The Meaning is Cliche
I think that a lot of people believe “they don’t like poetry” because they have wrong expectations of the genre.
People seem to want poems to tell them something they’ve never thought of before, to say something that’s never actually been said before. When forced to read poetry, they read it for “new information.”
But the “information” a poem provides is, as has been said, “news that stays news” (Ezra Pound)—in other words, poems often tell us “stuff we already know” aka cliches.
I joke with anyone who is unfortunate enough to be within my radius when I’m talking about poetry that “all poems basically have the same themes: spring is great, love is awesome, carpe diem, and death really sucks.” I don’t think I’m too off-base in that assessment.
So the meanings of poems are often cliché, but—and here’s the clincher—the language in which that meaning is conveyed is NOT.
It was earth-shattering to me when some critic pointed out that Shakespeare wasn’t the most intelligent man on earth; after all, his sonnets are like a broken record, singing the same forlorn love song over and over[1]. But what made Shakespeare great was not that he told us something that had never been said before—but that he said something we already knew or felt in language that made that knowledge or emotion new, more alive, or more intense to us.[2]
In essence, poetry just reminds us—in vivid, new language and images—of what we continually forget—that spring IS awesome (and so is love), that death really DOES suck (and thus we should carpe diem).
It’s not that poems don’t sometimes teach or explain something—or even reveal a hidden resonance or relationship we’d never thought of before—it’s just that most poetry doesn’t do that.
The poster I have on my classroom wall quoting James Stephen says it better that I can: “The chief work of poetry is not to teach anything, nor to explain anything—though it may both teach and explain. It is to intensify life.”
We forget everything that’s real and of value, distracted by our screens, our ambitions, our daily needs—and poetry brings us back to what truly matters.
It’s one of the reasons I say (with only a little hyperbole) that poetry can save the world.
[1] A fact even Shakespeare himself acknowledges in Sonnet 76.
[2] It can never be said enough: you read Shakespeare for the language. The language is beyond his wonderful plots, unforgettable Titanic characters, and moving themes. His language trumps all.
