Poetry

I teach a rather substantive poetry unit to my AP/IB seniors every year. Poetry is a major part of both the AP and IB curriculums, and the students have to be able analyze and write about poetry and answer extremely difficult questions to pass their exams in the spring in order to receive college credit from the Powers That Be. I haven’t really questioned this before given the fact that I myself have both a natural and professional affinity for poetry and studying it seems entirely natural and reasonable. But more recently, I’ve taken a step back and realized just how irrelevant and marginalized poetry has become in our society, how odd it is that we teachers devote so much time and energy teaching our students how to analyze poetry when no one really seems to care about it anymore. Apart from English classes and exams, most people have nothing to do with poetry in their lives. They don’t read it, they don’t write it, and they don’t have even the faintest glimmering of desire to do so.

Why does poetry matter? This is the question I have been mulling over since last Saturday night, which is when I spent an evening with about 1800 other people at UCLA’s Royce Hall listening to poet Mary Oliver read and speak about her work. It was unlike anything I have ever experienced before. The event was sold out—every seat was filled. The excitement and anticipation in the air was palpable. The young woman sitting to my left, in her green plaid mini-skirt and black punk boots, leaned forward in her chair during the introduction as though to bring herself closer to the woman who would emerge onstage. We were high up in the balcony, by the way.

Mary walked somewhat stiffly and slowly onto the stage, arranged her books on the podium, and began to speak to us with a casual intimacy that made it seem like we were all sitting together in her living room instead of an enormous, public hall. After a few remarks, she began to read her poems, and all 1800 of us sat in absolute stillness and silence. I have been to many symphonic concerts, plays, and other hoity-toity events with extremely sophisticated and devoted audiences, but none of them have ever been that quiet and that raptly attentive. We were mesmerized by the cadence of her voice, by the beauty of the words she spoke, and, most of all, by the weight of truth those words contained. At times her spoken truths evoked laughter—boisterous, noisy laughter—and at others a spontaneous and appreciative “mmmm” rolled in waves across the seats.

It seemed as though we all knew that in listening to her, in seeing her before us live, we were participating in something profound. Even sacred. It had the feel of a church service (although again, more attentive and quiet than most church services I have been to), and each line she spoke was a benediction, a sacrament. And we worshippers of truth and beauty stretched out the hands of our souls and received the blessing.

This probably sounds overwrought and melodramatic, like something only an “English” person would think and feel. But my friend, who is not an “English” person and who had never heard of Mary Oliver or been to a poetry reading before this night, also experienced this feeling of awe and transcendence.

So this is what has made me think about poetry and its place in our culture and society. It’s made me realize how much we’ve moved away from the beauty of language and how quickly we’ve given up the effort required to attain something worthwhile. Efficiency and ease have become the new gods. What will appeal to and entertain the masses has become the most desirable. And yet, beauty and depth still matter. As evidenced by Saturday night’s turnout, there is still some segment of the population who craves a beautiful and truthful and carefully crafted word. I think many others would as well if they could remember it was there in the first place and could pause long enough to taste it.

I once explained to my classes that poetry is like a reduction sauce. All the excess and extraneous language is boiled and evaporated away until you are left with only the richest and most flavorful essence of words and ideas. Poems point the way to things, but allow us (or force us, if you’re a reluctant reader) to navigate the layers. They offer lenses and landscapes, and that jolt out of ourselves that we need every now and then to see things more clearly. Seamus Heaney, a rather wonderful poet himself, captures what I’m trying to say in these lines:

You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

We are all so often living as “hurries,” desperately needing some wind to blow through us and make us gasp. Other things can do that too—a strain of music, a beautiful landscape, even tragedy. But poetry does this especially well, I believe. You cannot hurry with a poem. You have to savor each word, letting its flavor blossom in the heart and mind. Try it. Find a good one and read it aloud to yourself, and let the words sink in you like stones in slow depths.