The Magic of Poetry and the Poet's Art

Stephen Vincent Benet

• Publisher: White Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781473312357
• eBook ISBN: 9781528765305
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Poésie

This article bridges the gap between the instinctive liking for musical candence and a true understanding of poetry. Here Stephen Vincent Benét tells the story of his art in a way to interest young children. It was originally published in 1929 and is now republished here with a new introductory biography. Benét was an accomplished writer at an early age, having had his first book published at 17. His best known works are the book-length narrative poem American Civil War, John Brown's Body (1928), and two short stories, The Devil and Daniel Webster (1936) and By the Waters of Babylon (1937).

THE MAGIC OF POETRY AND THE POET’S ART

How the Music of Verse Is Made by Rhyme, Meter, and Pattern

POETRY is one of the oldest of the arts and one of the most persistent. We do not know who the first person was who had the idea of telling a story or expressing a thought in rhythmic, chanting words with a strong and easily remembered beat. Perhaps he thudded a drum-log by some very early campfire and, as he thought of his day’s hunting or the fearfulness of the night or his own bravery, began to fit words to the rough tune. He would chant and stamp and beat as he made those words. Where the words did not fill out the tune, he would give a shout or a cry. That must have been the earliest and most primitive form of poetry—rhythmic words, chanted aloud to a rough musical accompaniment or to no accompaniment at all but the stamp of the chanter’s feet on the ground, the slap of his hands on his body to mark the pulse of the song.

He was saying something, but he was singing it as well; he was making his words a drum-beat or the rush of a storm, a prayer or a call to battle. If he had merely wanted to tell his friends that he was hungry or that he had seen a fine herd of deer in the forest, he would not have needed the drum or the cry or the chant. He would have said what he had to say in prose, as we do when we write an ordinary letter about ordinary things. But he wanted to do more than that. He wanted his friends to remember what he said and to think about it. He wanted to excite and stir them as he was excited and stirred. So he made a song, in words.

Then, if people liked the song, they would listen. A very famous song might be passed down and down through the generations by word of mouth, until there got to be something sacred about it. Till, at last, poems were written down—and Alexander the Great, as he strove to conquer the world, carried Homer’s ‘Iliad’ about with him in a gold casket; and James Wolfe, the great British general, told his council, on the eve of victory, that he would rather have written Gray’s ‘Elegy’ than capture Quebec. For that is the way that great men and great nations have felt about great poetry. They have thought of it not as a task or an ornament, but as an essential part of the greatness of life.

THE POET’S PURPOSE

It is a long way from the chanting singer, in the red light of the campfire, to the printed book of verse in your library. But the road is a clear one, and the poet’s intent the same. He is trying to tell you something—perhaps a story about gods or heroes, about lumberjacks or sailors or the people you meet every day—perhaps merely about his own feelings when he sees a cloud or a flower—perhaps about the mysterious things of life, the things like death and birth and the great empty places between the stars which make us feel small and wondering when we stand before them. But he is trying to tell it to you rhythmically, in musical words that will stir your imagination and leave a magic pattern on your mind. Most people talk a great deal but say very little; the poet tries to talk very little but say a great deal. He wants to make you see what he has seen and feel what he has felt. To do so, he uses words not only for their meaning but for their ring and music —as a composer uses the sound of certain musical instruments, alone or in combination, when he wishes to make you think of the sea or the forest, of the trumpets of battle or the voices of lovers at night.

THE MUSIC IN PRIMITIVE POETRY

We know what primitive poetry is like; we have very fine examples of it in the ceremonial chants of our own North American Indians. When the Indian singer chants, in his own language, to the drum-beat

The corn grows by the red rock.

Beautifully it grows

he could hardly make a plainer or more simple song. In the English translation we miss the drum-beat, we miss the music of the Indian words for corn and rock and the rest. But we notice this: In the first place, the singer has seen something beautiful, something he wishe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• How the Music of Verse Is Made by Rhyme, Meter, and Pattern
• Stephen Vincent Benét