The Sound of Poetry

Excerpted from Inquiring Mind's interview with poet Andrew Schelling.

IM:
In your book ef essays, Wild Form, Savage Gammar, you claim that in India a story from the Ramayana, about an archer who shoots a bird, contains what's considered to be the first poem.

AS:
It is a case of spontaneous poetry. The poet Valmiki was charged by his master with telling the story of Rama. He was wandering through the forest trying to figure out how to tell this tale when he suddenly saw an archer shoot a bird. The bird was a curlew, which doesn't have much meat nor much in the way of feathers, so it was a wanton Act of killing. What was worse was that the archer shot the male bird while it was in the act of making love to its mate. The heart-breaking sight of the female bird beating her wings onto he ground and crying out in grief prompted Valmiki to curse the archer. Later, in a moment of reflection, he realized that not only did the curse make him feel much better about his own grief but that it had come out in a rhythmic for that could be set or recited to music. The belief is that this is how poetry originated in India.

IM: A poetic curse!
AS: A curse against the wanton destruction of a wild being, a sentient being.

IM: Speaking of rhythmic curse, you claim that the sound of poetry affects us at least as much as the meaning of the words.
AS:
Poetry works with language at many different levels, and sound is the most immediate. For instance, in Buddhism some phrases have been formalized as mantras and dharanis, and while they may have some meaning attached to them, the point is more the sounds of the syllables themselves, the overtones that open up levels of awareness. It's similar to a magic spell.