What is Poetry? A Manifesto

Before posting any poems I'd like to let my readers, and fellow poets, know something about how I stand on poetry, since my ideas on this topic are, to say the least, different. Some might consider them unreasonable or perhaps even dogmatic. They don't really reflect my "standards," because I don't really have any "standards." As I said in the first post, I don't believe in bad poetry. However, my little manifesto is important to me because it conveys a sense of what I find most meaningful in a poem -- and that, it seems to me, is very different from the way most people approach poetry. It might sound unreasonably narrow minded, and I don't consider myself a narrow minded person -- but I do find it important to express the essence of what to me lies at the heart of true poetry. Take  it or leave it, this is how I feel.

What follows was written some time ago, and is based on posts lifted from another of my many blogs:

"What is poetry? And if not what is poetry then what is prose?" That's probably the best general definition. Gertrude Stein.


Neil Simon came dangerously close when he had a character in his very amusing play The Sunshine Boys explain how some words are funny and others aren't:

Words with a 'k' in it are funny. Alkaseltzer is funny. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny. All with a 'k'. 'L's are not funny. 'M's are not funny. Cupcake is funny. Tomatoes is not funny. Lettuce is not funny. Cucumber's funny. Cab is funny. Cockroach is funny -- not if you get 'em, only if you say 'em.

Poetry is a lot like that. Certain words have poetry and others don't. "Poetic" words, like "oft" or "plash" or "liminal" or "azure," etc. are definitely NOT poetry. Simple words can be poetry, but only when they fit together in exactly the right way.

I wish I had a big old hog
And corn to feed him on
And Shady Grove to stay at home
And feed him when I'm gone.

That's not only poetry, it's great poetry. It's also economics. In fact it's a perfect demonstration of how poetry and economics are fundamentally the same. Notice, by the way, that money is never mentioned. All that's needed is the hog, the corn, the worker -- and unfortunately, the boss (actually the boss isn't really needed -- that's poetic license).

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments." That's NOT poetry. Sounds more like a divorce proceeding. "Ding dong bell." That's poetry.

Swift's epitaph is poetry:
Hic depositum est Corpus
IONATHAN SWIFT S.T.D.
Huyus Ecclesiæ Cathedralis Decani,
Ubi sæva Indignatio
Ulterius Cor lacerare nequit,

Abi Viator
Et imitare, si poteris,
Strenuum pro virili
Libertatis Vindicatorem.

Here lies the body of
Jonathan Swift,
Dean of this Cathedral,
Where savage indignation
Cannot lacerate his heart anymore.

Go, traveler,
And imitate, if you can,
One who to the utmost
Strenuously championed
Human liberty.

So, as we can see, poetry is also politics.

One thing poetry is not it is not the poetry written by poets. I mean, yes, certain poets have it in them, no question. But usually not. For example when Shelley writes “O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,/ Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead/ Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,” no he doesn’t have it, that’s not poetry. Clever yes. And what’s with “leaves dead”? Who talks like that? Now on the other hand, his pal Keats writes (and we need to wind down a bit before reading this -- take some deep breaths and then maybe five seconds of silence to slow the metabolism):

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk

Oh yes, he has it, this is poetry. Four lines and we’re trembling in the grip of pallid death. Because poetry is a lot like a joke. Except instead of laughing something else happens to you, something grabs you deep inside and tears you to pieces.

Or take John Clare, a farm boy really, not a poet:

The rolls and harrows lie at rest beside

The battered road; and spreading far and wide

Above the russet clods, the corn is seen

Sprouting its spiry points of tender green,

Where squats the hare, to terrors wide awake,

Like some brown clod the harrows failed to break.

Wow. That’s it. That’s really it. The rest of the poem is also very fine, but that opening verse cuts really deep, don’t ask me why, but I bleed inside when I read it. (The question was “what,” not “why.”). You don’t even need to know what a “rolls and harrows” is. It’s a kind of old fashioned wagonny farm implement used to tear up soil. “The rolls and harrows lie at rest beside/ The battered road;” Yes. “and spreading far and wide/ Above the russet clods, the corn is seen/” Oh yes. Even just “The corn is seen.” Poetry. Even just that much, that one simple phrase.

T. S. Eliot once said the most beautiful word in the English language is “cellar door.” He actually said that, so I’ve heard, yes. Of course really it’s two words, not one. But think about it: “cellar door.” Sounds kinda French.

Now Shakespeare, even he doesn’t always have it: “To be or not to be, that is the question.”? What kind of a question is that? But the followup is terrific: “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/ Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.” Yes. (I’d have left out that second “to.”)

No, despite certain notable exceptions, which are, admittedly, quite good, real poetry cannot usually be found in the work of poets. And it’s definitely never “poetic.” Which reminds me of a story about one of my favorite poets, Charles Olson, returning to Wesleyan University, his alma mater, to recite in the “Honors College,” where sherry was always served either before or after, I forget which, and Piranesi prints lined the expensive walls. He starts off (I was there) with this poem about these bikers on a beach somewhere and how they took over the beach, looking almost like certain ancient gods, and it’s getting very interesting, because he really knows how to write poetry, and also how to read aloud -- but then he stops dead, sits down right there on the floor, and puts his head in his hands. “I can’t go on,” he says, “I can’t do this.” Moment of stunned silence. “Oy, this is such a poetic atmosphea.” He’s not even Jewish but he says “Oy” and yes the word “atmosphere” comes out with a New Yawk accent and then he just sits there and will not be consoled.

“Oh they call me hangman Johnny/ Come away my Bonnie/ But I never hanged no body./ Oh hang boys hang.” Lots of these sea shanties are poetry. Or have poetry in them. Often they’re made up of disconnected or almost disconnected couplets or stanzas, framed by tiny refrains. Some of these stanzas, well, they’re not too great. But many are. “Oh hang boys hang.” Now that’s very special because it’s a punch line too and the whole stanza is basically a joke. Only to get the humor you need to know something about how the song was used. It’s a song for hanging sail. Get it? But it’s also a very efficient little machine, with a wind up spring that gets wound up very tight in those first three lines and you don’t really have to know what the song is used for to find yourself caught in the trap.

“We’re sailing down the river from Liverpool,/ Heave away, Santy Anno!/ Around Cape Horn to Frisco Bay,/ All on the plains of Mexico./ There’s plenty a gold so I been told,/ Heave away, Santy Anno!/ There’s plenty a gold so I been told,/ ‘Way out in Cal-i-for-ni-o./ So heave ‘er up and away we go,/ Heave away, Santy Anno!/ Heave ‘er up and away we go,/ We’re bound for Cal-i-for-ni-o.” You’ll find many versions of this shanty, but this is one of the best. Word has it “Santy Anno” is Santa Anna, the old Mexican general. But I prefer to think of it as another name for the wind, namely the “Santa Anna” winds, which rage along the coast of California. So that refrain then shouts defiance over and over in the teeth of some half forgotten storm. But what’s really important here is not what we interpret the words to mean, but the tremendous weight of each and every syllable, with no room for any half measure anywhere. For example, if you substituted “plenty of gold” for “plenty a gold” you’d ruin it. Just listen, say it, and feel it on your tongue: “Around Cape Horn to Frisco Bay.” Say it, feel how it resonates through your soul, makes you more courageous, more foolhardy, more of a pirate. 

Probably the greatest poetic couplet ever written is the first two lines of "Rising Sun Blues," as performed by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee:

Whichaway whichaway, does that blood Red River run

From my back window, straight to the rising sun.

To me the “blood red river” is the way the sun produces these tiny red beads of reflective light on the water, creating a river of its own, leading straight to the source of that light, the rising sun. It’s also the “blood red river” of blood, also leading back to the sun as the source of life itself. And of course it’s the Red River of New Orleans, reaching all the way to this guy’s back window when it floods, as has happened all too often in the history of that tragic city.

Which brings me to the destructive power of poetry. Great poetry can literally blow you away, cut you into a thousand pieces and make you ill with an illness like love. Which is why it can be so powerful. And so important a tool, if we want to change the world.

Which reminds me. Ultimately, when all is said and done, the greatest poem of all is:

DO THE RIGHT THING