I’m trying hard to understand poetry, but it’s a real slog some days. I’ve been making my way slowly through three poetry books: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Richard Wilbur, and Selected Poetry of Ogden Nash. It’s not uncommon for me to have to look up words, phrases, places and names to help frame a context for poems in the first two books, but thank God for Ogden Nash – there’s nothing oblique or esoteric about his poetry.
Here are some examples:
The difference between Despair
and Fear – is like the One
Between the instant of a Wreck-
And when the Wreck has been-
The Mind is smooth – no Motion –
Contented as the Eye
Upon the Forehead of a Bust –
That knows – it cannot see.
Emily Dickinson
I’ve read that one several times and am still not sure what she means.
Here’s another Dickinson one:
I send Two Sunsets –
Day and I – in competition ran –
I finished Two – and several Stars –
While He – was making One –
His own was ampler – but as I
Was saying to a friend –
Mine – is the more convenient
To Carry in the Hand –
I like that one! I believe she is talking about the difference between her making a painting of a sunset, and the Day’s making a real one.
Now here’s the first four stanzas of one by Richard Wilbur entitled “To Ishtar”
Is it less than your brilliance, Ishtar,
How the snowfield smarts in the fresh sun,
And the bells of its melting ring, and we blink
At the light flexing in trickles?
It is the Spring’s disgrace
That already, before the prone arbutus
Will risk its whiteness, you have come down
To the first gate and darkened.
Forgive us who cannot conceive you
Elsewhere and maiden, but love you only
Fallen among us in rut and furrow,
In the shade of amassing leaves,
Or scrawny in plucked harvest,
Your losses having fattened the world
Till crown less, starless, you stoop and enter
The low door of Irkalla.
I felt pretty clueless by this time. I looked up Ishtar: Mesopotamian goddess of love and war. Not helping. I looked up arbutus: a flowering evergreen shrub. Irkalla: ancient Mesopotamian underworld. I was starting to get the idea that this poem might be about going from winter to spring. I did some more googling and ran across a reference that said “the descent of Ishtar marks the death of the year (winter) which is reborn as spring with her annual resurrection.” The word Easter apparently comes from a form of Ishtar.
I’m sorry to put you through all of this, but perhaps some of you speak “poesy” better than I do. It seems so HARD to penetrate some of this stuff, but I’d like to at least try. I went to Goodreads to look at reviews for Wilbur’s book, thinking that maybe I wasn’t the only one who was struggling. Nope – I’m definitely the only one. People were giving it glowing reviews…
But here’s a little poem by Ogden Nash:
Oh, once there lived in Kankakee
A handy dandy Yankakee,
A lone and lean and lankakee
Cantankakerous Yankakee.
He slept without a blankaket,
And whiskikey, how he drankaket,
This rough and ready Yankakee,
The bachelor of Kankakee.
He never used a hankakee,
He jeered at hanky-pankakee;
Indeed, to give a frank account,
He didn’t have a bank account.
And yet at times he hankakered
In marriage to be anchachored.
When celibacy rankakles,
One dreams of pretty ankakles.
He took a trip to Waikiki
And wooed a girl aimed Psycheche,
And now this rugged Yankakee
‘S a married man in Kankakee.
Good night, dear friends, and thankakee.
If you’re like me, you probably skimmed this whole post – it’s hard for me to make myself read poetry. No judgment from me on that score.
Anyhoo, good night, dear friends, and thankakee!
I’ll probably delete this in the morning with a book of poetry in my hand and a puzzled look on my face.
Lynniebeemuseoday 