3 Reasons to Give Poetry a Chance

Lots of folks dismiss poetry out of hand.  Obscure.  Dense.  Old-fashioned and boring.  Poetry truly does have a poor public image.  Unfortunately, Poetry has done a lot to earn that image, aided by schools and academics that try to instill a love of poetry’s depths and intricacies before getting students to love the experience.  Those in the LovePoetry camp love all sorts of poetry and can’t wait to expose people to it.  We want them to like Shakespeare but forget our own struggles to master the language of his day.  We want to talk iambs and trochees instead of emphasizing the music of the passage.  We get the cart ahead of the horse, and the AvoidPoetry camp gains an adherent.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Here are three reasons to give Poetry a try:

1.  Poems are easy to digest in one sitting.  We’re all busy.  We like short, easy to grasp material.  That’s why we like blogs!  It’s a bite at a time.  Sure there are epic poems, but most poetry tends toward shorter pieces.   Pick it up and put it down.  Re-read it tomorrow if you like.  Let it rattle around in your thoughts as you go about your day, then come back and take a quick look.  Poetry becomes an experienced meaning, not a theoretical meaning, when we interact with it.

2.  Poetry tends toward colloquial, modern language.  Sometimes funny, sometimes wry, sometimes evocative.  Sure, poets like their words, like finding just the right word, but how is that any different from architects putting just the right angle on a design?  Wordplay in poetry is similar to wordplay in music lyrics, and just as varied.  There’s something for everyone.  The perfect turn of phrase creates an image that stays with you.

3.  Per William Wordsworth, poetry originates in  “emotion recollected in tranquility”.  It collates and collages an experience so that you have the whole in your mind.  It is the difference between viewing a finished painting and watching the artist paint.  You may not have every detail of the experience, but the essence is before you.  That essence is what translates, what may parallel your own experience.  You don’t have to be an artist to appreciate a painting, and you don’t have to be an academic to appreciate a poem.

If you’re lost for where to start, I’ll give you some names.  Don’t start with the “old dead masters” — they’re valuable but they’re not as accessible as they were in their own times.  Instead look to more contemporary poets.   Try Jane Hirshfield, Mary Oliver, Louis Gluck, Sharon Olds, Rita Dove.  Try Tony Hoagland, Al Young,  Li-Young Lee, Thomas Lux, Dean Young.   Go to a library or bookstore and find a copy of Best American Poetry (an annual anthology) from a recent year and find out what work speaks to you.

Poetry is every day.  Every memory or point or recollection.  Every hope.  Every sudden insight.  Every what-if?