of language, are evocative, and they are sometimes soothing and reassuring. Poetry is a way to express deep emotion, from intense joy to crushing grief. It has provided a meaningful way for me to deal with the pandemic. 

Szymborska won the Nobel prize for literature in 1996. The following is from her acceptance speech where she talks about the astonishment of everyday life:

"Astonishing" is an epithet concealing a logical trap. We're astonished, after all, by things that deviate from some well-known and universally acknowledged norm, from an obviousness we've grown accustomed to. Granted, in daily speech, where we don't stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like "the ordinary world," "ordinary life," "the ordinary course of events." ... But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world.

Poetry reminds us that our world is astonishing in so many ways.

A Tale Begun

by Wislawa Szymborska

The world is never ready

for the birth of a child.

Our ships are not yet back from Winnland.

We still have to get over the S. Gothard pass.

We've got to outwit the watchmen on the desert of Thor,

fight our way through the sewers to Warsaw's center,

gain access to King Harald the Butterpat,

and wait until the downfall of Minister Fouche.

Only in Acapulco

can we begin anew.

We've run out of bandages,

matches, hydraulic presses, arguments, and water.

We haven't got the trucks, we haven't got the Minghs' support.

This skinny horse won't be enough to bribe the sheriff.

No news so far about the Tartars' captives.

We'll need a warmer cave for winter

and someone who can speak Harari.

We don't know whom to trust in Nineveh,

what conditions the Prince-Cardinal will decree,

which names Beria has still got inside his files.

They say Karol the Hammer strikes tomorrow at dawn.

In this situation let's appease Cheops,

report ourselves of our own free will,

change faiths,

pretend to be friends with the Doge

and say that we've got nothing to do with the Kwabe tribe.

Time to light the fires.

Let's send a cable to grandma in Zabierzow.

Let's untie the knots in the yurt's leather straps.

May delivery be easy,

may our child grow and be well.

Let him be happy from time to time

and leap over abysses.

Let his heart have strength to endure

and his mind be awake and reach far.

But not so far

that it sees into the future.

Spare him

that one gift,

0 heavenly powers.

View with a Grain of Sand, copyright © 1993 by Wislawa Szymborska, English translation by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh copyright © 1995 by Harcourt, Inc.

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Be sure to visit Kym and Kat today and read their answers to "Why poetry?" and join us next Thursday for our Poet of the Week!