By Howard Nemerov
I frequently draw inspiration from writers of different genres, especially those who write outstanding books. However, in order to convey a message that has significance for readers who value the written word's creators, poetry may occasionally be necessary. The poem, "The Makers" by Howard Nemerov, makes a stronger argument for this.
We can never locate that initial item that got us going, that initial spark that spans generations. In his poem "The Makers," Howard Nemerov strives to trace the history of poetry and comes to the realization that what counts most is that all of those concrete, physical feelings are transmitted throughout time through poetic tropes and pictures. It makes no difference who the first poets were or the specific tree, rock, or star that was first mentioned. What matters most is that we can relate to each other through these descriptions. The repetition of these sensory cues reveals a fundamental truth about the human condition.
"The Makers"
Who can remember back to the first poets,
The greatest ones, greater even than Orpheus?
No one has remembered that far back
Or now considers, among the artifacts,
And bones and cantilevered inference
The past is made of, those first and greatest poets,
So lofty and disdainful of renown
They left us not a name to know them by.
They were the ones that in whatever tongue
Worded the world, that were the first to say
Star, water, stone, that said the visible
And made it bring invisibles to view
In wind and time and change, and in the mind
Itself that minded the hitherto idiot world
And spoke the speechless world and sang the towers
Of the city into the astonished sky.
They were the first great listeners, attuned
To interval, relationship, and scale,
The first to say above, beneath, beyond,
Conjurors with love, death, sleep, with bread and wine,
Who having uttered vanished from the world
Leaving no memory but the marvelous
Magical elements, the breathing shapes
And stops of breath we build our Babels of.
