My sister, Sandee, and I were chatting on the phone when she asked if I remembered the poem Dad recited frequently, one that he had learned from his father, the first Dan White in our line. I didn’t until she recited it.
“He drew a circle that drew me out
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,
But love and I with wit to win,
We drew a circle that let him in.”
The lines got me to thinking about how many poems have woven themselves into my memories of Dad, and how select poems have been frequent visitors in the story of my life. This, despite the fact that some of my early language arts teachers seemed more interested in teaching me about iambic pentameter and rhyming schemes than about the artistry of the words or the beauty of the thoughts.
The poem above, it turns out, is but one stanza from “Outwitted,” by Edwin Markham, published in 1913 in the book, The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems. Markham was highly acclaimed as a major American poet in his lifetime but hardly read since his death. I thought about the verse after Sandee rang off. I got a different glimpse of my paternal grandfather, apparently more of an ecumenist in faith and pragmatist in life than I had known.
I have made reference before to poems Dad liked. “The Blind Men of Hindustan” was his homage to ecumenism. Devout believers believe that the truth they perceive is the whole truth. But Dad’s affinity for the poem suggests that, despite his firm faith, he allowed that the faith of others might have merit, too.
Dad used Rudyard Kipling to engrain in me the personal traits to which I ought aspire in order to “be a man.” “If” urges stoicism—“If you can keep your head about you when those around are losing theirs and blaming it on you; “ physical stamina—“If you can fill each unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run;” and humility—“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue or walk with Kings nor lose the common touch.
There was a framed copy of “If” in his office at home, and not a few times, he would recite a line or two to exhort me to right behavior.
Another of his favorite lines of poetry, he would be happy to know, were the seed that sprouted as one of the founding values at Island Pacific Academy; “those little unremembered acts of kindness and of love,” from Wordsworth’s Lines Composed Above Tinturn Abbey.
A friend of mine who is an English teacher—it seems that several of my friends are English teachers—loaned me a book of poetry written by a poet from whom my friend had taken a class. I read it. It was the first time I had ever read an entire book of poetry.
I liked it. In the ways of the universe, my friend was probably compensating for all those hours I spent in school dissecting pentameters and rhyme schemes.
He likes to write poetry, too. I have not been so moved. Dad was. For any event or just because, he would dash off a few lines of verse. Mom collected some in a spiral-bound book for him. At her request, I matched one poem with an English folk tune to create a hymn that sounds pretty good.
I still don’t feel moved to write poetry. But I use poems a lot, in things I write and to spark thoughts about particular things at particular times. There are those from Dad. Then there are ones of my own where specific lines (like “Take something like a star to stay our minds on and be staid” from Frost) or thoughts (“But I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep,” also from Frost) are ones I remember well.
“August 1914” by William Butler Yeats contains multiple prompts for reflective writing, even some titles for About Aging, like “Things Fall Apart.” At the bottom of our staircase is a poem by Sam Walter Fawn encased in a frame but without a title. It begins “Let me live in a house by the side of the road where the race of men go by. The men who are good, the men who are bad, as good and as bad as I. I would not sit in the scorner’s seat or hurl the cynic’s ban. Let me live in a house by the side of the road, and be a friend to man.” That one came from Judy’s grandmother.
People of a Certain Age, do you have poems that enrich or inform or embellish your lives? Are they long-time friends? Do you “friend” new ones still?
I can’t tell what makes a poem good enough for the poet to become Laureate or win a prize or publish a whole volume that sells. Sometimes I know I miss the intent of particular symbolism or phrases.
No matter. I know what I like. I know that it isn’t one of my talents. (My English teachers friends will write—just try!). I know the poems are treasures I can revisit. I know they probably reveal something about me.
If the poems you like do reveal something about you, I know from one stanza of one poem written in 1913 that, if that is what he believed, the first Dan White was my kind of guy.
Daniel E. White
March 5, 2018