The Yeast of Soul-Making

If the only antidote to darkness is light, to hate is love, to ignorance is education, then it stands to reason that the extraordinary lowering of human decency, intelligence, caring that we witnessed in the recent State of our Disunion address (not one second of it a surprise, simply what we’ve come to expect and accept), is best countered by rising. We are like the Hebrews in exile, who fleeing from disaster had no time to let their bread rise and subsisted on matzah. It helped get them through and it’s a tasty snack, but I imagine we all prefer the yeasted bread that allows for sandwiches, avocado toast and garlic bread. We want to stop running from the next catastrophe and have time to slowly knead the dough of our own Soul-making and let the yeast do its work to help the bread rise.

 

While every American can name the sports stars and movie stars and despicable (or courageous) politicians, who knows who our poet laureate is? Who has read a poem voluntarily in the past ten years? Written one? Memorized and recited one? Who could even name ten poets, living or dead?

 

Needless to say, I’ve done all of the above as recent as yesterday, when I read a poem to a group of fellow hikers and recited a Shakespeare sonnet (by memory) to a friend on a phone and sat in my backyard perusing an entire book of poetry by Naomi Shihab Nye. And I’m here to testify I’m a better person for it. 

 

The Irish culture that has produced poets like W.B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney and half-Irish David Whyte, that has a Blarney Stone tourist attraction where people hope to improve their eloquence, that coined the saying, “After a full belly, it’s all poetry,” that has a government that holds artistic works that are original, creative and generally recognized as having cultural or artistic merit exempt from income tax, is a model spokesperson for the power of poetry. So it’s not surprise that reading my third book by Irish author Niall Williams (The History of the Rain), the book is peppered with my penciled underlines and exclamation marks in the margins. Starting with the first paragraph:

 

“The longer my father lived in this world the more he knew there was another to come. It was not that he thought this world beyond saving, although in darkness I suppose there was some of that, but rather that he imagined there must be a finer one where God corrected His mistakes and men and women lived in the second draft of Creation and did not know despair. My father bore a burden of impossible ambition. He wanted all things to be better than they were, beginning with himself and ending with this world. Maybe this was because he was a poet. Maybe all poets are doomed to disappointment. Maybe it comes from too much dazzlement. I don’t know yet. I don’t know if time tarnishes of polishes a human soul or if it’s true that it’s better to look down than up.…”

 

Later in the book, the father begins reading Yeats. His daughter (the narrator) describes it thus: 

 

“I can’t remember who said it, but it’s true that whenever anyone reads Shakespeare they become Shakespeare. Well, the same is true for Yeats. Take an afternoon. Sit and read his poems. Any, it doesn’t really matter. Spend an afternoon, read out loud. And as you do, sounding out those lines, letting the rhythms fall, following some of it and not following more of it, doesn’t matter, because gradually, without your even noticing it at first, just softly softly, you rise. 

 

You do. Honest. Read poetry like that and human beings become better, more complex, loving passionate, angry, subtle and poetic, more expressive and profound, altogether more fine.…”

 

 Yes, indeed. And couldn’t we use some of that? In any time or place, but most especially, right here, right now, in the Disunited States of Delusional America.We need to rise and poetry is good yeast for Soulmaking. Music, too, as modern science confirms that the two things that light up every area in the brain when we engage in them are… music and poetry! 

 

Two Christmases ago, when my granddaughter Zadie was 12, I offered her $25 if she could memorize and recite to the family a Maya Angelou poem. On the last morning, just before departing from our vacation rental, she surprised me by telling me she was ready. And she did it!!! $25 was never better spent!

 

And the poem? Still I rise. 

 

So there you have it. A surprising antidote to our daily lowering. Look it Maya's poem, memorize it, recite it and send me a video and your Paypal account. I’ll send you $25. Honest!