Of Poems, Poets, and That Ilk

Happy Holidays, everyone, whether we're looking forward, backward, or what. I'd write “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” but it's been done, so I guess poetry not necessarily about the season will be my topic today.

I've noticed that after each shower I take, as I get around to drying my feet, I am reminded of the line, “Jellicles dry between their toes.”

Since not everybody knows about Jellicle Cats, I refer you to T. S. Eliot's collection, “Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.” “Cats,” the musical, is largely (but by no means entirely) based on those poems. The Jellicles are generally well-behaved. I happen to like the poems better then the musical, even though one of the nicest songs has nothing to do with Eliot's book.

But now, how come drying between my toes reminds me of the line about the Jellicle Cats? Each time it happens (i.e. every time I shower or bathe) I think about why the line has stuck in my mind, and then I always also think about why a lot more lines from famous (or other) poems stick in my mind, and so far I'm not completely sure of the answer. But here are some possibilities.

Nowadays, standards more or less require a poem to consist of what, formerly might have been called “a short bit of poignant prose.” Short seems usually to be required, poignant is almost always required, and prose seems to be absolutely essential. When is the last time you read a recently written poem that included what was (in English poetry, for a very long time) regarded as absolutely essential, namely rhyme and meter? See, the Jellicles thing is from a poem that, while short and--for some--perhaps poignant, does something that prose doesn't do, namely reveal both a catchy rhythm and a clear-cut rhyme scheme. So, even though I've never felt impelled to memorize the whole poem, I find that it often rings a bell in my memory. There are lots of poems like that. On the other hand, it's pretty rare that a line from a poem that meets today's standards rings any such bell. I read ‘em. Well, not a lot of ‘em, but enough that something ought to register, but the lines just don't seem to stay with me.

It would also be possible for lines from poems about truly significant subjects to stay with me, regardless of formalisms, but for some reason that rarely happens. Some pure prose of that sort stays with me, usually due to endless repetition. For example, the Pledge to the Flag, which we recited over and over when I was in grades 1 through 12--so many times that when I come across the words “Under God”--which were inserted into the Pledge after I'd moved on to college, so that they weren't ingrained in me like the rest was--they seem incorrect.. Of course, for those who grew up reciting the revised version, it seems perfectly normal. I have no idea what whoever it was who wrote the Pledge down in the first place would think of the revision, but most Americans today accept it as if it had been there in the first p lace. (How it came to be added is an interesting story, but I think it's not considered a poem, so it doesn't play a role in today's diatribe or whatever this is.)

Well, what is a poem in the first place? That question is a pretty hard one to answer. One of my students (I used to teach) told me that in a literature course he'd taken, the class discussed the matter extensively and finally decided that a set of words is a poem if (but perhaps only if) the writer cares how they are arranged on the page. The poet e. e. cummings (whose shift key may not always have been functional) wrote a lot of poems that may have suggested this quasi-definition. Most of them I don't remember, but some I do. The one that starts:

Anyone lived in a pretty how town/ with up so floating many bells down

has enough rhyme and meter that it sticks in my memory, even though I haven't ever set out to memorize it. It's poignant, too, and brief, but not prose. I don't know whether literati still regard it as a poem or not. The same poet's poem about a falling leaf leaving a tree black against white sky has no particular rhyme nor much meter, and yet I recall it all, so I'm sure my analysis of what's memorable is incomplete.

Poetry tends to be considered an art, and there's a tendency to suppose that the only great artists are the ones who revolutionize their medium. In poetry's case, the revolutionizing has tended to take the form of abandonment of previous requirements. In music, e.g., we had Stravinski revolutionizing things by abandoning some requirements, writing good stuff, and then re-revolutionizing by renewed acceptance of some of those requirements in some of his later work. In my state of relative ignorance, I can't say how widespread this tendency is. In the art of mystery writing, a reversion to earlier requirements might consist of reinstating the need for a book labeled “mystery” to present the reader with a solvable puzzle, rather than depending on emotional thrills or horrified suspense. But could it happen? Who knows? Not I, say the pig, dog, cow, and other animals, and there may or may not be a Little Red Hen out there somewhere.

(See, you thought that by writing about poetry I was abandoning mystery writing altogether. Well, actually I was, but the opportunity presented itself. Incidentally, here's a mystery for y'all to solve: how come the song “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” is very well known today, while the considerably longer poem--which has both rhyme and meter--on which it is based is almost forgotten? I'm betting it's because the song is shorter, is repeated far more often, and has even more rhyme and meter than the poem. But I could be wrong.)