Poetry

Poetry is so abominably misunderstood in my culture that, for clarity, this dictionary entry will begin with what poetry is not.

Poetry is not:

• a specific form of words, such as short lines or a rhyming scheme (it need not rhyme to be poetry);
• writing whose point is to obscure meaning and require decoding;
• writing on a specific subject, treatment, or mood.

The most accurate and concise definition of poetry I have ever heard comes (if memory serves) from Canadian poet Christian Bök. I can’t find a written reference to this turn of phrase, but as a guest at a university lecture I attended around 2009, I remember him telling us something that has stuck with me ever since:

Poetry is what words do in their spare time.

He then proceeded to read from Eunoia — a book that took him seven years to complete, in which each chapter uses only one particular vowel — demonstrating that in order for words to enjoy their spare time, authors must sweat.

The point of poetry is that language is a living thing, and all living things require play and whimsy to be well. A good poem, like a worthy companion, is one with a distinct personality, whose company is an experience in and of itself. Whether the poem’s words happen to communicate a “meaning” in the traditional sense depends on the genre of poem and the bent of the author. They may, but that is only one possibility when words assemble for play.

A poem may rhyme, of course, but not all rhyming poetry is good. There is all the difference in the world between words that one can feel have been imposed upon to sound in accordance, and words whose rhyme “loves to happen”¹. All good poetry loves to happen, regardless of whether it rhymes, has any literal meaning, or has an elevated mood.

What words do which we call poetry is much the same as what bodies do which we call dancing. As some dancing includes walking (or something resembling it), some poetry includes literal meaning, although in both cases the aspect that resembles the usual “work” of the constituents (walking or communicating literally) is merely subservient to the whole. As some dancing has musical accompaniment, some poetry rhymes, while other dances make their own music.

As some dance moves are symbols for other activities, some poetry employs symbols — but it’s a poor dance or poem whose main purpose is merely to communicate cryptically. My culture’s idea that poetry is essentially hard to understand and must be decoded to be appreciated is a sad result of organizing our power structures around an obsession with expertise, and the perverse incentives within academia to do ever more specialized work, rather than making one’s thoughts broadly relevant.² To attribute intention to the ultimate effect of this — lessening poetry’s radical power to transform minds, hearts, and society — would be simplistic. But it can be seen as a natural outcome of the standard incentive of elites to preserve the status quo in a culture with historically high literacy rates.

Don’t be taken in by these toxic misconceptions. The root word poiesis is more about being than about understanding. A poem is first and foremost a potential friend. If you don’t enjoy its company, find another. If you do, don’t insist on understanding it right away, any more than you would begin a human friendship with hours of interrogation and background checks. Be in conversation, too and hold the words lightly. This part of yourself may never have been given leave to play before. Be generous with its awkwardness.

Footnotes

1. The phrase “It loved to happen” is usually attributed to Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, thought it may rather have been popularized as a paraphrase invented by J. D. Salinger for his Franny and Zooey (1961). Still it does seem faithful to the depiction, in Meditations 10.21, of what is essentially the concept of poiesis. ↩

2. These thoughts come from John Ralston Saul and are explored in several of his books, particularly Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (1992). ↩