In
an attempt to come to some understanding of what poetry is about — in the
broadest sense — I have decided to try
and describe what happens on those occasions when I have written a poem. What
inspires me in the first place; the preoccupations I have while writing; and
what I think the point of the
exercise has been when I’ve finished. As I have said before, I am not a poet.
Nevertheless, the experience of occasionally writing poetry has given me a
greater understanding of the process than I could ever have got from reading
alone. I do not intend this to be a large claim, and would prefer to call it a
work–a–day claim — involving even so a
degree of craft knowledge, and some understanding of a poet’s sources of
inspiration. To give grounding to these observations I am going to take one
poem: ‘Dall‘altra parte della piazza’. An English
translation of the title would be: ‘On
the Other Side of the Square’, which sounds prosaic. (Of course, it’s possible
that the Italian title sounds prosaic to an Italian — I don’t know.) The
seventh line of the first stanza is also in Italian. This is, I know, an annoyance
to anyone who does not know anything of the language. However, it is not a
‘show off’ line, and I am certainly not fluent in Italian. It just seemed
appropriate, and so — with the help of the dictionary — I put it in.
Dall‘altra
parte della piazza
 |
| Kathe Kollwitz. Woman with Dead Child |
Connatural
to the deep night shadows
of
the magnificence of Santa Maria Maggiore,
huddled
in a doorway,
Dall'altra parte
della piazza,
the dark shrouded form of a
person—
once
newborn pink — now
un uomo senza tetto, grigio,
*
an
embodiment of despair beyond repair,
such
a one as might have been enfolded once
by
the deep compassion of St Francis.
(The
passing Vespa’s ugly whine
heralds
no benediction:
pillions
the pleasure of the night,
forbidden
apple beyond the priest’s requite.)
Dall'altra parte
della piazza
behind the façade of Benedict
beneath the campanile of Gregory
is
the rich gold gilded ceiling,
pledge
of Isabella
Queen
of Spain.
Glory
be to God!
Give up thy great
idol, riches.
Go, sell
whatsoever thou hast.
Dall'altra parte
della piazza
a soul famished
a
body wasted
a
stomach empty.
For he that hath,
to him shall be given:
and he that hath
not,
from him shall be
taken
even that which
he hath.
Rags
to rags and riches to riches.
Glory
be to the Word,
which
fulfils by lot, feeds the few,
leaves
millions with an empty pot.
* un uomo senza tetto,
grigio: a homeless man (without a roof), grey
____________________________________________________________
The
poem was inspired by witnessing exactly what is described in the first stanza.
My wife and I were walking from our hotel in Rome to a local trattoria. The sun
had long since gone down, and as we crossed the piazza adjacent to Santa Maria
Maggiore, we saw — in the blackness of a recessed shop doorway — a huddled figure, so wrapped (or shrouded) in rags
that not a single feature of their face was visible.
I
did not write, or even begin to write, the poem in Rome. It was unnecessary:
the contrast between this complete outcast and a church whose overriding
interest is in power was so striking that the scene remains with me now (and
the details of Santa Maria Maggiore I got from The Rough Guide to Rome). So, from start to finish, that was my
subject: how a vast religious structure has all but buried the inconvenient
teachings of Christ. And all my
concentration was directed to expressing this in the medium of verse. As to
technical matters, I have studied such things as spondees, trochees, metrical
variation, and etc. However, it is impossible to learn how to write poetry by
reading books on the subject; but once you have somehow managed to write some
poetry, then such books become invaluable.
As
far as line length goes, I prefer to judge by what seems right, rather than
following a strict number of iambic pentameters, or some other classic form. I
prefer internal rhyme to line–end rhyme; and I leave out capitals at the
beginning of each line unless they are
capitals as they would be in prose: otherwise the reader gets a jolt at the
beginning of some lines. The quatrain in parenthesis is clearly Eliotic, but
not as a result of any effort in that direction. Somehow, nothing sticks in my
mind so clearly as the ‘voice’ or intonation of Eliot’s verse. Quite how that
quatrain
came
into my mind I cannot now clearly remember. I had to look up ‘requite’ to make
sure that it meant what I thought it
did. That four of the stanzas are quatrains is deliberate, in that there is
something very satisfactory in the ‘compactness’ of this form. That the first
stanza consists of ten lines is, I think, a happenstance. Likewise with the
third stanza, which consists of seven lines. Had it consisted of eight lines,
then the ‘poem on the page’ would have been too neat for my liking.
As
to purpose, I had no thoughts of achieving any change — socially, religiously,
or politically. And as to the way people and societies think and act across the
world, I can do nothing but observe. Who anyway has read my poem? Perhaps some
twenty people; and it’s not going to be published in The Tablet! Nevertheless, I was inspired to write it,
and insofar as it has been a source of enrichment to me, and possibly to a few
others, that is sufficient. And so it is that art — of all forms — is somehow
essential to us. But a response from Anthony Paul to
my previous blogs on the subject can, I think, scarcely be bettered:
Keats
got to the heart of the matter; I'm sure you know the quote:
“We
hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us .... Poetry should be great and
unobtrusive, a thing which enters
into one´s soul...” It isn't the
business of art to set out to change the world. In the end, you might say that art makes the
world, though.
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