How I Turned My Pirate Poems into My Daily Meditation ✏️
Who doesn’t want to have the names of 17th and 18th century pirates ingrained in their memory through spending some *quality* time actively learning their stories and creating something new in the process? I sure want to. 🏴☠️ 🏴☠️ 🏴☠️
I have had a little bit of a new hobby for the past two weeks… I have been writing poems for a slew of different pirates and buccaneers that were *almost* forgotten by history until I came along (I like to think). What can I say? I like to feel important.
As a side note, I should say that there were a few very well-known names in there as well, though I think that the unknown ones were what made it so exciting for me, not the usual household names.
They say that writing something down boosts recall significantly, and honestly, it seems to be true. I now have a whole crew of minor pirates, their names, and their deeds, all singing sea shanties in my head, able to be accessed at any moment. It has nudged me closer to history through this surprisingly intimate ritual, and that makes me feel some kind of way.
I suggest everyone try to make their own poems when learning facts or reading a book or watching a movie or scanning the newspaper — not in the mind but physically, on paper. There is something about the mechanics of sliding the pen, crossing out the fruits of mental labor, trying to fit three lines into one accidentally dog-eared corner of a page… It all just feels so much more *authentic*.
Jokes aside, it can be very meditative, like a puzzle. The less information there is about the person or event that you are trying to put into verse, the better, because then your mind has to fit a tiny narrative into rhyme and rhythm, changing the words to fit the structure better and make it your own — but not too much, because you are trying to process a fact in poetic form, not your own fantasies.
Plus, the less information there is, the more self-contained the product will be, which means that it is a great mental exercise for an idle afternoon hour, or maybe twenty minutes in the cafe while sipping on something (wherever and whenever lockdown does not apply, which is not yet the case where I live, unfortunately). At the end of it, you will have a little present for yourself!
I like to write on leaves of those office supply paper blocks, since they are relatively small and give that same feeling of self-containment that I want to get from the whole process. Ideally, all of my quiet exertion fits into one page roughly the size of my palm, with copious amounts of scribbled black and the occasional un-crossed-out word or two within the miniature jungle, often too tiny and crippled by its cramped conditions to be read on first glance. Just how I like it.
That last bit is true, actually, since the extra effort required to read through the whole thing before the final version gives me the time to struggle through each. and. every. word… Often, more is removed and added through noticing the ridiculous details that escaped my scribbling-out before, which all ends when I finally give up on the whole thing and declare it done.
It all started with one of my regular sweeps through gutenberg.com. It can result in hours of fun to type random keywords of interest in the Quick Search of this MASSIVE online library.
The public domain works that come up will be all over the map, from Victorian etiquette guides for Christian teens to saucy Edwardian tales of romance for suffocating housewives. Fun for the whole family! I was searching for something about pirates, because I know that the public domain actually has some of the most underground gems out there.
One work caught my eye: “The Pirates’ Who’s Who: Giving Particulars of the Lives & Deaths of the Pirates & Buccaneers” (1924).
It is a whole compendium of MANY pirates, with only a smattering of recognizable names, which all come with pages upon pages recounting their swashbuckling adventures and grisly deaths. The rest of the unfortunate souls — who might not even be familiar to the pirate geek — are afforded a sentence, or maybe a short paragraph at best, to cover an entire life story. These were my targets for the poems that I wanted to write.
As a side note, the dedication of the book gave me a chuckle, so here it is:
“I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
TO
MY FELLOW-MEMBERS OF
THE FOUNTAIN CLUB
WITH THE EARNEST HOPE THAT NOTHING
IT CONTAINS MAY INCITE THEM TO
EMULATE ITS HEROES”
Flipping ahead, the observations of the preface give an insight into the personality of the author, Philip Gosse:
“In delving in the volumes of the “Dictionary of National Biography,” it has been a sad disappointment to the writer to find so little space devoted to the careers of these picturesque if, I must admit, often unseemly persons.”
“I compare with indignation the meagre show of pirates in that monumental work with the rich profusion of divines! Even during the years when piracy was at its height — say from 1680 until 1730 — the pirates are utterly swamped by the theologians. Can it be that these two professions flourished most vigorously side by side, and that when one began to languish, the other also began to fade?”
Here are some some more highlights from the lengthy preface for you:
“Increasing evidence is to be found that the more intelligent portions of the population of this country, and even more so the enlightened of the great United States of America, are beginning to show a proper interest in the lives of the pirates and buccaneers. That this should be so amongst the Americans is quite natural, when it is remembered what a close intimacy existed between their Puritan forefathers of New England and the pirates, both by blood relation and by trade, since the pirates had no more obliging and ready customers for their spoils of gold dust, stolen slaves, or church ornaments, than the early settlers of New York, Massachusetts, and Carolina.”
“I sometimes wonder what happens to the modern pirates; I mean the men who, had they lived 200 years ago, would have been pirates. What do they find to exercise their undoubted, if unsocial, talents and energies to-day? Many, I think, find openings of an adventurous financial kind in the City.”
“It is recorded of a certain ex-prizefighter and pirate, Dennis McCarthy, who was about to be hanged at New Providence Island in 1718, that, as he stood on the gallows, all bedecked with coloured ribbons, as became a boxer, he told his admiring audience that his friends had often, in joke, told him he would die in his shoes; and so, to prove them liars, he kicked off his shoes amongst the crowd, and so died without them.”
“The trial of a pirate was usually a rough and ready business, and the culprit seldom received the benefit of any doubt that might exist. If he made any defence at all, it was usually to plead that he had been forced to join the pirates against his wish, and that he had long been waiting for an opportunity to escape.”
“The number of pirates or buccaneers who died in their beds must have been very small, particularly amongst the former; and I have been able to trace but a single example of a tombstone marking the burial-place of a pirate. This is, or was until recently, to be found in the graveyard at Dartmouth, and records the resting-place of the late Captain Thomas Goldsmith, who commanded the Snap Dragon, of Dartmouth, in which vessel he amassed much riches during the reign of Queen Anne, and died, apparently not regretted, in 1714.
Engraved upon his headstone are the following lines:”
“Men that are virtuous serve the Lord;
And the Devil’s by his friends ador’d;
And as they merit get a place
Amidst the bless’d or hellish race;
Pray then ye learned clergy show
Where can this brute, Tom Goldsmith, go?
Whose life was one continual evil
Striving to cheat God, Man and Devil.”
I scattered a few example verses from me into the article to get your creative juices flowing. Illustrating them can be a lot of fun as well, and adds to the whole meditative quality of this daily practice!
And finally, who doesn’t want to have the names of 17th and 18th century pirates ingrained in their memory through spending some *quality* time actively learning their stories and creating something new in the process? I sure want to.
And so should you!
