Poetry gets a bad rap.
No, not poetry is bad rap. Let me explain what I mean. Poetry is older than the novel, can be shorter than a song, and asks only to be read to be experienced. Other forms of entertainment are much more demanding. Reading something longer than a poem requires time and a quiet environment. Properly listening to music takes time too, especially if enjoyed live. TV or film needs the setup of expensive electrical equipment.
But a poem, theoretically, can be read in a minute or so and offers a pause from the rapid pace of everyday life. It suggests a glimpse into someone else’s human experience, presented in a convenient and (ideally) aesthetically pleasing bundle of words. And it is often the case that poems deal with intense or difficult emotions, presenting them to us in a way that tells us we are not alone, that someone has gone through this before, that things are OK. Poems could be the most popular form of entertainment.
So why is this just not the case?
Well, consider this extract from an unpublished poet:
“It’s easy to be clear: Climate change kills.
It’s easy to be difficult: “Red endless Duncan
salts Dante, oui, to the sea in ships: Zeitgeist, oh Babylon.”
It’s hard to be clear: So much depends upon “depends upon.”
Uhh… Huh? The poem continues in a similar vein before ending with:
“It’s good to live and write in the groove
you moved in and to mute notions of clear
and difficult and do neither for its own sake
but instead stay awake to your own moods.”
OK. To sum up the issue here, ironically this poor poet has been really quite unclear. In demonstrating being difficult, I feel confused by the references used, and while they are likely used specifically to be opaque, this can have the effect of locking readers out. The final message of the poem in the last line gets lost among the muddy sentencing of the previous three. There is no connection to or engagement with any character, voice or story, so this poem’s meaning is lost. Anyone and everyone can write poetry and publish what they’ve written with the minimum of effort and cost, which sounds like a democratic dream, with the means of production firmly in the hands of the producer-consumer. However, it brings with it a lack of quality assurance.
Further consideration, then, of a name that should be synonymous with quality: Shakespeare, and his “Sonnet 102”:
“My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming;
I love not less, though less the show appear.
That love is merchandised whose rich esteeming
The owner’s tongue doth publish everywhere.”
The issue here? Difficulty, at least at first glance and contact. Perhaps due in part to the off-putting “doth” in the fourth line, although the rest of the words in are not all that unusual or uncommon; yes, even “merchandised”. Difficulty arises from the layering and doubling of words. “Less” used twice in quick succession muddles our processing of what is being described. Shakespeare’s love is not less because he shows it less, and his description of other tired-out love poems as “sweets grown common” touches on another issue that can come out of poetry; an overabundance of it. (I do, in fact, advocate reading the rest of this poem. Arguing over Shakespeare’s quality makes more sense the more of him you’ve read.)
Poetry, then, gets its bad reputation from appearing to be too challenging, not always clear, and too exclusive. It probably doesn’t help that many readers will usually only encounter it at one of these three places; school, wedding, funeral. In an educational setting, if the teacher is not enthusiastic about teaching poetry, it’s possible to do more harm than good. At weddings, finally, poetry starts to find its place. Poetry strives to represent hopeful, noble ideals like love and future. However, there is still a strong chance the poem will be one of the clichéd classics (Rumi, Neruda) or, infinitely more terrifying, a poem penned by the groom or best man just for that day with no previous experience. This could again put people off. It is perhaps at a funeral where poetry feels most appropriate. The gravity of the occasion matches a sombre, tender poem, and universal grief is well served by the slowed down ritual of the spoken word.
So how, then, to rehabilitate poetry into everyday life?
Poetry doesn’t have to be only serious, grief-serving, clichéd, or complex. It can be simple without being stupid, and direct while still packaging language up pleasingly. It can even be fun.
A poet I recommend to all readers, old and young, is Billy Collins. Poet Laureate of the USA from 2001-2003, he understands the problems plaguing many poets, who can appear too distant and aloof, too concerned with appearing clever. He has said, “I have one reader in mind, someone who is in the room with me, and who I’m talking to, and I want to make sure I don’t talk too fast, or too glibly”. This sentiment captures the best of what poetry could be, for me, a way to connect with another human being.
It is a message that chimes with one strand of the tradition of poetry here in China. As Billy Collins notes, titles of well-known Chinese poems can be extremely literal and direct, telling us immediately what to expect: “题西林壁” (Written on the Wall of the West Woods Temple) being just one example. In his typically soft, humorous, and self-referential way, Collins named one of his works, “Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of their Titles”.
The poem itself is an exploration of how pleasing direct simplicity can be. Collins discusses poems with titles like “On a Boat, Awake at Night”, comparing them favourably with the idea of complexity for complexity’s sake:
“There is no iron turnstile to push against here
As with headings like ‘Vortex on a String’,
‘The Horn of Neurosis’, or whatever.
No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.”
Collins goes on to elevate his own poem above the literal, but by now we are well and truly with him. His use of figurative language from this point in feels earned and mindful of the reader’s needs. Collins has held our hand and guided us, respectfully, along the track of his thoughts and we are more than ready to see what he wants us to see. By describing another poem’s title as, “… a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders”, Collins shares with us the comfort he feels from reading this well-crafted, simple, direct poetry. He finishes his poem by personifying another of the poems he’s allowed into his world:
“How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
to sit down in a corner,
cross my legs like his, and listen.”
If only all poems could treat us this way.
