To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

I think a poet lurks inside all of us. You can’t go through a single day without using a poetic device in everyday speech. Who doesn’t use a hyperbole in conversation? We always exaggerate stories that we tell. As the old saying goes, the fish gets bigger every time the story is told.

I don’t fault anyone for sitting down and trying to pen words that have meaning to them. But I do not understand the esteem to which some poems are held in regard to their contribution to literature. Some poets and authors write beautifully; each word crafted to fit in a certain place and have a certain meaning, while others are downright obscure.

But I take issue with what defines a “great” poem, partly because I don’t know what makes a great poem. It is something you know when you read it and not based on guidelines that critics have made up. Check this out.


so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens


Written by William Carlos Williams in 1923, this is one of the first poems that popularized the Imagist style in modernist poetry.

Literary critics hail this as a groundbreaking poem in modernist poetry but I really don’t understand what the big deal is. Sure it’s poetic, it looks poetic but why the stature that comes attached with it? I consider it to be one sentence. If I knew more about the context of the day and studied other works of that era, maybe I’d have an appreciation for it.

In Flanders Fields - there’s a poem. Not only do you get the imagery of battle, but a rallying cry - “to you from failing hands we throw the torch, be yours to hold it high, if ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep.”

That evicts a powerful emotion, not just through the language, but the historical environment to what the poem references.

How about one of the most popular poems of all time?

The Tyger, by William Blake.

Written in quatrain this poem is full of imagery, allusion and meaning as it poses a question. What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

This is one of my favorites for the above reasons. It is chock full of imagery - “burning bright, in the forests of the night.” It alludes to Milton’s Paradise Lost - “on what wings did he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?” And Blake eloquently muses over what kind of God would create an animal as perfect and fearful as a tiger.

In retrospect, this is not a very Christian poem, even though it does make a reference to God and the Lamb, when Blake asks, “did He who made the Lamb, make thee?”

Blake was a staunch atheist. He hated religious formulae. Yet he still included biblical references in this work.

The Tyger (yes, it’s ‘tiger’, but back in 1794 when it was written, tiger was spelled with a ‘y’) is a popular representation of poetry written in the romantic era.

I like the poets of old. Andrew Marvel, John Milton, Lord Byron and William Shakespeare. These are the poetic titans of their eras. Modern poetry just doesn’t have the lyrical quality they did. Their works have lasted through the ages and are still being studied. Scholars are still arguing over some of the content in The Tyger and what it means.

Free verse just doesn’t do it for me. There has to be structure for me to appreciate a poem. A rhyme and reason, if you will - no pun intended. Sonnets are a great example. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 is one of my favorite pieces of literary writing.

I guess one could call me old fashioned. Poetry has evolved along with the english language and I’m still stuck in old days, appreciating that which has passed on by. But I believe some things are timeless.