CHAPTER ONE What Is Poetry? Poetry is as universal as language and almost as ancient. The most primitive peoples have used it, and the most civilized have cultivated it. In all ages, and in all countries, poetry has been written—and eagerly read or listened to—by all kinds and conditions of people, by soldiers, statesmen, lawyers, farmers, doctors, scientists, clergymen, philosophers, kings, and queens. In all ages it has been especially the concern of the educated, the intelligent, and the sensitive, and it has appealed, in its simpler forms, to the uneducated and to children. Why? First, because it has given pleasure. People have read it or listened to it or recited it because they liked it, because it gave them enjoyment. But this is not the whole answer. Poetry in all ages has been regarded as important, not simply as one of several alternative forms of amusement, as one man might choose bowling, another chess, and another poetry. Rather, it has been regarded as something central to each man’s existence, something having unique value to the fully redlized life, something that he is better off for having and spiritually impoverished without. To understand the reasons for this, we need to have at least a provisional understanding of what poetry is—provisional, because man has always been more successful at appreciating poetry than at defining it. Initially, poetry might be defined more and says it more intensel el it is that poet to understand this fully, we need to understan it is that poetry “says.” For language is employed on different occasions to say quite 3hings; in other words, language has different Uses, t use’ of language is to communicate informa, ion. We that it is nine o'clock, that there is a good movie dovntorn, Se aw hhington was the first president of the United State, us George Mi dine are members of the halogen group of chemics} cele we might a tis practical use of Janguage; it helps y, i i i of living. eee Se eal to communicate information ‘that ce and short stories and plays and poems are written. These exist to bring usa sense and a perception of life, to widen and sharpen our contacts with existence. Their concern is with experience. We all have an inner need to live moze deeply and fully and with greater awareness, to know the experience of others and to know better our own experience. The poet from his own store of felt, obseryed, or imagined experiences, selects, combines, and reorganizes. He creates. signi the reader—significant because focused and different kinds of th Perhaps the commones reader can participate and that he may use to give him a greater aware ness and understanding of his world. Literature, in other words, can used as a gear for stepping up the intensity and increasing the range ¢ our experience and as a glass for clarifying it. This is the literary use ¢ language, for literature is not only an aid to li ing but a means of living” Suppose, for instance, that we are interest ; ted in eagles, 3 simply to acquire information about eagles, w ce ones, and thy that land eagles are Feathered to the 10 the toes to the toes; that their length j and sea-fshing eagl ' seven feet; that the ne Bt is about three '§ eagles halfway is unaly Hey feet, the extent of wing n some inaccessible cliff; that find in advertixemen These three ues of + Seti, tt This i ser sharp dial Rc area wctual specimens of wit” "AY be thocat asthe litera Rental epee. , Written Langa URht oF ag eee aNd th FREE S878 mae igor ABU ee 2c..the hortatory—are rm ini he hortatory— Pee becceney fMAtion, gat tl Son hen, Points oF triangle; most eae eran, ome Within the gj When the Poetry ha: ie triangle, Most 4 © desire ty ts design on the reader. But : MAT iy Fonmay? Mnicate experience prethe eggs are spotted and do not exceed three; and eagle's “great power of vision, the vast height to whi sky, the wild grandeur of its abode, have . . of all nations.”* perhaps that the ich it soars in the + commended it to the poets But unless we are interested in this information only for practical purposes, we are likely to feel a little disappointed, as though we had grasped the feathers of the eagle but not its soul. True, we have learned many facts about the eagle, but we have missed somehow its lonely majesty, its power, and the “wild grandeur” of its surroundings that would make the eagle something living rather than a mere museum specimen. For the living eagle we must turn to literature. THE EAGLE He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls. Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) QUESTIONS 1. What is peculiarly effective about the expressions “crooked hands,” “close to the sun,” “ringed with the azure world,” “wrinkled,” “crawls,” and “like a thunderbolt”? 2. Notice the formal pattern of the poem, particularly the contrast of “he stands” in the first stanza and “he falls” in the second. Is there any other con- trast between the two stanzas? If the preceding poem has been read well, the reader will feel that he has enjoyed a significant experience and understands eagles better, though in a different way, than he did from the encyclopedia article alone. For if the article analyzes man’s experience we brs 8 poem in some sense synthesizes such an experience. Indeed, the two ap- Proaches to ecrette= ihe scientific and_the literary—may be said to_ complement each other. And it may be contended that the kind of * Encyclopedia Americana, 1X, 473-74d is at least as valuable as the secon from the ing one gets nderstanding it. joni! experience—gi,. kind he gets from the re to communicate_significant =e a a : ists : tion is not to tell yg i then, evs ed. Its func Literature, d and organized. ue ae nitrates | articipate in it. It ig nificant because sta allow us imaginatively to particip. tig ience but — about experien imagination, to live more full ns of allowing us, through the imagination, meal ing us, a means of allow! Stren do thine jnoré deeply, more rich! wi can do this jn y, y, and with greater awareness. It 4 tx om 2 y making us ac : broadening our experien at is, b king y f ience with which, in the ordinary course i erien > f inted with a range of exp saat eee ee & ea we might have no contact—or by deepening me ce aa is, by making us feel more poignantly and more u the everyday experiences all of tis have. literature firmly in mind. The first approach al sson or a bit of moral instruction, The second expects tofind poetry always beautiful. Let us consider a song from Shakespeare: WINTER When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blocd is nipped and ways be foul, 5 Then nightly sings the stating owl, “Twwhit, ta-whor A meny note, it, tu-who! skim ind doth by An Coughing d, at 1 And binds se bree ey he ~~ And Matian’s nose Tooks red arn} Taw, Then nth oabe eg bowl : ghtly the staring oy], ” ms te s, a S ; Avery rol Uwwhit, tuwhol” ile prea 'Y Joan doth keel the Pot, ivan ae. ‘liam Shakespeare (1564-1616)QUESTIONS 1. What are the meanings of nail (2) and saw (11)? 2, Is the ow!’s cry really a merry note? How are this adjective and the verb sings employed? 3. In what way does the owl's cry contrast with the other details of the poem? In the poem “Winter” Shakespeare is attempting to communicate the quality of winter life around a sixteenth-century English country house. But instead of telling us flatly that winter in such surroundings is cold and in many respects unpleasant, though with some pleasant fea- tures too (the adjectives cold, unpleasant, and pleasant are not even used in the poem), he gives us a series of concrete homely details that sug- gest these qualities and enable us, imaginatively, to experience this winter life ourselves. The shepherd lad blows on, his fingernails to warm his hands; the milk freezes in the pail between the cowshed and the Kitchen; the roads are muddy; the folk listening to the parson have colds; the birds “sit brooding in the snow”; and the servant girl’s nose is raw from cold. But pleasant things are in prospect. Logs are being brought in for a fire, hot cider or ale is being prepared, and the kitchen maid is making a hot soup or stew. In contrast to all these homely, familiar details of country life comes in the mournful, haunting, and eerie note of the owl. Obviously the poem contains no moral. Readers who always look in poetry for some lesson, message, or noble truth about life are bound to be disappointed. Moral-hunters see poetry as a kind of sugar-coated pill—a wholesome truth or lesson made palatable by being put into pretty words. What they are really after is a sermon—not a poem, but something inspirational. Yet “Winter,” which has appealed to readers now for nearly four centuries, is not inspirational and contains no moral preachment. Neither is the poem “Winter” beautiful. Though it is appealing in its way and contains clements of beauty, there is little that is really beautiful in red raw noses, coughing in chapel, nipped blood, foul roads, and greasy kitchen maids. Yet some readers think that poetry deals ex. Clusively with beauty—wi 3ed—and that the one appropriate ca moment. ofiful!” F aders poetry ji ; dence, “Isn't that beautiful!” For such reade Ne 17.8 Prey avd silence, “Tsu * only of delicate souls, removed from the heat ir, the enjoymel a = affair, ie ina ife. But theirs is too narrow an approach to Posi sweat of ording Fal an The function of poetry mes to be, ther. bes common colds and greasy kitchen in; + ' 1 wit wid poetry may dea ; ‘ A tea as with sunsets and flowers, Consider another example; legitima DULCE ET DECORUM EST Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, 5 But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots OF gas-shells dropping softly behind. Gast GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, 10 But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And found'ring like a man in fire or lime.—- Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, Asunder a green sea, I saw him drowning, In all my dreams before ny helpless sight 5 He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning, iin some smothering dreams, you too could pace ie ng him in, n © white eyes writhing in his face, 1rebsPsing face, lke a devils are of sin, ” you could hear, at every jolt, the blood me garpli Bitar a be the froth-corrupted lungs y frien - Sores on innocent tongues,— . childeen eed Not tell with such high zest fs fo. pt ol ie: Dudeg gt on eesPerae glory, ia oh decorum est Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)QuESTIONS 1. The Latin quotation, from the Roman poct Horace, means “It is veet and becoming to die for one's country.” (Wilfred Owen died fighting for England in World War 1, a week before the armistice.) What is the em’s comment on this statement? "List the elements of the poem that to you seem not beautiful and therefore unpoetic. Are there any elements of beauty in the poem? 3. How do the comparisons in lines 1, 14, 20, and 23-24 contribute to the effectiveness of the poem? Poetry takes all life as its province. Its primary concern is not with beauty, not with philosophical truth, not with persuasion, but with ex: perience. Beauty and philosophical truth are aspects of experience, and the poet is often engaged with them. But poetry as a whole is concerned with all kinds of experience—beautiful or ugly, strange or common, noble or ignoble, actual or imaginary. One of the paradoxes of human éxistence is that all experience—even painful experience—when trans- mitted through the medium of art is, for the good reader, enjoyable. In. teal life, death and pain and suffering are not pleasurable, but in poetry they may be, In real life, getting soaked in a rainstorm is not pleasurable, but in poetry it can be. In actual life, if we cry, usually we are un- happy; but if we cry in a movie, we are manifestly enjoying it. We do not ordinarily like to be terrified in real life, but we sometimes seek movies or books that will terrify us. We find some value in all intense living. To be intensely alive is the opposite of being dead. To be dull, to be bored, to be imperceptive is in one sense to be dead. Poetry comes to us bringing life and therefore pleasure. Moreover, art focuses and so organizes experience as to give us a better understanding of it. And to understand life is partly to be master of it. Between poetry and other forms of imaginative literature there is no_ sharp distinction. You may have been taught to believe that poetry can be recognized by the arrangement of its lines on the page or by its use of time and meter, Such superficial tests are almost worthless. The Book of Job in the Bible and Melville's Moby Dick are highly poetical, but a versified theorem in physics is not." The difterence. hetween. poetry and other literature is one only of degree. Poetry, is the most condensed and Poor Fet instance, the following, found accidentally by Bliss Perry (A Study of etry [Boston: Houghton Mifllin, 1920], p. 155) in a textbook, The Parallelo- 9i in the fewest numbe literature, saying most in concentrated — ae individual lines, either because of thei, a words, It is vee they focus so powerfully what has gone bel oe ataea voltage than most language has. It rere that pro, a : ‘ fo ently incandescent, giving off both light an eat. aire try can be recognized only by the Tespon, Ultimately, therefore, poetry : de to it by a good reader. But there is a catch here. We are not , ed readers. If we were, there would be no purpose for this book, A, t you are a poor reader, much of what has been said about poetry sof must have seemed nonsensical. “How,” you may ask, ‘can poetry bea scribed as moving or exciting, when I have found it dull and Dorin, Poetry is just a fancy way of writing something that could be said ma simply.” So might a colorblind man deny that there is such @ thi as color. r The act of communication involved in reading poetry is like the z of communication involved in receiving a message by radio. Two fact are involved: a transmittin; g station and a receiving set. The comple: ness of the communicatio mn depends on both the power and c arity ¢ he taney ee of the cecenan WT the transmitter and the sensitivity ing of the receiver. When 3€ transmitter and the sensit ne receiver. When person reads a and no e; is transmitted, either the poe not a good poem or the teader is a poor teader or not Properly tune Wh new pec, we cannot always be sure which is at fault” Wi older i i ae it ‘as acquired ce—has been enjoyed ge of good readers—we may assume that the receivi t ist fault. Fortunately, “ade critical acceptan Sram of Forces, is no % Pri ennyson’s In Memoriams avene, it # has the same meter and ime scheme # Can ies fe however great, wire. 4 horizontal line ich shall absolutely straight, 10 waar 18 Porrny>Poetry, finally, is a kind am ional language, Ordinary Janguage—the kind we use to communicate information—is one-dimen- sional. It is directed at only part of the listener, his understanding. Its one dimension is intellectual. Poetry, which is language used to com- municate experience, has at least four dimensions. If it is to communicate experience, it must be directed at the whole man, not just at his under- standing, It must involve not only his intelligence but also his senses, emotions, and imagination. Poetry, to the intellectual dimension, adds a al emotional dimension, and an imaginative di- sensuous dimensioy oe mension. Poetry achieves its extra dimensions—its greater pressure per word and its greater tension per poem—by drawing more fully and more consistently than does ordinary language on a number of language re- sources, none of which is peculiar to poetry. These various resources form the subjects of a number of the following chapters. Among them are connotation, imagery, metaphor, symbol, paradox, irony, allusion, sound repetition, thythm, and pattern. Using these resources and the materials of life, the poet shapes and makes his poem. Successful poetry is never effusive language. If it is to come alive it must be as cunningly put to- gether and as efficiently organized as a tree. It must be an organism whose every part serves a useful purpose and cooperates part to preserve and express the life that is within it. ith every other SPRING When daisies pied and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then, on every tree, 5 Mocks married men; for thus sings he, “Cuckoo! Cuckoo, cuckoo!” O word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear! iW