I had a bit of a wait ahead of me at the pharmacy today – or so I was told. I got to getting bored pretty quickly and wondering what I could do, so I pulled up my Kindle app, knowing I’ve got a few hundred books to get around to.
Then Amazon, sly as they are, gives me some notifications, first of which was a recommendation for an eye-catching title by an author I’ve really liked reading, Wendell Berry. And who could pass up $1.99 for a book called What are People For? Well? This sounded like something I might not mind reading, so I picked it up and got started with an essay that I’d already read in his book The World-Ending Fire (recommended by my older brother and the first I started reading Berry).
But the essay was worth it all over again. Within the first few pages I found some of the words that got me thinking (as do many that he writes). In speaking of the arts, he says, “From the imperfections of life, one could take refuge in the perfections of art. One could read a poem–-or better, write one.”
Why not? I think I’ve found something of that in the words I write here. Even if at times they’re shallow throw-aways, I find a bit of satisfaction in them. I’m convinced there’s something there, lurking under the surface of what I’m doing, and that if I just write enough, it’ll pop up. It’s shown itself at times, even if the readers don’t see it. It’s been that way for me for quite some time. I’ll have written something years ago, and when I go back to it, I’ll think, “Hmmm, this is pretty good.” Perhaps not as often as I’ve thought, “What the heck was I thinking when I wrote this disjointed piece of garbage,” but every so often, there’s a glimmer.
So writers like Wendell Berry get me thinking, and that’s one of my favorite pastimes. What do you think I do when I’m putting in those miles on a bike? I’ve had some of my best ideas out there, and a few of them I’ve remembered when I got back home.
But Berry says something in that line I quoted that makes me think too – the call to write a poem. I’ve done that a couple of times here (just pull down the “categories” menu and you should see “poetry” in there). Silly stuff, but fun. There was a stretch when I could do that just by thinking of a random line and building from there. Like when I suddenly thought of the words, “Along the river, by the woods, there lived a golden duck…”
They’ve been harder to come by lately though. I wonder what’s broken.
Still, I’ve written poetry before. Maybe even a sonnet. As good as anything Bill S. ever wrote, I’m sure. Poetry is an emotional thing though, and just like COVID can dull one’s sense of smell, perhaps living in a COVID world has dulled our emotions to the point that a lot of the [quality] passions have kind of seeped out of them. Sure, we’re emotional, but they’re the emotions of fatigue, frustration, and anger. We’re just plain tired, so we’d rather have someone else write the poetry for us.
But you know what? There’s got to be something left in the tank, I’m sure. And if it takes a thousand bad haikus, I’m gonna get to it. Maybe even tomorrow.
Yeah…tomorrow.
I do not generally care for Bill’s sonnets so I’m guessing yours are better
I can still pretty much recite 18 from memory — and I actually did a few years ago to a professor of English literature at a local university and she was kind of impressed. Not with the sonnet, but the fact that I knew it, of course. I almost passed for educated there.
I could also do the Macbeth piece from which my title comes with a little refresher — that’s such a cool bit of work. “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Gotta love that line, even if it is kind of dour and over the top. But, you know, context.
I wrote a paper on Macbeth as a high school senior, but I don’t remember much except “out damned spot”
Haiku is my favorite poetry form: spare but deep.
and portable enough that anyone can take it with them…