Poet's Choice

Poet’s Choice

I feel like such a dilettante when it comes to poetry. And that thought led me to the dictionary for a quick definition and in addition to “dabbler” or “someone who takes up an art or activity merely for amusement, esp. in a desultory or superficial way” (my intended meaning), “dilettante” ALSO means “a lover of an art or a science, esp. a fine art.” And you know, I’m so eager at times, even unintentionally as in this case, to wrap myself in a mildly negative defining of something, that this time I choose the second definition to describe myself, "a lover of fine art" for I am a lover of poetry. I can rush to say I know so little, I’ve read so little compared to others (“compare and despair” as one wise friend reminded me) BUT those poems that I have read I cherish. They stick with me. They stay with me. I love them. Deeply.

Several years ago, let’s say in the 80’s in NYC (30 years ago, geez), I became enamored with Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” There was a chapter in “Prince of Players,” a book about the American actor Edwin Booth, in which young Edwin observes his father, actor Junius Booth, entertain a friend who’d stopped backstage following a performance of some Shakespearean tragedy by reciting the entirety of the “Ancient Mariner” … off the top of his head! “Here’s a little ditty I’ve conned, I think you’ll like it.” IT’S AN EPIC POEM! A LOOOONG POEM! I can just see the friend squirming in his seat, trying to keep an interested, engaged smile on his face. No! It must've been amazing! Mesmerizing! captivating! Another great performance. And this after playing “Othello” or “Macbeth” moments before. It’s what you did! You recited poetry. Well, something about that whole notion grabbed me and convinced me that I had to do it. So I set out to memorize the entire poem. For a moment or 2 I thought that I should also become addicted to opium since it’s alleged Coleridge wrote "Rime" under the heavy influence of that drug, but I quickly dismissed the idea as tangential. I got pretty close to getting the whole poem down too. ("Water, water everywhere; and all the boards did shrink. Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.") I even worked on a piece of it with an acting coach. I think that’s when poetry really grabbed me. I’d done some Shakespeare before, dabbled around a bit with other poetry, but learning “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” was my first experience of a poem really taking hold of me. The epicness of it at least.

Then Ben Okri, a south African poet, came into my life. This would have been in the early 90s. A book of his poetry was prominently displayed in a London bookstore window when I happened to be in that town during a particularly low period of my life. I literally felt it call out to me from the bookstore window, pulling me to pay attention. “Look here! See, buy, read.” There’s a poem within that particular collection “A Letter to an English Friend” which bolstered me then and continues to do so through unfamiliar deserts in my life. A life buoy, an embrace. That mysterious and undefinable magic of art that makes you feel not quite so alone on earth. I highly recommend his work.

And since Okri, Donald Hall, Jane Kenyon, Ted Kooser, Philip Levine, WS Merwin and countless others whose names escape me at the moment have all delighted and uplifted and awakened me. I have a book by Edward Hirsch called “Poet’s Choice” that I bought back in 2006 and have read each year since then. It’s a smorgasboard sampling of his favorite poets, those whose poems, like Okri’s in mine, have come at the exact right time in his life. In the introduction to the book, Hirsch says that he can remember where he was, what he was doing when he first read certain poems. They’ve been companions during hard times. They’ve elucidated and deepened knowing. They’ve “sacramentalize(d) experience.” I love that. I believe that. And he goes on to say something else I believe, that we need poetry in our lives now more than ever in a world rife with dehumanization, with commercialization, materialism, with war, the destruction of nature. Poetry can help challenge us to find meaning in it all. We need it now more than ever because it speaks to our collective hearts. It gives voice to sorrow and anger and joy and doubt, to LIFE, to everyone’s experience, everyone’s voice. It reminds us, even in a reassuring whisper, what is truly important.

I’m so grateful and glad that some voice told me to reach for “Poet’s Choice” this morning and open its pages. Maybe the self same voice that told me to look at Ben Okri’s book in the window of that store in London a few decades back. Maybe a poet’s voice, a dilettante’s voice. To choose poetry. To see life, this day, as an unfolding poem. To see one’s self as a poet. There’s an invitation. And just for today, I choose to see myself as such. To pay attention, to be present in one’s life, to appreciate - fully.

And being a Vermonter, maybe some time today I’ll even pick up a bit of Robert Frost and give it a read.

Have a good poetry filled day, fellow poets!