Why You Should Read Poetry...Yes, Poetry

In May of 1944, the poet Anna Akhmatova gave a reading at the Polytechnic Museum, the largest auditorium in Moscow. It was her first appearance in the city since World War II, and the room was packed. The poems she read had rallied Russians throughout the war, and her voice had broadcast through the streets of Leningrad to steel the city to the approaching German Army. When she finally closed her books, she received such thunderous applause that Joseph Stalin asked who'd organized the ovation. The man knew power when he saw it.

If you grew up in America, it might surprise you to learn that a poet has ever had that sort of impact. Poetry here is best known for the simple, sentimental verses found in Hallmark cards and the lyrics of pop music. The word "poet" probably calls to mind some weirdo in a beret. And poetry's power to influence American politics is, at best, a fizzle--if you heard anything about the anti-Bush anthology Poets Against the War, then you listen to a lot of NPR. The truth is most Americans have lost touch with the best of what poetry is: a record of some of civilization's greatest writers--and wisest people--taking on the questions and emotions that define us.

Certainly, the world has changed a lot since Akhmatova. Time once devoted to reading books now goes to TV, movies, and the Internet. When people do read, most prefer to pick up something they can relax with like John Patterson or Augusten Burroughs. But one only needs to look down the aisles of inspirational books at Barnes and Noble to know that the search for meaning that has always driven the great poems still resonates. Classic themes like love, despair, life, death, and hope still infatuate us. Heck, you can find them all in one episode of "Grey's Anatomy." Yet the poems of faith John Milton wrote after he'd gone completely blind, the atheist Percy Bysshe Shelley's passionate explorations of a godless world, and Sylvia Plath's struggle just to hold her world together all go under-appreciated and under-read.

So why aren't we reading poetry? Here are some reasons I often hear that will probably sound familiar. Here, too, are some reasons to reconsider.

Reason 1: I've never understood it.

Poetry can be difficult. Learning to read Shakespeare is difficult, and I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone take on T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" without some guidance. But most poets are far more accessible than Eliot or Shakespeare. Also, it's important to note that your expectations for a poem should be different from your expectations for, say, a newspaper or a novel. A poem often has multiple layers of meaning that will unfold over a few readings--and it's important to give a poem that opportunity. It's a good idea to read a poem more than once in a sitting or go back and reread it over the course of a few weeks or even a lifetime. Remember that the process of exploring a great poem should be part of the reward. As Walt Whitman asked in "Song of Myself":

"Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? Have you reckon'd the Earth much?

Have you practic'd so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?"

Reason 2: I can't get past the whole rhyming thing.

Rhyming verse can fall a little hard on the modern ear, which is why most contemporary poems are written in "free verse" with no set meter or rhyme scheme. Rhymes are a part of poetry's music: the rhythms and sounds of words from which a poet draws power. Like a great soloist or orator, a poet with a good ear can infuse what he's saying with emotion and immediacy. If you're reading a poem with end rhymes and they're bothering you, ignore the line breaks and try reading the poem as if it's prose.

Reason 3: Poetry is for angst-ridden teens, hopeless romantics and the aforementioned weirdos in berets.

Sure, you run into a few aspiring poets at your local coffee shop that fit this bill, but I guarantee you couldn't pick a practicing poet off the street. We're surprisingly normal. Just like you, we're obsessed with things like fantasy football and I Love New York 2. I was on track to be a doctor before I stumbled on poetry (yes, my parents were real happy about that one). That's not to say that your experience with poetry will be as all-consuming as mine, but for all that poetry has given me, I have no doubt that it has something to give you.

So how should you begin? I'd recommend you start with an anthology. You can't go wrong with the Norton Anthology of Poetry, which covers everything from medieval English verse to Bob Dylan. When you find a poet you like, buy a book of his or her work. Volumes of poetry aren't as daunting as the word "volume" implies. In fact, they're relatively small. And you can read through most poems in a fraction of the time it takes to finish a Sudoku. You should also check here each week, where I'll be posting a great poem as a blog. Think of it as a weekly cultural aperitif.

Comments

[strifeknot]

Poetry should be read for its beauty, not its politics. Art trumps politics.

I'm partial to Wallace Stevens, Dickinson, and Hart Crane.

[webmaker02]

Poets have an obligation to be the conscience of their societies.

[strifeknot]

Poets have an obligation to make great art.

I would never say great art can't be political, but it must first and foremost have aesthetic merit. There are many artists with a good conscience and good politics who make terrible art.

Auden is a great example of a fine poet who's work was often political in nature. But his work wasn't great because of his politics, but because of the way he wrote.

[1fliteup]

I disagree, politics make for some really juicy poems.

[1fliteup]

I disagree, politics make good poetry.

[rini]

Poetry is about the experience of life. What is more important and more of an integral part of life than politics?

[strifeknot]

Good poetry can certainly be political, but writing that's political in nature isn't innately meritorious.

[elleng]

ee cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

[plainsman]

Nice post.

I'd encourage those interested in a good read to check out this year's edition of The Best American Poetry guest edited by Heather McHugh.

[N678]

I can think of no better introduction to poetry than the verse of Ogden Nash. Whimsical and humorous, he performed delightful acrobatics with the English language. For instance:

The Purist

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist,
Trustees exclaimed, "He never bungles!"
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
"You mean," he said, "a crocodile.­"

[wijg]

Thanks for the post, John. I look forward to reading your weekly offerings.

[macfee]

"if you heard anything about the anti-Bush anthology Poets Against the War"

This makes it appear that some poets are for the War. Who? Where do they workshop?

[watchingthings]

Guess that leaves me out. About the only poems I know are those I saw on Bathroom walls. Sure must be alot of "shithouse poets" out there.

[unitron]

How does "...May of 1944..." qualify as "... since World War II..."?

Wasn't it Dylan (Bob, not Thomas) who called Smokey Robinson the greatest American poet of the 20th Century? Certainly no one else would have ever come up with
"Just like Pagliacci did
I try to keep my sadness hid".

[elleng]

GOOD ONE, unitron!

[elleng]

GOOD ONE, unitron!

[skyreader7]

And brings passion to your life, meaning where it didn't exist before, and a sense of completion to our need for patterns.

[macfee]

To quote someone "Poetry is the fewest words, in the best order, that contain an idea"

Schools don't teach poetry anymore because it is not tested and it requires thought (from both teacher and student)

John Lundberg
writes superb
facts he didn't check
Oh, what the heck

[1fliteup]

Poetry is more like painting a picture with words.

[Jericho]

Man, poets don't teach poetry anymore. Poetry was a deadborn child. There's no such thing as the fewest words, in the best order, that contain an idea.... 'an' idea ?! Which deserves more credit, the beauty and the least amount of words or the quality of the effin idea? You can't have three qualifiers in a single sentence, it screws up the grades on your report card....

[ShoelessNol]

As a teacher, I'm here to tell you that I teach poetry almost every week. Last week, my students wrote Protest Poems/Songs. This week we read a Margaret Atwood poem about a witch being hanged as an introduction to Miller's The Crucible. My little Wiccan girls loved it. Forget the report card ... the question I ask is "Do they learn?" Sometimes yes and sometimes no.

[macfee]

Few word or it is prose
Best order and it is music
A idea because it has to be about something otherwise white noise

3things to make it a poem

Painting a Picture with words leaves out 4 senses the soul and mind

Poetry is a craft, Some people are good at it some are not
The majority of all poetry and prose is bad

[plainsman]

I think the quote is "best words, best order," not necessarily the fewest words.

[immafreake]

I'm currently engaged in the process of choosing a second career for myself. I've spent sixteen years as a mental health worker. But i yearn to use my artistic talents to make my living, I just don't know how! I spend my free time on art, photoshop, poetry, writing...­I need direction. Does anyone have advice for me? It's striking to me that this writer was studying for medicine, then found poetry...I­'d like to do that myself!

[1fliteup]

I have been writing poetry as well as lyrics, or should I say lyric poetry, for about 30 years, to date I have had 4 poems published in anthologies and 1 in a newspaper. Unfortunatly most poets never are recognised until they die. And making a living at it leaves a lot to be desired like eating. I have gone from the romantic stuff to the political stuff. Poetry should be done in a manner that everyone can relate to in some way. I don't know if this is a good example.

"Walk with me softly in the morning mist
ere the worlds in sunlight kissed
linger here with me a while for
I've missed your laughter and loving smiles

though we've talked in silence across the miles".

whatever is your stronger suit in the arts, stick to that and don't scatter your forces.

[barriosbabe]

-- keep a stack of old newspapers on the corner of a table, a good one inch brush, a jar of water, and 5-8 cheap tubes of acrylic paint; whenever you feel tired, frustrated, happy, etc, go there, pull one section of paper out (keep it folded to absorb the water), and start painting. Do it like a three year old, loose, happy, instinctively. The key is to not try and accomplish anything. I also have recommended readings, like elio frattaroli and stanley grof and robert johnson's "inner work" the second half, which is about wonderful ways to do active imagination; you close your eyes and "play" with your inner "goo.".

[Zapatista]

**** RECOMMENDED POETS: ****


Rumi, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, Ogden Nash, Joseph Déjacque, Paul Goodman, Hafiz, Kabir, Attar, Jose Marti, Saul Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Tom Paulin, Amiri Baraka, Adrienne Rich, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Oscar Wilde, Pablo Neruda, E. E. Cummings, Gregory Corso, T.S. Eliot, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Countee Cullen, Gary Snyder, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, W. H. Auden, Wallace Stevens, Raymond Roussel, John Clare, Marianne Moore, Giorgio de Chirico, James Schuyler, Jim Morrison, Gary Soto, Eli Siegel, Dylan Thomas, Kenneth Koch, Leonard Cohen, Nicolás Guillén, César Vallejo, León Felipe


**********­**********­********

[hontonoshijin]

Yeah, Auden. "I sit in one of the dives/On thirty-second street,/Uncertain and afraid,/As the low dishonest hopes expire/Of a low dishonest decade."

Or "Lay your sleeping head, my love,/Human on this faithless arm./Time and fevers burn away/Individual beauty from/Thoughtless children and the grave/Proves the child ephemeral.­"

Beautiful, beautiful.

[hontonoshijin]

Oops. "ThoughtFUL children." Brainslip.

[Norge]

The list you provided came out of Norton's anthology or appears to have.

There are more than 170 different countries in the world and all have their survivors.

[snideelf]

Jehovah buried,Satan dead,
do fearers worship Much and Quick;
badness not being felt as bad,
itself thinks goodness what is meek;
obey says toc,submit says tic,
Eternity's a Five Year Plan:
if Joy with Pain shall hang in hock
who dares to call himself a man?

go dreamless knaves on Shadows fed,
your Harry's Tom,your Tom is Dick;
while Gadgets murder squawk and add,
the cult of Same is all the chic;
by instruments,both span and spic,
are justly measured Spic and Span:
to kiss the mike if Jew turn kike
who dares to call himself a man?

loudly for Truth have liars pled,
their heels for Freedom slaves will click;
where Boobs are holy,poets mad,
illustrious punks of Progress shriek;
when Souls are outlawed,Hearts are sick,
Hearts being sick,Minds nothing can:
if Hate's a game and Love's a fuck
who dares to call himself a man?

King Christ,this world is all aleak;
and lifepreservers there are none:
and waves which only He may walk
Who dares to call Himself a man.

- eecummings

Complete Poems 1904-1962
pg. 438