The Starry Night, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889
By my “aged” 5 years, I had already consumed and enjoyed Shel Silverstein, nursery rhymes, Dr. Seuss, and all the other children’s book writers who dabbled in the poetic form. But as much as I enjoyed them, their silliness, their sometimes dark humor, they were just entertainment. They definitely fed my love of humorous writing that I nurture to this day, but I didn’t stop in my tracks and say, “what is that!?!” like I did when Don McLean sung:
The car trip to school each morning took 25 minutes, from our wide-open suburban streets through smaller and tighter town streets and eventually to sharp city turns and lights.
Sitting in the back seat of our family Plymouth Horizon, at 5 years old, I remember staring out the window and listening for the first time to Don McLean’s “Vincent” on the car cassette player on the way to school. Music playing while en route was a given, but one particular day when “Vincent” began, I listened more closely. What was he saying?! Something was different in this song than in our usual musical fare of 1950s radio tunes and folky children’s songs from Tom Chapin and the like.
I didn’t have a conscious thought about it at the time, and rarely does any 5 year old, but I’ve realized later in life that that moment was probably the very first time I connected deeply and emotionally to poetry, the first time I appreciated what great poetic writing could do and say.
Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and grey
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
-”Vincent”, Don McLean, 1971
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand
-”Vincent”, Don McLean, 1971
- I didn’t know words could combine to do that!
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
-”Vincent”, Don McLean, 1971
Of course at that young age, I hadn’t consumed some of the greats yet, at least to my knowledge - Wordsworth, Brontë, Browning, etc. (But at some young age, I do recall devouring an homage piece to William Blake by Nancy Willard, “A Visit to William Blake’s Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers”. Hilariously I had no clue about who William Blake was or the reference in the title at the time, but I remember liking it! But still the contents didn’t stick with me and I wasn’t ostensibly changed…)
As I grew up during my school years, the books of poetry in the classroom mostly stayed closed for me, reserved for the sensitive children at school who daydreamed in corners or wrote quiet pieces about their garden or cat at home.
That wasn’t me - I was the get the school stuff done, and more, to get the good grades, and then go home and listen to music or go somewhere for a new experience. I relied, during those years, on the lyricists in the music world to feed my poetic soul, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, Tracy Chapman, Old Folk tune writers, Alanis Morissette and Nirvana - they were all my poets.
Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way that you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way
-”From Both Sides Now”, Joni Mitchell, 1966
Much as “Vincent” served as an awakening for my 5 year-old soul, Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” was an awakening for my adult mothering soul. When my daughter was quite young, I opened our book of poems and on this particular day it opened to “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”. I read it aloud; when I finished, we were naturally silent for a moment. I glanced at her and she looked me straight in the eyes and we both said, “yeah, that’s a good one!” That moment lit a spark in her that has fed and carried her soul forward into the world of words and art, much like the spark “Vincent” lit in me as a child.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.
-”I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” - William Wordsworth
It’s been a good while since that quiet moment with my daughter and Wordsworth, but the poetic spigot continues to stay open and we often share, almost daily, beautiful words found in our readings or wanderings.
It would be difficult to think of my life without the gift of poetry in it. As an adult and as the years have passed, the world of poetry has been a salve to my worrying heart as a mother, a mirror to my existence as a female, an inspiration for the gift of aging, beautiful words for beautiful days, words of sorrow to express the inexpressible.
I lift my heart as spring lifts up
A yellow daisy to the rain,
My heart will be a lovely cup
Altho' it holds but pain.
For I shall learn from flower and leaf
That color every drop they hold,
To change the lifeless wine of grief
To living gold.
-”Alchemy” by Sara Teasdale
I hope you enjoyed this week’s Thursday Reflection and I wonder if anyone else has reflected on or remembers their first impactful moment with poetry? I’d love to hear about it!
Many thanks for reading and spending a bit of time with me today!
Brittany