Ernest Hemingway wrote poetry? Yes, the winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature, the novelist famous for his innovative prose style, his terse and minimalist writing, dabbled in poetry as well. It is not uncommon for great writers to cross into other forms of writing, such as poetry or screenwriting, or even other forms of art.

For instance, Derek Walcott (who, as it turns out, won the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature) is both a famous poet and an accomplished painter. A famous poet who has a critical audience can find much freedom in artistic expression in a medium for which they are not expected to be a master, where they can freely make mistakes and follow cliché lines of thinking that ultimately lead to “wasted” time.

Many poets have admitted (the latest being Elizabeth Alexander, author of the Inauguration Poem for President Obama, entitled “Praise Song for the Day”) that the best way to clear one’s mind before a great poetic effort is to immerse oneself in a great piece of prose. If, on the other hand, one reads too much poetry, there is a tendency to become burdened in the meter, the sounds, the vocabulary, and the style of that poet, which encumbers one’s own creative process. One tends to say, “I could never write that,” and so they cannot summon the energy for their own writing.

Novelists, too, often find similar solace within the airy confines of poetic thought. But while crossing over into other writing forms is common, it is rare that this crossing over produces anything that is worthy of being remembered in its own right, aside from the historic curiosity of having been written by this or that writer. But here, writing in Key West, a favorite location and drinking hole of the late novelist, I have decided to give some of his better poetry a shot.

The first is a short entry, entitled “Chapter Heading”:

For we have thought the longer thoughts
      And gone the shorter way.
And we have danced to devils’ tunes,
      Shivering home to pray;
To serve one master in the night,
      Another in the day.

The song of the poem is immediate, 4/3 ballad meter, with rhymes on the even lines; yet neither the rhymes nor the meter are overbearing, a common mistake in beginner’s poetry. The rhyming lines do not fall awkwardly, and it is never apparent that Hemingway had to alter syntax or word choice in order to keep in time with the iambic meter. The form of the piece serves the content nicely.

Ballads were, and still are, the chosen verse for religious hymns. These six lines have a similar tone to some psalms in the Bible. Here, the long and short lines often present contrasting, and conflicting, images and themes regarding religion: the long thoughts (which are cleverly written as the “longer” line), the shivering prayers, and the master of day versus the shorter way, the devils’ tunes, and the darker ruler. The title is mysterious, but might refer to the heading or epigraph one might find at the start of a chapter in a novel. Is this poem then referencing a book Hemingway read? A book Hemingway wrote? Wanted to write? Was going to write but then took a break to clear his head by writing poetry? Regardless, Hemingway has accomplished a lot for six lines, all the while making the work look easy.

Click here to read “A Brief Look at Hemingway’s Poetry – Part 2”

Related posts:

1. A Brief Look at Hemingway’s Poetry – Part 2
2. Pain vs Poetry