Do You Write Folk Poetry? You Does or You Doesn't

Folk poetry and, more generally, regional writing is in great disfavor with academics today. However, many authorities in the past have felt that all great art is provincial. Poetry is especially so because the best poetry is concrete and located somewhere in the particular -- "the windy plains of Troy" or "the wine dark sea" plied by a "swift, fast ship" as Homer tells us. In a more folksy vein: "I'm an old cowhand from the the Rio Grande" or "When the frost is on the punkin."

One thinks of a medieval Russian peasant hero whose strength depended on having his feet firmly planted in the soil. This sort of poetry is generally in narrative form either as the epic or the ballad. Examples are "The Epic of Gilgamesh" or the Anglo Saxon "Beowolf," and representing the ballad, "The Wife of Ushers Well" and "Barbara Allen." It is the poetry which has been used to record history and tradition.

Folk poetry best illustrates poetry as a "more imaginative, emotional, rhythmical, melodious and colorful form of writing than prose." It has an interest in nature and in common things. It has an enthusiasm for humanity, not in the abstract but in the particular. Consequently it tends to focus on the idiosyncrasies of language of subcultures. One thinks of Frank L. Stanton's "Keep a-Goin." The author's picture is reminiscent of "Doc" in Gunsmoke.

Taint no use to sit an' whine

When the fish ain't on your line;

Bait your hook an' keep a-tryin'

Keep a-goin!

Such renditions of the speech of multi-ethnic and common folk are labeled hate speech by liberals. But more often they are motivated by a love of people just as they are, warts and all.

We can see this in the writing of Willa Cather. Her novel My Antonio was inspired by a visit to a region in Nebraska called "Bohemian Country." Cather renewed her acquaintance with Annie Sadilk Pavelka who was now married to a farmer and the mother of ten children "as exuberant and full of joy as their mother. Annie's pride in her large family was a glorious sight." Cather was deeply moved. Memories of her childhood in this region flooded back and overwhelmed her. Although this inspired a novel, Cather wrote excellent poetry. "Prairie Dawn" is one of her best, showing her love of the Nebraska landscape.

Many passages in her novels, though not poems, are very poetic. Describing Alexandra's response to the landscape in O Pioneers, Cather says: "It seemed beautiful to her, rich and strong and glorious....her eyes drank the breadth of it until the tears blinded her. Then the great free spirit which breathes across it must have bent lower than it ever bent to a human will before. The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman." Cather goes right down to the bedrock. Concerning Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs, Cather said: "She early learned to love her country for what it was. What is quite as important, she saw it as it was. She happened to have the right nature, the right temperament to see it so-and to understand by intuition the deeper meaning of what she saw."

Much the same could be said of Robert Frost, James Whitcomb Riley and dozens of folk poets. By contrast, one of the darlings of the academics is Anne Sexton. Yet, her poetry is totally self-absorbed, abstract, rootless, and replete with subjective symbolism, as compared to the down-to-earth honesty of folk poetry.

I would love to expand on this subject sometime to quote a dozen examples of the folk poetry I like. One that keeps going through my head is an old Scottish song: "Oh but I'm longin" for me ain folk,/ though they be lowly poor and plain folk./ I am far across the sea/ but my thoughts will ever be / back home in dear old Sco'tlan' with my ain folk." For me this resonates with "By the waters of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion." How, indeed, can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? This lonely refrain of alienation has recurred throughout history among immigrants and exiles, "folk" who are faraway from home. Another good example of this is the Irish American song "I'll take you home again Kathleen."

Concerning form, narrative poetry has tended to the epic or the ballad. But its content and use of common speech is what makes it folk poetry. Try to write something in this vein. Think of a scene that moves you or excites you like the mill pond at Metamora or the canal. Think of a colorful character, who breathes the soul of his part of the country or his occupation. The Bible uses the expression "natural affection," and says the damned lack it. Don't be like them. Show us your roots, show us your affection. Show us something too commonplace for us to notice that is very special to you and may become so to us after you have shared your vision with us.