All language subtitles for MasterClass Walter Mosley Teaches Fiction and Storytelling - 07. Using Poetry to Understand Language

[MUSIC PLAYING]

In the beginning, there
was the word, right?

And word as it was passed down
from generation to generation

was codified in certain
ways that made it poetry.

And so our deepest
social memories

are poems that tell us,
you know, what's right,

what's wrong, what we should
do, what we shouldn't do,

what happened, what will
happen, what's our fate.

All of that comes
through poetry.

And as poetry grew, being the
oldest and most sophisticated

form of human language,
it became so perfected,

so specialized that it expresses
more than any other thing

in language.

Now one of the relations
of that is song.

Song expresses feelings
like poetry does.

And in the beginning, poetry
and song were the same thing.

And still, they are
very close to that.

That's really the most beautiful
and the most important form

of writing.

And any person who
wants to do anything

with writing, from a great
novel to a love letter,

needs to understand poetry.

I want to read some
poems to you because I

want you to know how I
feel when I'm reading them,

and I want you maybe to
understand the different ways

that poets address the world
and tell stories, but really,

really, really big stories in
ways that fiction can't really

do.

But if we use the
techniques involved,

if we learn the
techniques involved,

we're going to know something.

So I'm going to
read a few poems,

and we'll see what happens.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Over my head, I see the
bronze butterfly asleep

on the black trunk, blowing
like a leaf in green shadow.

Down the ravine behind
the empty house,

the cowbells follow one
another into the distances

of the afternoon.

To my right in a field of
sunlight between two pines,

the droppings of
last year's horses

blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back as the evening
darkens and comes on.

A chicken hawk floats
over looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

In this poem, James Wright
is talking about life--

about the world.

How the world lives,
how it survives.

It talks about the chicken hawk.

You know, it's looking for home.

It's also probably
looking for food.

It talks about the cows.

It talks about the
butterfly hanging

on for dear life against
this tree in the shadow.

And he realizes that
he himself and all

of these other
creatures have just

been hanging on in a
moment, and that there's

such beauty in that moment.

And he realizes that this
beauty has always existed

and he's never been aware of it.

And so in that way,
he's wasted his life.

And I think it's
incredibly gorgeous.

It's a very sweet sentiment--

bittersweet sentiment.

And it's said in so few words
it's just unbelievable to me.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The next poem I'm
going to read to you

is by one of America's
great poets--

Gwendolyn Brooks.

It is a very powerful poem.

Like most poems, I
don't need to explain it

to you because when you hear it,
you'll know what she's saying

and you know what she means.

And your response to it should
be somewhat conflict I think.

Anyway, the poem is
called "The Mother."

Abortions will not
let you forget.

You remember the children
you got that you did not get.

The damp small pulps with
the little or with no hair.

The singers and workers
that never handled the air.

You will never neglect or
beat them, or silence or buy

with a sweet.

You will never wind
up the sucking thumb

or scuttle off ghosts that come.

You will never leave them
controlling your luscious sigh,

return for a snack of them
with gobbling mother eye.

I have heard in the voices
of wind the voices of my dim

killed children.

I have contracted.

I have eased my dim
dears at the breast

that they would never suck.

I have said, sweets if I
sinned, if I seized your luck.

And your lives from
your unfinished

reach if I stole your births and
your names, your straight baby

tears and your games, your
stilted or lovely loves,

your tumults, your marriages,
aches, and your deaths.

If I poisoned the
beginnings of your breaths,

believe that even in
my deliberateness,

I was not deliberate.

Though why should I whine?

Whine at the crime
that was other

than mine, since anyhow you
are dead, or rather or instead,

you were never made.

But that, too, I am
afraid is faulty.

Oh, what shall I say?

How is the truth to be said?

You were born.

You had body.

You died.

It is just that you never
giggled, or planned, or cried.

Believe me, I love you all.

I wanted to choose
Gwendolyn Brooks because she

is such a wonderful--

I mean, she's dead now.

She was such a wonderful
and such an important poet.

And, you know, for
me, you know, you

have to remember those
poets that go unremembered.

You know, and it's not
that she's unremembered--

certainly not in Chicago.

And she's such a powerful poet.

And she's so committed
to truth, you

know, that you feel
like you're walking,

like, a razor edge
listening to her, you know?

You feel-- are you
telling me that I should

be thinking some
political, that I should

be making something illegal?

Should I be-- and she said,
no, I'm talking to you

about these poor
mothers that have

to give up their children
because they can't feed them,

they can't support them.

It's really-- I mean,
it's really gorgeous

and really powerful.

If you write language that's
almost prose in poetry,

then in prose, you can write
language that's almost poetry.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

You know, all these poets
I've been reading to you,

I like them.

Next poet who
might be considered

the greatest of all of them,
though, I don't think so.

I don't like him very much.

You know, kind of
politically, socially,

and culturally, he
and I, you know,

I don't think we're
ever on the same page.

We were never alive at
the same time either,

but that's another thing.

He's very famous.

He wrote "Cats."

I mean, he wrote "Cats."

What are you you going to say?

But he is one of America
and England's great poets.

His name is TS Eliot.

And he has a power of reach,
at least in this poem,

even greater than Ethridge.

And this is only
a small 12 lines

of a poem in a larger work
called "Burnt Norton," which

is of "The Four Quartets,"
the last work of TS Eliot.

And every time I read this
thing, I just love it.

And I will read it to you now.

Garlic and sapphires in the
mud plot the bedded axletree.

The trilling wire in the blood
sings below inveterate scars

appeasing long forgotten wars.

The dance along the artery,
the circulation of the lymph

are figured in the
drift the stars,

ascend to summer in the tree.

We move above the
moving tree and light

upon the figured leaf.

And here upon the
sodden floor below,

the boar hound and the boar
pursue their pattern as before,

but reconcile among the stars.

I have to admit, I've
never really understood

"The Four Quartets."

I've read it many times, and
I understand parts of it.

And I think it's
incredibly beautiful.

One of the things that I
really like about this,

you know, tiny little sub
sonnet is it starts, you know,

with tiny little plants
growing in the mud

at the base of a
tree, and it ends up

flinging our consciousness
out toward the stars.

And it moves there
with such certainty,

with such deftness, which
such beauty of language

that I'm always amazed by it.

It's that I was looking at the
ground, and all of a sudden,

I was the size of a galaxy.

That takes great patience
and great talent.

I want to show that we can glean
beauty from almost anything--

almost any kind of writing.

And it's so important to
understand our poetry.

It's so important to understand
that our use of language

is this use of language.

And if you can't do
that in your fiction

or your your non-fiction, then
you're really doing yourself

and us a disservice.