What Is Poetry? A Rough Draft

Tony Miller
English 210
April 15, 2011

Poetry: What Is It?

Poetry, as one of the most versatile literary media, is a device that everyone thinks they can understand in some form – in fact, an argument could be made that many people’s definitions of poetry falls along the lines of “the subset of things that might be poems which I comprehend.” The Oxford English Dictionary tries to lend some clarity to the matter, stating that poetry is “[i]maginative or creative literature in general; fable, fiction;” “[t]he art or work of a poet;” and “[c]omposition in verse or some comparable patterned arrangement of language in which the expression of feelings and ideas is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; the art of such a composition” (“Poetry”). While this is a noble attempt by the dictionary to be inclusive, the Oxford definition is such a non-restrictive clause (pardon the pun) that it is hard to use to pinpoint the bounds of the poetic realm.
This non-restrictive definition is similar to the one espoused by Lyn Hejinian in her introduction to The Best American Poetry anthology in 2004. Hejinian is also the author of My Life, a rather small and autobiographical work which we studied earlier in English 210. On first glance, the work seems to be more prose in form than poetry: words are arranged with punctuation into forms that look like sentences, and these sentences are placed into blocks of text that strongly resemble paragraphs. When one looks at the content, however, it becomes clear that the text is not at all prose, as the sentences do not form nicely into paragraphs or chapters – although they eventually combine to tell the story of a woman that may or may not actually be the author, at times those items which I have been referring to as sentences fail to satisfy the grammatical requirements for that name. From My Life, it is clear that Hejinian’s definition of poetry is based more on form than on content.
For the editor of the previous year’s Best American Poetry volume, Yusef Komunyaaka, the traditional poetic form is not as important as the issues of which it speaks. In his introduction, this poet explains that he feels words spoken or verses written simply for the purpose of creating them – to borrow an art history term, art for art’s sake – are just words and that they cannot mean much unless they make a point. This is similar to another English 210 text, G.C. Waldrep’s Disclamor. In the BOA Editions text, Waldrep dispenses with the traditional notions of stanza and flow, instead creating works which are awkwardly spaced across the page and embody a stream-of-consciousness format that is occasionally more intelligible backward.
Given the constraints imposed on poetry by the above sources, it seems prudent to combine the three reference definitions and say that poetry is this:
Imaginative or creative literature in verse which responds to a social issue, tells a story, or reflects on the actions of an individual or group.

This seems to incorporate all three of the works included above, while still including the vast majority of the Thoreaus, Frosts and Eliots we are taught in grade school. A major consideration there is that of literature in verse – this is the gate that lets Longfellow’s Paul Revere through but keeps out Ebenezer Scrooge.
Both my Against Forgetting poet, Pablo Neruda, and my Individual Poetry Project poet, Todd Davis, align more closely to a mainstream poetry definition akin to the additional wordsmiths above rather than the style of Hejinian or Waldrep. Neruda in particular was known to broach a number of social causes, being a fervent Communist in an era when Chile was particularly anti-Communist; Davis sings a song of the environment in an era when all of us know it is changing, but fewer of us want to change our behaviors to reverse this. Both of these poets deserve to have more written about them, and they will get their time when this paper’s rough draft is not competing with other final drafts.

Works Cited

Hejinian, Lyn. Introduction. Lyn Hejinian and David Lehman, eds. The Best American Poetry 2004. New York: Scribner, 2004. 9-14. Print.
Hejinian, Lyn. My Life. Los Angeles: Sun and Moon, 1987. Print.
Komunyakaa, Yusef. Introduction. Yusef Komunyakaa and David Lehman, eds. The Best American Poetry 2003. New York: Scribner, 2003. 11-21. Print.
"Poetry, n.". OED Online. March 2011. Oxford University Press. Web. 14 April 2011.
Waldrep, G.C. Disclamor. Rochester, N.Y.: BOA Editions, 2007. Print.

Feeding the Pear

"Feeding the Pear" in Waldrep, Disclamor, Rochester, N.Y.: BOA, 2007; page 64.

In high school AP English, the guiding light of our poetry analysis was "stay as literal as you can for as long as you can." That approach is nearly useless here -- no logical person would attempt to feed a pear, which of course means it is the perfect subject for a poem. Similarly, carrot sticks are the first things offered to the pear; even without questioning why the poet has carrot sticks at church, I would have tried countless other things (up to and including Carrot Top) before carrot sticks.

Will we ever know for certain why the poet chose carrots and sugar as foodstuffs? Short of finding G.C. Waldrep on the street in Lewisburg, Pa., quite likely we will not. Will we ever comprehend what the pear represents or why it must remain in the room (or, for that matter, how the poet obtained sugar from the fellowship hall given that constraint)? The same answer above also applies to all three of those.

Of course, that will never stop me from making (slightly-)educated guesses. I think the pear could be an ego, soft and easily bruised; of course, if those had to stay in one place, the world would be much simpler ... and we'd stay out of Alaska. Is it a debate? Those, too, hurt feelings, but similarly are nearly omnipresent.

The identity of the pear hasn't yet come to me. Maybe it will soon. Or maybe it will come in a dream during the next 5 a.m. downpour.

Maybe that's too grandiose . . .

Maybe

. . .

"Battery Alexander" - Waldrep

After several read-throughs of G.C. Waldrep's "Battery Alexander," the clearest thing to me was that George Calvin Waldrep's first two initials are identical to those of Goshen College. Then I wondered if the poem would make more sense written backward -- though I did not know it at the time, this reformatting technique is similar to one used by my classmate John Miller. In a fit of 1:30 a.m. rage, I made the rather strange decision that this would be a good idea to test and see what happened.

I decided to simply invert the order of the stanzas rather than the words within them to avoid creating a hodgepodge of random sentences in out-of-order groupings. The result is linked here, as Blogger cannot properly handle the spacing required.

I feel like the reversed version tells more of a story than the original does! True, this may be a placebo effect induced by the fact that I had actual influence in the revised production, but the flow feels greatly improved when the stanzas (stanzae?) are reversed.  The spacing is unorthodox and really rather annoying, but I do appreciate the stairs-landing-stairs effect of the descending lines directly above the final dividing symbol.

Waldrep used a different symbol there -- I replaced it with the radioactive sign because it was the closest thing I had.