By FLEDA BROWN
I keep swimming in our lake until the water's unbearably cold. My family thinks I'm crazy. But it's the deep pleasure of going slow, of feeling the water on my skin, of the way it feels velvety as I push through it, for no particular goal, just to keep afloat from our dock to Cherry Point and back. I'm thinking about a poem I found in the July/August issue of Poetry magazine. It's about fishing, but it's the same principle:
Trout
I do my best
to keep pointlessness
at bay. But here,
wet above my
knees, I let it fly.
Here, hot and cold,
fingers thick with
thinking, I try to
tie the fly and look
for the net, loosening
the philosophical
knot of why I came
here today, not yet
knowing whether
I'll free or fry
the rainbows
and browns once
they're mine.
-- Kathryn Starbuck
A poem has a lot in common with summer -- the time we've given to fishing, or swimming, or lying on the sand. We've enjoyed just being alive. Supposedly, relaxing has a "purpose." It's good for us, it helps us be more productive later, but we didn't give a hoot. We just dug our toes in the sand and sighed.
Back to school: We suspect that studying poetry might be good for us. We think if we're educated, we "ought" to read poetry. We think there must be a moral buried somewhere in a poem that we're supposed to find.
Some of us are too polite to say so, but basically, we think poetry is useless. The poem, of course, doesn't care. It exists for itself. It's like a song in that way. What it "means" is less the point than that it's good to be in its presence, to let it carry us like a melody.
As with any fine piece of music, the more closely we listen to the melody, and the more we know about the art, the better we can enjoy it. But anyone can enjoy on some level.
It's good to stop and listen closely to words. They're quite beautiful on their own. They don't need music to back them up. They don't need pictures. Sometimes it takes staying with them to find out where they're going, what they're doing.
For example, this little poem, "Trout." Notice that the speaker has to try hard to "keep pointlessness at bay." So we know from the beginning of the poem that there is a pleasure, a drift toward drifting. But she -- and all of us -- think it's our job to focus, to have a goal. However, sometimes, when we get ourselves up to our knees, or necks, in something we love just for the love of it, it doesn't matter if we catch anything, if we win any prizes.
Notice that the speaker says "not yet/knowing." Presumably, she'll resume her goal-directedness at some point in the future. But not for now.
Not to say a poem can't wham us over the head with meaning, even with a political stance. But to do that well, it must stop us in our tracks and allow us to feel the moment, so we live the meaning instead of having it preached at us.
If you can, save a little time this fall to remind yourself of the slow feel of summer. Buy a small book of poems. Read one a day. Experience it without trying to analyze it. Let it rest in you. Try Mary Oliver, Kay Ryan, Linda Pastan, Joy Harjo, Billy Collins or Kenneth Koch, for a start.
Fleda Brown, of Traverse City, is professor emerita, University of Delaware, and past poet laureate of Delaware. Learn more about her at fledabrown.com
