Roof Garden sculpture, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, 2009 @sedsemperamor
I don’t know why I do this to myself…
As promised, here is my bold, ambitious and frankly foolish attempt to answer the question:
“Why poetry?”
Moreover, my inchoate attempts towards a theory of poetry are set against a backdrop of intellectual giants – Aristotle, Shelley, Dante, Eliot, Plato, Coleridge, Kant, Poe. Hmmm…I rely on your good nature, dear reader, to embrace my ideas as endearing ramblings as opposed to embarrassing rubbish. In addition, in my efforts to clarify for myself why poetry matters, I hope to stir within you questions, ideas and arguments that you would wish to share. This is my little concoction rather than my grand design; you are more than welcome to join me in blending the nebulous elixir.
Writing this post actually frightens me. So, why poetry? Firstly, because it is about life – birth, death, love, grief, ambition, joy, fear, jealousy – all of it, all of human existence. It is about everything.
“Poetry is a place where all the fundamental questions are asked about the human condition.” Charles Simic
It is a place to explore the light and darkness in the world and within ourselves, to try to make sense of the contradictions, disappointments and impossibilities of life.
Like all forms of art, poetry unlocks doors to our understanding that intellect and reason alone cannot open. This is because a poem exists on many levels: content, meaning, context, rhyme, form, sound, culture, shape, language, tradition. A poem may (or may not) mean something but it always is. It validates and interrogates existence.
“Poetry is what makes the invisible appear.” Nathalie Sarraute
So simultaneously, a poem holds answers and questions. Opposing forces are bound together in space and time through a shared language. Poetry makes concrete the duality of our existence. Like us, it is everything and nothing.
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry” Emily Dickinson
Poetry is the distillation of thought. It is language and consciousness pared to the bone. A poem cuts to the chase. Scratch the surface and another, distinctive surface is revealed. Words are blended, filtered, fermented, stretched to their limit, pulled apart and reconstructed. Dissonant fragments are carefully bound by artistic energy into a coherent whole greater than the sum of its parts.
“Every explicit duality is an implicit unity” Alan Watts
It attempts to express the inexpressible. It is an foolhardy, naive, unending struggle with the inexplicable, the impossible, the incomprehensible, the unspeakable. I love poetry for trying.
“Poetry is what gets lost in translation” Robert Frost
Poetry exposes our vulnerability. It is a tightrope of jeopardy and opportunity. Each word is a liability but it is through vulnerablity that we can achieve intimacy.
“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” T.S Eliot
The reader must wrestle alone amongst the mysteries. Whilst connecting us to humanity, poetry is a personal and individual experience. It is a place of frenzied energy and vast stillness. The words of the poem are part of the world and yet are inside all of us.
“You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear through the search.” Rick Riordan
The poet is a magician. Poetry shines a new light upon familiar things. It lends a bewitching sparkle to old and tarnished objects, experiences and ideas; it rejuvenates our mind, our eyes, our ears.
“It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.” Stephen Mallarme
Its form is a work of art. There is freedom in the constraint of rhythmic forms, unwieldy metres and uncomfortable rhyme.
“Every new poem is like finding a new bride. Words are so erotic, they never tire of their coupling.” Stanley Kunitz
New and unusual patterns are formed as words separate and converge in fresh combinations. The lifeless page is transformed into a dynamic incantation, where the medium is the message, the ephemeral is everlasting and the surface reveals the hidden depths.
“I turned silences and nights into words…I made the whirling world stand still.” Arthur Rimbaud
Portable and accessible,
“Poetry is the shortest distance between two humans.” Lawrence Ferlinghetti
It exists simultaneously in silence and speech. It is practically useless and potentially transformative.
“they [words] hate being useful, that it is their nature not to express one simple statement but a thousand possiblities” Virginia Woolf
To misquote Bill Shankly, some people believe that poetry is a matter of life and death. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that. Poetry matters. It is why I do this to myself.
Like us, it is pointless, confusing, deviant, contradictory, exacting. It is a willingness to inhabit the dust and ashes in an attempt to create something beautiful and eternal from the clay of human existence. Poetry is
“A little concoction of words against death” Miroslav Holub
sedsemperamor 