What is poetry? Why is it important?

The answers to these questions are often as annoying as the questions. We live in a culture where many people do not care about poetry, which is okay, if that's your choice. You don't have to like poetry, but you should give it a chance. I have always said I don't like liver, but I have never actually tasted it. How do I know? The truth is that I don't know. Throughout high school and college, many students are forced to read poetry that would bore and confuse any of us, and they are left to wonder what the point of poetry is and resolve to never read it again. That's too bad, because poetry is both interesting and purposeful. When asked by family and friends "Why poetry?" I am often left stuttering. I feel attacked. I lose all sense and reason. In these scenes, I'm too close to poetry to defend it the way it ought to be defended. I let my emotions take control. That's too bad. So here, the purpose and joy of poetry eloquently explained, I present to you the first four paragraphs of the Introduction to the book The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry, edited by Christopher Burns, which is one of four awesome poetry anthologies I received for my birthday. Be prepared for more about these books in this here blog! And, if you're lucky, I will try liver and get back to you. 

"Great poetry is personal. Like a seashell held to your ear, a poem resonates to the beating of your heart, matching the design of its inner chamber to the contours of your mind. The poet brings the words, you bring your life and together you make the song. The stories of great poetry are familiar. Constructed from the culture and the symbols the writer and reader have in common, a poem can present a personal experience so truthfully that it is not read, as Robert Frost said, so much as it is recognized. The account of life it offers can be so accurate and self-effacing that it becomes our own, informing our memory, extending our vision and clarifying our thoughts. We find our feelings given voice. We get involved.

The language of great poetry, too, is like our own. It invites us in. All poems capture thought in a rhythmic narrative that is easy to remember, and to that extent poetry is little more than a device, a chant, a mantra, a prayer. But the rhythms employed in great poetry are more intimate: the studied stride of formal speech, the monotones of madness, the quiet sighing of despair, the blurting out of love. And through image, irony and symbolism the message is structured to turn on us in surprise like life itself. While the syntax may be as difficult to parse as a midnight thought, great poetry breaks through to a higher grammar of ideas and feelings. Let go of the rhyme and listen. Modern verse in particular speaks as we do, using the power of plain words, searing and unadorned.

Too often, though, in our efforts to understand and discuss it with others, we hold poetry at arms length, concentrating on it as a cultural specimen or a puzzle to be solved: here the poet reveals her neurosis; there the stain of his times shows through. We shine a light into the poet’s eyes: what exactly did you mean by that? Yes, it deepens our understanding to know a little about the circumstances in which the poem was written. Friends often ask that kind of knowledge of each other. And, yes, we must sometimes enter into a poem’s strangeness, however discomforting and difficult the lesson may be. Our closest friends, too, can be demanding and obscure. But great poetry should be held up close. It is often your life and not the poet’s that gives the language meaning. The great poems are usually about you.

Is it dangerous to get so personally involved? Poetry takes your mind off the job; it raises questions; it gets your blood boiling. Even Plato banished poetry from his Republic because it might encourage troublesome ideas that were in conflict with official doctrine. Aristotle replied that it should be permitted to continue because it can be made instructive and of service to the State. But both seem equally wrong. Poetry is no servant, it is another regime, a parliament of ideas in permanent session, still working its colorful and circuitous way through the whereases. Poetry has been banished a thousand times and we still have poetry. States rise and preen and march and have their day, and it is poetry that survives. It is in poetry, not on the Senate floor, that we debate the issues of honor, loyalty, love and respect for nature that are the foundations of our society. Poetry is a truth toward which our reason turns and we measure its strength by the way we feel."