Poetry in Motion

I came across a fascinating word the other day—metrophobia. It means the fear of poetry. I don’t know anyone who actually fears poetry, but I do know many people who hate it. And I understand that. In school we’re taught to dissect poems until there’s nothing left of them to enjoy. We learn about rhyme schemes. We talk about what the poet really meant, not what’s on the page. About symbolism. Metaphors. Reading poetry as an adult can feel like a dreaded homework assignment.

I’ve loved words all my life, but even I wasn’t a huge fan of poetry until one of my professors talked about reading it for pure enjoyment—for how the words in a poem sound to you, if you find meaning in them, and if they come alive to you. I started reading poetry for the enjoyment of it. And I came across “Autumn Journal,” the seminal poetic work by the Irish poet Louis MacNeice. His words entranced me. They jumped off the page, danced their way into my brain, and touched places in my soul I didn’t know existed. MacNeice was my gateway poet—after reading his work, I wanted more and more. And I found it by following my professor’s advice and focusing on what I could take away from each poem I read.

This is still how I read poetry: a single image can take my breath away. A string of words put together unexpectedly can put a feeling into words and make me feel less alone as I think, “I feel that way, too.” In poetry, I recognize bits and pieces of myself and, gathering them to me, I am whole.

The following are some of my favorite lines of poetry. They have changed me, imprinted on me, and spoken for me when I couldn’t speak for myself.

“Set fire to the stars.” (from “Love in the Asylum” by Dylan Thomas) This, to me, is a perfect line of poetry. I don’t need to analyze the poem or read about the life of Dylan Thomas to truly “get” it. Those five words create an image that makes my soul burn for more.

“I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.” (from “Personal Helicon” by Seamus Heaney) When I first read this poem, I set the book down and thought about that line. Across space and time, Seamus Heaney somehow put into words the reasons that I write—reasons I’d subconsciously known but never defined. Writing, for me, is a process of discovery. As I write, I discover who God created me to be. I also write to keep the darkness at bay—writing gives my life meaning and fills it with the abundance Jesus talks about in John 10:10. Without it, I have no doubt that I’d be lost in darkness and depression. Writing is my God-given light that sets “the darkness echoing.”

“Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.” (from “Failing and Flying” by Jack Gilbert) This is the opening line of Jack Gilbert’s poem, and though the rest of the poem is worth reading, for me, it’s all about that first line. How many times do we define ourselves by our failures? We mull over them, wonder what others think about them, and focus on them to the exclusion of our successes. We all know the story of Icarus flying too close to the sun—it’s a cautionary tale to remind us of the danger of wanting too much. But Icarus flew. He defied limitations. He refused to be earthbound. He had a moment of extraordinary freedom and beauty. And, as Gilbert writes, “Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph.”

“Put out my hand and touched the face of God.” (from “High Flight” by John Magee Jr.) That line is pure beauty on its own. But to fully grasp it, this is a case where I think it’s important to know the backstory of the poem. John Magee Jr. was a World War II fighter pilot who, at nineteen years old, wrote the poem after his highest flight took him up to 33,000 feet. In the poem, he writes about soaring above the earth in joyful freedom, so close to the heavens that he feels he could put out his hand and touch the face of God. Just three months after writing the poem, Magee was killed in a mid-air collision. The triumph and tragedy of the story and its parallels to the story of Icarus moved me to tears when I first heard it, in a song by John Denver—he set the majority of the poem to music in his song “The Higher We Fly.” As a teenager, I listened to that song over and over, trying to imagine what it must have been like, at just nineteen years old, to be all by yourself in the sky, so high that you felt you could almost touch the face of God. Now, I can imagine it: when I accomplish something I know I couldn’t have done on my own, it seems as though I’ve had a divine encounter. Or in moments when I’m overwhelmed with gratitude, I feel like my soul soars so high that the earth fades until all I feel is the nearness of God.

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.”  
(from “When Death Comes” by Mary Oliver) Those two lines shocked me out of a stupor as I thought, “I want that, too!” I want to be grateful. To be amazed. To notice the beauty of this world. William Wordsworth described a person who doesn’t notice beauty as “dull of soul.” What a terrible life sentence—to be so dull of soul that you walked through God’s world without truly seeing every moment as the miracle it is. I never want to become inured to miracles big or small.

“Live in the layers, not on the litter.” (from “Layers” by Stanley Kunitz) I found this poem eight years ago when I got sober and entered a recovery program. So much of the recovery process is about learning why you made the choices you made in order to change your thoughts and behavior so that you make different choices going forward. Examining your past in depth like this can be agonizing because there’s nothing you can do to change it. This line of poetry was and is a lifesaver when it comes to my past. I could easily relapse into complete self-destruction if I let myself wander around aimlessly in the wasteland of my bad choices. I choose instead to live in the layers—the life I’ve built on top of that wasteland. Each new layer God and I build together puts me further away from my past. I can’t forget it, but I no longer dwell on it.

And last but certainly not least—some lines by Louis MacNeice. I could have written this whole post using MacNeice’s words, but I chose these lines. They were a huge impetus to my getting and staying sober. They are medicine to my soul when I’m mired down in self-pity. They echo my joy when I make progress on my life’s journey. I have them framed on my bedside table and above my desk. They are my world of words, in four lines:
“But may I cure that habit, look up and outwards
And may my feet follow my wider glance.
First no doubt to stumble, then to walk with the others
And in the end—with time and luck—to dance.” (from “Autumn Journal”)