Opinion

The potential for Gloucester poetry


Published: July 24, 2008

Poetry is tough to pin down.

Edward Arlington Robinson called it:"...language that tells us something that cannot be said..."

For Carl Sandburg, it was: "An echo asking a shadow to dance."

Of course,we know it when we see it: Hey diddle diddle, The cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon. The little dog laughed to see such a lark And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Good stuff. We love it because we are rhyme-minded and metaphor-minded by nature. For young children, poetry is a favorite subject.

True, by the time most of us graduate from high school, it's farther down the list. But that's not because we don't love it; it's because we are afraid to admit it.

Everyone loves poetry. (Almost everyone. MarkTwain notoriously said, "I have thought many times that if poets when they get discouraged would blow their brains out, they could write verymuch better when they got well.")

Besides loving poetry, we are all real poets. We might not know thefancy names for the tricks of poetry, like synecdoche, metonymy, personification, hyperbole..., but we use them. If you ever said life isa bowl of cherries, hired hand, basket case, or ever called your honeyhoney, you were a poet.

Every time you asked someone to cut it out,told him he was barking up the wrong tree, or had too much horsepower in his rattle trap, you were a poet. It's fun to listen and make apersonal list of everyday poetry: cat nap, seed money, dim as dirt,stretch a dollar, all ears, the Yankees suck... I want poetry to be a public commodity in Gloucester.

Poets are good atwriting poems, posing for book jackets, and looking crucial. But since poetry exists in the very real world of politics and difference, not inLimerickland outside Orlando, we have to do more. I have some specificplans to realize my goal.

The first is to found a Poet Laureate scholarship for graduating Gloucester High School seniors who show ability and interest in poetry. The Parker and Kingman awards already honor students for grades and goodprose. There is, however, no poetry award, though past Poetry Without Paper contests — conducted every year by the Sawyer Library - demonstrate there is real talent at the high school. It should be recognized.

Second, to reach into the schools at all levels so that I, with other poets in the city, can be available to teachers to talk about and to read poetry with students. The library's excellent program of sendingreaders into the schools is a good model.

Third, to reach out to the other end of the age spectrum, the elderly. To promote poetry reading and writing among our oldest, wisest, fellow citizens.

Fourth, to publish a book of poetry by and about Gloucester, with aparallel Website.

The book might include past poets, but wouldemphasize the many fine writers active in the city today. Cape Ann's newspapers do a good job of publishing poetry, a practice that'sbecoming rare. Like the newspapers, the book would be inclusive. But it would go further, its poems a mirror of the diversity and talenthere, written in the spirit of Gwendolyn Brooks: "Be yourself. Don'timitate other poets. You are as important as they are."

The Web site would reach a worldwide audience - at less expense than thehardcover edition. Parallel print and website editions have a goodmodel in the Poetry Without Paper contests. Student winners have theirpoems published online, at the library's site, and their poems areprinted for distribution the evening of the awards.

All of this is a lot to do and it will take time — right now, I have to mow the lawn. But I'll report back.

Gloucester, a city of innate poetry, deserves poems about our common community experience. Because, when you get down to it, we're all in the same boat.

John J. Ronan

Gloucester Poet Laureate