The poets down here don’t write nothin’ at all

 

When the poets dreamed of angels, what did they see?
History lined up in a flash at their backs
When the poets dreamed of angels, what did they see?
The bishops and knights well placed to attack

David Sylvian, When the poets dreamed of angels

I honestly never intended this to be a poetry blog. I had no idea I would be including poems here beyond the lyrics of my favourite songs. The fact is I almost never write poetry. And yet here I am, just eight months in with over fifty poems now posted. How did that happen?

If I’m honest, my original reason for deciding to give it a go was that I wanted to explore the more erotic aspects of our story (I’ve branched out a bit since then) without it reading like, well, porn. The emotional and physical intensity of our love is a huge part of all of this and I felt I had to find a way to address that.

Poetry seemed to offer an opportunity to capture that intensity without going into too much gory detail (not that I think there’s necessarily anything wrong with doing that. I know some bloggers are very happy to write intimate prose about their sex lives and more power to them, it’s just not the direction I wanted to take here).

The power of a poem is that it can convey so much and still leave space for the reader’s own imaginings and interpretations. I vividly recall a high school English class where we explored a very moving and disturbing poem about the horrors of war. It was called The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner and ended with a particularly gruesome piece of imagery. Here is the poem in its five line entirety:

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Randall Jarrell, 1914 – 1965

The whole class, including our (male) teacher, was in agreement as to what the poet’s message was. All, that is, except for one young woman – she would have been no more than fifteen I suppose – who was convinced that the entire poem was about an abortion from the perspective of the fetus.

Now, at the time, I remember being quite frustrated with the girl and the way she stubbornly stuck to her interpretation of the piece in the face of overwhelming opposition from the rest of the group. Looking at the poem again after more than thirty years, I can see exactly what she was saying.

I’m still just as convinced as I was then, that the poet intended the piece to be taken literally. But the imagery certainly lends itself heavily to the other interpretation. I see that now, though I couldn’t then.

That’s absolutely the best thing about poetry in my opinion. There is always another way of looking at the piece. The reader will bring their own insights to a poem, imbuing it with new layers of meaning that even the poet may not have considered.

 

 

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