My View
Poetry's not everything, not even in Gloucester.
"The Perfect Storm" by Sebastian Younger is great journalism, and Anita Diamant's "The Last Days of Dogtown" is fine fiction. There are also high expectations for Gregg Sousa's long-awaited novel, "Nadir of Hubis."
Still, poetry rises to the heights more often than prose.
How can that be?
Poetry is insightful, but the best prose is, too. Good poetry is fresh, but so is good prose. Even many of the tricks of poetry, metaphor (equating different things), simile (noting similarity between different things), personification (giving human traits to things), et al. can be found in prose. What gives?
One reason for poetry's prominence is that it can use poetic tools without the logjam of exposition. It doesn't have to tell a story.
Here are some examples from Gloucester poetry: "When a man's coffin is the sea..." (metaphor from Charles Olson).
"Haunting shroud and listless sail ... Whispering like a phantom pale." (simile from Clarence Falt);
"Flow on, O unconsenting sea ..." (personification from Hiram Rich);
Another reason is that poetry uses the repetitions and meters of sound in ways that separate it fundamentally from prose.
In fact, one basic definition of prose is that it is language written in the way we talk, without intentional pattern or rhymes: We hear such sound devices above in the "sail ... pale" rhyme, in the internal rhyme "Flow ... O ..," and in Rich's wonderful repetition of vowels and consonants (assonance, consonance) in "unconsenting sea." Here's a more famous example of sound tricks:
"Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of the Norman's Woe!" (rhythm and rhyme from Longfellow).
Oooops! "The Wreck of the Hesperus" actually does tell a story; it is a narrative poem. Though most modern poems only gesture toward narrative, in simple and brief vignettes, poetry can tell good stories and in the past, there was more narrative, more reliance on rhyme, with a different sensibility and tone.
Speaking of a change in tone, there is a happy poem by Clement Clarke Moore you may remember, in part because of its regular rhythm and rhyme. It has survived almost 200 years and if you don't recognize Moore's name, you will certainly recognize his poem, a wonderful story. It ends:
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, 'ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"
John Ronan is poet laureate for the city of Gloucester.
Fishermen Wives' Contest
Gloucester residents are invited to mark the importance of the Gloucester Fishermens' Wives Memorial, created by Morgan Faulds Pike and dedicated in 2001, with poems.
The contest is open until May 1 and the winner will be announced for Mothers Day. Send entries, along with address and phone number, to: Fishermen's Wives Contest, Box 5524, Gloucester, MA 01930
