The Power of Poetry

This week’s blog post celebrates National Poetry Month. It is longer than usual because I am repurposing a speech I wrote for Toastmasters several years ago. But I think you’ll enjoy it.

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Poetry can be funny or it can be serious. Its subjects can be trivial or earth-shattering. But it often sticks with us in a way prose doesn’t. This is especially true when poetry contains the “rhyme and rhythms found in life,” as my friend, poet Tom Spencer, expressed it.

How many of you have read or listened to Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”? If so, how much do you remember? I own the book, and I’m not sure I can quote any of it. “Leaves of Grass” is written in stanzas but reads like prose, with neither rhyme nor much of a rhythmic beat.

But consider another of Walt Whitman’s poems that is much easier to remember. “O Captain! My Captain!” is Whitman’s tribute to Abraham Lincoln, written shortly after his assassination. This time Whitman used both rhythm and rhyme, perhaps because he knew no better way to convey his strong emotions. Here is the first verse:

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While fellow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

            But O heart! heart! heart!

                        O the bleeding drops of red,

                                    Where on the deck my Captain lies,

                                                Fallen cold and dead.

So rhythm and rhyme are the main elements that help us remember what a poet has said.

Strong word images also play a part. Here is another Walt Whitman poem that has always captured my attention.

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. 

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to

            connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold;

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

This poem doesn’t rhyme, but I remember it because I can see the spider patiently weaving its web and then hear the longing as Whitman compares himself to that spider.

Or, to take a shorter example, a word picture can be something as simple as the one in Carl Sandberg’s, “Fog.”

The fog comes

on little cat feet. 

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

So rhyme is not crucial to remembering as long as the word images are strong enough. It does help, though. An hour from now, see if you can forget these lines from Gelett Burgess’s short poem, “The Purple Cow.”

I never saw a Purple Cow,

I never hope to see one;

But I can tell you, anyhow,

I’d rather see than be one.

Actually, Burgess must have had second thoughts about that bit of humor, because he later wrote this:

Ah, Yes! I Wrote the Purple Cow —

I’m Sorry, now, I Wrote it!

But I can Tell you Anyhow,

I’ll Kill you if you Quote it!

(“The Purple Cow: Suite)

I guess I’m lucky Burgess is already dead and can’t come after me.

Rhythm and rhyme are also important elements when saying, “I love you.” Who can resist John Boyle O’Reilly’s “The White Rose”?

The red rose whispers of passion,

And the white rose breathes of love;

O, the red rose is a falcon,

And the white rose is a dove. 

But I send you a cream-white rosebud

With a flush on its petal tips;

For the love that is purest and sweetest

Has a kiss of desire on the lips.

The “rhyme and rhythms found in life” also play a big part in soothing the soul. My favorite poem is by William Wordsworth.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought: 

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Whenever I read Wordsworth’s poem, my own pulse slows and the tension drains away. And it’s all because of word images conveyed through rhythm and rhyme.

Poetry can also affect the way we react to the world around us. “The Arrow and the Song” was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s way of reminding us that our actions have consequences even if we don’t see them right away—or maybe never see them at all.

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight. 

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song? 

Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

Then there are poets who want to change the world. Their message is more likely to be heard if it also entertains.

If Joyce Kilmer were alive today, would he be a tree-hugger? I don’t know, but everything the environmentalists say and argue is ineffective compared to Kilmer’s simple poem, “Trees.”

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree. 

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; 

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray; 

A tree that may in Summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair; 

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain. 

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

Of course, humor is another way to promote a cause. Consider Ogden Nash’s parody of Kilmer’s poem in Nash’s “Song of the Open Road.”

I think that I shall never see

A billboard lovely as a tree.

Indeed, unless the billboards fall,

I’ll never see a tree at all.

Oh yes, poetry can be powerful.

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The lines of poetry at the beginning and the end of this post are mine. The Ogden Nash poem is still under copyright but is covered by the fair use exception. The other poems are in the public domain because of their age.