Poësie as terapie

Die beskouing en skepping van skoonheid

Probeer jou inleef by die volgende uittreksels uit gedigte. In elke geval gaan jy 'n wêreld van klank en betekenis binne, 'n drama in die kleine met eie karakters en situasies. 'n Wêreld.
                Sê die gedigte hardop, artikuleer dit, langsaam, volledig; voel die klemme en pouses, sien die beelde. Kan jy hoor? Poësie is klank. Jy moet dit met die oor kqn lees, sê Van Wyk Louw. Poetry is sound.
                Luister na die lang en kort vokale:
"Blou see van denne teen die hang".


toll, low, slowly, homeward; ploughman, world.

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way
and leaves the world to darkness, and to me.

(Quoted from "Elegy written in a country churchyard", by Thomas Gray.)

Many of the effects are fairly obvious, like the alliterations lowing and lea, ploughman and plods. An alliteration is created by consonants which are repeated, like the l and the p. There are also examples of assonance, like the rounded vowels in tolls, lowing, slowly, and homeward. And rhyme: the pattern is abab, a more "mobile" rhyme scheme than for example aabb or abba.

Landscape itself (or its contemplation) can provide therapy, as in the scene shown above. Many people find that escaping nto the countryside, "far from the madding crowd" in the words of Thomas Hardy, is already a relief and the beginning of recovery. Read whatever you can of Hardy's poems and novels.
            I took the photograph shown above out over the roofs, vineyards and fields from one of the back streets of St. Gimigniano in Italy. A young woman who gave me her poems to publish was very pleased with this photo when I used it a year or so later on the cover of her first volume of verse. 

Of course, crafts can also be diverting and provide really valuable therapy and relaxation.  WH Auden recommends avid gardening and cooking.    * Perhaps, however, the dramatic intensity of "gripping" poetry, no matter how relaxed its speech or the scenes it evokes, is absorbing enough to engage and bring peace. The English word "entertain" is derived from Latin "tenere", meaning to hold or grasp.

Poetry as art

* Mostly I've always been concerned with poetry as one of the arts. It has been my passion and indeed directed my career.
        I have published my own poetry, helped numerous other poets to shape their verse, published some of their volumes, researched poetry and its study to doctoral level, and compiled two anthologies, one a somewhat pioneering e-anthology. I have lectured in the study of poetry at universities and a teachers' college since the age of 23, forty-five years ago!
        Of course, it's not always possible to work only with poetry and the poets. You become an administrator, member of committees, dean of a faculty, and publisher. The latter means much editing, proof-reading, doing layout, designing covers, and marketing.
* In many cases, poets I have known and read about have been passionate about other art forms as well, like painting, sculpture and (naturally) music and drama.  Dance. These are experiences of value, and have been cherished through all societies, according to DH Brown's book Human Universals. They have evolved into film and other modern media.
  * The arts offer a source of relaxation, entertainment and other planes of experience. The greater the art, the more intense and lasting the experience often is, and the more that can be gained from it; the more it endures.
      
 

* On the one hand, listening to the more mellifluous tones of (for example) a Tennyson, Burns or Browning poem could be recommended for relaxation. At the other end of the spectrum is the intellectual, sensory and emotional adventure of composing poetry, coordinating, subtly juxtaposing or even clashing speech sounds, images or experience. Then, the painstaking exploration and discovery of editing what you have written, listening to all the sounds that merge as it proceeds, their effects and suggestions. 

* After the tube train and bus bombings in England in 2005, a memorial service was held in Trafalgar Square. The speakers each read or referred to a poem, either one of their own written specially for the occasion or an existing verse. They represented various branches of society. To many people in all walks of life, when something really important must be said, poetry springs to mind.
        * Like "Do not go gentle into that good night", by Dylan Thomas. 
 There are many fine volumes of poetry in the world; a great deal is available on the Internet. I would recommend reading and listening regularly, even daily, almost like scheduled therapy sessions. Now that one can listen on a smart phone, tablet or other device, poetry is available in many fine readings.
* Here are some lines from "Caring" by F.R. Scott:

  Caring is loving, motionless,
  An interval of more and less,
  Between the stress and the distress.

This is not even work by one of the most famous poets in English, or taken from a well-known poem. Just imagine (and discover) how much is out there! 
Emily Dickinson, TS Eliot, DH Lawrence, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, John Milton, William Blake, Roy Campbell, Wilfred Owen ... naming these poets almost at random as some of the greats, some American, some English, one also realises how many of them have themselves written of anxieties, fears and uncertainty. Perhaps some wrote because of their "stresses and distresses". 

Writing your own important poetry to benefit the world:
"the specific is the path to the universal".

This is a photo my wife Engela took of me (2012). What's most important, however, is the beautiful church. It's on the island of Murano, close to Venice. Building started in the 7th century; it was rebuilt in the 12th century.
        In poetry there is often a spiritual dimension. This church with its clean lines is a real inspiring jewel inside. There is a mosaic floor, the stones painstakingly placed by the faithful centuries ago. A modern crucifix made of the glass for which the island is famous. I believe there is an aesthetic dimension in religion; that it is serene beauty and sublime splendour that make faith in the divine real and essential to so many people on earth. Surely the cathedrals were portrayals of the glories of heaven in the ages they were built. Consider your next poem as a cathedral, embodying your belief in something of eternal value and nobility. Perhaps a cliff face, the roar of rushing water, or the light entering the darkness of a forest. Use the voice of a person experiencing it intensely. Share it directly.

Poetry can be fun as well as profound. You may find it entertaining to read and  write humorous verse, by poets like Edward Lear or Ogden Nash. The former was famous for his limericks. His house in London is now an hotel, in Seymour Street close to Hyde Park. Dr. Seuss has written wonderful rhyming books for children.

Where there are seemingly impersonal cities, airports, railway stations and other hives of activity, there are also people. Real members of families, probably all with uncertainties. Strangers who are in many cases "just friends you do not know", to misquote a song from long ago. 

The beauty of poetry as therapy is that it is so varied. You can "tune" it like a very sensitive instrument, to be a cello, deep and cherishing, all the way to the plaintive piping of a piccolo. And then there are all the possibilities of experimentation, both within adventurous systematic verse and the dizzying flights of free verse. If it's too much, too soon, we return to the fold, the peace, the consolation. Poetry is important. Throughout human history, people have found it essential (according to Human Universals, by DH Brown).


Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
(The immortal bard, poet and playright Shakespeare)


Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are thing which enclose me,
or which I cannot touch because they are too near.
(ee cummings in unusually formal mode!)

An amazing series of things happened after my book of poems appeared in May this year. It was published by the Cordis Trust as part of their award to me in 2012 of the Order of the Golden Pen. Suddenly there seemed to be interstices between poems I would never have thought connected at all. They were written over many years, in very different circumstances, and all they had in common was that they had survived my rigorous selection. The only criterion was quality, or rather, immediacy and importance. Originality and the conviction that they were not mere revistings of previous texts of mine or anyone else's. One reviewer has referred to them as separate dramas unfolding with characters and situations. This many poets feel; i.e. that poems are not (only) direct expressions of the poet's feelings. Yeats (than whom there is no greater) stated that a "mask" that was needed. A character or persona through whose voice the poem reached its audience. The Dutch poet Nijhoff called it a flute.

These are the hands of Herbert von Karajan, a great conductor. Listen to Brahms; his symphonies and string sextets. This is the kind of "conducting" or "directing" control you should try to exercise through your writing and experience of each separate poem. Don't get stuck on the easy and obvious ones you learnt at school, but never abandon them either. Realise that there have been additions, adventures, experiments, a new conceptualism. Add to Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats also Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Jennings, and Ted Hughes. Recognise Sylvia Plath as a soul in torment. So many of her poems depict suffering. Also tortured was John Berryman. Live their poems to become understanding, healthier. Calmer. "You are not (to be reduced to) your circumstances," I once heard. Also, "tough times don't last; tough people do".

This is Tintern Abbey; or rather, these are its ruins. Tintern was only the second Cistercian foundation in Britain, and the first in Wales,  founded on 9 May 1131 by Walter de Clare, lord of Chepstow. Buildings were added and updated in every century until its dissolution in 1536.  This is Wordsworth, moved by the Abbey:

While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.


Here are some lines from his great "Ode: Intimations of immortality from recollections of early childhood":


What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,     
Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;      
We will grieve not, rather find       
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy       
Which having been must ever be;       
In the soothing thoughts that spring       
Out of human suffering;       
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

Read Eliot's acceptance speech of the Nobel Prize for literature. Read Eliot.


This is Engela. Peace and poise.


Any time you feel in need of the kind of solace poetry can bring, send me a message. Use the form below.

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