Poetic License

            The trees in the photo above immediately brought to mind the words of poet Joyce Kilmer, first published in 1914, still ringing in my memory.  In the simplest of words, he captured a thought that would  last long beyond his death at such a young age, fallen to a sniper's bullet in World War I when he was just 31 years old.

"I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree."

            As I've reflected on the death of Maya Angelou in recent days, I've been reminded how much poetry enriches our lives.  It's an art form that some find off-putting, much as some find Shakespeare's plays troubling.  Poetry, like Shakespeare, makes us think.  That's not an activity we always come to with enthusiasm in today's hurry-up, get-it-done, ASAP world.

            Angelou's words do make us think.  But even as they are provocative, they are beautiful, singing with the rhythms of her struggles and her victories.  In "Still I Rise," she wrote:

" Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide."

            Poets tell stories with words that paint pictures, words that evoke feelings and stir us to follow them in their thoughts.  As I read Angelou's words, I think of the poems that have been part of my life, from childhood to today, from the simplest verses that spoke to me of things seen, but not yet understood, to the more complex stanzas that urged me to interpret experiences that I've not had and may never know except through the words of others.

            The first poem I can remember hearing and memorizing was a child's prayer. 

"Now I lay me down to sleep.

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take."

            This prayer, recited nightly as we were going to bed,  was comforting initially, not because I knew what it meant, but because its cadence was soothing.  As I grew up, I began to reflect on its somewhat morbid tone. 

            In conversation with friends, I found that others had found this a frightening prayer.  The specter of death was not a comfort to them.  My early lack of fear was, I think, engendered by the fact that we were taught to end the poem with asking for blessings on our family.  We learned to extend the list of those blessed to include little-known relatives and pets, alive and dead, thus attempting to delay bedtime.  When I researched the words later in life, I found only vague references to its origin in the 18th century.  Some say it was written by Joseph Addison and first appeared in 1711 in The Spectator.

            Another childhood poem comes to mind whenever I lift my eyes to the night sky.  It is yet another perfect connection between rhyme and meter that will stick in our minds forever after just one or two recitations.   The origin of its words reputedly come from an Englishwoman, Jane Taylor, who published it with other nursery rhymes in 1806.  The music it has been set to is attributed to Mozart as an adaptation from an old French tune.

"Twinkle, twinkle little star

How I wonder what you are."

            My father, a man who was born and lived all but a very few years of life in Georgia, loved his state and its most famous poet, Sidney Lanier.  Thus I heard Lanier's "Song of the Chattahoochee" many times through my young life and can even now recite its first few lines.  Aptly named a "song," it still speaks to me as a soaring tribute to the river for which it is named and the path of that river from Georgia's mountains to the sea.

"Out of the hills of Habersham,

Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover's pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall."

            I was thrilled when I was given a small volume of poetry in high school to find Lanier's "Song" there along with other famous poems.  I was moved again to remember its words when we became part-time residents of Lake Lure and, while roaming the countryside in Western North Carolina, came across a roadside plaque marking the home near Tryon where Sidney Lanier died.

            Poetry often drives the songs that we sing for decades, remembering words and verses when we can't even remember personal information that would be useful to keep in mind.  The strength of rhymes and poetry, according to those who have studied this more than I, is the combination of rhythm and imagery that simplifies information by putting thoughts together in a form we can recite and thus remember. 

           

            One of my all-time favorites is the Eagles' "Desperado," its haunting lyrics certainly aided by  an equally touching melody, but its words are among those I can never forget, such as the stanzas that say:

"Desperado, oh, you ain't gettin' no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they're drivin' you home
And freedom, oh freedom well, that's just some people talkin'
Your prison is walking through this world all alone.

Don't your feet get cold in the winter time?
The sky won't snow and the sun won't shine
It's hard to tell the night time from the day
You're losin' all your highs and lows
Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away?"

            Written by Glenn Frey and Don Henley, the song is said to have been about the trials and tribulations of being an artist, but the word pictures drawn in song always evoked in me the sense that it was a cowboy's lament.  Its words captured a solitary life that was meant to be free, but was instead achingly lonely.

            Angelou's passing encourages me to  seek anew the words of poets, those who find the way to touch my heart and move my mind as Maya Angelou touched and moved so many with her honesty and her passion.  Perhaps even a few well-crafted lines each day are the best medicine we can find to slow the frenetic pace that technology allows and fill the tiny spaces that we allow ourselves for reflection.  As written long ago, there should be "A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance..." and perhaps a time to breathe in beautiful, lyrical words that touch our souls and linger in our dreams.