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James Dickey, the noted poet who died earlier this year, told me in a 1989 BookPage interview he thought it "a function of the human mind to reach out for some memorable language. You hear it on television all the time; you read it in the newspapers. People are trying to say something that is memorable -- they are trying to be witty. All of these in an effort to reach the state of poetry which is the best of all."
In truth, there are many kinds of poetry. Here are three distinctive collections to consider.
The last two winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature are poets. Last year's winner, Wislawa Szymborska, of Poland, offers 100 poems from 40 years in View with a Grain of Sand. Her poem "Under One Small Star" gives us a glimpse of her intelligence, wit, charm, understatement, and humility: "My apologies to great questions for small answers," and "Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words then labor heavily so that they may seem light." Or, as she writes in "The Century's Decline," "the most pressing questions are naive ones."
The 1995 Nobel laureate, Seamus Heaney, of Ireland, much better known in the U.S., explores the natural world, a varied cast of characters, and ethical issues in The Spirit Level. In "The Gravel Walks," he asks us to "Hoard and praise the verity of gravel. Gems for the undeluded." And, in "Weighing In," we are urged to "Prophesy, give scandal, cast the stone" in response to the "Passive Suffering that makes the world go round." Thoughtful, elegant, and very down to earth.
Author of The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje is also a poet of note. The Cinnamon Peeler brings the best of his work over 27 years. The personal, family history, love, and different perceptions of reality are among the themes. He often surprises and raises penetrating questions as in "Rat Jelly" and "White Dwarfs." Overall, there is a lean narrative power that grips the reader.
Not all poets can write well. In fact, some who have a compulsion to write verse have no sense of their lack of ability. Very Bad Poetry, edited by Kathryn Petras and Ross Petras, acquaints us with many of these poets and also others, William Wordsworth and James Whitcomb Riley, who had bad writing days. The reader should know that "Death, preferably by disaster, is a favorite topic of very bad poets. They eagerly and cheerfully share with their audience every lurid detail." Several of James McIntyre's "cheese odes" are here including one about an actual cheese that weighed over four tons. There is an anonymous poem, "Ode to a Ditch," and "Song of the Three Hundred Thousand Drunkards in the United States," one of many dealing with moral rectitude. The editors even select "The Worst Poem Ever Written in the English Language."
Although it is not a collection of poems, poetry lovers should enjoy Richard Wilbur's The Catbird Song: Prose Pieces 1969-1995. Wilbur is one of our most distinguished poets and translators. I particularly enjoyed his appreciations of May Swenson, Elizabeth Bishop, and John Ciardi. Of Bishop, he writes, "If she was afflicted by the absurdity of things, she also took delight in everything curious, incongruous, or crazy; that's one reason why she was the best of company. Almost all of my mental pictures of her belong somewhere on a scale between amiability and hilarity." His reflections on the art of translation and "The Persistence of Riddles" are fascinating.
The book concludes with an exploration of the work of Witter Bynner, a poet much praised in his own time, earlier in this century, but whose work is largely forgotten today.
Roger Miller is a freelance writer in Lopez, Pennsylvania. He can be reached at roger_miller@bookpage.com.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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