A Love Song for Poetry | Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Zoe asked me where I had got the title of my first book, “Wandering between Two Worlds” from. I told her it from from a Matthew Arnold poem, “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse” which I had read when I was 16. I recited bits of it to her

“Wandering between two worlds, one dead,

The other powerless to be born,

With nowhere yet to rest my head,

Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.

Their faith, my tears, the world deride—

I come to shed them at their side.”

And I recited fragments from another Matthew Arnold poem, his famous Dover Beach.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Isn’t it lovely? I felt so moved reciting the bits I imperfectly remembered. Truly, creating poetry is one of mankind’s greatest achievements.

I wanted to be a poet for 7 or 8 years in my twenties. And then, I showed my poems to John Frederick Nims, then the editor of Poetry Magazine. I asked, “Do you think I will have a career as a poet? Is it worth persisting, and really going for it?”

I don’t remember his exact words. But he pursed his lips, looked dubious, and I read the answer as no.

I was feeling the pull of prose then, of writing a memoir, and so, I went with the energy, and abandoned my first love.

But I still love my first love.

And now, about 19 years after that meeting, I think, I love poetry. I love reading it, I love writing it.

So what if I do not become a great poet?

Most people are not great readers of poetry either.

I will still write poetry, ordinary poetry for ordinary people, to bless, comfort, cheer, and yes, perhaps, delight.