To thine own self be true

Winner of ARTA’s News & Views poem contest. winter 2015 issue.

The magazine picture is evocative though the mountain views from the first hills west out of Calgary on #1 would have been more accurate and exhilarating. This poem ‘wrote itself’ on my way to a Banff film conference when I stayed at the cabin of my Scona colleague whose classroom was next door to mine. I’ll include the ‘cabin poem’ below which they had framed and hung in their cabin after my stay:

There is nothing quite like solitude, especially when you’re ‘soaking up’ and totally immersed, as an individual, in beautiful, quiet, wild scenery. One is left with nothing except words and images, strong inner feelings (in this case, of peace), and, if you’re lucky, another poem that ‘wrote itself’.

(Time to get out there, outside again…)

It’s not accidental that screensavers are often of tranquil scenes of nature. Or that the Shaw’s Frame channel is so popular as a screen background in many poems. Likewise, when people escape cities to go to the country on holidays and ‘to get away from it all.’

As Wordsworth noted in “Tintern Abbey” and Beethoven in his “Pastoral”, scenes of nature are restorative and speak to something deeper, something spiritual in humans. It appeals to that which needs and desires deep spiritual nourishment on a regular basis.

Death is very much a part of our daily lives. If we aren’t looking at photos in our homes and in newspapers of those we’ve known who’ve passed, we experience death moments of other kinds, especially in Nature. Sometimes these moments are juxtaposed with ordinary daily activities like going to the store or even playing a board game on the patio. Violent death often takes our breaths away as in watching the daily news from the war in Ukraine: the suddenness, randomness, and absurdity of it. Death, too, can occur right in our own backyards and houses.

My own basic awareness behind every poem is of context; these poems all occur in different contexts which resonate in different ways. “For whom the bell tolls” and all that is on the edge of these people’s consciousness.

The last ironic lines are a reminder that there are some things and feelings which are beyond our ken or our choices in how we respond to memorable events. But, in this case, I felt lucky to assemble the words to encapsulate all the above.

Solitude, Nature, and sanity vs. pig-piling, materialism, and madness. Uh, why leave home when you’re at peace? And the knowledge, especially of late, that good weather is at best ephemeral and more so these days, what with the proof of climate change revenge on the failed stewards of this planet.

Situational irony. At the time, I experienced this poem, I was struck by the peace of the cemetery juxtaposed by the noise of the highway some 100 yards away. Many times, it appears that folks are going nowhere fast, only getting close to a cemetery. At the same time, there’s a reminder here that cemeteries can be dangerous places to walk about it if you’re not paying attention. But maybe there’s another ironic truth to the sign as well. In the end, the sign cinched that there was a poem in the experience.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). Her 1775 poems were not published in the form she wrote them until the 1955 Thomas Johnson/Harvard edition! (All previous publications distorted her capitalization, punctuation, and wording.)

Fascinating biography with many illustrations.

Recommended for fans of his poetry.

1832, “Louis-Francois Bertin”, oil on canvas, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. A neoclassical portrait close to photographic quality.

Like my parents, I have been a long-term believer in Nature as a major force and influence in my life/our lives. (There is also much to be said in favour of the role of church in many people’s social lives.) Nature has been a palpable long-time Wordsworthian companion and more physically, mentally, and spiritually present in my life, from my only-child days growing up onward. For me, there is a peace that passeth understanding connected with the presence of Nature.