Verses, Not Versus, 2025
by Sarah May Clarkson
April was National Poetry Month and cause for celebration. This time last year my
monthly column was about my maternal grandfather – and poetry. In April, I felt the
need to revisit the latter topic in 2025.
Poetry is often treated like the red-headed step-child by those who say they don’t get it
or by those who don’t want to get it. But here’s the thing: poetry is not hard, it’s not
trippy, and it is not written by folks who just want to mess with you. We’re in a moment –
nationally, politically – that applauds doing more with less. That, in a nutshell, is poetry:
it does a lot, often a powerful lot, with less. Poetry is economical. Some of the best
prose I have ever read was poetry-like.
We begin at the beginning, by which I mean at the beginning of our collective literacy
journey. Babies, youngsters, and students of elementary age learn to read – and learn
to appreciate reading – through rhyme and poetry. Establishing comfort and confidence
with language begins with a certain kind of mastery, which for children often means
rhymes, and music, music and rhymes. Quick! Name a nursery rhyme. Here are a few
that are no doubt familiar: Mary Had a Little Lamb, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle
Little Star. Strong neural connections are made through the exercise of rhyming and
that strengthens language acquisition, language proficiency, and language confidence.
During a brief stint as a children’s librarian, and, of course, as a parent who read to our
boys during their very early years and at night before bed, I became enamored of some
real gems that were spectacularly rhyming: Nanette’s Baguette, Good Night Moon,
Madeline, Pierre: A Cautionary Tale in Five Chapters, Llama Llama Red Pajama, and
some personal favorites, such as Winter Poems (compiled by Barbara Rogasky and
illustrated, beautifully, by Trinia Schart Hyman; I sure do love those illustrations), and A
Child’s Calendar (now 25 years old, compiled by John Updike and, again, illustrated by
Trina Schart Hyman, which is still in print and a treasure). What happens to that base
enjoyment of rhyming and fun? Why do we lose that appreciation when we grow up?
For those of you out there who are rolling their eyes at a valentine to poetry, please
consider that the foundational texts of many world religions – Islam, Judaism,
Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and others – often impart their spiritual messages
(imperatives) through the use of poetry and verse. Who could argue that the Bible’s
psalms are not poetry? Psalm 138 begins thus, a prayer of gratitude (the first of eight
stanzas):
I will praise thee with my whole heart:
before the gods will I sing praise unto thee.
In the Torah (derived from the first five books of the Biblical Old Testament, the
Pentateuch) both the Song of the Sea and the Song of Moses are written in verse. The
Jewish celebration of Passover concluded this year, mystically, on the same day as
Christian Easter. Here is stanza 13 from the Song of the Sea, which gives thanks
(again) for deliverance from slavery in Egypt:
In your unfailing love you will lead
the people you have redeemed.
In your strength you will guide them
to your holy dwelling.
Readers are invited to interrogate the use of verse in the Quran, in Buddhists texts
(called gathas), in Hinduism, and in the works of other practiced faiths. What is it about
verse that makes the spiritual and the seemingly inaccessible more accessible through
verse? It is a question for the ages.
Since we are on a bit of a time travel here, it is significant that William Shakespeare
composed many of his plays and more than 150 sonnets in verse. Sonnet no. 73 rings
true for me as a woman of a certain age and one who appreciates the call and song of
birds whenever I have the privilege of hearing such songs. Here are the first four lines of
that sonnet:
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
Ah, Billy Collins. Some critics and reviewers have disparaged him as pedestrian, not
sufficiently academic, but I disagree. My first-year college students got him in a way
that they didn’t get other poets. Here are two excerpts that hit the mark with me –
someone who is decidedly not a first-year college student. First a few lines (stanza 2)
from “The Trouble with Poetry” (2007):
the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.
And then there is “Forgetfulness” (1999), by Billy Collins, which, I suspect, all of us can
relate to:
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Sigh. Memory. Remembering. Remembrance. Forgetting. That’s a topic for a future
session.
Langston Hughes (1901 - 1967, gone way too young) was a giant of thought, reflection,
and America’s persistent and perennial examiner of our great contradictions and
hypocrisies. “Let America Be America Again” (1935) is both pointed and heart-rending:
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
Some of the most powerful and impactful (in that subtle and lovely way of poetry) works
of fiction I have read were written in a way that was assuredly poetic, or which was
written by poet / novelists. Have you read Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was
Divine? Truly. Incredible. Just a few weeks ago I finished Anne Michaels’s novel Held
(she wrote the important novel Fugitive Pieces that I cannot recommend highly enough).
Held is not like any novel I have ever read; it is lean and trippy and evocative in a way
that I can’t properly describe – except to recommend it. Michaels has published as a
poet as well as a writer of fiction; the relationship between the two styles is, me thinks,
symbiotic.
Poetry insinuates itself into our lives in many ways: song lyrics, religious texts, books of
fiction. All I want to say here is: give it a chance. Support writers and artists: check their
work out of your friendly neighborhood library, buy their books new or used, take the
opportunity that poetry provides to slow down, use fewer (charged) words, and
appreciate that, for real, less is more.
