A Smorgasbord for the Soul

Poems are like dishes on an all-you-can-eat buffet.  If you try one and like it, you can go back for seconds and thirds and fourths....  Some new flavor might impress the palate with each helping in delightfully delicious ways.  An especially decadent poetic dish to which I returned for another taste is Wordsworth’s “Daffodils,” which is the author's reflection on a particularly sublime event.  As readers, we are able to share in Wordsworth’s experience, enjoying the intimacy of poetry; however, it is interesting that the poem emphasizes the joy of solitude, as if we are able to share in it as well, making even solitude relational, in some way adding to the intimacy. 

Poetry has been a staple in my diet for as long as I can remember.  As children, my younger brother and I often spent hours delighting each other with dramatic interpretations of our favorite Shel Silverstein poems, many of which I can remember to this day.  When I recall the poems from my memory, they give me so much more than their words, rhythms, lines, and stanzas.  They speak to me of family, ring with laughter, and smell of love.  They are a part of me to which I can return, like Wordsworth, with my inward eye.

A poem committed to memory can also be fodder for future use.  In my existential angst ridden teenage years, when seized with a particularly robust rebellious urge, I would often regale myself (in my room con voce fortissimo) with Hamlet’s soliloquy or Macbeth’s, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” monologue. Thank you, Ms. Elizabeth Williams, high school English teacher and stoker of my eloquent rebellious fires.

In short, poetry, like food, sustains life by feeding the spirit.  Unlike food, however, poetry expands one’s soul, not one’s waistline.