Trading the Roar of the World for the Refuge of Verse

In a week where I spent hours listening to dunces and charlatans pontificate about the O.J. Simpson verdict, an Irish poet I never heard of won the Nobel Prize. This renewed my concern that somewhere along the line I’ve gotten off track in life.

The poet’s name is Seamus Heaney, and darned if he doesn’t look like an Irish poet. Hair out to here, laterally from the ears; in the photo in the paper he resembled no one if not Beetlejuice’s kid brother. Richard Harris will play his life in the movie, or vice versa. I took one look at Heaney and couldn’t help but picture a pub in Belfast, the rain, some ale, boisterous arguing and then backslaps and hugs all around.

This year’s Nobel Prize was a record-setting $1 million, and I confess right off I don’t know what that converts to in iambic pentameter. Rest assured, though, that the money automatically precludes Heaney from ever looking another poet square in the eyes. Poets work for peanuts; the appellation, “millionaire poet” is as foreign to the tongue as “struggling brain surgeon.”

Poets won’t admit it (they’re a proud lot), but there’s nothing they’d like better than to die dissolute wretches, preferably in a gutter or sanatorium, sneezing right up to the end and suffering from an exotic disease. That kind of demise enhances their legacies as worldly sufferers who have seen life from the bottom up, instead of the other way around. Poets who are served breakfast in bed can’t rhyme anything.

So, why don’t we appreciate them more?

Really, how many people out of 100 could identify Seamus Heaney? His name even sounds fictional.

As a hyper-evolved ‘90s guy, it bothers me that I’m unfamiliar with a Nobel-winning poet and yet can tick off the starting lineup of the Colorado Rockies.

It’s not that I’ve never been exposed to poetry. In college, I took more English classes than anything else and was fed an ample dose of poetry. Sadly, I can say that not a single poem has stuck with me.

Even while writing this, I’m developing flashbacks that may induce sleep. I remember poems, yards and yards of poems, full of images I didn’t see and cadences that made me jumpy. I remember professors with bow ties and moth holes in their cardigans, telling me that “son” was a sexual metaphor and not understanding how that could be so.

I remember being unable to distinguish the works of the masters from the screeds of my classmates. They sounded equally nonsensical and pretentious. Maybe by then, in the late ‘60s, I was already hopelessly deprogrammed by rock music. After you’ve been exposed to “Yummy, yummy, yummy/I’ve got love in my tummy” (peaked at No. 4 in 1968), it may be hard to make the switch to contemplate ancient mariners and spreading chestnut trees.

But what I’m saying is that I want the peace that poetry brings. I must remind myself that poetry is not just for men with glasses. It can be for regular Joes looking for relief in a clamorous world.

We say we want the noise level in our lives reduced, but do we seek solace in poetry, or literature, or art? No, we inflict on ourselves the sure-fire cacophony of talk radio or round-table TV debates in which panelists insist on talking over each other.

No wonder our society is so hostile and uptight.

The relief is out there. It’s available in bookstores and museums and on forgotten hideaways on the radio dial. We can calm ourselves and tune out the racket.

I don’t know if it’s too late for me to come to grips with poetry. For all I know, maybe it isn’t an acquired taste.

But I need some quiet contemplation, and so I hereby resolve: Rather than check the matinee times for “Showgirls,” I’m going to buy a book of poetry this weekend. Inspired enough by Heaney’s prize and embarrassed enough by my own ignorance of him, I’m going to give it the old college try.

At worst, I’ll lapse into a stupor and get a stiff neck from falling asleep in a chair. At best, a verse will capture me and the world won’t seem as noisy or shallow as it did the moment before.

After all, the only rhyme I’ve heard over the last 10 days has been, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

Surely we can do better than that.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.