A Poem Is Something That Happens To You

1. Why I Do Not Have a Favorite Poem

— Jim Mills

A poem is something that happens to you without intention or choice.

Backing  out of your garage, you hit the building and knock off your sideview mirror. The rest of the day you see things differently.  

Whitman is like that. 

Who would get up in the morning and say - 

I think I’ll meet someone today 

With a strange voice 

That I’ll never forget, 

Someone who will give me a vision

That I didn’t ask for, 

That I can’t escape from:

So wild, so hopeful.

You don’t happen to Whitman.

Whitman happens to you.

You are tired. 

You stumble around the kitchen late at night trying to get a glass of water, 

You drop the water bottle, step on the glass, your foot is bleeding.  

You would never make a plan to have that wound.

Shakespeare is like that. 

You would never choose to know 

The world is that cruel, that horrible, 

That beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. 

You only meant to go to a play or do your reading assignment 

And you will never be the same again.

You can read Poetry, 

and close read Poetry 

and turn Poetry inside out and shake Poetry,  

but a poem, a poem is something that happens to you.

Annotation: This is one of my poems. It’s about how I think about poetry. The poems I’m including below are poems that happened to me.

2. Mercurio and Queen Mab

http://www.monologuearchive.com/s/shakespeare_067.html

Annotation: My theme is poems that happened to me, that left a mark or an open wound. This is the only great, complex, technically perfect poem in my anthology. I’ve never found another group of words that described the passions of youth, lust, and wonder beyond the bounds of physics. This is love as magic. This is the music you don’t want to hear, proof that love is, in fact, only a madness.

3. Edna St. Vincent Millay  Conscientious Objector 

http://www.twcnet.edu/cschutz/history-web-links/history-web-links-us-1914-1945/conscientious-objector-by-edna-st-vincent-millay/

Annotation: This poem happened to me when I was sixteen and the war in Vietnam was beginning. There is an undeniable rightness to her simple resolution, a truth that could not be denied. The poem a great technical achievement. It is not great verse, but  it has a great courageous voice that quietly speaks what has to be spoken. 

The universal draft was in effect. The war was growing rapidly. At sixteen, I had to decide whether or not a duty to country compelled a duty to kill. More than any other influence, the voice in this poem persuaded my decision.

4. Nine Charms against the Hunter - David Wagoner

http://aflockoffools.tumblr.com/post/34459346155/nine-charms-against-the-hunter-david-wagoner

Much of my youth was well-spent walking in the woods. I was there to be in that part of life that is not a city. I had no thought that the woods were also a place to hunt, to kill for sport. I came across this poem, in fact, before I ever met anyone whose lifestyle included guns and hunting. Damn poem. I never walk the woods with quite the same peace again.

I think Wagoner intended that his reader, some very specific hunter — hear  a voice that is compassionate, cautionary, a voice that wants to protect him and warn him of the sacredness of life and of the danger of not treating life as if it is not sacred.

5. Gary Snyder Long Hair

http://www.wenaus.com/poetry/gs-longhair.html

Annotation: “And deer bound through my hair” is a mad image. This is a mad poem. Was it drug induced? Inspired? Is this a Shaman’s vision? I’ve never experienced mind altering chemicals, but from first reading this strange poem has had a dream-like effect on me. Deer are coming out of  the walls. I submitted this poem with an essay for this course. My readers simply didn’t get it, gave me low scores. The poem had no effect on them. For me, it’s a spiritual experience, a hymn that I sing when I need to be one with my nature, when I need to see myself as a part of the whole.

6. Walt Whitman - I think I could turn and live with animals

http://www.all-creatures.org/poetry/ar-I-think-I.html

Annotation: Remember, my theme is poems that happened to me. I was a secondary English teacher. This poem was printed in a textbook intended to be read by high school freshmen. My teachers’ edition had a nice worksheet of questions that I could copy and send home as homework. My staff  included creationists, fundamentalists, and before school prayer groups. 

This poem happened to me at my desk. Whitman sings of evolution: “I wonder where they get those tokens, /Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?”

How do explain I that the poem definitely does not praise religion. Do I tell them the truth about the stallion, the sexual images, and the final lines that clearly state he sees himself as beyond the animal? He is Walt Whitman and he is very dangerous to your peace of mind.

Nope, I decided this poem is not for freshmen.

7. Carl Sandburg - The People, Yes

http://glenavalon.com/peopleyes.html

Annotation: Sandburg’s voice is not an imitation of the voice of Walt Whitman. Squint your eyes and the lines may look the same. Whitman sings at an eternal pitch. Sandburg sings of the here and now where there is common wisdom to be gained and work to be done today. The butcher, the school teacher, the labor, cannot be Walt Whitman; we can all be Carl Sandburg. We can do our tasks, raise our kids, grow the food, and be proud. And we can vote. Sandburg reminds us that we have a vote in how things turn out. That that vote is precious, we have to think about it and protect it from those who will themselves to be powerful. 

This poem happened to me when Kennedy was President. I think, no I’m sure,  this poem had also happened to John Kennedy and his brother when they were younger. I taught this poem as often and as well as I could during the thirty years I was in a classroom. I hope someone is teaching it today. 

8. Stephen Spender - I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/241980

Annotation: 

This is the poem that happened like a bad argument. I like it and then I really don’t like it. Still upsets me.

Spender was very young when he wrote this poem. His friends, Auden especially, intended on changing English poetry and they succeeded. I was very young when I read it. As I read the first two verses, I thought it was about living fully; it inspired me to seek a quiet life, study the classics, seek firm competence. The first two verses inspire that kind of full and meaningful life. 

But the final verse names, without naming, heroes who could never have or will exist. Although I was very young, I knew that last verse was a fiction, a fake, just plain wrong. 

I had read Homer. Odysseus was a very competent man, but really just a guy who managed to get through the day and get home to his family. The heroes who the last verse describes — “Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun

And left the vivid air signed with their honour.” — guys like Achilles, they never made it home and left a lot of destruction in their path. Is the vivid air really signed with his honour? Or is he just a lesson to be learned?