The linguist, David Nunan, said that learning a language is more like growing a garden than building a wall. This image of the garden works for poetry equally well. Once a poem is written, you may go back to it and prune a dead branch here and there or tidy up some dead leaves. But the poem is growing. It is alive. A wall, too, lives in its own way, but it does not give flowers or provide fruit.
Now consider Monsieur Jourdain, who is the main character in Molière’s ‘Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme’. Like Mr Bott of Bott’s Digestive Sauce in the William stories, he has made his money and now he wants to take his place in society. He pays a teacher to educate him in the arts, and one day he learns that all language is either poetry or prose, and, even better, that he has been speaking prose all his life. What a pleasant discovery! Like Monsieur Jourdain, we must distinguish between poetry and prose, and, above all, we must not write prose when we think we are writing poetry.
It is as well to nail my colours to the mast and say what I believe poetry to be but first let us start with what it is not.
Boileau gave poets the following advice. ‘Polissez-le sans cesse et le repolissez.’ ‘Polish it ceaselessly, and then polish it again.’
No, Monsieur Boileau, poetry is not a piece of furniture.
While on my soap box, and I carry on because, like the speakers at Hyde Park corner, I know my listeners can walk away at any time they wish, let me say a word or two in defence of rhyme. Rhyme is much maligned and much abused. If there is a fault, then it is not rhyme itself but inadequate rhymers who are to blame. Rhyme has added stem and flower, structure and ornament to poetry. It makes the point, and it is part of the music.
Here are a couple of examples. First let’s take Wordsworth. He is missing the loss of the joy he had in nature when he was a child.
The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose…
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go
That there has passed away a glory from the earth.
Let’s remove the rhymes but not change the meaning. How does this strike you?
The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the lily…
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I walk
That there has passed away a glory from the world.
Now read aloud the lines of Wordsworth’s friend, Coleridge, describing the time when the Ancient Mariner’s ship was becalmed:
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
What about this?
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted sea.
Why malign rhyme? As long as it is unforced and natural, why not enjoy it?
Poetry is music. It should run as well as walk. It should rise and it should fall. It should be read aloud or perhaps even sung. It should be understood by the listener at the same time as it is heard. It is not ‘The Times’ crossword. It should touch the feelings rather than stimulate the mind. It should give you energy and pleasure. If it does not do these things, it is not a garden but a wall.
If it does not lift the heart, it may be another type of poetry but it is not the poetry that people will recite to themselves over and over again. It is not the poetry that people return to for enjoyment in good times and for solace when times are bad. It will not be the poem which they learnt at school, and which stays with them for the rest of their lives.