Today the Academy of American Poets celebrates a day for Poetry & the Creative Mind, with its 15th annual gala at Lincoln Center. It highlights the impact of poetry in our culture, on readers and on creators in other fields. The benefit event
.
.
.
.
.
.
How rich we are, this generation of poetry lovers: all this new wealth of online voices, and still our traditional libraries, surviving so far, forests of printed books in them. And so many people caring in their different ways to to keep the craft alive, who knew?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Poetry
Marianne Moore (American, 1887-1972)
I, too dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there is in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a
.
high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
useful; when they become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the
same thing can be said for all of us—that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand. The bat,
holding on upside down or in quest of something to
.
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic wrinkling his skin like a horse that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician—case after case
could be cited did
one wish it; nor is it valid
to discriminate against “business documents and
.
school books”; all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half-poets, the result is not poetry,
nor till the autocrats among us can be
“literalists of
the imagination”—above
insolence and triviality and can present
.
for inspection, “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,” shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand, in defiance of their opinion
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness, and
that which is on the other hand,
genuine, then you are interested in poetry.
+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+
Last year the Nobel Prize in Literature went to American composer and performer Bob Dylan (1941-) "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."
Clearly not all songs qualify as poetry, yet poetry and song are often twinned. (Nod to Shakespeare, among others.)
And in popular American culture, a poem linked to music has the best chance of all to touch mass audiences.
Here is one that IMO deserves the name.
Sounds of Silence
Paul Simon (American, 1941- ), Arthur Garfunkel (American, 1941- )
Hello darkness, my old friend;
I’ve come to talk to you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.
.
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone;
‘Neath the halo of a streetlamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by a flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.
.
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.
.
“Fools” said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.”
But my words like silent raindrops fell
— — —
And echoed in the wells of silence.
.
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made,
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming,
And the sign said, “The words of the prophets
Are written on he subway walls,
Tenement halls,
And whispered in the sound of silence. “
.
.
+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+
.
.
A few notes:
I’ve never entirely known how to judge Moore’s famous didactic poem, and — surprise — neither does Slate editor Robert Pinsky (as of 2009).
According to Pinsky, neither did Moore herself. She kept fiddling with it for more than 50 years, he states, and finally cut it to just three lines! The version above, often anthologized, is from 1924.
Some other interesting takes are here, courtesy of the University of Illinois.
In some ways I actually dislike it.
Yet love “imaginary gardens with real toads in them” — who could put it better? This phrase, according to Pinsky, was not actually a quotation; Moore just chose to make it look like one.
(”Literalists of the imagination” on the other hand approximates a comment by William Yeats on William Blake. Yeats actually called Blake “a too literal realist of imagination, as others are of nature,” Elizabeth W. Joyce reports in a piece on the U. of Illinois site.)
.
The original, acoustic recorded version of “Sounds of Silence” was issued in 1964 as part of the first Simon & Garfunkel album ”Wednesday Morning, 3 AM.”
That album did not sell well, but an overdubbed version of “Sound of Silence" with electric guitar and drum hit the charts in 1965.
Which was when I first heard it on a local pop radio station — and stayed glued to the radio for the next 2 weeks until it played again, because I’d missed the song ID the first time around.
What is the role of poetry in our culture?
Sometimes—to startle 12-year olds awake and make them feel all of a sudden less alone.
.
For enthusiasts, if any, a much more recent live performance below...(undated on YouTube), and here are some comments on the You Tube site:
One of my top favs of our era. I wonder if they knew it was prophecy of our world today?
Wow, the first few seconds of them singing together sent a chill up my spine. So cool!!
When the era of Men is over and wilderness rules this planet once more, few of us will be left and songs like this will still humm in our souls. Briliant!!
+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+
Happy “Poetry & the Creative Mind” Day!
POST YOUR OWN POEM (OR THOUGHTS) BELOW?
+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+
More:
Classic Poetry Group
Readers and Book Lovers (with full schedule of literary diaries)
“Expression is the need of my soul” — Archy the Cockroach (via Don Marquis)