Where did the poets go?
Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere / On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five / Hardly a man is now alive / Who remembers that famous day and year . . . (From “Paul Revere’s Ride”)
It was the schooner Hesperus / That sailed the wintry sea / And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr / To bear him company . . . (From “The Wreck of the Hesperus”)
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! / Sail on, O Union, strong and great! / Humanity with all its fears / With all the hopes of future years / Is hanging breathless on thy fate! (From “The Building of the Ship”)
For much of human history, literature was indistinguishable from poetry. And before there was writing, bards spoke in meter and rhyme, the better to remember their tales and to carry their listeners along. Playwrights often composed their lines in poetic form, for similar reasons. Even today, songwriters observe conventions of poetry in constructing their lyrics.
But poetry per se fell out of favor as an item of popular consumption, certainly in America, starting in the late nineteenth century. A combination of factors did it in. Innovations in printing reduced the per-page cost of producing works of literature, bringing books within reach of ordinary people. A distinctive feature of poetry is the punch it packs; novelists ramble comparatively, and the new technology let them do just that.
About this same time colleges and universities were becoming centers of research. This happened first in the sciences, but the humanities felt obliged to play along. English departments demanded sophistication rather than popularity, which was often seen as the mark of unsophistication. The more abstruse a poem, the better chance it had to please the critics.
And popular music stole much of poetry’s thunder. Economic development in America permitted more families to acquire pianos, around which people would gather to sing songs by Stephen Foster and other tunesmiths. By the early twentieth century, to the extent Americans experienced poetry, it was largely in the form of song lyrics.
And there it remains.
Need it be so?
One reason poetry was more popular in the nineteenth century than it is now is that poets wrote for popular audiences. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was something of an American Shakespeare, in that Americans learned a lot of their history from Longfellow’s poems in the same way English men and women learned their history from Shakespeare’s plays. Longfellow made Paul Revere, theretofore best known as a silversmith and engraver, into a hero of the American Revolution. With his “Building of the Ship,” Longfellow did more for the Union than almost anyone besides Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln.
His poems weren’t all heroic and triumphant. As the title of “The Wreck of the Hesperus” makes clear, the vessel goes down, and it takes the skipper’s daughter with it, victim of her father’s hubris. In “The Song of Hiawatha,” the great warrior’s true love, Minnehaha, dies in a bitter winter.
Edgar Allan Poe, another bestselling poet of that era, wrote in a different tone entirely. Yet his poems are as memorable as Longfellow’s, being even more compelling in rhythm and rhyme. I don’t know if high-schoolers still read “The Raven,” but the poem, though long, almost memorizes itself.
Much of Walt Whitman’s poetry was in yet another style. But when he wasn’t writing free verse, Whitman was distilling the heartbreak of millions into twenty-four well-mannered lines in “O Captain! My Captain!”
Maybe all the popular poets have become songwriters. Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his song lyrics. The words of the songs of Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor, Carole King, Mary Chapin Carpenter and others stand up well as poetry. The intricate rhymes of the best rap music delight the imagination. Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” channels Longfellow directly.
But some people—maybe?—still prefer words without music. Is there a place for ballads that are simply words, that create their own music in readers’ heads? If a person were to write the twenty-first century equivalent of “The Building of the Ship” or “The Raven,” would anybody read it?
What do you think?
About fifty years ago I heard a concert given by the Scottish tenor Kenneth McKellar. He sang of course, mostly Scottish songs -some were fabulous poems by Burns, Scott, and Byron -others were fun ditties. But one song he sang I will never forget as it made such an impression on me. McKellar made some comments on Scots going to sea and ship building and that everyone in the hall probably had an ancestor or relative who was in the Merchant Marine or Navy. I remembered that my Scottish grandfather had gone to sea himself on a tall ship circa 1895 when he was eight years old. The song McKellar sang was Sea-Fever by John Masefield (music by Ireland)
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
The first time I heard this song I did not understand it completely.
I have read the poem dozens of times in the last fifty years and heard the song in recordings by McKellar and many other times. Today I appreciate the lovely imagery of the poem and the lure of adventure and excitement that is the sailor's life but also how lovely it is to experience nature in person. I know the word WHETTED means sharpened. I know the whale's way is the deep blue ocean. Reading the poem, I have some idea of what my grandfather experienced before the mast in the late 19th century. The song is forever linked to memories of my grandfather and to Kenneth McKellar and my parents who took me to see him perform at Kearny High School in Kearney New Jersey so long ago.
Poetry like prayer is important for our inner lives. We will all have challenges and disappointments in life. We will all know sickness (how dreary!) and the death of loved ones (how heart breaking!). We will feel an intense emotion, but we won't know what to say. We will be at a loss for words or an explanation. But the bard and songster can put our feelings into words and provide some consolation. In this poetry comes close to religion. Many times, people have come close to Sergeant Death in bombings of cities (I knew people who survived the London Blitz and one who was buried alive for three days). Many times, in battle under a bombardment men huddled closely and put their hands over the bible in their front pocket or grabbed hold of their rosaries. It is almost unbelievable to read that regiments like my grandfather's (The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) were under continuous attack for thirty-six days during 2nd Ypres (1915). The soldiers repeated the Hail Mary and the Our Father over and over and Psalm 23. The freethinkers among them did not argue, in fact one said "GIE ME THEM BEADS!". They repeated together an ancient poem that some had not said since boyhood.
...The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want....
And they found great comfort in these words. I am sure many thought back to their mothers and loved ones and quiet and safe times back home. Many found comfort in those words as no words of their own would have brought them.
I remember the day my mother died at age 86. On New Year's Day she unexpectedly had a heart attack. She lingered a few days in the hospital but before we knew it she was gone.
I will never forget when she said to us, "This time I don't think I am going to make it."
My immediate reaction was to take her by her hand now cold and weak and say with her the OUR FATHER, the Hail Mary and repeat the 23rd Psalm that she had taught me as a child. She smiled an angelic smile and was not worried about her death and her parting from this world. She instead was WORRIED FOR US! She said she would be waiting on the other side in paradise, but we would suffer many years of separation.
My mother had a Good Death. There is such thing as a Good Death. She did not suffer. She was not alone when she died, and he lived a long life mostly in good health. Before my mother's death I found it very difficult to deal with the deaths of loved ones but after her death I found a new wisdom and a maturity to endure without losing control.
We all at some time in the mysterious future may have to endure some experience absolutely outside our present scope such as war, a major accident or contagion.
Even if we personally are not called to endure such extremes there are those about us, perhaps very close who will face situations: drug abuse, alcoholism, a car crash, a mugging, sudden wealth, divorce, sudden unemployment, poverty, old age and humiliations.
We will all suffer personal loses in this life because no man and no woman is master of the line of his or her life.
We are all mortal. Genesis 3:19
By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,
till thou return unto the ground;
for out of it wast thou taken:
for dust thou art,
and unto dust shalt thou return.
So here's an idea. Find a poetry anthology. Find a poem. Find a quotation. Perhaps a fragment of a poem or anonymous ballad.
Any poem. Any song. Write it down. Say it. Memorize it. Then when you feel down in a funk you can say it to yourself or look it up and find it and read it again. You can say it in your head or on your tongue.
And you will find that poetry is magic. It restores love. It restores joy. It Connects to memory. It gives us laughter and tears. It reminds us that life and love are just brief moments in time and that one day "the long trick" will be over.
It was one of the best things high school ever did for me.