for Savannah and my mother, with the hope you will give poetry a chance, and for the maestro who recommended Good Poems You learn a lot in high school, whether you plan on it or not. For example: I’ve learned not to assume I know anybody else’s mind, and to know my own a lot better. So without presuming to speak for any of my friends or classmates, I can say with certainty that the most important lessons I’ve learned have not been the ones about the stereochemistry of enantiomers, or Simon Bolivar gallivanting across the Andes, or how to use the subjonctif…and they absolutely—sorry, IB— have not been about the theory of knowledge. Don’t get me wrong; I did learn a lot from History, and languages, and Chemistry (this last through many bleary-eyed nights and multiple textbooks), and even ToK could sometimes be interesting if you gave it a chance. But the lessons that will stick, the ones that I will build on for the rest of my life and that have already shaped me as a person, were the lessons about values. And most of those lessons were learned outside the classroom, from peers rather than profs. When I think about what those values are and how to explain them, I think of the medium that comes closest to drawing together classroom learning with pure living: poetry. Last summer, my teacher recommended a poetry anthology called—wait for it--Good Poems, put together by Garrison Keillor. I had not read poetry outside school since Shel Silverstein in elementary school, and it took me most of the year to read them all—but once I had, and looked back at my favorites, there were seven that stood out. These seven poems are not special to me because of fancy wordplay or grandiose images or tongue-twister alliteration. Instead, they are all poems about how to live—by values high school has taught me to recognize as part of who I am and want to be. In many cases, the writers that speak to me, in drawing the same conclusions and giving the same advice centuries and continents apart, inadvertently corroborate each other. So poetry has street cred with me for its ability to retrieve truth from the white noise of superfluous words, and communicate it with concision and elegance. Here, I look back in these seven poems as rear view mirrors that reflect high school with hindsight, feeling for guidance and grounding convictions to direct me on the winding road ahead. (I recommend you read the poems themselves too--they're short!--which is why I've included hyperlinks, but no pressure.) “The Three Goals” (http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2000/12/08) Much of high school is spent trying to develop your own viewpoint by distinguishing it from those of your family, friends and teachers. You have to figure out your standards for yourself; what your priorities are for the present and the future; what you care about; how to forgive yourself and others for mistakes, without wallowing in guilt or resentment, which prevent you from moving forward. Plus, you somehow have to balance being responsible with reveling every once in a while in the enchantment of being a teenager. “The Three Goals,” by David Budbill, recognizes that you have to see “the universal and the particular” simultaneously to do all these things, to have a clear, independent perspective; one race, one test, one party must stand alone in your mind for you to make the most of it, yet you cannot forget that it exists alongside other past and future opportunities. You have to see the person and their context, the heartfelt opinion and the biases that skew that opinion, so that you can make a balanced judgement and respond. Not to mention that all the while, you can’t succumb to analysis paralysis while trying to take it all in, or get lost in “seghe mentali” (mental masturbations). How to actually pull this off? I think friends, reading and a sense of humor go a long way, but the poem does not presume to offer easy answers, and is all the more delightful for it. Budbill cheerily acknowledges the difficulty of this task, with succinctness, style and a light touch—instructive, but not preachy, like the best teachers—admitting that “a little wine helps a lot,” a reminder to take it easy and not get too lofty or uptight. It ends with wry humility; the speaker, after telling you, the reader, what they know about the importance of perspective, asks you to “call me when you get it,” when you succeed in actually seeing “the thing itself” and “all the other/ten thousand things” “simultaneously”, because they themselves are only human and haven’t cracked it yet. “Dilemma” (http://asuddenline.tumblr.com/post/5134369905/dilemma-david-budbill) Perspective and humility are present again, in a different context, in Budbill’s even shorter poem “Dilemma.” It is an astute self-reflection on how the speaker wants to be “famous/so I can be/humble/about being/famous.” That is, what the speaker wants, paradoxically, is not fame itself, but rather to afford the luxury of being modest while already enjoying “proof” of their own worth in the form of widespread recognition. This desire to be recognized for your achievements without bringing attention to them yourself is poignant, genuine. In high school, you might want to be noticed, or respected, or liked, or all of the above, to the extent you can afford to be nonchalant about how you are viewed by others. But by drawing your attention to this whole thought process with tongue-in-cheek self-awareness, this poem gives you perspective on yourself, offers a contrast between how things are for the speaker and how they should be for you between the lines, reminding you that in fact it doesn’t matter if your humility, or kindness, or diligence is acknowledged; what matters is whether you live these ideals or not, and oftentimes only you can know whether you do. “Those Who Love” (http://www.helpself.com/love-poems/poem-8x.htm) On the subject of humility…there is a lot of posing, strutting, name-dropping in high school. But you should not have to fill a void of meaning with compensatory declarations of passion or drive. “Those Who Love” by Sarah Teasdale notes “Those who love the most/Do not talk of their love”; they are too consumed by the feeling itself to do so, too occupied “fighting in somber pride”—struggling without faltering, intent only on a feeling so strong that it is its own reward, for at hearing the name of the beloved alone, “A light would pass over [her] face.” So this poem captures the difference between talk and action, between feeling something real and boisterous bluffing. It sketches the outlines of all-consuming internal motivation with such deep-reaching, thick roots it needs not bother announcing itself to the world. This poem may be about love of a person, but I think you should live your life looking for a passion that inspires this level of unquestioning devotion, for which you sacrifice every bit of yourself behind the scenes, quietly self-assured and fulfilled enough by what you do to not need to brag about it. This poem captures the difference between talk and action, between feeling something real and boisterous bluffing. “Romantics” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54643/romantics) In high school you learn that the truth is not a science. Opposite things can be true for different people depending on their experiences. You realize words are only approximations for communicating the complexity of what and how many conflicting things people can feel and think at once. You learn that you cannot judge or categorize in black and white, and that sometimes all you can do as a friend is listen and try to understand. In “Romantics,” by Lisel Mueller, the speaker chastises those who try to synthesize unambiguous conclusions to replace the inconveniently convoluted truth, those who pigeonhole definitions and abandon nuance. “Romantics” paints a love that, though it may never have been consummated physically, is delicate, complex, exquisite in its reserve. The presumptuous “modern biographers” digging for the details of this love from the present, are a stand-in for anybody analyzing from the outside and trying to measure what can’t be measured, such as by asking “the rude and irrelevant question/of our age,” that is, “how far it went.” Here, the “modern biographers” personify the rapacious contemporary pursuit of clear-cut answers where there are none. The tone tinged with tender nostalgia gives the appropriate weight to the statements “he thinks of her constantly,/his guardian angel, beloved friend”; the speaker convinces you it does not matter “how far it went” when you have such intimate admissions of affection. The nostalgia is in the nods to the “nineteenth century,” a more quaint and in some ways more romantic time, when “a hand/held overlong or a gaze anchored/in someone’s eyes could unseat a heart.” I believe this kind of romance still exists today, but that you have to defy the hookup culture and the digital norms of brazen hyper-publicity to find it or make it real. The speaker is not just nostalgic about love, but about language; “Nuances of address not known/in our egalitarian language” is an acknowledgement of a loss of subtlety with the hurried way we talk and type, and of the potential and power of the right combination of words still has. But this poem reminds me of something else as well, something different. The truth is complicated, yes, and a relationship does not have to be physical to be real—but on the other hand, it is dangerous, very dangerous, to bask in inaction, letting opportunities you have to deepen a relationship or seize the moment slip through your fingers because you are afraid that you will shatter what is already there. And sometimes the “romantic” course of action is not the right one; sometimes you have to buckle down, put in elbow grease and do, say, schoolwork instead of spending a night out, with nothing but a dreary, abstract goal in the future in mind to motivate you. You must not live off daydreams of what could be—you must have the strength to see when those dreams start poisoning your opportunities to act in the real world, when you become addicted to an image of yourself, like Narcissus, and let the real wither away. Contenting yourself with mere possibility, with the delicious anticipation of something beautiful, you set yourself up for missed opportunities: addiction to hypotheticals can be fatal. Hence, concerning this poem, again, while it is true that nothing physical has to have happened for the relationship between the two titular romantics to be real…if they only ever looked in each others’ eyes, and held hands, but were not actually able to be honest with each other about how they felt, too fearful of marring a fantasy, that was a mistake and a tragedy. You must not live off daydreams of what could be—you must have the strength to see when those dreams start poisoning your opportunities to act in the real world, when you become addicted to an image of yourself, like Narcissus, and let the real wither away. “Courage” (https://allpoetry.com/poem/8505443-Courage-by-Anne-Sexton) This is exactly the quality necessary to remedy such dithering. Ideally, high school is a balancing act in which you live audaciously, but not rashly. Live too cautiously, too zoomed out, and your prudent preempting of mistakes could become habitual instead of intentional—at which point you risk following external guidelines on autopilot and losing yourself. Live too much in the moment, and you could lock yourself into a cycle of temporary exhilaration, which can be so intoxicating you never give yourself the chance to find meaning or purpose transcending a single place or set of people—and should that narrow world ever grow sour, or shallow, or empty, you have no other options. It takes courage to take a stand and have an opinion at the risk of being wrong. It takes courage to fail yourself and admit it. It takes courage to ask uncomfortable questions, to have a conversation with someone with whom you disagree, and to keep making your point while also listening to theirs. It takes courage to be honest with yourself, to admit the difference between how you want things to be and how they are. It takes courage to let go—but it also takes courage to hold on, keep hope alive even when you have no proof; having the nerve to believe in things, exposing yourself to disappointment, is the essence of faith. It takes courage to tell people you love that what you want is different from what they want. The same action can be cowardly or courageous depending on your motivation and intent, because your courage is defined by what it is you fear. Telling your friend the truth even though they may be angry at you is courageous; telling them the truth because you want to make sure you are off the hook is cowardly. Showing that you are not bought, not puppeteered by the adults or authority figures that surround you is courageous, but seeking approval from peers because you cannot grant it to yourself is cowardly. Admitting you need help is courageous if you are proud, but not bothering trying to help yourself first out of fear of failure is cowardly. Anne Sexton’s poem “Courage” picks out specific moments from an entire person’s lifetime, looking back from the end and shining a spotlight on ordinary actions driven by courage. She mentions standing your ground when you are labelled or insulted, where “you drank their acid/and concealed it”; you have to take in what people think of you without letting it warp or wound you. Courage also means not having excessive self-pity; “You did not fondle the weakness inside you/though it was there.” Courage is active, painful; it is “a small coal that you kept swallowing.” Sexton also makes an insightful distinction; she understands that when you have a strong enough emotion to tide you through, a motivation as rock-solid as in “Those Who Love,” you do not need courage to push your immediate misgivings about the moment—you are instead buoyed by “love; love, as simple as shaving soap.” The poem solemnly honors the endurance of “great despair” “alone,” with you having the resilience and perseverance to “[pick] the scabs off your heart,/then [wring] it out like a sock.” You reward yourself with courage, with moving on; having courage in the face of sorrow can tide you through, as the sorrow in the poem “woke to the wings of the roses/and was transformed.” Courage is deliberate, so in every courageous act there is an element of decisiveness, which is the thought with which this poem closes; you cannot choose what happens to you, but you can choose your attitude and reaction. The poem speaks of going with meeting death willingly, proudly, at the end of it all; “you’ll put on your carpet slippers/and stride out.” On your terms. With dignified acceptance. That’s how I want to go.
“Gallanter” than fighting aloud is “to charge within the bosom/the Cavalry of Woe—“ to choose your struggle with full information, without hope of a reward, with resolve that does not waver or shrivel. “Sonnet XXV” (http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/25.html) Doing things for their own sake, not for echoing accolades or any recognition, is in fact a recurring lesson from these poems and from high school—essential to finding purpose and crafting an internal compass that will not crack when you lose external reference points, whether these be settings or people. So who was it who got to the ephemerality of celebrity, before Budbill or even Dickinson? Probably multiple people, but the last of my favorite poems from this collection is the Bard’s “Sonnet XXV.” As usual, Shakespeare is confident, shrewd, balanced, and every word is perfect. “Unlook’d for joy in that I honour most”—my ugly translation of this line at the heart of the poem is, “outside the spotlight, I am free to rejoice in what, or who, is most important to me.” It’s a poem about the fickleness of pride and fame—“Great princes’ favorites their fair leaves spread/But as the marigold at the sun’s eye,” not forever, because eventually the other shoe drops and “at a frown they in their glory die”—this is the mortal peril of living on the whims of others’ misguided approval. The poem ruefully exposes our judgmental, perfectionistic tendency to focus on failures rather than successes; the poor “warrior” “After a thousand victories once foil’d/Is from the book of honour razed quite,/and all the rest forgot for which he toiled.” If you worship something like fame, as David Foster Wallace put it, sooner or later it “will eat you alive.” This poem looks you in the eye and tells you to keep your priorities straight, or you’ll be scarred. It is the people you love, who truly know you, warts and all, who will forgive you your failures, allowing you to hold on to who you are even at your lowest. This knowledge of yourself is a kind of freedom—freedom from the expectations of others. High school has been a gradual process of replacing blind, automatic trust in those around me with trust in myself; for that, I feel bone-deep gratitude. Doing things for their own sake, not for echoing accolades or any recognition, is in fact a recurring lesson from these poems and from high school—essential to finding purpose and crafting an internal compass that will not crack when you lose external reference points, whether these be settings or people. *** After heaven knows how many hours over four years spent squinting and chasing and scrutinizing meaning in every discipline, I know that not overthinking is almost as important as thinking, as is leaving yourself unstructured time for your mind to wander rather than chaining yourself to a chock-full schedule. Reading this collection, I did not go out of my way to crack these poems open or pry out their pearls of wisdom with force. Instead, I just enjoyed them, and the meaning sank deeper the more times I read the ones I love. Poetry may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I see it as the ultimate reassurance that you are not alone in what you feel, because somebody else went and wrote about it, with the precision of thought that only comes from firsthand experience. I know as much as high school teaches you and shapes your values, I won’t ever be quite prepared for the testing of those values that happens in the real world, and that these values will probably change with time. So I will keep coming back to these seven poems, and read many more as well. Reading poetry, like living, should not be forced or rushed, and should be done with an open heart and mind. Call me when you get it.
8 Comments
7/7/2017 12:21:21 am
Great piece! I couldn't agree more. And oh, I think I got it!😁
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7/7/2017 03:53:47 am
Your response are beautifully rendered. Might i be humble enough to suggest (when you are ready..poetry being, well, poetry) anything by Gabriela Mistral and Anna Ahmatova...however, my favorite poem is "Like Wings" by Philip Schultz...
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Sophie
7/8/2017 08:41:57 am
will do!!! thank you!
Sophie
7/8/2017 08:27:43 am
well done! thanks!
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Nick
7/7/2017 07:50:24 am
Brilliant stuff! You've put into words the feelings and lessons from high school with such economy and wit. In analyzing these well-chosen poems, you manage to suck out the essence of their wisdoms and pose it to the reader with your own philosophical meditation on its implications to high school life. My favorite would have to be the 'Romantics' analysis - your point about a labor of love, involving sacrifice, toward a distant concept of "success" or "college" being an intangible dream, capable of corrupting one's present, was well made. It reminds me of a startling fact friend once reminded me of - your grade school years make up a whole 16% of your life - you wouldn't want to look back and only have really lived for 84% of what you were given.
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Sophie
7/8/2017 08:36:59 am
I am so glad that resonated. And I had never thought about the numbers before! I will pass that statistic on for sure.
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Savannah
7/7/2017 01:33:49 pm
I hate to admit it but I enjoyed this maybe a slight tiny little bit... The Three Goals was great, probs my fave, Dilemma was good but tooooooo simple I feel like a seven year old could have written it (kind of like modern art - god i strongly dislike modern art); Those who Love was quite good, I LOVED courage and the others were far too poetic for my standards. Your analysis was good, but i will admit I only read the first two hehe sorry I bet the others were just as... detailed:) WELL DONE DRACO
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Sophie
7/8/2017 08:39:44 am
fair enough. all I asked was that you give it a chance and you did that so WELL DONE DRACO yourself
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Born in Boston, USA, spent six years in Florence, Italy, and now living in Oxford, UK. Archives
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