Why read poetry? In this day and age, when people are afraid of poems, why do I read it? Because it teaches me that I am not alone in my feelings. That others have felt as I do, both the wild rage of pain, and the tumultousness and gentleness of love. When I read poetry, I discover myself. I learn about new ways to express how I feel, and how I am in the world.
What I didn't know, was that poetry actually teaches me. I could look at Neil Gaiman's poem "Instructions" and say it teaches me about how to come to fairy tales, which it does. I could look at John Keat's "On a Nightingale" and say that I have never heard a nightingale sing yet, though I know it through Keat's eyes and ears. I have been by that hedge where he hears the nightingale sings every time I read that poem, and the glorious song he hears is echoed by the birds I do hear, over here in Canada - though not the same, I know, not at all. I really want to hear a nightingale so I can go back and read the poem and see what Keats took from the singing. I could say that Dr Seuss gave me my first love of rhythm and words that rhyme in the English language, and that I actually had a line from the Grinch Who Stole Christmas occur to me last week, the line 'we are we'.
Later, I went to look up what it was and when I read that it was an American Goldfinch and that it loved thistles, I thought to myself, I know that. But how do I know that? So imagine my delight and joy when I read "Invitation":
Invitation by Mary Oliver
Oh do you have a little time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy
and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles
for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,
or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air
as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine
and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude -
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in this broken world.
I beg of you,
do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.
It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.
This poem, from the first time I encountered it, has captured and retold what I try to do in my own life, the values that I live by, and how open I try to be to the natural world around me. I didn't know I was also learning about goldfinches, and that Mary Oliver was writing what was real: but there the little goldfinch was, on Tuesday and yesterday, beside the path, digging into the thistles and burying himself in the seed fluff. Isnt' it a marvel how nature has made it, that in searching for food, the finch releases the seeds from the pods at the same time?
As for the poem itself, it is among the handful of poems that I want to print up and put on my walls to remind myself how to I want to live.
As a writer, this poem and Rilke's idea that I must change my life - it is from Letters to a Young Poet, and what one must do in order to write, is also moving through me. I also think that slowing my life down, taking the time to see around me, to see nature, is something I consciously try to do every day. I can't write, if I don't see in my own life what is there. And only by seeing, can I bring back to my writing my own voice and view.
This is why I read poetry.
If you read poetry, who do you like? What are some of your favourite poets, and poems?
