THE POWER OF POETRY
By
John G. Sutton
To be truly effective poetry should, in my opinion, touch the soul of the reader. By this I mean that the verse must create an inner reaction, sparking an emotional response, be that sadness, joy, anger or even repulsion. Many believe that they can write poetry and most of us will, at some time or other, have tried to do so. Few actually achieve the heights of emotional expression that are the domain of literary greats such as Tennyson or Wordsworth. I think of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ in which he wrote:
“I am a part of all that I have met / Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ / Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades / for ever and for ever when I move.
In those lines Tennyson is saying that our lives are but a journey whose destination, that distant margin, disappears further and further into the distance with each new experience we gain and each step that we take along the way. As if by merely moving forwards we extend the kingdom of our dreams, ‘that untravell’d world’ and in so doing we become that which we have always been, immortal. Tennyson touches our souls with his words of wonderment and we, as mere readers, are all the richer for that experience. His words form an arch through which we may gain a deeper understanding of the human condition.
William Wordsworth wrote ‘The Daffodils’ which is perhaps one of the best-known poems in the English language. I am sure that most readers will know the opening lines:
“I wander’d lonely as a cloud / That floats on high o’er vale 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.
In that poem Wordsworth captures the symbolism and very essence of Spring, that glorious feeling that the world is eternal, it lives forevermore. Just the sight of the simple daffodil fluttering in the breeze by the side of a sparkling lake is enough to convey the message that we, like the daffodil, will one-day bloom again in the eye of eternity.
Another poet, Wilfed Owen, captured an entirely different emotion in his war poems, I think of ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’. Owen was writing of the horror of a gas attack during WWI. In this poem he describes a near dead soldier being thrown into a handcart and hauled away from the trenches to die in some forgotten corner of the battlefield.
“If in some smothering dreams you too could pace / Behind the wagon we flung him in / And watch the white eyes writhing in his face / His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin: / If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, / Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud / Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues - / My friend, you would not tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory, / That old lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori. (It is sweet and good to die for one’s country)
As you can see by that example poetry really can cause repulsion as well as spiritual joy. My argument here is that it is the duty of the poet, their craft, the very reason for their being, to touch the souls of their readers. Owen’s poem makes me shudder, I was once a soldier and I can well imagine the terror of a mustard gas attack from reading his terrible words. Wilfred Owen was himself killed in WWI in the year 1918 aged just 25 years. His poem tells us that it is not true that war is for peace and our heroes die glorious deaths. War is hell and it is always, without exception, about power and greed.
I write poetry myself and have recently been experiencing some degree of success as a poet with guest appearances on a number of local BBC Radio stations in the North West of England. I was invited on to BBC Radio Lancashire and interviewed by Ted Robbins who asked me to read my poem about being a grandfather:
‘Grandpa Grumps’ : I’ve just become a grandfather / Me daughter give birth to a lad / And suddenly all of me moaning / Has stopped, ‘cos now I’m just glad / I used to think days were real hard like / All workin’ and plodding away / Just filling in time till me passing / But now, well I’m plannin’ to stay / Wife says as I’ve getten’ a smirk on / I’m laughing and chuckling at kid / Watchin’ him yelling and skriking / Just like his mother once did / Now I see that this life’s got a purpose / And all of them trials, hurts and bumps / Have turned into lessons I learned from / On the road to Grandpa Grumps / And though I might be an old codger / Grey hair, baldy patch and fat tum / For one little chap I’m still perfect / And that fellow is my grandson / You see it’s all down to perception / He sees not the signs of old age / But a person that offers affection / His very own jolly plump sage / I tell him tall tales of brave exploits / Read nursery rhymes and sing songs / He sits on my knee and starts laughing / And never a day is too long / Dear God let this boy live in freedom / Do not let his innocence spoil / As he faces this world and its troubles / May he find peace of mind, not just toil / Then one day when my song is a memory / And he’s travelled and wearing life’s lumps / God grant him a grandchild to cuddle / Then he too will be Grandpa Grumps.
I hope that I have succeeded in touching your soul with that poem. I wrote it for my own grandson Aaron Nathanial Dowrick (Pictured above) who is now 16 months of age. He was staying with us one weekend and I woke with that poem almost completed in my mind. If you enjoyed it you can actually buy a copy of the poem read by me on my CD: Grandpa Grumps & Collected Poems run time 45 minutes cost £9.99 including P&P. Write to John G. Sutton care of The Editor, Psychic World, PO Box 14 Greenford, Middlesex UB6 0UF enclosing a cheque or postal order.