Editorial by Nicholas Pediaditakis, MD, DLFAPA
And there is poetry.
Poetry is putting words in an emotionally mobilized way to better express our secret deep feelings, fantasies, and life that usually we do not dare to or is nor practical to express in every day life. There are some rules to follow. Such as a sonnet 4 lines, 4 lines, etc. to 14 lines.
There are other rules, like the end of word of the previous line to agree sound-wise with the end of a new line. But of course, you can write a lovely poem without following the rules.
There are, however, a few guide-lines you have to follow — least the poem will sound boring and feel flat footed as it were.
Avoid “I-I-I-I,” second rule: try to organize a sentence in a way that is novel and felt deeply. For instance, here is an example fragment from a poem:
A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
Least people will think that only grown ups can write a poem that evokes feelings and joy and an ability to present a set of new experiences by a set of new ways of saying it! Here is one from two gifted and talented young teenagers who I respect and esteem.
Is This Love? – F and X
Oh why, why, why
I can’t sleep at night?
I can’t stop thinking how
you brought the laughter
and then the cry
Oh is this love?
the steering inside?
the long hours at night?
the moments of the kiss!
The longing
thirst for the next sight?
I felt your love was perfect
so were you
and all were new!
I was yin and you were yang
and now I have none
Oh is this love?
the steering inside?
the long hours at night?
the moments of the kiss!
the longing hunger for the new side.
And here is two lines by one of the great Ancient Greek writers named Sophocles (which sounds more wonderful in Ancient Greek):
There exist awful inspiring wonders
No greater than that of humans.
And another fragment pronounced by a chorus (a group of chanters that really represent the audience symbolically) by the same author:
Oh the one love of the betrothed ones
Being forever undefeated
Oh the one love of the betrothed ones
Which you are hiding at night just below the rosy cheeks of the young woman
And finally a fragment by Shakespeare’s Hamlet who successfully, as usual, was able to define in his sonnet with a few words, the awful wonder of being human. Here it is:
“What a piece of worke is a man! how Noble in
Reason? how infinite in faculty? in forme and mouing
how expresse and admirable? in Action, how like an Angel?
in apprehension, how like a God? …”
Let’s not forget that Rudyard Kipling, a dated but still mobilizing in our feelings for the things he wants to say poet and storyteller. A shortened version of his famous poem:
If–
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise
And here is a magic one, perhaps one of the best poems ever written, again shortened:
The Day is Done – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me
That my soul cannot resist:
A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
Come, read to me some poem…
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.
Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
And here another jewel of the English language that everyone in our country should know by heart.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening – Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And now, paying tribute to my vanity as it were, here two of mine:
Chroniclers and Storytellers – Nicholas Pediaditakis
At night I stare at the abyss of the sky:
The myriads of the quivering stars, like multicolored
opals, are Beckoning me.
With them, I stare at the Eternity.
All So far away,
the fingers of my imagination cannot reach.
For millions
their image: echoes of themselves,
Eons after their Valhallas.
The enormity of my awe
humbles me,
The solace: for myself, and my kind:
Chroniclers, ponderers, and storytellers of this universe.
Requiem to Sam a Sampyed
He jumped the fences of our Tribe’s heart from the start.
and there he stayed the years.
-A faithful chronicler of our happenings and unfolding-
His white body a moving shimmering Igloo.
in the northern light.
Yesterday, as the allotment for his kind came up, He died in his sleep, dreaming
of the Tundra.
Now his mate, keeping her head down , whimpers the hours in wake.
Maybe to-night, way up in the Taiga, His brother still there, will howl for a
while,
staring at the midnight Sun.
They say they always know.
Today our clan is diminished by one.
Here is one of the best Greek poets of the last century who really belongs to humanity.
Candles – Constantine P. Cavafy: Poems
Our days to come just allotted to us
Stand in front like little lighted candles –
Golden, vibrant, warm and lively ones.
Our days that departed behind us are lined up,
Like a grim line of extinguished little candles
The nearby still with a whiff of drifting smoke upwards,
Cold, bent, and melted candles.
Oh I do not want to look at them,
As their piling up saddens me.
They remind me the vibrant light of the days now long past.
I do want to gaze in front of me at the lighted ones,
No! I do not want to look back, least I will shudder how the line of the extinguished candles lengthens
How the bent smoky candles are now piling up.
And in closing, as it ought to be, here is an appropriate segment full of melancholy of a person that imagined how it would be like after they die. It’s called April by Bryan. Here it is:
But if, around my place of sleep,
The friends I love should come to weep,
They might not haste to go.
Soft airs and song, and the light and bloom,
Should keep them lingering by my tomb.
These to their soften’d hearts should bear
The thoughts of what has been,
And speak of one who cannot share
The gladness of the scene.
Copyright © 2017 by Nicholas Pediaditakis, MD
For more information on Dr. Pediaditakis and his Raleigh NC mental health clinic, visit his Facebook page.
Dr. Nicholas’ blog may be read at chroniclersofthesoul.com.
Ed. Note: The views and opinions expressed in an editorial or article are not necessarily those of the editors and do not necessarily reflect official policies or positions of The Grey Area News. This information is merely submitted for your consideration. If interested in submitting an article or editorial, email for review.
