Art Resonance

The poetry that I like resonates with me internally. That word "resonate", crystallizes the ineffable effect art can have on me. It's that "it just feels right" feeling when you see a painting, photograph, sculpture, or hear a poem, prose passage, or music that hits you in your gut. It is particularly strange and noticeable when the image or sound seems to bypass your intellect. When the effect is something other than the meaning of the words, lyrics, or specific content of the image. It is an appreciation of the abstract.


For me, art complements moods. I am more likely to like a particular kind of art depending on my general mood at the time and the environment that I am in. I select music to reflect my mood or sometimes the music I hear can change my mood. I may want to see and hear different types of things depending on whether I am outdoors or indoors; whether I am at work or a party; whether it is dinner or breakfast; etc.


I've read about the acquisition of language and music in the brains of infants and how it can lay down neural patterns reflective of the culture and environment around us. I've always felt that my appreciation of the cadence of Robert Frost's poetry was due to my New England upbringing.

My early education

My poetry education was terrible. I would like to generalize and say that poetry education in all American middle class schools in the 60's and 70's was terrible but . . . I don't know. The culture that I absorbed at that time instilled in me that poetry was something that rhymed. Children's nursery rhymes come to mind. And later maybe I realized music lyrics were poetry. As I got into high school then poetry became writing that was "difficult" and often written in archaic language.


I remember 9th grade English class. We had an assignment to memorize a short poem and a long poem to recite in class a few weeks later. Being an over achiever, I chose the longest short poem and the longest long poem (The Raven). I remember memorizing them line by line as I walked to and from the bus stop. On the day we were to recite our assignments the class was pounded into submission by the repetition of other students who recited the same two shortest poems. My selections were a welcome relief and the teacher was beaming when I recited each poem flawlessly (in my mind). 9th grade. That was the end of my poetry education.


No one ever told me what poetry was supposed to do.


Somewhere, along the way, some of it stuck with me for reasons I couldn't have articulated. Standing in line buying books for my first semester in college I saw a complete works of Robert Frost. A paperback. I bought it and during the following years I would dip into it randomly. That edition wore out with use and now I have a hardcover edition.

How I discovered poetry.

I can readily admit that well into my 20's I could say, without hesitation, that I didn't read or particularly like poetry. I was ambivalent at best. It is often said that Americans in general don't appreciate poetry. My schooling throughout the 60's and early 70's pretty much reinforced that notion in me. By the time I graduated from high school my experience with poetry was largely a vague remembrance of nursery rhymes and exposure to more adult "romantic" poetry (i.e. 18th, and 19th century poetry). I don't really care that much about romantic poetry. It really didn't fit with the mood of the 60's and 70's which was dominated by social revolution, the Vietnam war, rock and roll, Watergate, and disco (in the 70's). One exception I made for myself was the purchase of a complete works of Robert Frost when I entered college. It must have been my New England upbringing but the flow of the words in Frost's poems resonated with me. I've always had a complete works of Frost and have always enjoyed randomly dipping into it's pages.

In my late 20's (exact dates are a little fuzzy now that I'm in my 50's) I joined the San Francisco Bay Area Great Books Discussion Groups. Our regular monthly meetings focused on prose works but once a year all of the discussion groups would meet for a long weekend at the Asilomar conference center in Monterey, CA. We would read and discuss poetry on Friday night, an essay on Saturday morning, a novel on Saturday night, and a play on Sunday morning. I attended poetry discussion just because it was on the schedule. Once there I was exposed to people (mostly older retired persons) who were genuinely excited about poetry. They dove into the discussion with excitement and insight. After a couple of years I started paying more attention to the poetry and joining into the discussion myself. After 4-5 years I purchased a "How to Read Poetry" type book/anthology and signed up for the Great Books poetry weekend. The poetry weekend was a long weekend with four discussions focused on poetry. The first year I went because one of the discussions was to be on T.S. Eliots'"The Wasteland". Little did I know how difficult that poem would be. Let's just say I that I still didn't "get" the "The Wasteland" that year but I was hooked on poetry from then on. I bought books of poetry, attended poetry readings, and served several years on the poetry committee selecting poems for the poetry weekend and even leading discussions. While I am no way a scholar I have now learned something about poetry and truly appreciate it.