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Life Ways A Yearning for the Beautiful People can survive without love; people can survive without poetry. But perhaps survival is not what human life is all about. Our dignity and nobility as human beings reside in the land of love, knowledge and freedom-not mere existence. We are not created to focus our attention on the quantity of our years but rather the quality of our spiritual life, not on making it through life but rather on getting something from life and contributing our gift to the common good. Why poetry? Why music? Why art? Indeed, why love and knowledge? Because we hunger and thirst for deep things, things like truth and goodness and beauty. These noble "transcendentals" enrich our lives and call us to fullness of being. There is a type of poverty that rivals destruction, the loss of beauty that shirks the soul and diminishes our magnanimity. Just as the mind hungers for truth and the will for the good, so too the soul yearns for the beautiful. One of the major illnesses of our times is the divorce between faith and the arts. Poetry entered my life somewhat late, when I was in my early thirties. Indeed, along the educational road I had brief encounters with poets in high school and college-a Shakespearean sonnet, Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," Emily Dickinson's "I'm Nobody"-but these brief encounters ended with minimal appreciation and a lack of appropriation. A serious entanglement with poetry began and has continued only after I met several lovers of poetry who, through happy contagion ("felix culpa"), infected me with a love for words and the marvelous sense and sound flowing from the poetic world. I am forever addicted and I hope to spread the fire. I offer seven "becauses" to the question "Why poetry?" not as a rational demonstration of poetry's inherent worth but as seven "reasons" that keep me in the land of poetry. Although I no longer have to be convinced of the value of verse, most people have not come to devote a portion of their energy and time to reading poetry. In fact, statistics indicate that less than five percent of the population does so on a regular basis. May these seven "becauses" increase that percentage a point or two.
Because #1 "Poetry helps us to see and thus experience life more deeply."
And the poets, on whose shoulders the future rests, might, late nights, thinking things over, begin to see some meanings that elude the rest of us. (Lewis Thomas)
Gerard Manley Hopkins pleads: "Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies! / O look at all the fire-fold sitting in the air!" ("The Starlight Night"). 3 And in his "Hurrahing in Harvest" he laments: "These things, these things were here and but the beholder / Wanting." 4 Blindness is more than the absence of 20/20 vision. Blindness is walking in a summer's night and not noticing the star-studded sky; blindness is holding a baby in one's arms and failing to appreciate the pink cheeks, the fuzzy hair, the tiny toes; blindness is being inattentive to the fresh yellow of a springtime willow, the blueness of an August sky, the industry of an ant. Poets have the capacity for keen observation. They see more things and see them more deeply than most of us. Coming into contact with expert "seers" we begin to connect with creation and taste the joy and beauty of that intimacy. Poets aid us in fostering a spirituality of presence that leads to union and to a unity that abates our loneliness and isolation. Were we to consult a spiritual optometrist, most of us would be amazed at how much assistance we need to see better and more deeply. Jessica Powers observed life with reverence and awe. Though a small woman in stature, she stood on tiptoe and peered lovingly into God's creation. Listen to her stirring verse "Everything Rushes, Rushes":
Someone once said that spirituality is simple to define, for it's just a matter of "staying awake." Poets are people who are awake enough to see elk and deer, beetles and bushes. They also are good listeners as the morning offers the thought that all creation rushes toward God. More, poets have an eager voice, inviting us into this wonderful race, attempting to wake those who are sleeping or in a stupor. Artists have a vision and can transform our lives. Because #2 "Poetry enlarges our world and carries us to new lands." In one pocket of my coat I carried Tennyson's selected lyrics, and in the other, Browning's. It was as though they cast a spell of invulnerability about me. And in the darkest moments, with painful wrists and aching back, there was the precious secret of my beloved great little book. (John G. Neihardt) 5 Time and space hem us in. We are born into a certain historical era and our geography denies us physical bilocation. But poetry, engaging the memory and imagination, can draw us back to Eden's garden, to the crowning of Charlemagne, to the first landing on the moon. Poetry has the power to transport us across oceans and deserts, exhilaration and depression, success and failure, into geographies never dreamt of. Poets are tour guides pointing now to the glories of Rome, then to the smile of the Mona Lisa. If we accept their invitation to travel, our souls will expand and our narrow parochialism will diminish. One reason for National Geographic's popularity is the opportunity it offers to learn about distant countries, exotic birds. While staying at home the reader can journey around the planet and out into space, to discover for oneself the latest research of scientist or naturalist. The purchase of an anthology of poetry is also a passport to new experiences. Our horizons are extended as we ponder Dante's The Divine Comedy or read Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" or listen to Langston Hughes' "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." We are forever changed if we attune ourselves to the inner beauty of this poetry. In her poem "Escape," Jessica Powers demonstrates how the power of the imagination can transport us to new geographies and lift our spirit into a larger world: Escape I have escaped from fear and loneliness I think: if I should open this dark door, I think: if I would lift this window now (Jessica Powers, 102)
Poetry is a matter of opening the closed doors of our smallness and lifting high the windows sealed against the intrusions of life. It might well be that we will hear the whip-poor-will or see the distress of the poor or find the thrill and consolation of some lost love. Poetry has power to change our lives; it has transformative power to change our fears and loneliness. Go to Poetry as Prayer: Jessica Powers in our online catalog.
Copyright © 1999-2003, Daughters of St. Paul. All Rights Reserved.
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