verse v prose

This post appeared on *hi* it's only me in May 2010, but comments do not get mailed to me, so I pasted it here along with some excellent comments.  The post aims to do two things - firstly to put over the very basic view of life and nature that has driven me along since leaving my mother's influence, and secondly to provoke thought about how verse and prose communicate so differently, whether we like it or not.

 Life? No mystery

The mystery of life and nature lies

With shimmering pebbles in a moorland stream.

While deeper than it seems to our poor eyes

A simple slate like lapis lazuli can gleam.

And in this river find deceitful stones

That hide their sparkle from a duller glance,

But make the eyes of others shine with lust

Of riches for the one who hones

This glassy rock to its refractive best.

But I digressed.

The wonder of a diamond stems

From qualities discovered at the hand of man;

While nature had, so many eons past

Pressed humble carbon into service as a jewel-to-be, 
it took a jeweler to add the essential polish 

The question that I really want to ask

is do you feel the need to ascribe nature’s hardest creation to a supernatural power?  Nobody has ever told you to believe that beautiful pebbles in a stream or on the beach prove intelligent design, have they?

And does the simple worm that moves only to eat and procreate speak of a ‘maker’ just because it is more complex than a stone? 

Where is the design here?  Molecules exist because atoms can combine according to strict rules – and do so whenever they meet because they must.

Even under conditions of heat and pressure where life cannot exist, complex molecules can replicate, and do so because they must.  These replicating molecules can organize themselves into ‘simple’ forms that can move and take stuff from their environment – which they do, because they are able. But the mechanisms within continue to operate because they must.

Fishes skipped on the mud and gills slowly changed to lungs – a whole new world rose from the water’s edge to be explored and exploited. Wonderful changes took place because they could. Forms changed slowly as small errors crept into the processes of replication.  Particles  

from space bombard us still and can make changes to the elementary atoms involved in DNA – the instructions for replication.  

To a very simple creature a simple change meant success or failure in the competition for resources, in the ability to recreate. The changed forms flourished because they were better, and nothing could stop them. For a while anyway.

 As creatures became very complex tiny changes had tiny effects, but over millions of years the complexities grew, and not for one second in the time it took dumb animals to evolve into even dumber humans (humorous episode) was there a need for an outside ‘designer’ to make something from nothing.  


My mother was a devout believer, and I respect the human need to fill in the gaps of understanding, and to praise something for the wonder of life (when it is wonderful) and beauty of nature (when it is beautiful).  


It is my position that simple christians are among the kindest and most selfless people by nature, and fundamentalists of all flavors among the most neurotic and dangerous.  There cannot be a single god that both groups believe in.  How can there be?

4 comments:

Carol said...

I want to thank you for the compliment about being faithful to God. And there can be a God for all, maybe we call Him by different names but he is all and for us believers it means that we love and trust. Even sometimes when we do not agree, because God created us and all and gave us differnt thoughts. Some good and some bad, that's up to us. By the way love the poem.May 27, 2010 6:01 AM

corfubob said...

Thank you for responding Carol, there is, it seems to me, great humility in believing god gave us our thoughts, but then you say what we think is up to us! Can both be true?

I think what unites us both is the desire to know the answers. For me, nature created the terrible diseases that infect children (for example) because nature is not given choices. You could say physical laws are god - but this god has no choices either!

Your god seems to be different - it/he/she created diseases that blind and maim children from choice, and can even cure them if they pray correctly. Am I wrong Carol? His 'mysterious ways' are not an answer for me. If I believed in god I would hate him for doing this. Are not little babies innocent?

I believe many things Carol, but take pleasure in being proved wrong, if this is a step towards a better truth. My beliefs are in my head - nature and truth are outside my head, living independently (lucky things!) Go well, and be happy, BobMay 31, 2010 1:40 AM 

Jen said...

Wow Bob, I am so tempted to argue with you (respectfully) but will refrain (mostly) because I do not have the time to do so in a quality way, so I would lose. :-)
Will just content myself with saying a few things ...
-You have only described HOW molecules exist, not WHY. The fact that atoms have these attractions and repulsions is a quality of theirs, not what caused them. It is an important detail of how the physical universe operates, not the reason for the physical universe. It seems to me that in the sciences, we are often told we will receive an explanation, when all we really get is a description.
-The Christian explanation for the universe is a complex one. The Bible teaches that we live in a world that was created completely good, but is now fallen, ruined, and so contains much pain. It's tempting to say, "But if God exists, that means He created either evil beings, or beings capable of becoming evil, so isn't that exactly the same as if He'd created sickness and pain Himself?" The answer is, No. It's complex. It all goes back to the mystery of free will. God is somehow able to create beings outside of Himself, who can take real actions that have real consequences, which left to Himself He would not have chosen, DESPITE that He knew what they were going to do beforehand. No, I don't understand that. It's reality. It's too complex to understand.
-About the form. I like the parts that scan and rhyme. The transition from poetry to prose was smooth (I thought). It's also appropriate that the poem leads you to contemplate beauty, but the prose sticks to the argument. However, it seems to me you have a lot more prose than poetry. If you want the form to be perfect, shouldn't it move back and forth more?July 14, 2010 8:03 PM 

Jinksy said...

Wish I'd come in at the start of this arguement... LOL :)August 28, 2010 11:13 AM 

Rhyming matters

Upon Westminster Bridge

EARTH has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air,
For taxies have a century to appear.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Bill Wordsworth      Composed September 3, 1802     Borrowed from Poets Corner

Over the years I have read couplets with the regularity of clockwork in their rhymes, but with all rhythm lost in the effort to ‘fit in’ the rhyme. Perhaps this is the saddest of all amateur errors, and so often too, the chosen word sticks out like a sore thumb – it’s there because it rhymes.

I came across the Wordsworth above at ‘Poets Corner’, and found I could not find the rhyme-scheme (although it may have one).  However, the metre is near perfect ‘iambic pentametre’, 10 10 10 10. (Blank verse?)  Look Willow, I can’t find my ‘how to do poetry’ book OK?

The point I am making is that the best poets in the world deliberately let their rhymes misfire to avoid boring predictability, and also let the metre go adrift a (very) little in the cause of  meaning and avoiding cliché.

Natural rhyming – where the second word could hardly have been different, makes pleasant reading still, and will survive in poetry like Bach in music – i.e. for ever.

Do you agree?

Our Minds are Many

Our minds are many

and they live and die

like clouds that chase

their shadows in the sky.

Or like a hive

of loyal bees that weave

their pathways

through a cold grey dawn;

return and dance

a royal turn to sign

their findings at the throne

with sure but innocent design.

Our minds are many

not a single vault

of vintage wines

maturing by default.

More like a cave

with one eye to the light

and creatures happy

to be out of sight.

Our minds are many,

like a driven storm

of swallows,

free within their given form.

Our minds are many,

and we are not wise

to heed alone
the one behind our eyes.

The Only Ones

Shy Periwinkle

'Whatever' said Biba, and she was only young.

My favourite flower, my favourite grand-daughter, and my only Mr Magoo 

who disappeared and is greatly missed. 

 Look closely into his eyes and you will see my fear.

My fear is is also yours who are bound to others by love, 

both natural and inappropriate, 

and to whom I offer my thanks for being here.

Poetry is funny stuff is it not?  Can the above lines be dismissed as a badly constructed poem - with a rhyme to attempt confirm its status?  Probably.   But it was written as prose and a sincere message to my friends.    Inappropriate love has been hinted at recently (below), but what about this feeling many of us have for the creatures that we share space with - or allow us to share their space?   

This sentiment was made for poetry, because prose does not allow us so readily to 'feel' the meaning of words written to be 'understood'.   It is sad - pathetic - inappropriate, is it not, to be so attached to animals?  I bet we (you) don't think so.  Let me know anyway.  As in a  comment below - even the stressed, stretched, and serious among you! 

Hourglass Meeting

OK, the picture of Molly is not really appropriate unless she represents the look I probably got from the mother in this little poem from 1987. In fact when Molly was a young mother she used to watch the kittens playing, and if one got a bit rough she used to clout one of them (it didn't matter which). One day our puppy was man-handling a little cat (who was lapping it up) and Molly went over and clouted - you guessed - the cat!

Hourglass Meeting.

They took a table
Sat there in the slanting sun.
I tried in vain
To find the downward eyes of one.


But after toast
She risked a fluttered smile at me,
Just when her mothers eyes
Were closed in tea.


But like two grains of sand
That met once in the hourglass waist,
We were two lines
In separate memories chased.


An actual 'bed & breakfast' encounter somewhere in the south of England, but I don't remember much about the girl except that she didn't smile at me. This 'romantic' phase of writing didn't last long either.

'Nuff to make a willow weep

Two luvyduvy poems from my tender middle-age. These are for Willow, Call in, you will be well rewarded.


Singular Symbol.


Were there a bindweed with thorns
And the innocent face of a rose:
With the scent of sweet lilac
And the powers of nightshade,


and no less a tendency to carnivourizm
than the guiltless venus fly-trap, the lovelost
poet in me would, I suppose deem it a
singular symbol of that pointless passion
I am still naive enough to refer to
as 'love' Know what I mean?




Only one generation out of phase.


Insuly to injury
Pathos on perfidy,
Twenty nine reasons for tears
And all of them years.


But there's a brighter side.
Who would not say I tried
To love without deceipt?
If with enough conceit


Oh! Heartless destiny
Why do you toy with me?
Weeds in my heart you have sown.
Just leave me alone.

Unsynchronized

Oi Jerry, did you hear about Ruthie being stood up at the restaurant - 23 years she waited, so I'm told, then he brought her some primroses he found by the road and that was supposed to make it all OK .     Stoppit Piggy, you eggerate everything.........