Enjoying poetry

K S Sivakumaran

Most sensitive people enjoy poetry. I enjoy some fine poems in the English language as they give me pleasure as well as food for thought and entertain me with delight in feeling for the ‘other’.

One could analyze a poem critically but in this week’s column I just want to share with you one of the poems I liked for its content and form. Please read this poem and you would enjoy, my young friends, if you have not read them before; or even if you are re-reading it you would still enjoy the effectiveness of the poem in our sensibilities.

Among the large volumes of poetry available, let us select a specific poem usually prescribed for students. The one I have selected for you is from the Anthology for Edexel International General certificate of secondary Education (IGCSE) English Literature.

The poet’s social consciousness and the empathy he has had over the pitiable people affected could move anyone deprived of his own status in his own land.

Let us take one of the poems by a celebrated poet of the 20th century- W H Auden.

His Refugee Blues is a constant reminder for some of us who experienced or witnessed the horrors of warlike conditions in and around the world. Evidently it is a simple poem that students can understand easily except perhaps the historical context that the poet uses as the backdrop – Hitler’s Germany and anti-Jewish onslaught. There are many ways of enjoying poetry, as you would agree, but what do the examiners expect from you as an answer to the questions put in the examination? Apparently they want your own interpretation than repeating in parrot-like fashion what you have copied as notes in your note books.

While you think about it, let me refer to some views of a poet and critic, James Reeves in understanding poetry.

* Poetry is a matter of private enjoyment

* Only poetry obstinately refuses to be translated

* The love of poetry is an affair of the heart; it must also be an affair of the head

* Poetry can never be fully explained. It can be felt and it can be taught about with profit

* The primary purpose of poetry is magical

* The desire to communicate, to express, to give voice to emotion, is the root from which all poetry springs

* All poetry has to do with communication, but it is not merely saying something in a particular way

* It is a special form of words which has the power, to evoke certain responses in the hearer or reader, and this power never leaves it

One may disagree with some of the assumptions above as the politically concerned critics might consider poetry purely as a tool for social change.

Whatever it is, poetry is both for pleasure and delight and consequent wisdom as Robert Frost put it: Poetry begins with delight and ends in wisdom.

Refugee Blues

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew:
Old passports can’t do that, my dear, old passports can’t do that.

The consul banged the table and said:
“If you’ve got no passport you’re officially dead”:
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go to-day, my dear, where shall we go to-day?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:
“If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread;
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.
Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying: ‘They must die';
We were in his mind, my dear, we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren’t German Jews, my dear, but they weren’t German Jews.

Went down to the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors;
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on great plain in the falling snow
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

W H Auden - [email protected]