The Gift of Poetry

Friday evening I heard the poet David Whyte recite his own poetry, as well as poems by Seamus Heaney, Patrick Kavanagh, and Stephen Spender. He stood before the window in the Quarterdeck Room at Royal Roads University. The grey stone façade of Hatley Castle was visible below. We could have been in Ireland, assembled before some English lord’s country seat. And with his Yorkshire accent, and fine imitations of John O’Donohue, David Whyte made sure we were certainly somewhere other than the outskirts (the proper skirts) of Victoria, BC. That is the poet’s job – to take the listener away.

I had a seat in the front row and I was glad of it. There is a strange kind of permission that performers give their audience members – to observe them with unabashed curiosity. I watched the quick movements of his hands (in deft gestures evoking the encircling arm of rock, or the expanse of Galway Bay) as he brought to life the sacred sites of the west of Ireland, where many of his poems are set. He read only one poem from a book. The others were all there for him in his memory. First came the story of the poem and the story of the setting, and then, with a barely perceptible change of tone, he was launched.

“Be infinitesimal,” began one poem. But not just once did we hear this curious command. “Be infinitesimal,” he repeated, and then carried us into the heart of his meaning. With entire lines and sections of the poem repeated once, twice, and then, after a pause, the whole again, he spoke his work in such a way as to seize the attention, then land the images firmly in the body and there touch deeply the imagination of the listener. Poetry as oratory, sermon, and blessing.

It’s about waking up perception, so we can be more awake in our lives. Which in turn translates to being more compassionate, more aware of the truth of interconnectedness. Metaphors enlarge our imagination. Imagination saves us from isolation and despair. A poet uses something as simple as a blossom or a bud as metaphor and if the poem has truly landed in my imagination, the new meaning in the metaphor attaches itself to the original. Because of a poem, the sight of blossoms reminds me to practice self-acceptance. Here in Victoria, where the second blossoming of cherry trees is just finishing and petals fall in imperfect circles around the base of the trees, I am reminded, as I cycle along the streets, of Galway Kinnell’s poem, “Saint Francis and the Sow”:

The bud
stands for all things,
even those that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and tell it in words and in touch,
it is lovely
until it flowers again, from within, of self-blessing...

The blossoms become the blessing, reminding me of my own potential to flower from within.

And, as David Whyte pointed out after reciting Seamus Heaney’s “Postscript”, with its images of swans in a lake, the art of the poet is to layer meaning with images that evoke both the mundane and the mythic at once. This is another reminder that access to a parallel universe full of wonder and magic requires only a slight shift of perception. Poetry helps us find that shift and enter into wonder.

Saturday morning, the day after the poetry reading, I went out for a run. I saw a line of geese stepping among the gravestones in the Chinese cemetery.  They were simultaneously the elegant and familiar creatures we all know and love (or not) with their long necks and proud gait, as well as characters in some myth of transformation. What brings you here? I wanted to ask them. Where are you going? Where have you been?