So I tried to send this email a few minutes ago, but the internet got weird and didn’t send the whole thing. Sorry! Here it is again.
I am sitting on the patio of my favorite coffee shop, a stack of books in front of me (including the Odyssey and Othello), a half-eaten apple fritter and a still-warm cup of coffee keeping me company as I watch a misty rain drop onto the birds in the parking lot. This cool rain is a little mesmerizing, and something of a relief—a sign that our immense summer (as Rilke would describe it) is finally drawing to an end. One can hope, at any rate.
Today is August 27, which means that it’s been exactly one year since I posted the first episode of The Daily Poem. When I uploaded that first episode (a Shakespearean sonnet), I hoped that it would be helpful for a few people who (like me) wanted to make poetry a more consistent part of their lives. Worst case, I figured it would be a decent resource for my own family, and it would allow me to contemplate some things worth contemplating. It quickly turned into something much bigger than that, though—and not because of me. Before the first month was over the show was receiving thousands of downloads each day and I was hearing from families who were using it as part of their morning time (and even some bedtimes). I wasn't surprised, per se, because I know that poetry is a powerful, beautiful, and (dare I say) addictive thing. But I was blown away by the degree to which people were getting real pleasure from the show, the degree to which it was truly meaningful to so many listeners of all ages.
The pressure was on, suddenly.
Today, one year later, I don’t feel any less pressure. Every time I step in to the studio to record a new poem I get nervous that I won’t do justice to some great poem or some wonderful poet. And I am quite sure that I often mangle the poems I am reading. I’m sad about that. But I also know that poetry is a mysterious thing, and it’s hard to know what to say or think about a great piece of poetry. It’s even harder to know what a listener is going to get out of a poem. I’ve come to think of myself as a table-setter. If I can set the table with a good meal prepared by great chefs, then we can sit down together and who knows what kind of discussion we’ll have.
In her book, Rules for the Dance, the late Mary Oliver writes this:
“Metrical poetry belongs to a certain era . . . and with every passing year that contained time grows more distant, it’s methods more estranged from our own. The reader of modern poetry feels at ease with the cadences of conversation. To read Chaucer’s poems, now, requires a diligent and even extraordinary effort. . . The same thing, in our age, is happening to metrical poetry. It is no longer a safe bet that students will have been prepared for meter by having heard, over and over, the rhythms of Mother Goose. In schools, students are urged to follow their own unpatterned expressions . . .
As a result students and other readers . . . come to the poems, frankly, with tin ears. They cannot scan. They don’t know an iamb from an anapest. They read for comprehension and hear little if anything of the interwoven pleasures of the sound and the pattern of the poem, which are also deeply instructive concerning the statement of the poem, along with the meanings of the words themselves. Not knowing how to listen, they read the poem but they do not hear it sing, or slide, or slow down, or crush with the heel of sound, or leap off the line, or hurry, or sob, or refuse to move from the self-pride of the calm pantameter no matter what fire is rustling through it . . .
Every poem is music—a determined, persuasive, reliable, enthusiastic, and crafted music.”
Oliver explains that this is why she wrote Rules for the Dance. And, following in her giant footsteps, it’s also what inspires The Daily Poem. I’m not looking to “explain” the poems I share on the podcast. I’m looking to be in them long enough to hear some of the music. To give us a chance to linger, if just for a few moments, over some of the most beautiful music ever produced in our language.
If you’ve been listening, thanks so much. It’s truly an honor to be a part of your daily routine. Ultimately, it’s got very little to do with me. These poems don’t need me. But we absolutely need these poems. As Oliver writes a few pages later:
“Poems speak of the mortal condition; in poems we must about the tragic and glorious issues of our fragile and brief lives: our passions, our dreams, our failures. Our wonderings about heaven and hell—these too are in poems. Life, death; mystery, and meaning. Five hundred years and more of such labor, such thought within choice expression, lies within the realm of . . . poetry. Without it, one is uneducated, and one is mentally poor.”
Thanks so much for listening. I’ll be back with another poem tomorrow.
-David