"Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood" ~ T.S. Eliot

... And I am going to prove it. These days poetry is far less read than almost any other type of literature, which is desperately sad. Perhaps it is because it takes more effort to read a poem - it is not written, like in a novel, as ordinary, continuous, even lines where sentences cohere together. Sometimes we are bedazzled by it, seeing it so exalted and highly viewed that we worry we will not ever be able to understand its "hidden meanings", which we are convinced all poems possess. Yes, they usually do, if they are good poems (although even bad poems contain hidden meanings!). What it is important to realise is that often when a poet writes a poem, they draw on their own individual experiences and associations, as well as what literary critics and professors call "tropes" - poetic images and themes which continue throughout literary history (for example the symbolic linking of the rose with love). So we can unravel some of poetry through these ideas which we come across many times, but sometimes we have no hope because we don't share the poet's experience - or occasionally their historical timeframe and socio-cultural background and awareness among other things. This is where our own experience comes into play.

There are lots of technical terms for techniques used in poetry, and some of them enhance our enjoyment and understanding of it as we see what effect metre or rhythm has on the poem's overall effect and thus meaning (I recommend Stephen Fry's 'The Ode Less Travelled' for the person interested in poetry but ignorant of the technicalities). However, not understanding or knowing these terms does not at all need to hamper our appreciation of poetry. I find that often the sound of the words of a poem in my head, or on my mouth as I read them aloud, bring about emotions and associations even before I begin to understand what the poet is talking about - a great example is Keats; try 'Ode to Autumn' ('Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' - how beautiful!!) and 'Ode to a Nightingale' and I hope you'll see what I mean!! You can find these poems, and any others I mention, on poemhunter.com or hopefully in any good English poetry anthology from a library.

So appreciation of poetry need not be a scary or elitist thing - just read the poem slowly, aloud if possible, and let it speak to you and connect with your own experience; you may then find it easier to understand. Savour the sound - English really is a beautiful language and poets exploit that beauty to convey their meaning.

Here is one of my favourite poets, who I am very far from understanding, e.e.cummings, with 'i carry your heart with me' (and the typing/grammatical 'errors' are intentional; it was his style).

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)


I love that second stanza (verse), especially the line: 'this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart'. I couldn't explain why, and this is the wonder of poetry. I love the unusual way of expressing love as comparing it with something so huge and incomprehensible by humans - what is literally keeping the stars apart? Why should it not be love?

I was going to post a poem by John Donne - a very different poet but again a favourite of mine - but I find I've rambled and sermonised enough! Go explore poetry for yourself... please!!

I'm currently rather randomly reading a book intended for children, Gatty's Tale by Kevin Crossley-Holland, which takes a character from his medieval trilogy centred around a boy called Arthur (highly recommended!) and makes her the primary focus. I'm not sure if I'll blog on it, but it is a nice book, written in Crossley-Holland's unusual style, which combines poetry with fancy and a different way of seeing things. I'm also reading Philip Yancey's The Jesus I Never Knew, as something completely different, but am enjoying that too - it's interesting to see how much of our perceptions of Jesus are altered by our social, political, religious and historical perspectives.

Blog the First

Well here I am with a blog... Advance apologies for my lack of eloquence and occasionally inability to say exactly what I'm trying to, as well as occasional pretentiousness... (and over-uses of ellipses!). I'm also aware that sometimes I sound as though I'm writing an essay; hopefully this will change and become more informal as I become more used to casually discussing literature.

So here as I write my first blog I'm thinking about John Fowles' 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' (1969) which I have just finished reading. It's an intruiging book, and I enjoyed reading it, largely because it made me think. A brief outline of the story: It is 1867. Young gentleman Charles is staying in Lyme, as is his fiancee Ernestina Freeman (daughter of a rich tradesman of humble origin). During their stay they encounter Sarah Woodruff and learn the story of her relationship with 'The French Lieutenant' of the title. To tell any more would be to give away the story, which itself contains both passion and madness. The great interest, however, is in the way Fowles presents the story - or at least the way his narrator presents the story.

Fowles assumes the paradoxical role of an all-seeing, all-understanding and all-knowing yet twentieth century narrator, yet who admits 'This story I am telling is all imagination. These characters I create never existed outside my own mind. If I have pretended until now to know my characters' minds and innermost thoughts, it is because I am writing in... a convention universally accepted at the time of my story: that the novelist stands next to God.' (Fowles' narrator, whether it is himself he is portraying or not, is a fully-convinced atheist and his references to the after-life are humorous and slightly mocking) And indeed, this narrator flits frequently back and forth from "such and such happened was then usual but now we see it like this...", discussing the both the Victorian and modern ages as a whole, and telling us things about the future of the characters far before they happen. Occasionally this gives the effect of the narrator judging the period quite harshly, although his main concern is the issue of freedom during the Victorian era.

Following from this supposed admission that he does not understand his own characters, the narrator believes: "We know a world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator; a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live." This theory, along with the constant reference to and musing upon freedom drives the novel to its startling double-ending, which is evidently meant to free us as it frees the characters. My reaction, however, was possibly like that of many readers: frustration, impatience and confusion. In yet another paradox this is the exact view which Fowles' narrator would mock us as Victorian for taking, in our wish to have everything sanitised and cut and dried.

I think to really understand all the implications of what Fowles (or his narrator) is suggesting in this novel will require further reading at a later date (possibly after some study of literary theory and cricitism when I might be able to place tentative labels to some of these concepts!), as the interest for me lies here in these theories and ideas rather than in the characters - although those of Sarah and Charles are particularly interesting.

Do not read this book if: you want a light, easy read without any philsophising.
Do read if: ideas and the Victorian era interest you
Books it reminds me of: Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990) (which I recently read and really enjoyed, maybe I'll blog on it some time); Human Traces, Sebastian Faulkes (2005)
Other info: It was made into a film in 1981, screenplay by Harold Pinter and starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons (I might try and hunt it out!)

Your thoughts on this book are more than welcome :)