Robert Peake

I had the pleasure of seeing Billy Connolly perform stand-up live in Los Angeles last night. Throughout the show, I kept noticing how he would continually branch from anecdote to anecdote, snaring our attention with unresolved themes, then finally resolving them (for the most part) to hilarious effect. More and more it occurs to me that in many ways poetry and comedy are very similar. Frustration itself has been a theme in poetry, especially love poetry, since Petrarch (and no doubt before). Yet poetry itself, by its very nature, is pleasurably frustrating in much the same manner as comedy.

nce upon a time, there was a Young Intellectual Poet who lived with his friends in a beautiful tower. He loved poems, and read often. One day, he read a Great Poem that imparted to him a deep sense of mystery. Assuming the poem itself must actually be a mystery, he set out to solve the poem. He researched and read, and came up with many theories. His writings on the poem and its meaning were very poetic. People liked what he said, and decided that he understood the poem very well, because they were dazzled by his writing, thinking, and theories.

Heartened, the Young Intellectual Poet began to write poems of his own. Thinking that great poems must necessarily be mysteries to be solved, he began to omit certain parts of his writing and obfuscate others. His poems became cryptograms, rebuses, and riddles. Only he and his friends held the keys to unlock the poems. They also wrote many papers about his poems and other enigmatic poems (for now such was the fashion), again using poetic language and intricate theories.

The people in the village loved the Great Poem that originally inspired the Young Intellectual Poet, because it imparted a sense of mystery to them as well. The new poems coming out of the tower, by contrast, simply confused them. But because it was said that the Young Intellectual Poet was a great artist, they assumed the fault must be with themselves. Gradually, the villagers lost interest in poetry, deciding they were not smart enough for it — except for the few that enjoyed solving riddles. They went off to the tower to study.

Read The Poem

What is so great about this poem is the way that it carries you along with strong, simple words and imagery, whisking you past moments of highly ambiguous meaning, delighting the senses. Having blasted our way through many of these moments with an almost nursery-rhyme use of rhythm and alliteration, we come to this spectacular moment:

When the stars threw down their spears, /
And watered heaven with their tears

I am planning to select a new poem each Monday and write about it. I figure most people could use a dose of poetry on that day more than any other in the week, and it’s high time I say more about things worth talking about. My plan is to present the poem (or a link to the poem) and then talk about what is so great about the poem and what is so great about the poet responsible. That’s all.