Back in high school, I took a creative writing course. Shocking, I know, but I wanted an actually enjoyable class and an easy A. It was divided into four units, one for each term. Non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and a fourth that I can’t remember (this was nearly a decade ago, alright, get off my back.)
For the most part, the whole class was into it. Kids out for fun, learning, or an effortless grade, no one complained. It certainly helped that the teacher (whose name I cannot remember because I’m not God) was highly energetic and passionate. Even in a year wherein I skipped most of my classes (hey, I graduated, don’t look at me like that), this one was always the highlight of my day.
Until the poetry unit.
You’d think we’d just been stripped our human rights, that class was so upset. Oh, the energy was still there; we all liked the teacher too much to be rude. But the usual passion and excitement that came with the other units was gone. Nobody wanted to study poetry, myself included. Imagine it; an entire winter of teenagers reading poetry in monotone. If ever there was a hell, it was that.
Yet even then, there was one poem I actually liked. ‘The Raven,’ by Edgar Allan Poe. One of the most renowned works of literature ever penned. I didn’t think it was that good, but it was certainly more interesting than the usual fare.
Please don’t be mad, I was seventeen, I didn’t know anything yet.
Who am I kidding, I still don’t.
‘The Raven’ is definitive proof that neither me nor any of the other kids in that class understood poetry in the slightest. It’s a powerful work of loss and grief that’s still every bit as meaningful now as it was nearly two hundred years ago. If you read it correctly; which we most certainly did not.
Let’s have a look at one of my favorite stanzas as an example.
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil!
‘The Raven’, sixteenth stanza
By that Heaven that bends above us – by that God we both adore –
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within that distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
This is one of the more straight-forward stanzas. It basically boils down to the narrator, in a fit of madness and desperation in his grief, begging the Raven to tell him he’ll see his beloved again. To which the Raven has only the one response.
What makes this passage – and indeed the whole poem – is that neither you nor the narrator are sure if any of this is real. But in his sorrow, or perhaps his madness, the narrator places greater significance upon the bird than he should. Especially since said bird only has the worst possible response for its vocabulary.
It’s a powerful metaphor on the permanence of death and the despair that comes with it. Again: if read correctly. Not like how a teenager would; in monotone while utterly ignoring punctuation.
My personal favorite reading of it comes from the late legend, Christopher Lee. Yes, Saruman has read this poem. And it’s as awesome as it sounds. You can check it out in the link here. If we had heard this reading, I guarantee that most kids in that class would have been infinitely more excited for the poetry unit.
Then again, if Christopher Lee were narrating, I’d be excited to watch paint dry.
In school, I thought poetry was just writing with more rhymes and complicated rules. But like any piece of literature, the magic is in the words. A well-written bit of poetry can be every bit as powerful and enjoyable as any great book.
For me, there is no stronger example than ‘The Raven.’
This, I declared, forevermore.
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