Tags
Ars Poetica, contemporary poetry, Creative Nonfiction, critique, Emily Dickinson, modern poetry, poetry, reading poetry, T.S. Elliot, Wallace Stevens, what is poetry
I was invited to write a guest blog post about poetry on Luanne Castle’s Writer Site. The following was first published on her site in a slightly different version.
I’ve been thinking a lot about poetry lately, how some speaks to me and some not at all. While reading recent issues of prestigious literary journals, I was surprised to find that not one poem—not one—moved me. Amazing!
Most seemed like intellectual exercises or obtuse offerings of random thoughts and images. None engaged me intellectually, or stimulated my sensibilities, or even challenged me—let alone invited me—to a second reading. Instead they were studies in disappointment. I left them unfulfilled, still hungry and, admittedly, cranky.
Is it me? Is it them? (Sigh).
Just what is it I crave from poetry?
Wallace Stevens once famously said: “You can’t get the news from poems, but men die every day for lack of what is found there.”
That’s what I want: The thing we die from lack of. That’s why I read poetry. What I look for in other works of art too—in prose and painting and music that rise to the level of poetry.
I want what Emily Dickinson referred to when she says, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Something that tickles the hintermost parts of my brain, where I feel the synapses stretch and snap, reaching toward something just past my grasp.
I want what T.S. Elliot meant to when he writes that “poetry is a raid on the inarticulate.” Something dark and dormant, lying just below consciousness, rising into the light: a curved fin, a humped back, gliding momentarily along the surface of thought before dipping below again.
We have all felt that, I’m sure. Something deep and delicious, once known and now forgotten, woken momentarily. Something within us re-ignited, flashing briefly before dissolving into darkness again.
In “Ars Poetica,” Archibald MacLeish says: “A poem should be palpable and mute / As a globed fruit.”
He says: “A poem should be wordless / As the flight of birds.”
He says:
For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.
For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—
Reading his poem, I’m with him. I’m saying: Yes!
But then he almost ruins it with the last two lines:
A poem should not mean
But be.
Pointing to something static. Not in motion. Art for art’s sake. An artifact showcased in a museum.
Gwendolyn Brooks writes:
Does man love Art? Man visits Art, but squirms.
Art hurts. Art urges voyages–
And it is easier to stay at home,
The nice beer ready.
If it doesn’t make us squirm, if it doesn’t hurt, if it doesn’t urge voyages, is it art? Is it poetry?
Stevens calls modern poetry “the poem of the mind.” It’s “the act of finding what will suffice.”
He says:
It has
To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage,
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound
Of which, an invisible audience listens,
Not to the play, but to itself, expressed
In an emotion as of two people, as of two
Emotions becoming one.
A poem must construct something that it inhabits, that speaks to the reader, in the “delicatest ear of the mind,” “exactly, that which it wants to hear,” what the reader, that invisible audience, wants to hear—which is not the play, not the poem, but “itself.” Itself “expressed / In an emotion as of two people, as of two emotions becoming one.”
It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.
Stevens is saying that a poem can no more “be” than “mean.” Rather, it must act. It must unite poet and reader in the act of finding what will suffice.
It is not static: It is “a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman combing.” It is always moving. It moves us to capture it in its passing. It moves us beyond ourselves, where the top of our head lifts away and there we go unbounded, grasping for a brief moment what lies always, already, just beyond our grasp.
That which suffices. That which the lack thereof we die of every day. That’s what I’m looking for when I read poetry.
I want to feel my synapses snapping.
Deborah, I nodded and know that what you look for when you read poetry is what I call upon when I paint. I have had some of the same reaction to contemporary works of art in established art gallery as you have to the journal of poetry. I find these works heavy in style and control but devoid of risk and yes, movement. May the poetry, paintings, sculptures, songs, music and novels hear your cranky reader lament and act!
I’m not surprised, Terrill. We seem to be like-minded in many things. One of the reasons I love your art is that it does move me beyond myself, and my synapses do sing.
This is beautiful. And the whole of the piece, poetry.
“We have all felt that, I’m sure. Something deep and delicious, once known and forgotten, woken momentarily. Something within us re-ignited, flashing briefly before dissolving into darkness again.”
Thank you.
Thank you, Sunflower. That means a lot to me.
This relates well with my re-reading of May Sarton’s ‘Journal of a Solitude.’ In one entry she discusses the differences between prose and poetry as a writer thusly: “Why is it that poetry always seems to me so much more a true work of the soul than prose? I never feel elated after writing a page of prose…Perhaps it is because prose is earned and poetry is given…when I am profoundly stirred and balanced, then poetry comes as a gift from powers beyond my will.”
Just more input to consider! 😉
BTW: I like your distinction of poetry as being non-static.
Thank you for sharing that quote, Laura. I haven’t read Sarton’s work, but her journal sounds like something I should read.
Oh, oh, at last! Sometimes I submit to those literary journals and then I read what dusty old nonsense is in them and I am ashamed of myself. I don’t want to come across as vain but it’s just a different approach I guess. I will read this post again and again. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Isabel! I’m the same way. Too rarely do I find in the literary journals I subscribe to the kind of stories and poems I love to read. So glad this post spoke to you.
I wrote poetry when I was young–there was something very cathartic about it. I don’t get that same effect from writing anything else, but I don’t have the angst I had when I was young!
Thanks for writing, Stephie. I’ve been writing poetry since a child too, but it doesn’t come as easily to me as prose, and I don’t feel as confident about the results. I don’t consider myself a poet. But there are some things that cannot be expressed in any other way, so I still turn to poetry when nothing else will suffice.
Lovely, synapses snapping all the way through Deborah. Happy New Year, to a fruitful 2015 full of the right words coming to us at the right time.
Music to my ears, Margaret. I’ll toast to that!
I’d offer a different reading of “be”… I read it as not writing poetry to mean something (as often as writers are told their “intent” means nothing in the grand scheme of things), but rather, the poem must “be”, as in, “be” its own entity. I am an entity. You are an entity. We exist and breathe and move and play, laugh and cry… and yet, we are always searching for the “meaning” in our life, the “meaning” of this and that, and it doesn’t really matter, in the end. We “are”. We love. Grieve. Hate. Long for. This emotions “are”. To force “meaning” upon the emotive is to cage its natural state to something logical, to which it rarely fits.
Just my thoughts… but yes, I agree with you. I need poetry that moves me!
I like your thoughts on this, Alex. It’s so hard to describe the abstract, isn’t it? But I know what you mean. To force a meaning or definition of anything is to stifle it, limit it, and like you say, that rarely fits.
Deborah, I appreciated this post very much!
My book group has an annual poetry night and it is poorly attended. The few who love poetry are absolutely moved by it … everyone else is stumped by it.
Your comment “Is it me. Is it them?” was spot on.
How does the new poetry reader know where to start?
I’d love to read more that takes the top of my head off!
What a great idea to have a poetry night at book club meetings!
It’s funny, I can read a short story or a novel that fails to move me and just set it aside. No worries. But I expect more from poetry, I approach it with more anticipation, more hope, perhaps, and when it fails, with a deeper disappointment, even irritation. I suppose the poems that failed to move me must have struck the right spot for others if they made it into print. But I feel cheated somehow.
Absolutely beautifully written. This post is inspiring me to read more poetry! And, I teach creative writing, in which I focus on short stories. But I think this year I’ll also focus my students on widening their creative net to poetry.
But like Stephie says above, and I think you agreed, I wrote more poetry myself when I was younger, responding to the ‘angst’ in my life then. Now, my life is smoother, and I write prose. But we should approach our joy and serenity through poetry also, I believe.
Thank you, and thank you for writing. It means so much when my posts touch someone, and if this had encouraged you to read more poetry, all the better. I hope you find ones that take off the top of your head.
Deborah, I’ve been finding intrigue and soul solace dipping into your blog archives today. This post stood out as both invitation and challenge. It stretches me as a poet, reminds me to come up higher yet maintain a sensitivity to the depth and heart of things. Thank you for your open, honest reflection. It spoke volumes to me! Bless you, friend. 😊💜
Joy, I love your poetry. And your blog is an inspiration for me too. Glad we found each other, friend.