You Can Quote Me on That

Elbert Hubbard quoted by Bugs Bunny

Throughout my life I have collected quotes.  If something gives me pause when I read it, I take note.   Over the years, the list has grown considerably long.  It’s not so much a formal list as it lives in my head, to be recalled when I need to make a point about a particular issue.   If judged by how often I use them, it is pretty obvious I have my favorites.

I’ve even posted to this blog about the use and misuse of quotes, you can read it here.  The point is people say some incredibly witty and pithy things, well worth repeating.  I guess that’s why books of quotes have always been popular.  Here are a few of my favorite quotes:

• Regarding time, I like to quote Albert Einstein.  Late in his life he was asked by a reporter about his Special Theory of Relativity, this is the E=mc² one, a subject Einstein was weary of talking about as the paper was published some 50 years earlier, he explained it this way:  “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT’S relativity.”  As funny at the quote is, in the end it does explain Relativity.  As I get older, it grows more and more relative.
• It is no secret I am not the biggest fan for free-verse poetry.  I have often quoted Robert Frost on the subject.  In a speech he stated “Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”  At first, it might seem that he is kicking free-verse to the curb.  In reality, what he is saying is the rules add to the game.  Imagine how boring tennis would be without the net to add a level of difficulty.  It is the same for poetry, the rules and structure add to the outcome.  In both tennis and poetry, you remove the net and it is up to the players alone to be exciting.
• When it comes to national responsibility, I’ve quoted Stephen Crane.  In case you do not remember, Stephen wrote the Red Badge of Courage.  It is and epic poem of his I quote though –War is Kind.  Of course, his point is war is anything but kind.  Here is the quote I use:

A man said to the universe:
“Sir I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”

This quote is like a slap in the face when you first read it.  It is harsh and uncaring, but it is true.  We are no more obligated to do a thing or care about something than the universe is.  It is a choice we make.  We choose to take action or to not take action.  It is an individual sense of morality that dictates the choice, regardless if the choice is good or bad.

• Of course, I have often pointed out we are a nation of individuals but it is our commonality that joins us.  As Voltaire put it “it is through our mutual needs that we are useful to the human race.”  In other words, it is through our mutual needs we put an obligation on ourselves Mr. Crain’s universe did not.

OK, so there are just a few of the quotes I often use.  I like to use quotes but I have a fear most do not understand the frame of reference and that leads to misunderstanding.   It sort of defeats the whole purpose of quoting in the first place.  That point opens the door for a completely different subject, do I Are they the same?

Give some thought to the quotes you use, even if you only use them mentally to yourself.  Quotes are like little metaphors we use to help explain the world.   On that note, I could not help but end this with a quote of my own to warn about understand a quote before its use, it is from a poem of mine called Testing Water:

So think about your actions
long before you make that jump
be sure you test the waters
and avoid that painful thump.

Free-verse, free-verse everywhere, but still no poets think

Walt Whitman
Father of Free-verse

I am often asked where my inspiration comes from regarding my poetry.  I am taken a little aback by this, as I think my poetry is self-evident. I guess they are asking more about what makes me see the world as I do rather than what a particular poem is all about.

For me, my life is poetry, not some free-verse prose form that runs on like a bad version of Hemmingway.  No, the poetry of my life is more like Frost, Dickenson, and Yeats.  In other words, it has something to say, a singular point to make.

I will never be a modern poet.  I do not understand spoken-word or slam poetry.  I’m not knocking them, it’s just not me.  I am all about metaphor and form, that and a good selection of adjectives.  It has been said I write “like a nineteenth century poet.”  I am sure it was not meant as a compliment but for me there could be no greater.  I am lost in a romantic time when true craftsmanship existed in poetry.

In the end, modern poetry has just passed me by.  In fact, I see free-verse much the same as Robert Frost.  He put it like this: “Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”  I tend to think the form is over used today.  In a sense, it is advanced poetry.  It requires the poet to be poetic without the use of ninety percent of poetry’s tools.  It is like a carpenter building a house with just a hammer.

Still, it does have its place, there is no denying that.  To be honest, some of my more popular poems are free-verse.  My point is I use the form sparingly.  I produce a work in that style, and then retreat back to the safety of rhyme and meter.  It is like coming home after a vacation.   It is good to get out and see the world, but nothing beats coming home.

Perhaps it is the fast-paced world that promotes free-verse.  I mean if all you have to do is move from a to b and not worry over structure, results come quickly.  I am not sure “quickness” is what Walt Whitman wished to inspire or that the controversial poet, Ezra Pound accepted a “fire and forget” approach to poetry.  They mastered the use of words and kept a poetic feel to their work.  Pound’s great free-verse The Garden has little in common in approach, style and feel of works produced today.  The effort he expended is obvious and the result speaks for itself.

Opening Stanza of The Garden:

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anemia.

Of course Ezra would be happy with poetry going beyond where he left it.  He even said to do just that.  My point is not about the newness, it is the seeming lack of effort I feel with much of what I read in today’s free-verse offerings.  I feel it debases the art of poetry.  I get the sense a young poet reads some T.S. Eliot and thinks “I can do that,” never realizing the painstaking time and deliberate word selection Eliot struggled with.  Even one of his best poems, one of the best poems ever, The Waste Land has been criticized for its disconnection and disjointed style, more a criticism of free-verse than Eliot.   Still, when you read it, then step back from it, the symmetry and beauty of the work stands like a beacon in the night.

The opening lines of The Waste Land:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

What all these champions of free-verse had in common is the ability to pick and choose the elements they used and remain poetic.  They knew how to color outside the lines.  That is what seems to be missing today.  While they abandoned the rules, they never abandoned style.

In the end, each poet must walk their own path.  My 2¢ worth of advice will not hold even that value to them.  My only hope is young poets wake up and put in the effort to produce true poetry and not just slap a few catchy words together and think themselves brilliant.