Eye of the Poet

I am staring at a blank wall. The waters of my inspiration ebb and run dry. My creative womb is barren. What to write? I ask myself. No epic saga springs to mind. The usual material, first love and death and daring deeds are not forthcoming. What is the task of the poet? I ask myself. To dwell forever on the pinnacles of life? Great battles, beauty, sex?
I ask myself if words are wasted on small things. Teacups? Onions? What makes a moment significant? What indeed is significance?

A faint whispering comes to me, the voices of other poets. My faithful anthology of poetry lies on the table. I pick up the book, and flick past long ballads and elegies, and come to rest alongside a simple poetic moment, Remembered Morning, by Janet Lewis.

Here at last, I find what I am looking for. A small thing brought to life. The poem is filled with the sounds of a normal rural morning, and the imagery is successfully simple, reflecting the simplicity of a new day beginning. There is nothing particularly ‘significant’ about this morning, indeed; it could typify any number of mornings. Yet Lewis brings this simple ‘memory’ to life with sharp onomatopoeia; “the axe ring[ing] in the wood” , the ripple of water, the crackle of fire, and a door slamming behind a girl on her way to school. I feel almost as though I were there, listening to the “…murmur and hum’ of the ‘children come[ing], Laughing and wet from the river;” Even “The little noise of the clock” is brought to my attention as a celebration of the commonplace, and the regular rhythm of the poem and basic rhyme scheme (abcabc then ababcc x2) serve to punctuate the everyday morning sounds, creating an idealistic and familiar atmosphere, appropriate to the poem.
The description is warm and positive, and it is clear Lewis finds value in this remembered morning where “…all goes on as it should.”
I find solace in this celebration of simplicity, and ask myself again, what is the task of the poet?

I choose another poem; A Game of Chess, by Gwen Harwood. Here too, a small thing is celebrated, as an inspiration of philosophical thought. Harwood likens the board game to “…the heart’s impossible ideal-” to experience “the calm of gods…”; to choose “…among a host of paths,” with no ill consequence.
In contrast to Lewis’ simple concrete imagery, A Game of Chess exhibits rich, abstract metaphors; stars against shadows, chromatic keys of a piano, and “dark brilliance on the river…” evoking shades of black and white in my mind; a subtle allusion to the chequered board.
The structure of the poem is unusual and complex. The poem faithfully follows the Petrarchan Sonnet structure of an eight line octave and six line sestet, but only partially adheres to the Petrarchan rhyme scheme (The octave is abbacddc instead of ababcdcd). In addition, the punctuation suggests an entirely different rhythm, evoking a sense of the unpredictable ebb and flow of the game itself. The imagery is simple and powerful, not overly detailed but evocative, like chess pieces themselves. Furthermore, the diction is complex, reflecting the expectation of education and a good vocabulary amongst chess players.

The seemingly insignificant board game is metaphorically transformed into a philosophical concept of divine reign and choice; “…if the kingdom crumbles one can yield /and have the choice again.” I find myself wondering what would happen if humans could play God, if I could choose anything.

This is not the board game I was expecting. Harwood puts it in a new light, makes it significant. I ask myself if this, then, is the poet’s task; to locate the ordinary in the light of the extraordinary, to elevate the mundane, to let others blink with his eyelids and gaze out from his paradigm.

A quote from an article I read the day before materialises in my mind;
“All existence, Tolkien insisted...was intrinsically mythical; the stars were the fires of gods if you chose to see them that way, just as the world was the stories you made up from it.”[1]

If this is true, I can create beauty out of any drudgery, craft significance from insignificance. In this moment I find The Broad Bean Sermon, by Les Murray, a pastoral poem relishing and revelling in the simple act of bean picking. A sermon! On picking beans! I find myself asking, what is there to say about beans? They are green and thin. Surely that is all? But no. It is not all.

The poem sprawls sporadically, with no particular structure or rhyme, reflecting the chaotic growth of the bean plants themselves which “are a slack church parade…” and “…keel over all ways…”. Murray’s diction is heavily descriptive and rambling; brimming with vivid adjectives, verbs, similes and metaphors; “[Beans] Upright with water like men…ripe, knobbly ones, fleshy-sided, thin-straight, thin-crescent, frown-shaped, bird-shouldered, boat-keeled ones, beans knuckled and single-bulged, minute green dolphins at suck…” This extensive descriptive listing reflects the mass quantity of beans in the poem, and effectively draws me into the moment, where I too discover “more than [I] missed:” and come back again and again with “shirtfulls more”.

Murray transforms a routine task into an interesting, almost frenzied gathering of bean after bean. The plants themselves are personified and compared to people, animals, smiles and even “edible meanings”. The bean picking world is described in detail; the plants themselves, the small animals, the sunlight and clouds. I feel as if I am there, “at every hour of daylight...find[ing] plenty…”.

I flick back Lewis’ beautiful morning, to the simple embrace of the ordinary. The girl comes out into the sunshine and is metaphorically swept into the running day. I revisit the room of music, warmth and wine, where divine thoughts emerge from squares of black and white. And now I am back in the bean field, “grinning with happiness—it is [my] health—[I] vow to pick them all, even the last few, weeks off yet, misshapen as toes.”

I am no longer staring at a blank wall. The waters of my inspiration bubble and begin to flow. My creative womb gives birth to a ballad about bread and butter, for I no longer believe that words are wasted on small things. Significance is in everything, hiding in the commonplace, waiting to be found, like beans, waiting to be seen and picked and celebrated. The ordinary, becoming extraordinary.