What I've Learned

This May, during all the heavy rain, it was often necessary to wait for a downpour to stop before venturing out.

One day when a rainstorm let up, I decided to take advantage of the momentary lull and go get the mail. I was wearing Crocs, those slip-on rubber shoes with holes in them, but figured if I placed my feet carefully, all would be well.

I made it dry-footed to the end of the driveway, got the mail, and started back up, sorting through the letters as I went. Because my attention was on the mail, I walked right into an ankle-deep trough of standing water.

"Oh, that's just puddle-wonderful," I said in disgust, then had to laugh. Spontaneously I had quoted a phrase from an e.e. cummings poem.

The poem is called "in Just-" and begins, "in Just-spring when the world is mud-luscious the little lame balloonman whistles far and wee".

Later, the poem says, "it's spring when the world is puddle-wonderful".

Along the road where I go running, lives a fellow I call angry-man. I see him sometimes storming about his property, angry at the world. He seems to have a limited vocabulary, consisting mostly of words I can't repeat here.

If he stepped in a puddle wearing Crocs, (he doesn't strike me as the sort who would wear Crocs, but go with me on this) if he stepped in a puddle wearing Crocs, I doubt he would say, "Oh, that's just puddle-wonderful."

One of the rich blessings of this life is allowing the language of poetry to invade our own. When poetry expands our vocabulary--not just with new words, but with new combinations of familiar ones, such as puddle-wonderful and mud-luscious--it expands our life experience.

In our society, a typical response--as exemplified admirably by angry-man--to any mishap is to emit an one-syllable word for excrement. I'm not saying there isn't some satisfaction in this, but that for the most part there is more satisfaction, I think, in a timely and forceful emitting of an appropriate poetical word combination.

Shakespeare is a fine source for this. Such a fine source, that there are whole books dedicated to Shakespearean insults.

If someone cuts you off in traffic, instead of employing one of the five or six rude remarks common in our society, imagine being able to growl, "You knotty-pated fool."

Or, "You scurvy-valiant dewberry!"

Or, "You beslubbering rough-hewn death-token!"

On the internet, one commenter made known his dislike for another by stringing together these Shakespearean words and phrases:

You are a "beslubbering, dissemling, errant, goatish, mewling, venomed, hedge-born, ill-breeding, knotty-pated, onion-eyed, ill-nurtured, flap-mouthed, clay-brained, whey-faced maggot pie. And THAT is on one of your GOOD days."

If you get nothing else from this column, do latch onto beslubbering. It means slobbering.

The next time a dog (or a baby or your Aunt Ethel) drools on you, find some creative way to use beslubber.

Poetry isn't just for moments of disgust. The same phrases that can be spoken in dismay, can be spoken in joy.

When a child jumps happily in a puddle, why not say, "Isn't the world puddle-wonderful?"

Or if a wee one is making mud pies, say, "those look mud-licious."

And calling a well-loved dog a beslubbering reprobate can be done with as much affection as saying good boy.

If you hated poetry in school and have avoided it ever since, that's because poetry was presented as dead words on a page. Want those words to come to life? Go to a poetry reading. Poetry as performance art is a world away from reading poems in class for a grade.

It so happens there's an excellent reading coming right up. The annual Poets on the Porch reading will take place at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, July 12, at Norway Memorial Library.

Local poets will read original work, as well as poems from Maine's past. It's going to be poem-wonderful and poem-luscious. Don't be a beslubbering, knotty-pated stay-away.