THE CONSOLATIONS--AND ODD CONTEXTS--OF POETRY

As related in his gripping true-life tale in the New York Times Magazine, the author, Jon Mooallem, was faced with an episode of not-knowing-what-to-say that makes my experiences of that uncomfortable phenomenon seem trivial. (The following slight hint of a spoiler will not detract from your enjoyment of the yarn.) He was pretty sure that he had to keep talking in order to keep his friend alive. And talking… and talking… for almost two hours, awaiting a rescue that was anything but certain. But what to say? After exhausting his store of platitudes—What to say?

He said poetry. Mooallem reports his gratitude to two college professors who made him memorize poetry. And so, there on the forest floor, he recited poems to his friend. Nature poems, comic poems, mystical poems. Love poems! Elizabeth Bishop, WH Auden, Robert Frost, AR Ammons, Richard Wilbur. “For the most part,” he says, “I trafficked in hits.” 

(With the author, I’m grateful that he could recall his poetic “hits," but it also caused me a bit of mild regret. I, too, had teachers who encouraged the memorization of poetry; but if I were to find myself in a similar situation, I could maybe muster three or four, with a few snippets thrown in. And I read poetry every day.)

Mooallem’s account reminded me of another nearly-doomed adventure: The 1907 Shackleton Antarctic Expedition. As the Endurance was being crushed in the ice, the crew rescued what they could from their sinking ship and scrambled on to an ice floe—adrift in the middle of the Weddell Sea—where, after checking to see that all had survived, and getting situated on their floating home, Shackleton read poetry to them. Not memorized, but read from one of the many volumes rescued from the library of the sinking ship.

The sinking of the Endurance

Priorities! If the reader is moved to exclaim, “What?! Poetry?! There on the ice floe?!,” it is well to recall that the expedition didn’t lose a man in the three-year ordeal, of which the sinking of the Endurance was just the beginning. Historians give the credit to the leadership of the poetry-loving Shackleton.*

The late U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall said, “Poetry is the language used at its best.” Although, for many, “poetry” means a breezy recitation of facile, sing-songy rhymes—either silly or maudlin—it is actually the deepest language of life, death, love, purpose, hope, and mystery. The reason that the Twenty-Third Psalm is one of the most beloved passages of scripture (and literature) for the last three thousand years is not because it’s beautiful (which it is), not because it speaks the truth about life and death (which it does), but because it’s poetry--the language used at its best—and most truthful. (I bemoan the literalism of those of the “Evangelical” church who limit the Bible by not allowing much of it to be the poetry that it is.) Author Mooallem could have said to his friend, “Hang in there, man.” Ernest Shackleton could have said, “Buck up, boys!” The Psalmist could have written, “Hey—everything’s going to be all right.” But they didn’t. They used poetry.

There are different versions of poetry. As a pastor, I sometimes hear—from an elderly parishioner whose eyesight is dimming—“I’m glad I know that hymn by memory.” One of the members I visit in the parish I’m serving in retirement is deeply into Alzheimer’s—often expressing confusion or even belligerence. I asked her daughter if she could suggest ways I might try to reach her mom. “She likes hymns,” she said. On my next visit, I didn’t say too much, but I sang “Beautiful Savior.” My elderly friend quieted down, her eyes calmed, and her lips were moving silently with the words.

I really do regret not memorizing more poetry, but—considering these variations—I think I could actually keep a friend awake for two hours with a combination of folk songs and old hymns. By which time, no doubt, he’d be very happy to see the rescue crew coming through the trees.

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*One of the last books I read which merits the saying, "I couldn't put it down," is Roland Huntford's "Shackleton."

And, on the pure fun of reading poetry out loud: "Cargoes of Diamonds, Emeralds, and... Snipping Snoppers?"