Charles does not always send me such poetic ramblings as the one below, but over the past seven years of our friendship, I have collected dozens of such epistles. It gives me great pleasure to share these with other friends.
Hugh,
This photograph is one of my screen savers. It is of Wild Goose Island on Saint Mary Lake in Glacier National Park. The lake is ten miles long. You can cruise the lake in a multi-passenger boat, but there are no kayaks, no canoes, no bobbing little fishing boats, no apparent way to get to "uninhabited" Wild Goose Island. You can see it but not touch it. For me, it is more wondrous and mystical and desirable than Shangri-La.
The Lake Isle of Innesfree - W.B. Yeats
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
I first read this poem straight through without preconception. Then I read it several more times. , Eventually I did a Google search and discovered the context in which Yeats wrote it; his thoughts on the first phrase and the inversion of the last three words, etc. The poem exerts a kind of invitation to find one's lake isle and build one’s own small cabin made of clay and wattles––or to capture such feelings by exercise of imagination and memory in our grey quotidian lives.
I am going to take a 180 away from the poem at this point but stay with the clay and wattle cabin. You know that I am interested in ancient methods of enhancing living conditions: arrows to improve upon javelins, javelins to improve on spears, spears to improve on clubs or throwing rocks, etc. John Plant is a young man who grew up in a rural area of Australia's Far North Queensland. From a young age, he was curious about making implements from scratch and living in the wilderness without contemporary resources. He created a series on YouTube that follow him as he demonstrates techniques for many projects. One of these videos combines a number of techniques: the creating of a stone axe, the skinning of bark from a tree, the building of a kiln to create clay pots for water, the mixing of water and clay at the building site to build a wattle and daub hut, etc. Well, if I were twenty years younger (O.K., fifty), I would build a wattle and daub hut with a water-shedding roof, bed, fireplace & chimney, etc. In lieu of that, I would simply like to invite you to experience something that intrigues and delights me. It will only take you eleven minutes and thirteen seconds. Just put this phrase in your query line: "Primitive Technology wattle and daub hut" and watch the video. Invite Ber to enjoy it, too.
So, what does this have to do with poetry? Quite a lot, really, because it allows me to discuss the role of the reader of poetry. The very first phrase (I will arise and go now) invites the reader to leave everything for a moment and arise with the poet and go to––an uninhabited island where "peace comes dropping slow" and one is required to live by personal effort in planting bean-rows, constructing a hive for honey-bees, and building a sturdy, solid, wattle and clay cabin. And the reader muses: “Could I do that? Am I capable of living outside of the structures of communal human life? Would I want that? Can I break free of my nine-to-five life?" I have recounted to you how an old man in his nineties taught me and our children how to raise honey bees. I have not told you, I believe, of my training in the art of dry-fly fishing for trout by my grandfather. I will simply say that when I climb down the river's bank and enter the cool water with my rod in hand––I feel as if I have come home . . . home, at last. Not only that, but for decades I have realized that I don't have to get back physically to the stream. It is a fact that even––
"While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core."
So, what does this add up to? Well, the composer of a 19th or 20th century violin concerto is the first actor in the phenomenon of music. Then come different artists at various distances from the composer stretching through time: Niccolo Paganini, Pablo de Sarasate, Yehudi Menuhin, Jascha Heifetz, Itzhak Perlman, Janine Jensen, etc., who are the second actors of the phenomenon of music. Finally, the third component consists of those who see and hear the realization of the composer’s imagination. In a similar way, the writing, the recitation, and the hearing make up the phenomenon of poetry. Is it possible to find a definitive performance of a piece of music or poetry? It is always a temptation, but if the third component is taken seriously, the answer would probably be that it was a practical impossibility. An unusual example of one person who took part in each of the three components is that of Sergei Rachmaninov. Justly famous for his third piano concerto, he performed his "Rac 3" for about 20 years until he heard his concerto performed by Vladimir Horowitz. Rachmaninov was so impressed by the mastery of this highly technical piece that he said that he would now retire from performing it himself. So he became creator, performer, and hearer. I can imagine a poet who, hearing a brilliant interpreter read his work, would be the third element in the phenomenon of poetry.
