“With seventy staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs”–RD
(above on the ‘Left Bank’ at the Impressionists show, Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2018)
(another geezer, Hemingway commemorative stamp, part of my famous American authors stamp collection)
“Common sense is very uncommon.”
–Horace Greeley
“Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.”
–Victor Hugo
“Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.”
–H.W. Shaw
“A sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some examples above…
I have definitely had and still have a ‘dreamy’, romantic, idealized, lofty view and approach that has supported, nourished, and motivated me most of my near 70 years.
A vision and preference for what used to be called ‘finer things’. No doubt much of this lifelong quest had much to do with context, timing, and opportunity. I was relatively free in my childhood, youth, and university years. I was an only child with few constraints on my imagination, fun, and choices. But I was lucky enough, along the way, to become a reader, a thinker, a writer, a lover of music, a musician, a teacher, and a poet.
The latter was a long self-actualization of my personal, moral, and aesthetic values. It crystallized and confirmed that I was mostly about ideas, creativity, and performing, thanks to reading, writing, teaching, higher education (olde-styled university education). A lot of my days would be spent in the company of Truth, Beauty, and, yes, Love. There are volumes I could say and write about those three companions and ruling passions.
Nature was often another companion, appealing to soul and spirit. I have returned to it of late, even in my immediate surroundings, solo walks, and trips to places like the Rockies, Radium, Butchart Gardens in the spring, New England in the fall, the Arizona desert in January and, strangely enough, the U of A on weekend mornings. Like my late mother, I have become a flower gardener, and I remain interested in birds, animals, weather, and the wild.
Family has also helped ground this free-spirited individual and given me more empathy and insight into all of our essential Inner Childness. We are marked for life in childhood as I have indicated above and we must needs give our Inner Child periodic (and for me maximal) play throughout adulthood and later years. This process is basic to remaining free and happy. “All work and no play makes Dick a dull man.”
In the end, we must all learn to let go, accept ourselves and others, and that the world is in other hands. In that necessary process, there is peace, more freedom, and what Keats called “Negative capability” — an acceptance of whatever unresolved contraries without the olde lifelong restlessness, frustrations, struggles, and discontentments.
“We’ll climb that hill no matter how steep when we get up to it.”
–Bob Dylan, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”
Shades of the opening overhead letterboxed shot of Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia
and earphone music in crowds to siphon off what is often just meaningless babble shouting and screaming at individuals, invading their private consciousness. Now if only, specialized glasses could screen out all the polluting visual advertising we encounter everywhere we go.
with Harvard, memories of Timothy Leary’s 1960-63 LSD work at Harvard comes to mind. Ground-breaking dope research now at Harvard? No, Tim was first, 6 decades ago.
“In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
–Erasmus
always busy apologizing and exonerating the past to govern responsibly and significantly in the present and for the future. Whenever there’s a real crisis on, he is doing something irrelevant which never helps here-and-now Canadians. His reign has been an absurd irrelevant toke/joke.
by Richard Davies, 2019
The title catches the reader’s attention, is engaging and makes the reader curious.
The look of the poem is likewise engaging. The reader is pleased by its first-look structure to the eye. Long continuous poems don’t work unless they’re Frost’s “Birches” or “Mending Wall”. They have to have continuously interesting images, sounds, and significant/engaging subject matter. Poems broken up into stanzas are more interesting immediately be they rhyming or not. Poems that break free of typographical restrictions and meander across a page can work if the choices fit the subject matter and the experience of the poem. See Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind.
Take a look also at the last words for each line down the page. Run your eye down those words to get a sense of what the poem is about. I have often said that these last words are the embedded poem, atmospherically or idea-wise.
Read the poem silently. If the grammar and mechanics are fine, you should be able to read it easily and continuously to the end. If something trips the reader up, it is an aforementioned error or a deliberate choice by the poet drawing attention to something. Punctuation can be very enhancing as E.E. Cummings demonstrated as long as it does not draw too much attention to itself or is actually a realized enhancement. Read it aloud if you can without stopping. It shouldn’t have any awkwardness or ‘stumbles’ in it.
It is one thing to write about ordinary, commonplace things and situations as Pablo Neruda did in his book of odes to things, but quite another if the subject matter never rises above triviality, A weak poem has no insight, no mystery, no surprises.
A good poem keeps the reader engaged, even to the point of ‘derailing’ the reader as the poem is read because the focus or ‘interruption’ is interesting, intriguing, or well-done.
Each poem will have a central purpose that is made clear; likewise, subject matter that arouses curiosity and interest which are both sustained, developed, and realized successfully.
The poem will have a rhythm or changing rhythms that work when the poem is read aloud.
Every good poem has effective sound choices and a ‘music’.
The poem will play with words effectively. Both simple one-syllable words or polysyllabic words will work (unless they’re unnecessary, don’t fit the poem, or are pretentious). The chosen words and phrasing should matter, communicate, and resonate with a reader and his/her consciousness.
Figures of speech should be original and used appropriately to develop feeling and thoughts.
Any names or allusions used should affect the average reader immediately. If notes are necessary, they should be added to enhance the reader’s experience. Epigraphs can cover most contextual additions for wider understanding and appreciation.
Quotations can add to a poem’s effectiveness reflecting ironies, voices, and situations.
There is nothing worse than a flat poem with no carefully chosen structure, flow, and music of its own. There should also be, as Frost suggested, both delight and wisdom.
I can think of very few successful poems that do not contain or subsume conflict, contrast, and irony. Good poems are also memorable and affect readers immediately and over time. A good poem will communicate the writer’s distinctive voice, persona, and style, thereby enhancing the reader’s experience. Overall, it is usually clear that a good poem originates from a sensitive and thoughtful person with something worthwhile saying in a memorable way.
(published in the May 31, 2019 Stroll of Poets Newsletter)
