A list is a kind of collection. I like collections and lists. I also like poems that are lists.
Well, not all of them. I don’t return to Homer’s “Catalogue of Ships” often. But I do reread the Cat Jeoffry section of Christopher Smart’s poem “Jubilate Agno.” The section begins:
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
The poet lists reasons why Jeoffry should be considered a wonderful specimen of creation.
The Australian poet Les Murray was a collector and so a maker of lists. His poem “Infinite Anthology” is a list of phrases and their definitions, interspersed with observations about the “single-word poets” who create new words or fresh meanings for old words. He says:
Creators of single words or phrases are by far the largest class of poets. Many ignore all other poetry.
The poem has many good lines. Three lines are on the same word: “bushed.”
Murray says you can read it as “lost,” “tired” or “suffering camp fever,” depending on whether you’re Australian, American or Canadian.
We humans collect things — words, lines of poetry, many things — as a way of making sense of the world and of ourselves. I’m struck by how those efforts take the form of a list.
Sources: Les Murray, “Infinite Anthology”; Quadrant, March 1, 2010. It can be found here:
https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2010/03/infinite-anthology/
The Cat Jeoffry section of Christopher Smart’s longer poem "Jubilate Agno" is at the Poetry Foundation’s site:
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