Musings: Poetry of Times Past Often Overlooked
For a moment, just for a moment, read the few lines below, out loud. Listen to the words and see the imagery. Poetry is meant to be spoken.
“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.” – Emerson, “The Snow Storm”
We are hard-pressed to find the same kind of poetry that was written in the 19th century – the kind of poetry that gives us wings. I love to read the poems in old journals of the past two centuries. The poetry has a certain cadence and a definite meaning. It is not just a mumble-jumble of words, senselessly strung together, meaning nothing, or else, something so obscure that the message is known only to the writer.
“The sled and traveler stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the house mates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of Storm.” (same poem)
Imagery in poetry, as in quilting, is everything.
Patricia Cummings
