Some thoughts on poetry

Writing poetry is hard work. Contrary to popular belief, poetry is not simply short lines of prose arranged to look like a "poem." Here is an apparently simple poem by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Rain

The rain is falling all around,
It falls on field and tree,
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea.

[this poem came from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, as available on Gutenberg.org]

I say apparently simple, because no poetry is simple. Let's look at this poem.

Stevenson makes a comment that is universal. But he makes his comment in a formal way, using certain conventions that make the thought unique and memorable. It is not the line length or the appearance that makes this into a poem. It is the combination of rhyme, meter, and content. So much of what I see today tries to be poetry by talking about "poetical" things. The whole world may be full of poetry, but it must be put into some form of rhyme, meter or content to actually become a poem.

Considering Stevenson's poem only from the standpoint of syllabic meter, it is in the form 8 syllables/6 syllables/8 syllables/6 syllables with rhyme on the last syllable of each of the two 6 syllable lines. The first and third lines have 4 iambic feet (tetrameter), that is accent on the second syllable such as -/. The second and fourth lines each have three iambic feet (trimeter). The word "umbrellas" is slightly problematical because the preceding stressed syllable falls on the word "the." The poem is constructed with enjambed or run-on lines in which the sense of the poem continues on to the next line without a natural syntactical pause, establishing a strong grammatical pull between the lines known as enjambment. See

http://english3.fsu.edu/~mkennedy/poeticform.htm Meegan Kennedy, Department of English, Florida State University.

Although the content of the poem appears simple, the thought shows substantial reflection on the universality of human experience and the egalitarian nature of natural phenomenon.

The next time you see a "poem" in print, think about both the form and content. You may find that much of what is being passed off as poetry isn't poetry at all. From time to time I will continue to comment on poetry. I believe that if poetry fails so fails the world. Not that I believe that poetry has any saving grace, but that true poetry embodies all that is good and beautiful in the world. An evil world cannot produce true poetry. However, just as pictures can uplift and edify as well as degrade and destroy, so words can be used for evil purposes. True poetry comes from the fullness of the heart and if used for evil, to that extent is no longer poetry.