The Voices Of Poetry

It is that time of year again, when my class studies poetry and I find myself thinking, dreaming, and wondering about the human condition and what makes it so real. Now I recognize that this can be a dangerous line of thought without a beret and a drum and a lot of coffee, but it happens anyway.

My class learns about Walt Whitman, Emily Dickenson, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Naomi Shallob Nye and Maya Angelou. We talk about imagery, Metaphor, Simile, Rhythm and the emotion that makes the abstract painting that is poetry. A lot of kids fall asleep. But here are some, each time who sit a bit straighter and their eyes grow wide and shining and I find myself pretending that I am talking only to them.

When I am lost in their gazes I believe that poetry is not dead and that there will be music forever. Those are the children I teach for. There are fewer of them, but they are there.

Today we talked about Langston Hughes and I let the students in on my strange fascination with voices. We all have qualities that we focus on in other people, attractants of sorts. It is not a sexual thing, though it is sensual and it part of how we perceive people. Some people focus on warm smiles, or expressive eyes or graceful hands. My thing is voices.

I could spend days in a room with just James Earl Jones voice, Sean Connery’s voice, Kathleen Turner’s voice, Glen Close’s voice. Sometimes it is a particular quality that I can name, deep tones, rich, resonant, and sometimes I don’t know why I like it, I just do. There are voices that have become comforting to me. Family members, good friends, and even a couple of students who had voices that really resonated with me (no pun intended). In that case the relationship, the personality, the other things influenced my perception of the voice, but either way, the memory of the voice becomes cherished to me.

There are things I am learning about myself now, because of therapy, and because of the introspection of entering my 30’s, applying for a PhD and watching Nana finish her life (she still has a decade to go, I am sure, but there is no doubt that her life is closing). One thing is the things I have heard that I did not want to, the ugly horrible things, another is the things, like I said, that I cherish, and then there is another funny category of the things I long to hear and what I imagine they sound like.

There was a time when I imagined what it would be like to hear “I love you” from someone special. For a long time, even after I knew I would never hear it, that way, from that person, I could still hear it. I remember the day I could no longer hear it anymore. Even though I had gotten over the loss of that relationship, I suffered a new anguish at the loss of the voice, the sound, the phrase. And understand I still had a friendship with that man, and saw him regularly, hearing his voice, even hearing him say those words to someone else, but I could no longer hear my imagination anymore… Not to say that it wasn’t a good thing and about time, I am just marking the moment of final loss.

When I listen to the poets, reading their poetry, I am always struck by their voices, the feeling, cadence and tones. For some reason I end up lost in my own memories of voices, past present and future and am struck by the absences as much as what is present.

If any of this made any sense, Happy Valentine’s Day. I hope for you all your voices are happy memories!