That Girl Who Reads Poems

 

I realize that I might be in danger of being known as that girl who always reads poems for every situation (and that's okay, because poems written by those I deeply admire are words wiser than my own). With every speaking opportunity I am given (through church or other gatherings) and with every written opportunity I am given (articles, cards, etc) I find myself reaching for a poem to read or write.  I apologize in advance if you ask me to lead/speak/write, for you will surely be faced with a poem.

A poem (or fragment of a poem) is going to be short to read (often not even reaching the right margins or bottom of a page) to convey something big I am trying to say or wish to explore in a concise yet beautiful way. 

So this book I stumbled upon a couple weeks ago, Rhyme's Rooms: The Architecture of Poetry by Brad Leithauser, showed up in my life right at the ideal time, casting that reinvigorated enjoyment of playing with words in the ways that poetry can (much more than prose). 

I love the author's opening of the book detailing the way poems set up a certain expectation to the reader, as one who is not aware of where the poet is going, to hopefully present a pleasant surprise by delivering a clarity and beauty that one did not even expect. This is a wonderful gift we have as humans to appreciate "that primal human pleasure, rooted in inadequacy and ignorance, that arises when clarity dawns unexpectedly: the joy of enlightened surprise." He introduces this as the prosodic contract of the poet (it's the pattern and rhythm and sound used in poetry).

Then, the book dives into the various aspects of poetic architecture, and it's such an enjoyable ride through the structures of rhyme schemes, meter, stanzas, patterns, indentation and capitalization, enjambment, iambic pentameter, iambic tetrameter, off rhyme, rim rhyme, etc. Along the way, he includes fun little poetic puns (oh yes, puns are discussed as poetic elements, too, as saying two things at once) and while I do have a natural inclination to enjoy reading a book about poetic structure (and most would not), it was never overdone with technical language. In between good examples pulled from all ages of poetry, he would include fun little lines that made me chuckle, like a good P.G. Wodehouse novel. 

For example, in his chapter on "Enjambment" (the running over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next without punctuation), he writes:

The word is derived from the French enjamber, "to stride over" or "go beyond", and ultimately from jambe, "leg". You might say that an enjambed line is legging it.

I am a forever advocate for reading more poetry, which is meant to be read aloud, for the ideal appreciation of it's structure, sound, meter, and rhyme. It's impossible to sum up the book in just a few short paragraphs. I might need to write a poem to sum it all up, but in this age of distraction and too much information at our fingertips all the hours of the day, I loved his line - 

Poetry is forgiving of almost any shortcomings we show it, except the disloyalty of inattention.