I Would Like to be Able to Sing or at Least Write a Decent Haiku

So twice five miles of fertile ground

 

With walls and towers girdled round:

 

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

 

Where blossomed many an incense bearing tree;

 

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

 

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

 

One of the great things about having writing as a hobby is that there have been so many brilliant writers in the past that it is very easy to rip off some of their genius if your own scanty reserves of talent and creativity fail you.  I can't write poetry to save my life but I can copy Coleridge with the best of them.  Another handy thing is that many brilliant writers are dead and can't object to their work being hijacked for a rather silly little blog.

 

For a long time I didn't really "get" poetry.  My attitude tended somewhat towards "If you have something to say then just say it for God's sake".  There was some attempt to introduce me to poetry at school.  At least I can think of no other reason for the occasion shred of Keats and Larkin that bounces around inside my head without any point of reference.  I certainly didn't seek them out.  Poetry has never had the hold on me that it has on many others, I think it's because the structure of the poem is as important as the words themselves.

 

I rather suspect you have to be in some way musical to have an appreciation of poetry and musical is something I am not.  I can't carry a tune in a bucket and even rhythm frequently escapes my notice.  There is music and songs I like but even with my favourites I am utterly incapable of seeing the words written on a page and translating them into music in my head.  The same applies to poetry.  If the words are good enough I will enjoy it but the author could have achieved the same result with a finely crafted paragraph.  Rendering the idea in the form of a poem doesn't do anything extra for me.

 

And I think the intention is that there should be something extra.  The crafting of the poem itself should add to the actual content to produce something more than simply the sum of its words.  At least I think it should, otherwise why not just write a paragraph.  Whatever this something extra is escapes me.  The only two poets I know are Keats and Larkin.  Keats is the one who died of tuberculosis, Larkin is the one who didn't.  From the extract above you might think I know Coleridge but in actual fact Kubla Khan is the only poem of his I know and I have H. Rider Haggard to thank for that.  He referenced "Alph the sacred river" in one of his books (I think it was Allan Quartermain) that I read as a child and I was sufficiently struck by the term to mention it to my mother who responded by quoting the first stanza of the poem which is the only one most people can remember anyway.

 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

 

A stately pleasure dome decree:

 

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

 

Through caverns measureless to man

 

Down to a sunless sea.

 

I actually love this poem but again its the language (and the subject material) that appeal to me rather than the fact of its being poetry.  I am quite fond of haikus or at least the English approximation of same.  Partially this is because they're short but mainly its because they have very specific rules.  I would never claim to be able to write a good (or even adequate) haiku but I can more or less follow the rules.  For example;

 

opium dreaming

 

nurturing beauty with love

 

warlord takes his ease

 

That fulfills most of the requirements for an English language haiku and it might not be good but unlike Kubla Khan it is my very own.

 

I've always wanted to be able to sing, and I remember a friend of my parents attempting to teach the youthful me the rudiments of the piano and staring in disbelief when I couldn't really recognise one note from another.  It was all very well for her, she was musical.  So is my mother but that talent seems to have skipped a generation (along with her literary skill, talent at painting and my father's practical ability to do pretty much anything that requires straight lines, coherent planning and attention to detail).  I don't necessarily want to be able to sing professionally but it would be nice to give voice to my favourite songs without birds falling from the trees and mothers hurrying their infants indoors.  Possibly if I could sing I would also appreciate poetry a little more.