Myth, poetry, and the power of the word

April is National Poetry month!

Myth and poetry have a long, shared history. In fact, our oldest known myths are poems.

Have you ever wondered why this might be?

I suspect the intuitive rightness of myth as poetry springs from the ancient understanding of the sacred power of the word. In this episode, we explore the creative power of speech with the aid of a handful of contemporary poems that reference myths. These poems also give us a chance to plumb the questions at the heart of these myths.

I hope you find a poem, a poet, a thought, a moment in this podcast that inspires or provokes you. As Jeanette Winterson says: ” […] a poem is like a shot of espresso – the fastest way to get a hit of mental and spiritual energy.”

Transcript of Myth, poetry, and the power of the word

Hello, and welcome to Myth Matters, storytelling and conversation about mythology and what myth can offer us today. I’m your host and personal mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide, beautiful, crazy world of ours, you are part of this story circle. 

April is National Poetry month here in the United States and today I want to celebrate that with you. 

Myth and poetry have a long, shared history. In fact, our oldest known myths are poems. The connection between myth telling and poetry is the root of culture around the world. You may think of Homer and The Iliad, The Odyssey, and the Homeric Hymns. Homer is not the first recorded poet and mythmaker, however. That distinction belongs to Enheduanna, a Sumerian priestess in the temple of the goddess Inanna and teller of Inanna’s myths.

Myth and poetry go way back. Have you ever wondered why this might be?

I suspect the intuitive rightness of myth as poetry springs from the ancient understanding of the sacred power of the word, to evoke, call forth, and create the world. The etymology of the words is interesting. “Myth” from Greek mythos, is generally agreed to be pre-Greek, of unknown origin–a word that the Greeks came across and incorporated into their language.  “Mythos” meant speech, thought, conversation, story. Any of these forms, which were understood as synonymous, or more so than we imagine them today– any of these forms delivered by word of mouth. “Poem” from the Greek poema, comes from the root poein, to make or complete, and a poem is a thing made or created. 

The Greeks often referred to the art of poet and playwright, those crafting language and culture, as “mythopoesis,” the making of myth.

Myths also describe the creative power of words. In the Vedic texts of the Hindus, for example, the goddess Vac is the divine Word of creation, the initial breath of life that is rekindled in the singing of sacred songs and poetry. The creation myth in the Book of Genesis is the story of a God who created heaven and earth through speech: “Let there be light.”

Our words call forth the literal, name the visible, and also invoke hidden dimensions, unseen presences, and the interiority of seemingly ordinary things. A poet writes of a stone, a rug, a cup of coffee, and these are transformed, right? In a sense, every poem can take you into the world of the “gods” whether or not this is explicit or religious in the formal sense.

Word as image, the image in the word, activates the mind’s eye. 

Our ancestors honored the power of spoken word in the earliest forms of writing also. For example, the Egyptians didn’t record the dark deeds of the gods in their sacred hieroglyphs so these events wouldn’t be inscribed too deeply into the nature of the world. Many of us have gotten so careless with this great power of words. This is worth thinking about, if you measure your impact and contribution to this time.

Poetry requires the precise use of words, the right words in the right order as someone said. The poet attends to the meaning and function of each word, hence the condensed form. People who study language note that the difference between prose and poetry, which the poet Paul Valéry described as the difference between walking and dancing, appears to be ingrained in our consciousness. 

We recognize it, like the forms of story, from our earliest days. This recognition stems from the relationship between breath, body, sound, and speech that is integral to poetry. The sound of a word as well as meaning, the way the sound of a word conveys meaning. The appearance of words on the page in lines, the conventions of “verse” and how this guides the breath. 

I encourage you to read some poetry out loud, if you don’t already do so. Read a poem out loud or commit one to memory. Speak it with the power and you may be amazed. A poem can bring you to life, feeling, thought, creation.

Today, I have a handful of poems that reference myths, this is a mythology podcast after all, and myth is still a great source of material for poets and artists. I mean, the myths are great stories right, with compelling figures. And because they have endured they are very rich cultural touchstones and sources of metaphors that extend beyond the story proper. 

And also, I think myths continue to be such a great source of creative material because every myth is a mystery or a series of mysteries. Every myth contains unanswered and perhaps unanswerable questions. This is why they lend themselves to multiple interpretations and to this ongoing and infinite process of mythopoesis, of making and re-making.

When you take up a myth through art, in this case poetry, you approach it in the manner of its existence. Ang by that I mean, you meet the mystery with mystery, power with power, and you have a chance to explore these questions at the heart of the story, and the mysteries, for yourself.

Now, you’ll hear this in the poems that I have for you today and maybe the poets’ explorations can fuel your own thoughts about these myths. So, I invite you to relax and listen. Let the sounds and the words flow over you and through you. You might hear a great word, one that feels potent in your mouth, or get an idea, or find a poem or a poet of interest, or have an interesting break in your day. 

Now, onto the poems. I’ll share a little background on the myth each poet is working as well.

This first one is called “Ariadne” by Oliver Tearle. Now, Ariadne is the princess of Crete and daughter of King Minos. And King Minos has the Minotaur, the bullheaded monster who is locked away in the labyrinth. The Minotaur is fed a tribute of young people who are sent from the city of Athens every year. Every seven years, I think it is, as a sacrifice. 

In the story the myth that involves Ariadne, the Greeks have arrived and one of these young people is the hero Theseus. Ariadne sees him. They fall in love. She helps him find his way into the labyrinth to kill the Minotaur and back out again, by giving him a ball of thread. Of course, once they do this, they have to quickly sail away before they’re captured. And the very first morning then, she wakes up on this island alone. She’s been abandoned. Or has she? Ariadne is discovered by the god Dionysus, who marries her. 

There are a lot of open questions about Theseus and Ariadne and what went on there. So, here is the poem by Oliver Tearle.

“Ariadne”by Oliver Tearle

And this next poem also takes place on Crete, in a story that overlaps with Ariadne. The creator of the labyrinth in which the Minotaur was imprisoned or housed, depending on how you want to look at it, was created by Daedalus, who was considered to be the greatest inventor who ever lived. He was kept a prisoner on Crete by King Minos and he had a young son named Icarus. 

Daedelus very much wanted to escape with his son. Watching birds fly led him to create– for the two of them– feathered wings held together by wax. One day, the two of them leapt off of a high place on the island, flapping their wings. Daedelus warned his young son Icarus not to fly too high and too close to the sun. However, the young man did not listen to his father. He was exhilarated by the experience of flight. The wax on his wings melted and he fell into the sea. 

This moment is the moment explored by W. H. Auden in his poem called “Musee des Beaux Arts.”  It references a painting by Bruegel which I will post on my website.

“Musee des Beaux Arts” byW. H. Auden 

I love the way that Auden reflects on the ongoing and persistent existence of suffering and disaster in our midst, and how we live despite it because so much of it doesn’t concern us personally. And the way this is conveyed in this famous painting– there’s an accumulation of meaning here that connects us to the ancients. Like I say, I’ll post that painting on the Mythic Mojo website. 

Now, I have another Greek myth that is wrapped in questions that can never be resolved. These are mysteries I think, of love and obsession, violence and innocence, initiation, awakening, sexuality, the secret chambers of the heart. And you may have guessed it. This is a poem that references the myth of the goddess Persephone, daughter of the goddess Demeter.

Persephone was carried away by her uncle Hades, who was god of the underworld. One fine spring day, plucked like a flower and taken to be queen of the depths. How did she feel about going? Did she want to stay once she got there? Persephone and her mother Demeter are often associated with the passing and the changing of the seasons, with the emergence of spring and the onset of fall and winter, those being the months when Persephone is down below ground. And yet, as powerful and important as that Earth cycle symbolism is, it doesn’t exhaust the myth. 

Anyway, I’ll stop there. This poem is called “A Myth of Devotion” by Louise Glück. 

Now, in this next one we’re going to step away from the Greeks and turn to a poem that talks about Ogun, the Yoruba god of war, iron, the hunt, the road, the patron smith of blacksmiths. Ogun is able to link the worlds of the dead, the living, and the unborn. he’s part of the mythological tradition of Nigerian playwright, poet, and political activist  Wole Soyinka. You may recognize the name Soyinka; he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. This poem is in his collection Idanre and Other Poems. Now, Idanre I discovered, is the name of a sacred hill in Nigeria and Soyinka went there.

I love what Soyinka says about mythology and religion. He asks:

“Do I really need one (religion)? I have never felt I needed one. I am a mythologist […] No, I don’t worship any deity. But I consider deities as creatively real and therefore my companions in my journey in both the real world and the imaginative world.”

This is so much in line with the way that we talk about myth here at Myth Matters. That myth is crucial, really important, and that the gods and these events are presences in our lives, but they’re not things to literally believe in. 

So on that note, what is the myth? Well, according to Yoruban mythology, the gods once lived here on earth with human beings and there was a mutual a relationship of mutual camaraderie and regard. But then humans misbehaved. The gods withdrew into the heavens and there was a lot of chaos here, with the gods sometimes trying to bridge the gap in various ways. And ultimately, both the gods and the mortals came to Ogun and asked him to resolve the breach. He cut through, you know, all kinds of chaotic growth and plants and moved stones and I mean, he reopened the road between the gods and the mortals, which is why he is the god of roads. 

Well, once he did that the people wanted him to be their king, but he really didn’t want to assume that role. He tried to discourage them by showing up in a very bloody, violent way, just reminding them of his destructive side. And this frightened them and they ran away and he went back into solitude. But the elders came back and asked him once again to come down and be their king and to please just be less terrifying. So, he did come down and do that. Now, in Soyinka’s view, human beings have unfortunately, chosen to embody the negative side of this unpredictable and violent god. And that is also one of the themes in this poem, which is called “The Beginning.”

“The Beginning” by Wole Soyinka, from Idanre and Other Poems

I have one more for you and it’s not about a specific myth. Rather, I think it speaks about one of the questions that most intrigues me, one that the myths touch upon again and again, the question of who or what designs a life. Is it fate? Free will? Chance? Luck? The will of the gods? How much do we plan? How many of the things that really shape our lives are brought about consciously by us? And if it’s some combination of these forces, in what measure?

This existential mystery animates so much of life and art and myth. It’s a topic we take up and turn over again, and again, and a motivation for that exploration. 

This is also a wonderful poem, to speak out loud. It’s called “Serpentine” by Billy Collins. And yes, I love this poem.

“Serpentine” by Billy Collins from Picnic, Lightning

Now, I want to close with a few paragraphs from an essay that I found by Jeanette Winterson. She was writing a review of a book of poetry by Carol Duffy called The World’s Wife and this is an awesome book of poetry. They’re so funny. I will probably read you a poem or two in the next episode. Well, Winterson’s essay is also great and I love the beginning, these few paragraphs about poetry. I will post the link to the entire essay, but I can’t resist reading you these opening paragraphs, Winterson writes, 

“Poetry is pleasure.

Sometimes people say to me, “why should I read a poem?” There are plenty of answers, from the profound – a poem is such an ancient means of communication that it feels like an evolutionary necessity – to the practical; a poem is like a shot of espresso – the fastest way to get a hit of mental and spiritual energy.

We could talk about poetry as a rope in a storm. Poetry as one continuous mantra of mental health. Poetry as the world’s biggest, longest-running workshop on how to love. Poetry as a conversation across time. Poetry as the acid-scrub of cliche.

We could say that the poem is a lie detector. That the poem is a way of thinking without losing the feeling. That a poem is a way of feeling without being too overwhelmed by feeling to think straight. That the poem is “the best words in the best order” (Coleridge). That the poem “keeps the heart awake to truth and beauty” (Coleridge again – who can resist those Romantics?). That the poem is an intervention: “The capacity to make change in existing conditions” (Muriel Rukeyser). That poetry, said Seamus Heaney, is “strong enough to help”.”

Strong enough to help. I’ll post the link to Winterson’s essay on the website so you can check it out.

And before I go, I want to tell you about the workshop offered by my friend and colleague, Bob Walter, at Esalen. Bob was Joseph Campbell’s editor and friend, and he guided the Joseph Campbell Foundation (which he founded) for over 30 years. He has lots of mythological cred in other words, and Bob is offering his Mythological tool box workshop, called Revisioning Your Hero’s Journey, at Esalen Institute in California from May 21-26, 2023. 

He frames his experience with an important question. “Do you dare to re-imagine yourself?” Do you dare to re-imagine yourself? I know from experience that working this mythic material with Bob at Esalen is a potent combination. I will post the link to details about the mythological toolbox on the Mythic Mojo website and I encourage you to take a look at it and consider joining Bob Walter for six days of inspired, creative, chaotic, joyful and challenging play at the extraordinary Esalen Institute in beautiful Big Sur. 

A big welcome to new email subscribers: Halima, Lind, Kathy, and Linda. Welcome!

If you’re new to Myth Matters, I invite you to head over to the Mythic Mojo website. You’ll find a transcript of this episode and information Story Oracle readings and my consulting services and other offerings, and you can join the email list too, if you’d like to receive links to new episodes in your inbox.

Thank you, thank you, thank you  to the patreon patrons and bandcamp supporters of Myth Matters. A shout out to new patron: Catharine. Thank you! If you’re finding something of value here at Myth Matters, I hope you’ll consider joining me on patreon too. Your few dollars a month make a big difference to me.

If we have a better understanding of our need for myth, and all that our old stories offer, we can live more satisfying lives. We can inhabit a better story and create a more beautiful, just and sustainable world. 

I hope you enjoyed the poetry today and that you’ve got a couple of interesting things to think about in terms of the power of the word. This is a power that each of us wields daily. 

And that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Thank you so much for listening. Take good care of yourself and until next time, keep the mystery in your life alive.