Wayne Reads kicks off with poetic presentation
By Dennis Hill
Published in News on April 6, 2016 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/DENNIS HILL
Poet Anthony Abbott, professor of English at Davidson College and author seven books of poetry, speaks Tuesday at Wayne Community College. Abbott presented a discussion titled "Poems to Remember" as a kickoff to the Wayne Reads program.
The Wayne County Reads campaign kicked off Tuesday night with a reading by Dr. Anthony Abbott, a professor of English at Davidson College and the author of seven books of poetry.
His presentation was on "Poems to Remember Always" and he said the best way to remember a poem is to memorize it.
"Poetry is the language of the soul," Abbott said. "Poetry is the language of feeling and emotion."
Abbott, who received the 2015 North Carolina Award for Literature, said he did not begin to seriously write poetry until he had reached middle age.
"I had to learn to find my emotions, my feelings, my heart," he said.
Abbott quoted from several poets whose works he said he believes are important for people to know, including Robert Frost and William Butler Yeats.
He said that by memorizing a poem "you make it part of yourself.
"It's a wonderful was to calm yourself and center yourself."
He said some poems strike a chord with readers and therefore become so important to them that they want to remember them. And the best way to do that is to memorize them, he said. Memorizing a poem creates "a freshness, an intimacy" between the poet and the reader, he added.
He went into detail on Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," describing the meter the poet used to create the work and explaining why it is easy to memorize.
He called Yeats' "The Second Coming," written in 1919, the most important poem of the 20th century and said it still resonates today because Yeats was describing a world in disarray following World War I and likened the times to those today, when terrorism has gripped the imagination of millions of people, making them doubt the direction the world is taking.
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
He then quoted a poem by William Stafford, "A Ritual to Read to Each Other," and said it was an attempt to answer Yeats "by giving people something to believe in.
"Poetry tries to give us something we can hold onto," Abbott said.