by Neal Whitman

Created on: August 26, 2009   Last Updated: August 27, 2009

Move a Mountain, but Not a Molehill

It's odd what poetry can do for us, and doesn't do. It can save lives individually, but not collectively. [Charles Wright. from his Introduction to The Best American Poetry, 2008. Scribner Poetry, 2008.]

I am not an English professor, but a writer and reader holding deep beliefs about poetry. Here I profess my belief that poetry is one heart speaking to another. Our heart beats and we live. Poetry is Heart. We can live without Poetry, that is, until we lose a loved one. I was prompted to speak to this belief by my friends who had just returned from a memorial service of friend where poetry was read: George emailed me, I was again forcefully reminded how poetry, like music, can condense and vivify reality and form memory.

Three years I attended a memorial service held at the Ken Sanders Rare Book Store in Salt Lake City for Utah's 2003 Poet Laureate, Kenneth W. Brewer, who died of pancreatic cancer on March 16, 2006, at age 64. In a SRO recital in the bookshop, friends read selected poems from a book he had written, but did not live to see published, [Whale Song: A Poet's Journey into Cancer. Dream Garden Press, 2007]. After his diagnosis in 2005, Ken began to work on this book to chronicle his living with the certainty of death. In its Foreword, he observed, When we are confronted with immediate crises, we seldom write novels or short stories: we write poems, or we sing, or we pray.

Poetry. Songs. Prayer. One heart speaking to another. Some say the meaning of poetry is to give courage. That might be so (though, late at night, a dark, smokey, single-malt whisky might do). Of course, it's not all about Death and Dying! We read poems when we fall in love. But, ah, that's for another story. For now, for now I profess my belief that without Heart there is no Poetry and without Poetry there is no Heart.

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