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    First A Poem Must Be

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    Angelo Pizarra
    The document summarizes an interview with poet Jose Garcia Villa where he provides explanations for the lines in his poem "Lyric 17". Villa states that a poem must be magical, musical, have brightness and movement like a bird, be slender yet hold fire, have the wisdom of bows and kneel like a rose. It should be able to hear the brightness of animals and hide its meaning like a bride. Overall, God should smile from the poem's cover. Villa notes that some poems cannot be fully explained and meanings must be sensed. The interview suggests poetry helps children learn to infer meaning through playful guessing, like riddles.

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    First A Poem Must Be

    Uploaded by

    Angelo Pizarra
    33 views3 pages
    The document summarizes an interview with poet Jose Garcia Villa where he provides explanations for the lines in his poem "Lyric 17". Villa states that a poem must be magical, musical, have brightness and movement like a bird, be slender yet hold fire, have the wisdom of bows and kneel like a rose. It should be able to hear the brightness of animals and hide its meaning like a bride. Overall, God should smile from the poem's cover. Villa notes that some poems cannot be fully explained and meanings must be sensed. The interview suggests poetry helps children learn to infer meaning through playful guessing, like riddles.

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    FIRST_A_POEM_MUST_BE

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    The document summarizes an interview with poet Jose Garcia Villa where he provides explanations for the lines in his poem "Lyric 17". Villa states that a poem must be magical, musical, have brightness and movement like a bird, be slender yet hold fire, have the wisdom of bows and kneel like a rose. It should be able to hear the brightness of animals and hide its meaning like a bride. Overall, God should smile from the poem's cover. Villa notes that some poems cannot be fully explained and meanings must be sensed. The interview suggests poetry helps children learn to infer meaning through playful guessing, like riddles.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as txt, pdf, or txt
    33 views3 pages

    First A Poem Must Be

    Uploaded by

    Angelo Pizarra
    The document summarizes an interview with poet Jose Garcia Villa where he provides explanations for the lines in his poem "Lyric 17". Villa states that a poem must be magical, musical, have brightness and movement like a bird, be slender yet hold fire, have the wisdom of bows and kneel like a rose. It should be able to hear the brightness of animals and hide its meaning like a bride. Overall, God should smile from the poem's cover. Villa notes that some poems cannot be fully explained and meanings must be sensed. The interview suggests poetry helps children learn to infer meaning through playful guessing, like riddles.

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    FIRST A POEM MUST BE MAGICAL

    The following excerpt is an interview with the poet Jose Garcia Villa. In
    thisinterview, he is asked to explain "Lyric 17." You should find it very
    interesting tocompare your interpretation of each of the seven couplets to the
    poet's personalinterpretations.
    If you find that your interpretations differ from Villa's, do not feel that
    yourideas were necessarily incorrect. Note how both the interviewer and the
    poetadmit that it is not an easy task to give an exact prose interpretation of a
    poeticexpression, particularly because poems are not explicitly stated; the
    interviewer,at one point, admits: "I have always found the next lines difficult to
    comprehend":

    It must have the wisdom of bows


    And it must kneel like a rose.

    Focus here on the poet's response: "You must remember," Villa said, "somelines and
    some poems cannot be explained. But let me try..."

    Once you have finished reading the interview, compare his interpretationswith your
    own and with the interpretations made by members of your cooperative group.

    The Interview

    Villa's lyrical and exquisitely crafted poem,"Lyric 17" (Villa, 1942),can serve as
    the basis for discussing his techniques of poetry. Although the poet did not setout
    to achieve this end, he does so, gracefullyand economically. As you shall see, this
    beautiful poem leads to a unique definition of what apoem should be.

    In a taped interview, Villa provided me withan explication of this poem. Of the


    first twolines,

    ★First, a poem must be magical


    ★Then musical as a sea-gull.

    Villa said, "These lines mean exactly what theysay: That a poem must have magic,
    and it mustbe musical."

    I asked the poet, "What meaning would youascribe to the next lines?"

    ★It must be a brightness moving


    ★And hold secret a bird's flowering.

    Villa explained, "There are some brightnesses which are stationary and static, but
    a poem,like a bird, must fly. This is the differencebetween prose and poetry. Prose
    is flatfootedand stationary; poetry soars, flies like a bird.The stationary bird,
    when first seen, appearslike a rosebud.When it begins to fly, it opensup and
    spreads its wings and blooms like aflower."

    I asked him to explain the images in the fifthand sixth lines,

    ★It must be slender as a bell


    ★And it must hold fire as well.

    To these lines, Villa responded, "A poem is economical; it's slender as a bell, it
    has no adiposetissue; it's lean and clean. Poorly written poemsshould, of
    necessity, go on a diet, to rid themselves of excess verbiage and adjectives. And
    by'fire' in the next line, I simply mean that apoem must have a spirit."
    "I have always found the next lines difficultto comprehend," I confessed:

    ★It must have the wisdom of bows


    ★And it must kneel like a rose.

    "You must remember," Villa said, "somelines and some poems cannot be explained.But
    let me try. I am speaking of the archer'sbow. A good bow is one that knows when
    toshoot, and one that directs the arrow to itsmark. Just as a good poem, it never
    goes astray.To 'kneel like a rose' is a metaphor for humility. All fine people are
    humble and a poemshould also be humble, however beautiful it is."

    For the seventh and eighth lines,

    ★It must be able to hear


    ★The luminance of dove and deer.

    "There's a good man behind every finepoem. A good poet is usually a good
    person.'Luminance' naturally means brightness.When I see a good face, it's a good
    face and Irespond. When I see a bad face, it is the facefull of crime, even though
    he doesn't proclaimhis crime. His face proclaims it out loud."

    "In other words," I asked, "the poet knowsthings instinctively?"

    "Yes, naturally," Villa answered.

    And for the meaning of the next couplet, Iprodded Villa to discuss,

    ★It must be able to hide


    ★What it seeks, like a bride.

    Villa, without hesitation, began, "A poemmust not explicitly state meaning. The
    reader issupposed to sense it out, feel it. The languageitself doesn't tell you,
    but the substructurebehind that language is the real meaning. It isnot explicit and
    declarative. That's why when Isay, 'It must have the wisdom of bows,' youmust guess
    at what I mean, and children loveto guess at meaning. That's why they love riddles.
    I used to love riddles as a child."

    The final couplet of this rather unorthodoxsonnet,

    ★And over all I would like to hover


    ★God, smiling from the poem's cover.

    is possibly one of the most beautiful ever written. "The last line has a
    masterfully dramaticeffect. At the same time, this couplet is, to me,the most
    mystifying one in the poem," I commented.

    Villa nodded and offered this explanation:"When you see a blessed creature, God
    shinesand hovers over that saintly creature. Thepoem itself creates a God-hood, and
    the poemradiates Godness. At the same time, God ishovering over it, acknowledging
    the Godnessradiating from the poem, itself, which embodies the spirituality
    existing in a poem and, atthe same time, radiates it to others."

    Indeed, there is a Godness to this poem; andthere is a God-hood within this poet.
    PoetRichard Eberhardt understood this, too, evidenced in a review of Villa's work
    in which hestates:

    A pure, startling, and resoundingbody of poetry, informed with somuch legerity and
    fire, remarkablyconsistent in its devotion to spiritualreality. The subject matter
    is formidable, the author a God-driven poet.He arrives at peaks without showingthe
    strenuous effort of climbing; thepersonal is lost in a blaze of linguistic
    glories.... (Eberhardt, 1958)

    The poet concludes that reading poetrymight be compared to enjoying riddles,


    andthat children enjoy solving riddles. Since poetry is neither explicit nor
    declarative, childrenmust be taught through sheer joy to sense outand feel the
    meaning. Is there not much of thisthat goes on when we are "sensing" or
    drawingconclusions, or making an inference? Perhapswe should become more concerned
    about providing children with joyous language experiences that will enable them to
    better understand poetry.

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