Form, Function, and Poetry

In all of my useless casting-about to try and figure out what to do with myself prior to dying, I have made up a list of things that, I figure, might constitute a life well-lived, or at least a farcical resemblance thereof. This list faces constant revision and addition, though not too much outright subtraction.

In a recent fit of additions, I decided that I wanted to memorize approximately 10 poems. These would be 10 poems which capture the joy of sound that many poems offer, and have something to say about the human condition which, when trotted out of the back-room of memory from time to time, give me a gristly profundity upon which I might chew an hour or two.

This was the plan. I began selecting poems, and immediately, like all plans that come within a 2-mile radius of my hands, the plan began fraying at the edges and mutating at the core. Ok, not really - it's just that I have a difficult time saying "No" to any poem I like, so the body of poems I am drawing from seems to be growing.

The first thing I did was write my favorite poetry authority, and ask him of to suggest some poems. He responded with the following:

“Sunflower Sutra” (or “Supermarket in California ”) by Allen Ginsberg

“Invictus” by William Ernest Henley

“ Lake Isle of Innesfree” (or “When You Are Old” or “Second Coming”) by W B Yeats

“And Death Shall Have No Dominion” by Dylan Thomas

“i thank You God for most this amazing” by cummings

When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer by Walt Whitman

“The Windhover” by Hopkins

Psalm 23

Sonnet XXI by EB Browning

“Kubla Khan” (or “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner”) by Colerridge

If I was going to memorize Shakespeare, I’d memorize the St. Crispin’s Day speech or, like you said, something from Hamlet.

I promptly looked these up on the internet, and began printing them off. Unfortunately, while there, I started looking at other poems, and ended up with a few more - such as:

The time I've lost in wooing
Out of the rolling ocean the crowd
She walks in beauty like the night
Delight in disorder
Some chapters of the Tao
Some Quartos of the Rubiyat

And then printed them all off, and stared that them for a while. Where to begin? For no real reason other than the size of it, I shuffled Whitman's "When I hear the learn'd astronomer" to the top of the pile, at which point it occurred to me that perhaps, if I were going to undertake a body of stuff to memorize, it might be wise to begin with the small stuff, the better to train the brain to it, and gain that extra juicy-reward feeling that squirts up between the toes of my brain when I manage to kick a totally useless personal goal in the ass.

(Don't let yourself dwell on a mental image of that last metaphor.)

So it was with Whitman that I began. And within a day, it was well-done. Here, some days later, it is, from memory. Please pardon punctuation mistakes.

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs and figures were ranged in columns before me
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting, heard the learn'd astronomer, as he lectured, with much applause in the lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out, I wandered off by myself
In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time
Looked up in perfect silence at the stars.

What I quickly noticed was that the second portion of the poem was easier to memorize than the first half. And the more I recited it to myself, the more I noticed the differences. The first half of the poem is broken in odd places, and has a hacking/coughing start-and-stop to it, punctuated by the wheezing "when," whereas the second half has more lilting words, and a rhythm that slides one line into another. Furthermore, the first half is full of science and order words - columns ranged and diagrams shown with charts to measure and astronomers and learn'd lecture rooms. The second half has not a single one of these words in it, but instead has soft action - rising, gliding, wandered off, mystical stars moist night perfect silence by myself. And somehow these changes made the second half easier to remember - easier to follow.

Which was odd, because in the course of memorizing that poem, I had accidentally memorized 1/3 of another one. Which is to say, just by flipping past it, and reading it once or twice in passing, it was now dancing with gluey slippers all over the echo-chamber of my mind, with no suggestion of stopping. It literally just fell into my head with almost zero effort. The first half below, is what I already had memorized when I finished with the first poem.

The time I've lost in wooing,
In watching and pursuing,
The light that lies
In women's eyes
Has been my heart's undoing.

Though Wisdom oft has sought me
I scorned the lore she brought me
My only books
were women's looks,
And folly's all they taught me.

So I immediately set about learning the rest of it - I will skip the middle 2 stanzas, as they really are not up to the level of the others, and go on to the last couple.

And are these follies going?
And is my proud heart growing
Too cold or wise for brilliant eyes
Again to set it glowing?

In vain, alas, th'endeavor,
from bonds so sweet to sever!
Poor Wisdom's chance
Against a glance
Is now as weak as ever.

I had to wonder - how is that I had to work at "The learn'd astronomer," but "The time I've lost in wooing" seemed to go straight into my brain?

I think the answer is the reason for poetry itself: that rhythm, rhyme, and repeated relationships between sounds and concepts, allow the brain to make connections between the items faster, thus enabling faster commitment to memory, and better long-term retention. Naturally, if you were living in a pre-literate society, and you wanted future generations to remember reliably remember the combination to the alarm system on the family's country-house, or not forget what utter uncle-raping bastards populate the village three hill's over, you might choose to set it to rhyme and rhythm to facilitate it being sung or chanted around the camp fire.

And from functionality to form, like all art, it moved. What was a useful device for carrying water becomes in time an exercise in precision crafting, cutting, glazing, painting and firing, and is an art form, valued for its aesthetic. What was once the necessity of keeping your hair from your eyes and out of the fire, in time becomes a multi-billion dollar industry and art-form, with its own high temples and high priests from whom women the world over purchase the unguents and conditioning cremes with micro-gel beads of exotic fruit extracts, and make cash offerings to in hopes that their hair will now better express their unique, sophisticated yet simple, vivacious yet with a touch of mysterious reserve, personality.

Oscar Wilde once said that "All art is quite useless." The line preceding this one was "The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely." And perhaps that is where the dividing line lies between Art and Utility - between function and form. When one begins to add function-less (useless) aspects to a thing in order to make it more worthy of admiration, one is engaging in art.

The joy of useless beauty is captured to a (for me, at least,) jaw-dropping degree in the following poem, by e. e. cummings, written here from memory, so please excuse any errors.

i thank you, God, for most this amazing
day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees,
for a blue-true dream of sky, for all
that is natural, that is infinite, that is yes.

(i who have died am alive again today. this is
the sun's birthday. this is the birthday of
light and of love and wings, and of
the great gay happening illimitably earth.

how could tasting, touching, hearing, breathing,
thinking any, lifted from the no of all nothing,
human merely being, doubt unimaginable you?

(And now the ears of my ears awake,
and the eyes of my eyes are opened.)