GETTING THE BEST FROM POETRY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22628, 16 January 1937, Page 4 (Supplement)

GETTING THE BEST FROM POETRY

, By PROFESSOR W. A. SEWELL

[Where Readers Often Fail

nyjOST pcoplo like poetry for tho wrong reasons. That is why they like bad poetry as often as they like good poetry. A man who drinks wine lor its exhilarating effect rather than for its flavour docs not mind whether he drinks good wine or bad wine, Both contain alcohol. A man who reads poetry without making an effort of taste cannot discriminate between good poetry and bad poetry. Both contain rhyme, rhythm, and a bare minimum of reason. The virtue of poetry, like the virtue of good wine, lies as much in the consumer as in the product; so that a discussion of good poetry must include a discussion of tho kind of human being who ■will help to make it good. We must have leisure if we would appreciate good poetry, for poetry is a luxury like football, Crown Derby pottery's nd summer tan. If our minds are wholly occupied with the price of but-ter-fat, the prospect of another war, or the weather for washing-day, we shall not be sufficiently free lor poetry. Lite is more urgent than literature and that is why the good readers arc almost as scarce as the good poets. Pleasure of Idleness r; To teach literature in the schools is • to teacji one of the pleasures of idleness. It is no use teaching a child at one and the same time that it is good to read Shakespeare and that " Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands . to do." There will be no hope for poetry • until society recognises that leisure is nobler than toil and that a well-con- % sidered self-indulgence is more virtuous ; than self-help. On the other hand, of course, the 7, lazy man will never read poetry. The • armchair, the fireside and the pipe are not the best accompaniments for a book of verse. I recommend a hard chair as far from the fire as possible. It is an ■ odd thing that when we sit down to earn our living, we take every precau- • tion to keep ourselves awake; but when J we read poetry, we usually make the r-conditions ideal for sleep. A\e keep awake to earn our living: we put our- • selves to sleep when Ave begin to enjoy ~ life. . !2- Not only physical laziness but mtelX lectual laziness also takes.the goodness out of poetry. It is a wise thing to £ suspect poetry (or our appreciation of git) unless it'is difficult, just as the v Puritans used to suspect conduct when _ they began to enjoy it. Great poetry rarely comes trippingly on the tongue and .there is not great poetry which is ■j* not read with an effort. You do not sit down casually to read "Paradise £ Lost " or the "Divine Comedy"; there is other and better bedside litera- »>• ture.

'** The reason for this is obvious. Give Bell says somewhere that when he is V-alert and active, he can cope with music, he can watch with his mind the T- movement of melody and the interweaving of harmonies. If, on the other hand, he is fatigued, the music overpowers him and he surrenders himself to a world of fantasy in which the music evokes all kinds of casual and futile feelings—in other words, it degenerates into a kind of private programme music and has as little value as the paperbacked novelette or the sentimental ft fox-trot.

Should Never Overwhelm Precisely the same is true of poetry. '/ Great poetry should never overwhelm us: it should quicken and brace the mind while it energises and organises the emotions. If the mind flags and is indolent, we are at the mercy of every chance word and image. The poet cannot discipline us, unless we discipline P ourselves. Great poetry is always t astringent. £ After all this talk of poetry, the question must arise: Why should ■ we read poetry at all ? Is it really' as inif portant as I suggest and as healthy? Is % the world any the worse off because J poets are apt to starve in it and most * of us would be hard put to it to quote X much more than the first stanza of " God Save the King?" Would it really - be a better world not only for poets but also for most of us if Walter de la £ Marc and T. S. Eliot were more S? familiar names than Ronald Colman r and Mae West? I think it would. To put it at its Sf lowest level, poetry is an excellent disS infectant, for there are many social % diseases which must disappear in a world fit for poets to live in. The *4 poetic imagination much more drasticC- ally than the scientific outlook will purge society of its chronic imbecilities ** because not foolish thought but foolish ■;l feeling makes men mad. Half tho troubles in the world are the result of sheer human .greed; the other half are the result of our silly responses to silly words. And great poetry makes us seni r i eitive to verbal sillinesr;. Hero is a list of things which good poetry universally admired should bo able to exorcize: crooners, political racialism (science could do that, too!), the Wurlitzer (have I mentioned that before?), the examination fetish and most of Hansard. A proper retort to this would be that if we got rid of these first, there might be some chance for poetry. For tho poet's ; is, after all, only a still, small voice. Justified by By-products I fepl that I am hoist with my own petard. The justification I have made for poetry has nothing to do with the enjoyment of poetry. I have justified poetry by its by-products, just as though I should defend dancing as healthy exorcise when no one, of course, thinks of dancing in order to keep fit. The main " apologie for poesie" is not, as Sir Philip Sidney once said, that " it instructs while it delights " —but simply, that it delights. That is why J called it a luxury.

Some time ago I protested in this column against the teaching of " scansion " in the schools as part of the curriculum in poetry. Our educational system as' a ■whole seems, indeed, to lie specifically organised to destroy the poetic imagination—for it tends to take from the child and the student the courage of his own intuitions. This courage is the main pre-requisite for the appreciation of poetry. If a child is prepared to believe that a locomotive may be a thing of beauty as much as s sunset or a dandelion; if he is able • • ee in a battleship not only a symboi of national safety but also a monument of human insanity; if the trees whisper to him as lie walks beneath them; if he goes on pretending that there is a man in the moon; if he is not obsessed with the idea of taking things to pieces to see how they work; if lie can see things whole as well as in their parts—he will not sit in an arm-chair to read poetry. This'artiele began as a discussion of poetry and its readers; it ends with a contribution—l think not entirely worthless—to educational theory.