On Poetry

On Poetry

There is no good reason to write poetry except sheer adventure. Once solely occupied with the deeds of kings and heroes, poetry today is democratized to the point where any man or woman can be a hero, any life an odyssey. Some say this trivializes greatness. Others see it as a profound, new freedom. Either view affirms that poetry celebrates the daring and nobility of the human spirit.

There is another reason to write poetry, one more homely but not altogether without merit: we write poems in order to act freely, truly, directly. We need no credential to do so, no apparatus more complex than pen, paper, and alphabet. The most rigorous training in poetics counts for little if the heart quails or hand fails. Writing poetry is an adventure in and assertion of personality. Poems that fail either substitute a stereotype for the truly individual, or shrink from full disclosure, writing around the subject instead of exploring it firsthand. But the most common reason poems fail is that they are not ever written.

There are good reasons for this failure. We stand to gain little by taking the time to write a poem, while we risk exposure and ridicule for wasting time and effort in such unprofitable action. This provides a strong incentive to ignore the call, to fail to act poetically. We also risk the charge that by writing our little poems, we have been too selfish in a world full of need. Poets are often guilty of failure in civic and economic duties. Had we not been writing, we could have served on some sort of board, enacted or advanced legislation, bought or sold something, or volunteered for charity. There is small time for tilting at verbal windmills with so much real, serious work to be done.

In contrast to society’s pressing material and organizational needs, it is because the poet needs so little that so little is given. Part of the discipline of the craft is to accept this, and be content without becoming resentful. Poets are rich in freedom. Being free, they lack support. Such is the price of freedom. No one tells corporate attorneys to work less. Our whole society encourages, even demands their efforts, couching envious respect in sour jokes. Nor do we commonly think of business executives as needing or having support systems or safety nets – even though they are practically invulnerable thanks to societal approval and golden parachutes. Instead, we honor them as “self-made mavericks” who can “think outside the box”.

Meanwhile, those few souls brave and strong enough live beyond the cardboard pale we castigate as silly, lazy, or both. Tacitly acknowledging the danger they pose, we question their sanity, calling them crazy for daring to challenge the assumption that more is better. We exhort them to give up poetry, and to get a job, a mortgage, a haircut, and a clue. When we do so, we sing a siren-song more enticingly, more dangerously than we know.

Despite such temptation, poets go on writing. Some are even flippant enough to suggest that this constitutes their value-added contribution to society. As if society needs art, or there is a market for poetry. We have few poems celebrating corporations, institutions, or movements – the poetry of causes is suspect and doesn’t last. But we do have poems, lots of very good poems about people, how they feel, how they act and interact, their conflicts and resolutions. This is the society and the culture that the poet cares about and takes part in. It’s not the governing, loaning, buying, or selling the poet shies from, much less the loving and hating. It’s the involuntary inclusion in faceless and inhuman entities whose demands leave us drained and scattered at the end of the day. Poets instinctively avoid assimilation, for they cannot bear its pain – a sifted, muted pain that grows like compound interest, overtaxing the nerves and rendering them numb. In return, society shuns poets as irrelevant.

So the social utility of poetry is tonic: it provides a little wilderness for the soul, a refuge for the individual against social sprawl. Protected by societal labels of freak, loon, dreamer, or rebel, the poet survives as a fringe-dweller, a living sign-post at the edge of society. Beyond that twilit frontier, lies freedom, lies adventure. There and back again, the poet, the thief-king of outcasts and bringer-of-new-things leads the way.

What he brings back, the territory she settles a few bold steps at time, creates out of chaos a world for society to grow into. Meanwhile, cautionary tales of the poet’s life keeps the press of life at bay, preserving room for the soul to grow, out there, over the horizon, where dragons and barbarians dwell. Derelict gate-keeper, free-lance scout, profane settler, and world-weaver – these are the poet’s jobs. Dangerous work it is, lonely and important too. So post the note: Brazen adventurers needed. Safe return uncertain. Meek inheritors need not apply.