The Twelve Days of Christmas

I've always wondered about that Christmas song, the what and the why of the true love's gifts. This season I found an interpretation that suits it and makes perfect sense if you see it in the context of the persecution of Catholics in seventeenth century England. Memorizing the doctrines as a song was a perfect way of not needing incriminating religious materials.

THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS
On the 1st day of Christmas my true love gave to me...A Partridge in a Pear Tree

The partridge in a pear tree is Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, whose birthday we celebrate on December 25, the first day of Christmas. In the song, Christ is symbolically presented as a mother partridge that feigns injury to decoy predators from her helpless nestlings, recalling the expression of Christ's sadness over the fate of Jerusalem: "Jerusalem! Jerusalem! How often would I have sheltered you under my wings, as a hen does her chicks, but you would not have it so . . . ." (Luke 13:34)

On the 2nd day of Christmas my true love gave to me...Two Turtle Doves

The Old and New Testaments, which together bear witness to God's self-revelation in history and the creation of a people to tell the Story of God to the world.

On the 3rd day of Christmas my true love gave to me...Three French Hens

The Three Theological Virtues: 1) Faith, 2) Hope, and 3) Love (1 Corinthians 13:13)

On the 4th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...Four Calling Birds

The Four Gospels: 1) Matthew, 2) Mark, 3) Luke, and 4) John, which proclaim the Good News of God's reconciliation of the world to Himself in Jesus Christ.

On the 5th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...Five Gold Rings

The first Five Books of the Old Testament, known as the Torah or the Pentateuch: 1) Genesis, 2) Exodus, 3) Leviticus, 4) Numbers, and 5) Deuteronomy, which gives the history of humanity's sinful failure and God's response of grace in the creation of a people to be a light to the world.

On the 6th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...Six Geese A-laying

The six days of creation that confesses God as Creator and Sustainer of the world (Genesis 1).

On the 7th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...Seven Swans A-swimming

The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: 1) prophecy, 2) ministry, 3) teaching, 4) exhortation, 5) giving, 6) leading, and 7) compassion (Romans 12:6-8; cf. 1 Corinthians 12:8-11)

On the 8th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...Eight Maids A-milking

The eight Beatitudes: 1) Blessed are the poor in spirit, 2) those who mourn, 3) the meek, 4) those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 5) the merciful, 6) the pure in heart, 7) the peacemakers, 8) those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake. (Matthew 5:3-10)

On the 9th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...Nine Ladies Dancing

The nine Fruit of the Holy Spirit: 1) love, 2) joy, 3) peace, 4) patience, 5) kindness,6) generosity, 7) faithfulness, 8) gentleness, and 9) self-control. (Galatians 5:22)

On the 10th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...Ten Lords A-leaping

The ten commandments: 1) You shall have no other gods before me; 2) Do not make an idol; 3) Do not take God's name in vain; 4) Remember the Sabbath Day; 5) Honor your father and mother; 6) Do not murder; 7) Do not commit adultery; 8) Do not steal; 9) Do not bear false witness; 10) Do not covet. (Exodus 20:1-17)

On the 11th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...Eleven Pipers Piping

The eleven Faithful Apostles: 1) Simon Peter, 2) Andrew, 3) James, 4) John, 5) Philip, 6) Bartholomew, 7) Matthew, 8) Thomas, 9) James bar Alphaeus, 10) Simon the Zealot, 11) Judas bar James. (Luke 6:14-16). The list does not include the twelfth disciple, Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus to the religious leaders and the Romans.

On the 12th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...Twelve Drummers Drumming

The twelve points of doctrine in the Apostles' Creed: 1) I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. 2) I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. 3) He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. 4) He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell [the grave]. 5) On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. 6) He will come again to judge the living and the dead. 7) I believe in the Holy Spirit, 8) the holy catholic Church, 9) the communion of saints, 10) the forgiveness of sins, 11) the resurrection of the body, 12) and life everlasting.

It's very reminiscent of another aide-memoire, the song/recitation (rewritten in 1948 by T. Texas Tyler and probably best remembered as performed in the late fifties by Wink Martindale) "Deck of Cards," about a soldier caught playing cards in church.

Focus Point

I’ve been thinking about haiku the past couple of days and how this form and related forms can carry so much meaning. Two or three lines, a few words, a clear and untrammeled image, simply speak out. Speak out about a time of year or a time of life, the simplicity of the natural world and the complexity of the human heart, the interconnections that make the all one.

To focus the broad lens of attention on the small, and often seeming trivial, bits and parts of life as we live it and not as we imagine or contemplate it, is for me the most important purpose of poetry. Oh yes, I acknowledge the importance of the narrative, the telling and preserving of personal and communal experience where the meaning is obvious. I admire the lyrical poetry that uses the beauty of language to enhance and sing a common experience and thereby intensify the joy of living – the odes, the sonnets, and numerous forms named and unnamed.

But for me it will always be the small poems that remain the most powerful: not only the Japanese forms but also all those that present one image uncluttered and wielding a quiet strength. The best of English language imagist poetry carry as much emotion and strength as the finest work of the haiku masters.

For me, poetry can be the way I focus the light of daily living on small things, a light that should be a way to explore their meaning and their special inherent beauty.

The Sound of Emptiness Revisited

Back in June of ’09 I remarked on poetry that seemed to be all flash and no substance. I want to revisit the concept because a book-length manuscript came across my desk that embodied it. Out of the sixty or more poems only two or three moved me. Those seemed to build their images around a recognizable theme; the others seemed extremely unconnected.

In fact they reminded me of the “Where’s Waldo” puzzles, you know the themed scenes populated by a multitude of human figures. The trick is to find which one has all the recognizable tributes of the “Waldo” character. Imagine how frustrating play would be if there was no Waldo included! That’s how I felt about those poems. The fact that they were devoid of any customary rhythm or rhyme scheme only emphasized their meaninglessness.

There’s nothing wrong with setting down words or sounds without a precise, discernable meaning. “Sound” poets do it all the time. But they will admit that it works better on stage than on the page. The flow of words/sounds creates a mood enhanced and emphasized by poetic devices: rhyme (both end and internal), other repetition, defined even if changing rhythms. The fundamentals that please the ear and mind.

It reminded me of a poem I wrote some years back; it was never published and was never meant to be. It’s a piece I liked to perform live on stage because the way the sounds driven by rhythm and repetitions connected with the audience. If it established a sentiment, a mood, all to the good; if it didn’t it was still a sequence of pleasing sounds. I’ll publish it here so you can see what I mean.

5ntwenty

when craven vultures songbirds be
new babes laugh hanging in each tree
through ruby filtered light you see
one trail is free

radiance crowns the powdered rack
fishermen mourn their linen sack
and oil now burns the broken back
the clabbered hack

promises mend a shirt of snow
and buttered railways slide below
the trees fall off the wheels to know
these weights won’t go

all frozen lobsters on a kite
sing for a nose to free the night
we vanquish chip-shops in delight
and leave to write

so shine the copper lilies round
run with the growling shaded hound
the magic ice flows underground
while we resound

The poem as it exists has no obvious meaning. Its “poetry” hangs on the well defined frame of rhythm and rhyme scheme. For me the joy was in the movement of the mouth, the embouchure, as vowel slipped toward vowel and consonant shaped to the next consonant.

If that joy is not there, what are we left with? Ink spots on a page? Or from the stage a cacophony?

I have written other poems that had no obvious meaning but because the way images interacted, complimented each other, and were held by a common structure, they carried a discernable meaning that could be touched. Several of these have been published and well received.

So, does meaning have to be obvious? No. But a way must be shown that can lead to a satisfactory conclusion by the reader/listener. Otherwise you are pumping darkness into a place where there is no light.

Communication

I went to an opening at an art gallery recently. I didn’t stay long. The series of paintings on display were not to my liking – abstract expressionist, I think you might call them. On a background of very dark colors, the artist had tossed, splashed, squirted, squiggled or otherwise applied lines and blots of paint. And none of those bits in very appealing colors or in recognizable shapes.

I understand that so-called abstract expressionists want you to observe the results of their action; and because those results are so abstract, so lacking in meaning in themselves, the viewer has to supply his own meaning without assistance from the artist. Imagine holding a conversation with yourself without being aware of what you’re saying or what you might reply. No wonder the paintings remind me of Rorschach inkblots, except that no one calls them art.

What then is art if it doesn’t communicate? I believe art is a shared experience, one that affects both the artist and his audience. (I almost said the maker and the consumer!) If the link doesn’t exist, is it art? Paint on a canvas, matter in a space, words on a page.

Words on a page. I love what James Joyce did with words in Finnegan’s Wake. That doesn’t make it a novel. I’m intrigued by what Christian Bök did with Eunoia. But that doesn’t make it poetry for me.

For me poetry is communication, a sharing of experience and vision. And if doing that, for that purpose, doesn’t make me an artist …

Sounds of Poetry (Encore)

As an extension of the previous entry, I want to deal with the delivery of poetry and the way it is presented to a live audience.
I've had the chance to hear poetry read in foreign languages, where the combinations of sounds that form words which deliver specific meanings are not familiar to me. Still, such reading/presentation often had a certain level of meaning due to the manner it was presented.
If foreign language poetry uses rhythm, rhyme, and all the common non-word-based tools that English language poetry does, it can convey the same emotional meaning. This is often, depending on the presenter's level of skill and/or involvement, enhanced by body language and movement that involves the eye.
Even if the surface meaning can not be discerned, other levels of meaning still exist. A good poem does not depend simply on what words convey. By emphasizing the visual aspects of presenting poetry, a supporting level of meaning can carry its desired impact.
I remember attending a reading by the Russian poet Yevtushenko. Although I did not understand the words he used, the mood of the poems were established; the translator's English rendition came as no surprise but only accentuated what had already been conveyed by hearing the original.

So vocal presentation, volume, the rise and fall of intonation, all become essential when hearing or speaking poetry in a language unfamiliar to the audience or a part of that audience. For myself, I enjoy poetry presented in such a way in a language with which I am not familiar. Because it uses the structures of language, it becomes, for me, even more enjoyable than sound poetry that depends on sound without the strictures of language.

Then again, why deny any audience the way to explore other depths of meaning in English language poetry? On stage, at the mike, use the voice and body. They captivate the hearer and make your work more memorable!

Sound Poetry

There is a form of poetry that happens in performance and is separate from "spoken word," a poetry that basically stresses sound as sound and not as words delivering meaning, etc. Even though I don't write (formulate?) material to be presented in such a manner, I do emphasize the role of sound in poetry and its presentation. The use of repetitive sounds - rhyme, alliteration, assonance and consonance - have always been a staple in poetry. In "sound poetry" the main emphasis is on vocal sound and how it works, much like music in a way.
I had the good fortune recently to share a stage with bill bissett, Canada's foremost practitioner of the style and probably one of the best in the world. Often his work consists of familiar vocal sounds and the changes that can be worked through and from them.

Sometimes, especially when used with ambient background music or an accompanying voice, the performance begins to feel like a jazz concert with structured improvisations. At other times, especially when he uses rattles or other small percussion instruments, it has the feeling of a tribal chant. And sometimes he makes you wonder if he isn't using a structured language, but one about which you have no knowledge, have never heard or experienced before.

To see the work printed on a page and deal with it like that is more than a challenge. Only with his voice still in your head do the sounds represented by words, scraps of words, approximations of sounds, etc. begin to make any kind of sense.

With bissett, with all sound poetry, the meaning is that mixture of dream and emotion and instinct that resonates with the listener. There is nothing grander than when, in this manner, the poet and audience become one.

Theatre and Poetry

I went to two of the shows running at the current Fringe Festival (theatre) because I had read about several that involved poetry. The first I attended was called "I Hate Poetry."


It had an interesting premise: three spoken word artists (poets) do a last minute impromptu rehearsal for a performance. They act as a troupe and as individuals, and the audience is left to consider what is "act" and what is the characters' unplanned disclosure, what is being rehearsed and what is supposedly not. But about the poetry.

It was the common spoken word genre, at times heavy on rhyme, often rhythm depended on that rhyme, and very little else that establishes language as poetry: the use of metaphor or simile, images to portray meaning that is not immediate. Any emotion or feeling was direct and in your face; all to keep the piece moving. Any contemplation would have to be done elsewhere later.

Still, with all my reservations about spoken word poetry, language, form, and meaning, I found the frantic pacing that is the nature if this type of presentation worked well. It communicated the characters as well as the concerns behind its topic. Thank you, Dream Chasers.



The second performance I went to because it was so highly recomended. "Head First" by the Toronto all-women troupe Femmes du Feu had won a main stream staging at the Toronto Fringe Festival and would only be here for four of the ten days. They had also won an audience choice at the London Fringe and so became a "must-see."

The performance consisted of interpretive dance, most of it aerial. The first segment was a pas-de-deux performed by the two co-founders of the troupe and explored the idea of two people sharing the same dream, not dreaming but existing in the same dream space; it sometimes occupied the floor, sometimes high off the stage, other times in mid-air, often in motion between those levels.

The second part was a mini flamenco performance, an interesting reflection on rhythm and movement. It was all the more intriguing because this was the only part without music; the motion and the tapping of the shoes had to say it all.

The third segment was performed by six dancers, sometimes all together and sometimes in smaller numbers. The movement and accompanying music fluttered and hung in a number of aerial silks, portraying six or seven aspects of a woman's life.
And what has this to do with poetry? There is no better explanation of how expression in poetry should be understood. Rhythm and flow. Brilliance to capture the attention, colour to hold it. The meaning suggested by the movements of the dance, by the phrases of the poetry.

Although meant to be an experience of theatre, the evening became one full of poetry.

Home Is Where ...

Earlier this month I attended Hamilton's second Jewish Literary Festival. It brought together writers from different parts of North America under the theme "Where is Home for the Jewish Writer?" but rather than limit the presenters to serious discussion of that question it was used more as a unifying theme. Although the festival opened with the Friday service in which some of the writers participated, the main thrust of the weekend was cultural rather than religious.

There was lots of reference to the Jewish cultural heritage, especially from Eastern Europe. Other areas were sometimes mentioned. It surprised me that there was no emphatic Zionism, the Jewish connection to the land of Israel, expressed. Besides connecting the novels, short stories and poetry of the modern writers to the older traditions and teachings, there was an interactive time of music and dance, and the presentation of a drama.

Somewhere among the searches among the stories and songs and all the trappings that makes Jewish literature recognizably "Jewish" came a remark that really spoke to my interest. As a writer born out of a European cultural background (and a culture so minor that we didn't have a written literature but relied on stories and poems handed down orally) and transplanted to flourish in a Canadian tradition, I sometimes question my attachment to my "roots."

Sharon Nelson, a poet and presenter, put the idea of "home" in a way I could understand. Home for the Jewish writer, she explained, was not a sense of place or belonging. Rather it was all that influenced him, was a part of him. Some of this, his core beliefs and influences, remained constant. But around this solid center was a more transitory circle of people, ideas, places, etc. that were a part of his comfort in his own skin and for a time "home" for him. That was a concept I could understand, could apply to my own questionings. It is the main bit of knowledge I'll remember from the festival. And the most valluable.

The Sound of Emptiness

An acquaintance of mine who is involved in the poetry scene in the big city tells me there is a "new wave" in poetry happening at open mikes. I forget what she said they call it.It seems the main purpose is to put together only beautiful words, to form images, metaphors and similes that have not been used before, that sound fantastic and outrageous. The problem, in her mind and mine, seems to be that no one cares about the meaning of the poems anymore. Poetry has become, using Shakespeare's image, "sound and fury signifying nothing."

Now I'm all for the beauty of language, for the magic of sound spoken or unspoken. I believe it is and must remain an integral part of poetry. Inflections, rhythms, rhymes, alliterations, assonances and all the underlying music is the root of poetry. But ...

When there is no meaning there is nothing communicated. When poetry becomes such a solitary pursuit that it doesn't matter if no connection between human beings is sought, why bring it out before the public at all. The only joy is the stroking of the ego that fabricated it. For the rest of us it remains an inexplicable emptiness.

I myself have used images in non-traditional ways, using them to build a mood or a level of emotion. In such a role, the words and sound of the words take on a greater meaning not obvious at first. But I would never claim that they didn't mean at all, conveyed only what the hearer/reader wanted them to mean.

Is this where postmodernism and the deconstructionists have led us?

Listening for Dylan Thomas

In my eclectic reading recently, I came across Dylan Thomas' essay on his poetics titled "Notes on the Art of Poetry." It brought to mind one of the reasons that I am so entranced by poetry, and especially the delivery of it to the audience.

In it Thomas speaks of his fascination with the sound of words, beginning with nursery rhymes as a child. The sound and substance of words came first for him; things like meaning and communication of ideas were secondary. This emphasis on the sound of language permeates most if not all of his poems; it plays a great part in his stories; it is integral to his radio plays. Under Milkwood, his famous play for voices, is probably the greatest example of prose and poetry combined in one work since Shakespeare.

If you're going to make yourself more familiar with Thomas' work, your best approach would be to hear it. Because of his experience working in broadcasting during WWII, he recorded much of his work and much of it is still available.

It is hearing him read, hearing his delivery of the sound and music of the language, that opens the way to an understanding of the meaning of his words and the ideas these words express. "I am a painstaking, conscientious, involved, and devious craftsman in words, however unsuccessful the result so often appears." Words and the way they are used, new expressions shaped from old, all may look odd on the page but resound like church bells in the air around.

Thomas is by no means the only poet who should be heard before he is read. I had but a faint grasp on the poetry of bp nichol before I heard him read it aloud. The dub poets need the voice to convey what the page can not. Any good presenter of his/her own poetry must add something more than can be found displayed in black text on white paper.

Probably because I come from a people who relied on public recitation as a form of community entertainment, on "foardragen," poetry and its presentation aloud mean so much to me. But that's not the only reason. I too love the sound of words; at times I don't care whether or not they mean. In a way it's like opera: who cares what banalities the words may mean, they sound so marvelous!

When I remember Martin Luther King proclaiming, "Let freedom ring!" I hear in my own mind, "Let poetry ring!" Sometimes freedom and poetry are expressions of the same thing.

Let's keep the words and language ringing.

A Pound of Modern Poetry

For those still lamenting that modern poetry doesn't rhyme and has no rhythm, they can find the reason in the ideas and work of Ezra Pound. Don't blame the man and his "madness" for everything; too much of what is coming out today comes from misunderstanding and misinterpreting his ideas.

Sure, you can blame him for the ubiquitious "free verse" that he promoted in English poetry. He and his bunch began that thing about presenting "images" to say things rather than using good old flowery words and phrases arranged in metronomic feet and all that good old stuff. Read Shakespeare's sonnets along side Pound's Cantos: you'll have no idea what he's on about.

But already in the first decades of the twentieth century, the times they were a-changing (sorry, Bob.) Literature and poetry in English were stuck in a Victorian rut; what was happening was happening in Europe: wars and rumours of war, but also slashing decisive movements in art and literature. With the influences of French symbolism in poetry, Impressionism and Cubism in art, and Dada in everything, Pound and others began to work the new ideas into the English language, shaping some to their own use and creating others. The "Imagists" and the writers reflecting the crumbling of society began a new look in literature and the understanding of it.

He encouraged and supported T. S. Eliot's poetry. Eliot's "The Wasteland" became the premier example of modernist poetry, using all the techniques and rationales the writers proclaimed. In the field of the novel, James Joyce worked these into Ullyses and later Finnegan's Wake.

Pound would use images to say only what they could. He used quotations in other languages, footnotes, other techniques foreign to poetry. He took these images and, instead of arranging them in nice orderly rows that fit together the way poetry had for ages, scattered them seemingly haphazardly on the page without any evident relationship. Instead of writing in accented feet, Pound wrote his phrases like musical phrases, holding true to a cadence and flow. What it ends up as seems to be an interlocking mass of words, hiding any sense and meaning.

But with a critical look, the jumble of stones, the collage of different ideas and phrases, become more that what is first apparent. They point at and even carry a beauty of their own. Words and phrases, ideas and concepts, they begin to connect, to form random patterns as if tossed for the I Ching. Perhaps this is partly due to Pound's study and work with traditional Chinese poetry.

Cadence and pattern. These become for Pound and the moderns the antidotes to stale phrases and metrics. And this is where today's poets make their mistakes. Free, they proclaim, is free from those old ideas and they leave it there. They forget to use the replacements. Their jumbles of words have no connections or no cadence. A framework must exist or all will be washed away to be forgotten. Those who count syllables may carry on for a time; they have established a pattern. However, unless that pattern is translated into a discernable cadence (which does happen in the best) such poems too become unmemorable. And unmemorable is not what a poem should be.

The Hip and the Hop

Right from the beginning, I never liked hip-hop: the breakdancing, the clothing, the graffiti "art," the music and its "poetry," the sideways ball cap attitude. It seemed vain and meaningless to me, rebellion for the sake of rebellion.Before I could let things settle in my mind, the music and song became nothing but (to me) shouts and epithets about crime, sex, violence, and gangsterism. What's more, the practitioners seemed to live it out in the media.

My attitude and acceptance are changing.

It began with an East Coast artist who calls himself Buck 65. I heard him on the radio one day and his lyrics, though delivered in true rap style, made sense in a way the rap and hip-hop thing never had before. But, I figured, that's just an abberation. Then at the Skydragon Mayday celebration a group calling themselves "Rhyme Travellers" performed on the stage and I got the whole thing live and in my face.

Four guys swapping rhymes among each other on stage, an easily discernable line of protest running through their words and their actions. Movement, language, attitude, all carefully orchestrated into an almost flawless presentation over a prerecorded rhythm track. It was more than enough to send me to find out what hip hop, rap, etc. was really all about.

A little research: hip hop as develloped among black urban youth has much of the same basis as Dub poetry from Jamaica; that began when DJs would rhyme their own words (dub) over the B sides, usually instrumental versions, of popular reggae songs. Take away the music but leave the rhythm and rhyme, especially when it has been taken away from extemporaneous and become finely honed set pieces. You have an accepted and understandable form of poetry that is immediate and vernacular.

So American black youth appropriated rhythm and rhyme for their own use, their own manner of expression, and built a culture around it. Sometimes money and ego cary it too far and produce that over-evident "gangsta" facade. But I believe in the poetry. I believe in the protest. I believe that hip hop is in some way a part of every artist in any medium.
With the beat in my blood and the rhymes in my mouth and the cry for justice in my heart, I too am a part of hip hop.

Playing With Words

I'm reading a collection of pieces by James Elroy, Destination: Morgue. Intriguing as usual, but ... The man uses so many short phrases and sentences; they come at you like alliterative headlines from the worst of the supermarket tabloids. And even when he's not in full voice tabloid mode, he still alliterates. It became too much. I had to set the book aside.Now alliteration in moderation is a good and powerful tool for the poet, more so than for any other writer (except the producer of tabloid headlines!). Old English poetry was founded in alliterative four-stress lines. The sound of a sound repeating itself is often a baby's first attempt at language. Alliteration and assonance, its concomitant construction, (two deliberate examples of alliteration) are a vital part of the language. The question still remains, When is it a game and when is it poetry? Nursery rhymes that depend on word play, are they considered lasting poems comparing favourably with Old English riddles? Lewis Carrol's "Jaberwocky" can be found in anthologies of Victorian poetry. Why then isn't Joyce's Ulysses a great poem of the twentieth century? Closer to home is Christian Bok, an experimental and "sound" poet. What makes his Eunoia such a popular and critical success? His gathering of words, divided according to their use of one vowel, is the ultimate in word play - the result of years of making lists. Sound (and assonance, therefore) is everything; sense and meaning are far down those lists!

On CBC radio they held a contest for the best haiku about Toronto; it had to be five syllables / seven syllables / five syllables. There was nothing said about the spirit of haiku, the satori or moment of enlightenment that is crucial. We are left with form but no substance, a useless exercise. We might as well arrange words on the side of the fridge.Abstract art: abstract poetry. You endow the words and sounds with whatever meaning you want to fit. So play word games. Play Scrabble, do anagrams, acrostics, crossword puzzles. I like them too. I just don't call it poetry.

Poetry and Proper Names

Some time ago a question arose in a workshop group about the use of proper names in a poem. The objection was that if the reader was unfamiliar with the location, the reference and any connotations would be irrelevant and thereby detract from the purpose of the poem. A generic reference such as "a park" rather than a specific park, or "the city" instead of Toronto would do as well and not clutter the poem with unwarranted reactions by the reader. This was only mentioned in passing because of time restraints, but the idea has bubbled around in the back of my mind since.I suppose that argument has its merrit but I tend to disagree. Throughout the history of poetry, the use of proper names has made poems stronger by their particularity and their emphasis. One example that keeps pushing to the forefront is that of Browning's "My Last Dutchess." In his poem, we never learn the lady's name; this lessens her importance and emphasizes the importance of the Duke himself. Compare that with the repeated naming of the artist, Fra Pandolf, and the impression left of the Duke as a rich man of fine artistic taste. The same still happens today: someone will claim to have a "Van Gogh" rather that a painting hanging on his wall.

By naming, by using proper names, the poet establishes a personal connection to the person/place/thing he names. In doing so he displays a connection which is important to the poem, more important than the thing named or the poet himself. It should be this connectedness that resonates with the reader; it then does not matter if the reader has knowledge of the thing/place in itself, as long as he can identify with that sense of connection in himself. Place, poet and reader become secondary to the poem and its expression; they become connotations of the primary idea.

Whew! Who thought simple poetry could become so philosophical! Anyway, continue to name that place; claim it and give it meaning.

Meaning and Poetry (3)

We've looked at different ways poetry can carry meaning. There is the apparent meaning which is conveyed by the words and images used. Delving a little deeper, we could find meaning in the connotations those words carried or the emotional references attached to them. Then, of course, there would be obscure or esoteric meanings, some that may not have been meant by the author. But underneath it all, a good poem can impart meaning by its structure.

By this I don't refer to such obvious devices as a Christmas poem in the shape of a bell, or any poem in any external concrete form. Let's look at the formats that have stood the test of time and are still in use. The sonnet is a solemn form, used to explore emotional themes and conclusions. Heroic couplets in which each two lines rhyme seem usefull to teach or preach. You could never do that with the quick, laughing form of the limerick nor with the dance-like repetition of the villanelle. Can you imagine Robert Services ballads in any other form? The line length and rhythm make an excellent conveyance for his tales. They would not lend themselves to express the solemnity found in a sonnet, nor the wit and dash of a limerick. Each form provides a well understood basis for its expression.

What happens too often in so-called free verse is that beneath all the words and images there is no trace of any structure. A poet who begins from structure and language and poetic devices will have so much more at hand to impart his meaning: literal, symbolic, emotional, or hidden. Certainly there is no rule that structure should be evident but a poem that holds together the way such forms tend to hold them will be that much stronger in its impact.
Even though you cannot immediately see the structure underlying a poem, you should be able to feel it. It is the backbone, the strength of a good poem. Structure carries meaning and also makes the poem memorable.

Meaning and Poetry (2)

We've looked at the meaning of poetry as it is carried in the language and the ways that it is used. But that's just the outside, the wrapping paper and the packaging of a poem. In the way you can see different layers of rock in the face of a cliff, a poem consists of different layers of meaning.

Most words and phrases have taken to themselves extended and inclusive meanings. A poet, when using them should be aware of the possibilities that such connotations also bring to the poem. A sea, when it is a "sea of troubles," is no longer a body of salt water; in deep blue sea we need to consider, probably by context, whether deep refers to "blue" or "sea." And this is just one level. Is the blue sea also a sea of blues, therefore a sea of troubles? That's another possibility. Then, like a dream, can it convey longing for distant places, a force limiting expansion of the soul, and so on and so on. All these layers of meaning, whether close to the surface or not, have a presence in a poem.

So a poet must be careful not to distort his clarity of expression by using words and phrases that carry meanings contradictory to what he intends. He must know and understand as much of the possibilities his words may create, what nuances lie hidden among the similes, or how his metaphor may be interpreted.

Even then, the poet should not be surprised if someone ascribes to his work a totally subjective meaning or interpretation. The wash of language can validate almost any meaning. The surrealists taught us that.