Poetry And Verse

[poliphilo]

George Steiner has a line about verse being "the opposite" of poetry. That's good. That's very good.

Verse is all on the surface. It has a brassy sheen. Poetry is inward. There's more going on in it than the words declare.

The versifier treats words as counters, the poet treats them as mysteries.

Which isn't to say that poetry is necessarily all mimsy and weird. That was the mistake the late romantics made. The most affecting, the most sublime line in English poetry is, "Pray you, undo this button."

Verse can be intelligent, witty, inventive, memorable- but it never surprises us. The element of surprise is reserved for poetry.

Good verse is better than bad poetry. But, then, "bad poetry" is a contradiction in terms. All poetry is good- and terribly, terribly rare. 

Bad poems are like failed attempts at the high jump; we can see the aspiration and applaud the ambition, but if you collide with the bar you collide with the bar.  

Bad poetry is good for nothing. Verse on the other hand  has a job to do and is to be valued insofar as it does it. Football chants, for example, are mostly very bad verse, but they get the job done. The lousiest football chant, so long as people can be got to sing it, is worth more than a failed poem.

Here are two pieces of verse. They sit side by side on a page of The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book. One is merely verse. The other is also a poem. I think it's obvious which is which.

Old Boniface 
                                                                            
Old Boniface he loved good cheer,                                      
And took his glass of Burton,                                                 
And when the nights grew sultry hot                                    
He slept without a shirt on. 

A Tawnymoor

As I went by a dyer's door
I met a lusty tawnymoor;
Tawny hands, and tawny face,
Tawny petticoats,
Silver lace.

Comments

[algabal.livejournal.com]

It seems like verse is outmoded these days. Everyone wants to be a poet, and writes and reads in earnest.

There was a big audience for "light verse" in centuries past, and it was meant as recreation! Can't imagine people reading those little elegant ditties anymore.

[sovay]

Tawny hands, and tawny face,
Tawny petticoats,
Silver lace.

Not only is this poetry, it explains a line from Tom Waits' "Singapore."

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Verse doesn't have to be poetry to qualify as literature. W.S. Gilbert's Bab Ballads, for instance, have no pretensions to be poetic, but the best of them are classic.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't know that song. I must look it up.

[sovay]

I don't know that song.

It's the first track off Rain Dogs (1985).

We sail tonight for Singapore
We're all as mad as hatters here
I've fallen for a tawny Moor
Took off to the land of Nod
Drank with all the Chinamen
Walked the sewers of Paris
I danced along a colored wind
Dangled from a rope of sand
You must say goodbye to me

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Hey, I think you've got me hooked on Waits! Ever since you first commented I've been listening to songs of his on YouTube.

I wonder if he owns the Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book?

[margaretarts.livejournal.com]

I agree, verse is the opposite of poetry, and I like your examples. Had a kerfluffle over this point with an academic who kept insisting that our mutual hero G M Hopkins never had a 7-year break from writing poetry. When I asked for his proof, he brought out H's letter that said "For 7 years I wrote no poetry except for verse requested by my superiors" or something like that. I said, "Exactly the quote I would have pointed to. Hopkins wrote no poetry for 7 years, just verse."

H's verse he spoke of:

Jesu, their hope who go astray,
So kind to those who ask the way,
So good to those who look for Thee,
To those who find what must Thou be?

And when his poetry finally burst out, he spoke of Christ another way:

Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east....

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Hopkins' verse is very decent, well-made and serviceable. It's an honest job well done. It's to poetry what bricklaying is to architecture.