Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most

Photo by Kathleen Tyler Conklin

Spring in the environs of Washington D.C. ranks high on the list of the world’s most beautiful.

It seems especially so this spring, in part perhaps in contrast to the ugliness of the political antics happening, being reported on and endlessly discussed here.  The contrast is poignant, but not only caused by political chaos.  Exquisite beauty can often stir up feelings of longing and sadness…a sickness of heart, sometimes referred to as spring fever.  Bipolar we become…knocked out by the loveliness of nature…but unsettled because we realize our human nature is so far from the perfection we find there.  We can’t quite capture it in our works of art.  We hope others will be able to feel  the beauty we felt, but know it will be fleeting and somehow changed forever.  We are left with a feeling of not quite getting there, a feeling of loss, a restlessness of spirit.

Shakespeare’s sonnets surely speak to the beauty of nature, but also to that feeling of never quite arriving home.  T.S. Elliot reminds us in his poem “The Wasteland” that “April can be the cruelest month”.  The jazz rendition of those words found in the song “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most “(lyrics by Fran Landesman) expresses so well the ache found in the sweetness of spring.  Listen to Ella Fitzgerald sing these words and feel better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd5VVELfWC8

Poetry By Heart

I wish I had a photographic mind.  Then I could pull up hundreds of poems from memory and recite them word for word by heart.  Alas, that is not the case.  I have a few poetic lines tucked in the brain folds which rise to my lips to be recited for comfort, fun or for the “see I’m a cultured know-it-all “ gamesmanship face-off.  

I envision the substantial value of having great poems in my memory bank to use in crises. It is not likely I will be actually imprisoned (although one never knows), but at times when my thoughts imprison me in fear, loneliness or worry,  I would like to displace them with the well remembered lines of a beloved poem.  

The other meaning of by heart relates to writing a poem.  It is useful to know something about the technique of writing poems…like rhyme, meter, alliteration, metaphor, etc.

It is important to have some of these to use if we wish, but more important to remember they are tools and not the meat of the work.  That comes from the heart, the depths, the heat of the writer.  The tools cannot get in the way of the connection to the writer’s center…that sincere, authentic, hardscrabble voice of the soul…poetry by heart.

I am not saying that the words can be spilled on the page without discipline or some structure…because they then become just non-sense.  

Iambic pentameter you have a valid place in the world of verse, but don’t let me get so fixated on you that I cannot write by heart.

Photograph by Kathleen Tyler Conklin

A Shower Of Poetry

Photo by Kathleen Tyler Conklin

 

April is poetry month.  Poems arrive daily on my computer from Knopf Poem-a-Day.  Poetry readings and panel discussions proliferate.

I am blinded by a burst of candle lights on the cake of the greatest Poet of them all---Shakespeare, whose birthday and brilliance is celebrated this month.

Alas, there is no shower from within.  I have hit a dry patch and struggle like the cherry blossoms to open to the warmth of any creative urge.  All is dormant.

 

But, I am hopeful.  Maybe with the warming days, my creative juices will begin to flow.  Poems will spurt from my throat, my pen, my fingertips---brilliant and well crafted…maybe even a rhyme or two.  They will float from my mind to seed and sprout around me…an array of colorful flowers. I will bloom again. Until then, I soak in the shower of poems that abound, now that April is here.

Note: The Folger Library celebrates Shakespeare's birthday on April 23rd with an open house, many festive, fun activities and a front lawn cutting of a birthday cake…check their website. Also the Library of Congress is offering many poetry events at:  http://www.loc.gov/poetry/events/#apr11

The Poetry of Silence

I am a strong advocate for the necessity, value and power of words--- spoken or written.  I champion the importance of finding and expressing one’s own voice.

However, lately I have been feeling that many of these voices are adding to the cacophony that assaults us daily.

I feel as if I am thrashing about in a turbulent sea of noise---the noise in my own head, the noise that comes from our electronic devices----TV, cell phones, e-mail, Face Book and from the written word---newspapers and magazines.

It is everywhere and it is unrelenting.  Everyone is talking.  Everyone has an opinion, something to say, a need to be heard.  No one is listening.  In order to listen, one has to be quiet.

We need to take a breath.  It is ok to be quiet, to refrain, to keep secrets, to let words fail us, to let what is inside us to stay there, at least for awhile. 

It is good to recognize that sometimes we have experiences which will not be caged by words, that need to remain private, that do not need to be held up to the glaring light of exposure.

We can live in silence for a minute, an hour, a day.  We can honor that silence. And we can listen…to the poetry of that silence.