Poetry in motion (or more like confusion?)
a sentence
will always look
like poetry
if you
hit enter
a lot —
Do you want to play a game with us? Pretty please say YES! I think it’ll be fun…mostly because it will show you how stupid I can be.)
The game: The person who sums the below poem up the best will be automatically entered to win a $50 gift card from Indigo. But you have to play to win!
So, let’s all ignore Wordle for a moment. (And if you don’t know what Wordle is by now, you should! Scroll back to see what all the fuss is about.)
Maya, the executive editor of re:books, has gone back to school and is taking her first English Lit class. (Go, Maya!)
We laughed like we had inhaled a s**t load of laughing gas after she told me about her first assignment: to dissect a poem.
Now the fun begins!
Maya took a jab at it. So did professional poet Catherine Graham, author of numerous collections of poetry, including Aether Out-of-Body Lyric; a finalist for the Toronto Book Awards; and her sixth collection, The Celery Forest was a CBC Top 10 Canadian Poetry Collection. You can find Catherine’s other works here and pre-order her novel The Most Cunning Heart here. Not only is she a legit poet, but her collections are a good entry into poems.
I kinda took a stab at it (never wanted to Google anything so much in my life), and now it’s your turn.
Maya was so incredibly stupefied nervous about this assignment. Let’s just say, “We weren’t born to read poetry!” That being said, we want to champion poets, because how do they do it? Poets are so admirable, really. It’s truly fascinating how they choose specific words that are interpreted differently by academics, readers, and the author themself.
Personally, I’m pretty much a “Nice bum, where you from?” poet. I yell this to my children whenever I’m trailing behind them. And I read them a TON of Shell Silverstein collections that I won’t even dog-ear — you can read about the controversy around this in part one. Also, I understand them. (Maybe most of us need illustrations to understand poetry?)
Let’s say a pretend English professor asked me what a pretend poem meant. I’d be like, “It means everything obviously!” If they pressed further, I would say, “There are dozens of hidden meanings in this beautifully deep poem. Can’t you see them yourself? I mean, sometimes there are no words to describe a poem...” thus putting my pretend English professor on the spot (and hopefully pretend professor would move on to another victim pretend student.)
Which is weird. When I was in grade 10 English and we had to write a poem as an assignment, I actually got 9/10. My teacher even stopped me in the hallway and asked if she could use my poem as an example for all her future students. So, obviously, somewhere deep, deep down inside of me is a repressed poet. (Don’t ya know it?)
(Then again, according to my high-school yearbook, I was also voted most likely to “join the peace corps,” so…)
“Sure, whatever. Roses are red, violets are blue, I don’t really care, so go ahead and use!” I responded to my English teacher.
Just kidding. Maybe. Ah, poetry. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, which is too bad to see!
Okay, I’ll stop now.
We both truly admire poets. We wish more poets could make a living writing poems and that mainstream readers (and press) would give it a chance, and we believe poets should be more widely recognized.
I begged Maya to send me the poem she was assigned, Praise the Rain by Joy Harjo. Our text exchange afterwards was beyond hilarious for two pretty avid readers, who may or may not be as smart as we think we are. It went like this:
Me: OMG. That poem! (Three laughing emojis) No fucking clue!
Maya: I do not lie!
Me: I think it has something to do with rain?
Maya: Thanks, Shakespeare.
Now, let's have some fun and be done! Below we’ve shared the poem Maya was assigned and how she interpreted it, as well as what poet Catherine Graham got out of it.
Not going to lie, I didn’t try since I’m not taking English lit.
And don't forget to share what moved you about this poem, or even what you think about poetry here for your chance to win a $50 gift card from Indigo. Game on!
Praise the Rain
By Joy Harjo
Praise the rain; the seagull dive
The curl of plant, the raven talk—
Praise the hurt, the house slack
The stand of trees, the dignity—
Praise the dark, the moon cradle
The sky fall, the bear sleep—
Praise the mist, the warrior name
The earth eclipse, the fired leap—
Praise the backwards, upward sky
The baby cry, the spirit food—
Praise canoe, the fish rush
The hole for frog, the upside-down—
Praise the day, the cloud cup
The mind flat, forget it all—
Praise crazy. Praise sad.
Praise the path on which we're led.
Praise the roads on earth and water.
Praise the eater and the eaten.
Praise beginnings; praise the end.
Praise the song and praise the singer.
Praise the rain; it brings more rain.
Praise the rain; it brings more rain.
Here’s What Catherine Graham author of numerous collections of poetry, had to say about Praise the Rain.
Interconnectedness in Jo Harjo’s poem Praise the Rain
A praise poem is a poem of tribute or gratitude. The title of Joy Harjo’s poem Praise the Rain signals this, and the poem’s content embraces praise in various ways: through image and movement—“the curl of plant” through sound—“the raven talk”; through earthly things in their element: trees, mist, fish, canoe. And the poem moves higher, into the sky—“the fired leap”—and then changes direction to praise the backwards, the upward, the upside-down, embracing all—“the hole for frog,” “the cloud cup.”
This accumulating praise includes what it means to be human—“the hurt” “the dignity” “the crazy” “the sad” “the eater and the eaten.” “Praise the song and praise the singer” brings to mind the last line of Yeats’s poem “Among School Children”: “How can we know the dancer from the dance?’” Everything is connected. We are the cycle of life. We too begin and end and perhaps in some new form, begin again.
The repeating last lines, through the trance of song, bring us back to the beginning and signal our role. To praise is to see and to see is to pay attention. This leads to empathy and dare I say love. Praising rain has purpose. It brings more rain. And rain brings life.
*****
Maya is way too honest — and refused to cheat look up its meaning on Google — which I did. (So, yeah, my dog ate my homework…”)
Maya’s take on Praise the Rain
The first part of my creative writing course started with a bang, in which I mean I have the most amazing professor: a writer, an opera singer, an actress, and a poet!
The other part was, well, the opposite of exciting.
We started off with poetry. If you asked me a few weeks ago, I would have said that I hate poetry. But that’s not true! It’s confusion. Like Rebecca, I don’t understand poetry. I just don’t get it. To be perfectly honest, I’m afraid of it. Yes, I’m scared of poetry!
My issue, maybe, is that it is too broad for me. I studied to be a mathematician, so I deal with absolutes. Poetry, however, is so open to interpretation.
However, there are times when I now read a poem, and it moves something in me, but certainly not often enough. Definitely not often enough for the above poem that was presented.
I sat on it for a few days and then, because she begged, I sent it to Rebecca to get her feedback. Well, you can read how THAT conversation turned out above.
This poem is well-studied and written by a reputable writer. But like other poetry, I was lost. To be completely candid, when I read poetry, I mostly feel stupid, as though I should get it but don’t.
I read it at least a dozen million times and then some. Here is my interpretation:
I see a lot of nature elements in this prose. The mention of rain, moon, sky, various animals, etc. makes me think that it has to do with the nature of nature.
I also see some opposites: beginning and end, up and down, dark and light, as well as movement. Movement of water and movement of life (baby).
The reoccurrence of the word “praise” means, to me, the theme of gratitude. Grateful for nature, grateful for life, grateful for the circle of life, its beginning and its end.
There are some human traits mentioned: warrior — bravery, cry — need, dignity, crazy, sad, used to connect the human soul to nature.
The one thing that stood out to me right away is that the writer must be Indigenous, as the poem has a quality about it that comes from someone who appreciates nature and life and humanity on a level much higher than I do. There are also symbols that represent Indigenous people: water, fish, land, canoe, frog, rain, the song and the singer.
After deep consideration, I see this poem as an ode to earth and nature, life, and the circle of life — the beginning and the end, and then another beginning.
****
And now’s YOUR chance to interrupt it! Send your thoughts here either about the poem or your thoughts on poetry in general — what you like, recommendations, even a poem you wrote — and you’ll be entered to win a $50 gift card to Indigo. (A poetry book, perhaps?)