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Just a few lines: Here’s to the Raven and Kamikaze Butterflies
What has happened to poetry? Learned men and women used to quote it like we quote the last funny line from “The Daily Show.” But poetry seems to have lost its cache.
A Facebook exchange made me remember. A friend posted a line that went:
“Jerry Grillo is filled with fantastic terrors never felt before. Maybe this is a good day to take opium and bury someone alive.”
Most of the people who responded got it. It’s a line from “The Raven” by Poe. It just may be my favorite line of poetry because of its brilliant alliteration: “And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain, thrilled me, filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.”
When I was young, Tuesday night was Family Night at my house. The seven kids (two came later and never knew 
the wonder of Family Night) were supposed to memorize a song or a poem and recite it for the fam. I memorized “The Raven,” because it was long and I thought it would impress my parents. My dad was a serious Poe fan. Many of you remember the piece I wrote upon his death, in which I recalled him sitting in the hall outside our bedrooms as we were going to sleep, singing songs (“On The Road to Mandalay,” “Go Tell Aunt Rhodie,” “Sleep, Kentucky Babe”) and reading poems (mostly Poe, including “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee,” but also “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “She Walks in Beauty”).
So I memorized “The Raven.” And Eliot’s “Macavity the Mystery Cat,” which played a significant part in “Cats,” the musical.
Oddly, several days ago, when Atlanta was having a cold snap and a rash of water main breaks, I was called by a reporter from WABE (I am the spokesperson for the City of Atlanta Department of Watershed Management. When something bad happens, I am on the air.). The reporter said, “Just talk for a few minutes while I do a sound check.” So I started, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door…” I got to this part before the reporter said, “Do you know that whole damn thing?”
For a long time now, when I am in a meeting and bored, and I want to appear as if I am paying attention, I will drag out my computer and type, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary…”
Or the Byron poem, “She walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies. And all that’s best of dark and light meet in her aspect and her eyes.”
Or the Robert Louis Stevenson poem with the line that’s engraved on my brother’s tombstone, “Under the wide and starry sky, dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, and I laid myself down with a will. This be the verse that you ‘grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be. Home is the sailor, home from the sea and the hunter home from the hill.”
Once when we were driving from Tampa to Fernandina, we ran into a swarm of butterflies. And my dad, who loved poetry said, “Look! Kamikaze butterflies!” Then he turned to me and said, “You can make a poem out of that. Kamikaze butterflies.”
I took out the pad and pencil from the glove compartment, and for three hours I worked. I would say, “Can we stop and get a Nehi?” and he would say, “Do you have a poem yet?”
Finally, we were about 20 miles from Fernandina, when I said, “I have it!” He said, “Read it to me. If I like it, we’ll stop at the Dairy Queen.”
I read it, and I remember it to this day:
Kamikaze butterfly into my windshield crashed,
And like a raindrop left its mark where other bugs were smashed.
Little did I know that when I started on my ride
My car would be the means of some poor bug’s strange suicide.
I do not know the circumstances leading to his fate.
But someone ought to call his wife and tell her not to wait.
I’d like to stay and write more, but I’d best bid a goodbye,
I have to wash my car now, Kamikaze butterfly.
It was a 13-year-old’s attempt at poetry, but my dad remembered it, virtually word for word almost to the day he died. Poetry, he told me once when he and I were sitting on the back porch at his house, is the way we say what we want to say in a pretty way. He never liked free verse or blank verse. Poetry has to rhyme, he said, or it isn’t poetry. I argued with him to no avail. My mother’s best friend, Nola Perez (https://www.pw.org/content/nola_perez_1) is a published poet. Her poetry does not rhyme, although I think some of it is very nice.
But Jerry Grillo’s Facebook post made me think how little we care about poetry nowadays.
Is it, as my sister, Dot, said, that poetry has become music? Were the poets of our generation Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles, Springsteen and Steve Earle? I’d have to agree that their lyrics, sans music, qualify. But that’s the whole point. Their lyrics are lyrics. They’re not poetry. Poetry is lyrics without music. To say, as I have on numerous occasions, that Simon and Garfunkel are the poets of our generation belittles Simon and Garfunkel AND the poets, like Maya Angelou and Allen Ginsberg.
But are Maya Angelou and Allen Ginsberg going to be the kinds of poets that people 10 years from now can quote with the ease that we can quote Byron?
I did a little experiment last night. I called three kids I know: my neighbor’s daughter, Sophie, who goes to Inman Middle School; my niece, Mary Alice, who goes to school in Fernandina; and my goddaughter, Caroline, who goes to Paideia. Sophie says she likes poetry; Mary Alice could quote a few lines from “Annabel Lee;” and Caroline, who is studying Shakespeare’s sonnets right now, could quote a few lines from “Death, Be Not Proud.” Will they be able to quote these poems 10 years from now? I don’t know. I doubt it.
Will they be able to quote any poem? I hope so. But I am not sure. I’d hate to think that poetry is a dying art form. Will Poe and Byron and Shakespeare die out from lack of use? I don’t know, but I am not feeling good about their chances.
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Billy Howard says: Thank you Janet! This was wonderful and inspiring and makes me want to memorize more poetry immediately. The bit that I do know brings me quite a bit of joy and I envy your list of poems.
-
Marie says: Oh my, you brought to mind:
“Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertue engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eke with his swete breeth,
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth,
The tendre croppes, and the younge sonne
Hath in the Ram is halfe cours yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye
That slepen al the night with open ye.
So pricketh hem nature in hir corages
That longen folk to goon on pilgramages,
And palmers for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.”
-ChaucerHad to memorize it for 11th grade English class. The verbal recitation, that is, not the punctuation, so I ask for clemency on that point. My Olde Anguish spelling may be a bit off, too. Everybody in my class can still recite it, and we did a few years back at our 40th high school reunion.
-
Janet: a thousand thank yous – Australia had a reputation for supporting more poets per capita than any other Western country; it may still be so. As in your family, recitations (or a song or tune) were a must at Povah family gatherings, part of the Celtic tradition that remains when most other reminders of it have vanished. When I was growing up, schoolteachers often asked new kids if they could recite or sing. I still like to quote a line or two from a poem or song to suit an occasion that strikes me as funny or tragic. Driving anywhere with me drives my wife nuts.
-
Ross from Pawleys says: Same here Frank. My sons and wife rolled their eyes continually as we drove through Maryland often to the lines of:
“Round about them orchards sweep
Apple and peach tree fruited deep”
. . . or further south
“Wherever the rivers of Georgia run
They smell of peaches long in the sun”
Oh, Dad, cut it out. Hats off to Miss Johnson, an eighth grade teacher, who had the wisdom to make us memorize 12 poems, and, yes, recite them every Monday. We didn’t like it then, but now to me it was a gift that has lasted for a lifetime.I have an eighth grade teacher who drilled
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Melinda Ennis says: Speaking of great Dad’s, mine used to delight us kids on car trips by reciting the entire prelude to Canterbury Tales (thanks for reminding me Marie!). And, like you, he did it in the olde English.
And, I knew I had met the right man (my husband) when he also professed a love of Wallace Stevens (one of my favorite poets, perhaps in part because he had to support himself as an insurance salesman). His “Sunday Morning” is my all-time favorite poem—here’s just the beginning:
“Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice”
Although I’m not a religious sort, for me, Sunday morning always have that air of “the holy hush of ancient sacrifice.” How gorgeous. Perhaps we should start a poetry society Janet. I know Keith Graham would join. He’s a great lover of poetry and a fellow fan of Pablo Neruda. If you haven’t read his love poems, get thee to a bookstore. -
George says: I agree with your father if it doesn’t rhyme it isn’t poetry.
I’m trying to understand why this isn’t poetry and how saying it is belittles George and Paul?Here come old flattop he come grooving up slowly
He got joo-joo eyeball he one holy roller
He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker he just do what he pleaseAgain I’m with your father what makes this poetry and not a collection of random thoughts
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the
streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles
full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! — and you,
Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons? -
George: That was wonderful. I must begin reading your USA poets. To all: What say we that on this site we compose a group poem. Contributions of no more than four lines, preferably two, at any one time. Though of course more than one contribution from each is allowed. First lines from Janet. Just an idle thought.
-
Robin says: Dear Janet,
This lovely essay is a “keeper.” Embodied in it, I heard anew the music in lines from poems that have become such old standards they sadly have fallen almost into cliche. And “Kamikaze Butterfly” was just grand.
Marie: I share your love of Chaucer’s opening lines in Canterbury Tales. I still cherish the time a college English professor taught me how to read the lines in middle English. I used to sit out under the giant oaks on the quad reading aloud, and the squirrels would pause as if to listen.
And for all who have been touched by this essay. Here’s one of my favorite memorized passages from a time long ago when I used to memorize long passages from Shakespeare’s plays for fun:
“Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated, this bird of dawning singeth all night long. And then, they say, the nights are wholesome. Then, no planets strike, no fairies take, no witch hath power to charm, so hallowed and so gracious is the time.”
“So have I heard, and do, in part, believe it. But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.”
But like many of you, my mother read poetry to me as a child, long before I could read myself, from “The Family Book of Best Loved Poems.”
Do any of you remember, “Wynken, Blynken and Nod one night sailed off in a wooden shoe. Over a river of crystal light, into a sea of dew. Where are you going and what do you wish? the old moon asked the three .We have come to fish for the herring fish that swim in this beautiful sea. Nets of silver and gold have we, said Wynken, Blynken and Nod.”
(I can’t believe I still remember this after 50 years!) -
Janet Ward says: I’m going to take Frank up on his thought about writing a group poem. I am going with the heroic couplet format since Chaucer was its daddy, and we seem to have a lot of Chaucer fans. He also wrote a lot in iambic pentameter, so:
A rabbit lived out there upon the hill
Her world was happy, quiet, calm and still.Y’all can take it from there.
-
Janet Ward says:
Frank, you just ended the dang thing. We were supposed to hop through meadows, meet Mr. Squirrel and Miss Frog and generally go on for a while!
-
(The sponsor’s nose is out of joint,
though she, too, used a fulle pointe,
To let us pause, our wits to gather,
Before we joined in open slather); -
C Smith says: Living free with redundancy and no strife
Along came the wolf and ended her life!Sorry!
-
Had she but lived, her life’s short strand,
She might have shown us that
No coney is an island. -
C Smith says:
Frank first time I’ve laughed out loud in quite a while.
-
Janet Ward says:
Damn, as they would say on Coney Island, youse guys is good.
-
No doubt that’s true, if speak they would,
Of gentler, poorer, simpler times;
In couplets worth just cents and dimes; -
C Smith says:
But our minds have withered since we could
So my prose are priceless rhymes
That worsen with the passing of time -
Janet Ward says:
And, yet I know for long, forsooth
I have no wonder yet in truth. -
“A rabbit lived out there upon the hill
“Her world was happy, quiet, calm and still.”[Insert all the other lines you guys have written.]
And, yet, she had a dear desire,
That some of us might e’en admire.This rabbit had a secret wish.
She really wanted to be a fish.Because fish found succor in a school.
And this rabbit, though uneducated, was no fool.Alas …
-
her brain was somewhat porous –
She found the Hallelujah chorus
Nigh on impossible to commit
To memory, but what of it;
Handel is a horrid habit;
When engaged in by a rabbit –
And so she concentrated on -
C Smith says:
How her life had gone so wrong
Living in happy, quite, calm, and still pieces
To now be forever known as wolf feces -
But hist! Upon that pile of foetid dung,
See there, a smiling flower has sprung;
Nid-nodding, smiling, so do not weep;
Beauty springs from a life’s defeat;
For see, her leaves are wondrous food,
For Rabbit’s swift-maturing brood; -
Melinda Ennis says:
Wow. I am impressed.
The dewers speak with tongues of honey,
I’d tarry longer, but I must earn money! -
No not honey, though I’m stung,
For my latest couplet was begun,
In blatant ungrammatic style,
With “unlike”, instead of plain “meanwhile”
But back now to our flow’ry ballad,
Which last did speak of rabbit salad; -
C Smith says:
The rabbit brood must eat fast and well
for the wolf’s litter is growing to quick to tell
it won’t be long indeed
before they too will need to feed. -
C Smith says:
For it is not a hot dog they desire
But coney tartar to fuel their fire. -
Oh Mr Smith, your thirst for blood,
Sweeps these couplets as a flood;
But brave New Worlders will not groan,
For see, the blood is not their own –
Oops, that slipped out, though I thought it merry;
‘Twas totally unnecessary,
Before I slide to old bad habits,
Let us return to flowers, and rabbits -
And how
When the wheedling, prying winds of fall
Set all the trees a-quivering, so that in ancient knowledge of the soon to come,
They send their sacrifice of leaves as grave-clothes to the butterflies,
Who in their vibrant hundreds just a few short weeks ago, danced
And courted on our hill; then it is that I give thanks
To he of the ancient truck and wood-wise ways,
Who fills my shed with promise of companionable hearthsides -
Cathy says: Number 9 here.
Jan, we knew “family night.”
In fact, it was during “Poetry Night” as we called it that I memorized “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.”What we did NOT know, however, was how to split a Coke and one order of fries six ways.
;);)
-
But wait, I’ll not let firewood interfere,
With one so brave as Paul Revere,
Who while riding through the midnight wild,
Did trample oe’r a wolfish child,
And by this quirk of Freyish whim,
Did make the rabbits’ life less grim -
C Smith says:
As Shakespeare wrote o’er and o’er
“quote the raven ” NEVERMORE”! -
And so it seems our tale is done,
Our dog’r'l jests their races run;
But where I ask did Janet go?
Regaining sanity with Poe? -
Janet Ward says:
Frank, I’ve had a tough few days at work. Haven’t been able to pull out the computer for fun. Sorry to have left everyone unattended, but it certainly seems like my input wasn’t needed in this endeavor!
-
I did wonder – I thought maybe you’d sought solace in a stiff drink and some real poetry.
-
Janet Ward says:
Strong drink is solace, it is true
But I did not leave you and would not do
That, as you are my kindred kind
And if I did, I would not find
The pleasure that I know in these
Immortal rhymes that soul doth please.
Or even rhymes that turn out crappy
And yet, in some way, make me happy. -
And so at last returning home,
Where was begun this epic pome;
(Or should that be returning hoem,
Where first began this epic poem?)
Oh darn, I’ve lost my train of thought,
Go widdershins I shouldn’t ought!
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