Pondering Poetry

Pondering Poetry

Pondering poetry is something I do from time to time: I like to read poetry, I like to read about poetry, think about it, play about with the sound and feel of poetry. I sometimes even have a go at writing poetry, but all too frequently emerge from my scribbling and pondering feeling at worst frustrated at my pathetic effort, and at best flat, staring at my attempt much as a fishing enthusiast will gaze at a tiddler with a sense of emptiness after an eight hour stint by the water.

This feeling of inadequacy at my own clumsy attempt at stringing words together was heightened this weekend, when, browsing my bookshelves, I found a copy of Seamus Heaney's The Haw Lantern and decided to indulge myself to an afternoon of poetry in a shady corner, away from the hullabaloo of the beaches and the scorch of the August sun. By the time I had read to page 3 and the closing line of the first poem, "Alphabets", I was close to tears: tears of joy at experiencing again the genius of Heaney, and of melancholy that try as I might, I know I will never have the skill to even come close to displaying a fraction of similar talent. What an imposter you are, Anderson, I chastised myself at the presumption that I, too, could even attempt to call myself a poet. Not even a modest writer of poetry (is that different to a poet? Does the reordering of those words add a subtle layer of meaning that distinguishes the true poet from the writer of poetry - something to be discussed at length over several bottles of fine wine, perhaps?).

Besides sheer pleasure, reading poetry also serves to help a poet learn; how to build an image, how to express emotion, how to use rhyme, rhythm, pace, line length, enjambement and other techniques. A good poem stops you in your tracks, gives you a hitherto unknown insight into the world, into humanity. It makes you question, it makes you think, it ignites emotion. A great poem will leave you breathless. It may even inspire you, which is how I felt at the close of The Haw Lantern.

Inspired, because, of course, my poetry will never equal Heaney's in standard. Nor will it reach the beauty of Lorca's images, the wisdom of Neruda, the poignancy of Yeats, the passion of Byron. But every clumsy attempt at shaping up a set of words, at moulding meaning into them, at distilling down an image, or an emotion or a moment in time into its pure essence and conveying it with precision and music and beauty, takes me a step closer to producing something that might be worth reading.

Knowing my shortcomings is what makes it so difficult to decide to submit a poem for publication, or for peer review, or to collect and publish my own work. Who do you think you are, Anderson, yells my imposter syndrome voice at me (she's far louder than the quiet muse of inspiration that gently nudges me into persisting).

This is why I was quietly delighted at reading The Crooked Timber by Giordano Durante and Gabriel Moreno, two writers whose poems I read, enjoy and admire. In this slim book, the two Gibraltarian poets discuss not just the craft of poetry, but what it means to be a poet in Gibraltar, a place where there is not yet a tradition of poetry, where the Gibraltarian poem has not quite emerged but is being birthed slowly, laboriously under the pens of those Gibraltarians who study and write it and who dare to consider themselves poets. There is a good deal of material in The Crooked Timber to spark discussion, but this section resonated with me. Moreno is writing about feelings of frustration at what he calls "the limitations of our genius" and how easy it is to feel diminished in the presence of the great poets and he says:

"It is on these occasions that I repeat to myself, like a mantra: they felt the same awkwardness in respect to their masters. The were equally ashamed and terrified even if they would not admit it!

"And it is with this exercise in self-delusion that I am enticed to continue to type and thread words on my computer screen hoping that, one day, they might reach someone who actually needs them." (Durante and Moreno, Pg 13).

En serio, Durante and Moreno, with their musings on poetry, have managed to rescue me from the depths of a despair so deep that I almost burned pages and pages of poetry that I deemed worthless. (Actually, that's a bit extreme; I probably would only have deleted them off my laptop, not actually chucked my MacBook on a bonfire).

And maybe, just maybe, when I get my breath back from the brilliance that is Heaney, I might just start pushing and pulling words around my computer screen to see if I can shape a half-decent poem out of them.

The Crooked Timber, annotated and tabulated and highly recommended

References:

Heaney, Seamus, The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber Limited, London.

Durante, Giordano and Moreno, Gabriel, The Crooked Timber: Letters between two Middle-Aged Poets (2025) Patuka Press.