Poetry is an effect where the cause is an encounter with a "numinous other," i.e., a reality other than what is empirically provable. This encounter may be localized within physical objects and places (nature, buildings, people, etc.) or abstracts and emotions (moments of joy, sorrow, love, hate, beauty, revulsion, hope, despair, etc.) or, as often is the case, a coalition of the two. Regardless, those things serve as mediums for the numinous other. We feel as though there is something greater behind them, that they are something more than themselves, something more to themselves. All humans desire (if they are truly awake and alive at the moment) the words to give utterance to this encounter, but only the poet actually finds the words. Therefore, poetry is the utterance of an encounter with the numinous other.
Mere rhyme and meter are not enough to make poetry. As a child I was often asked to make "poems" on the spot, which meant I was to make a simple yet adorable rhyme scheme based on something like the attribute(s) of a flower or a person. Such creations, though childishly sweet, are not poetry, for they do not venture past the subject/object of its consideration. There is no penetration to the other side of things. Talking about a flower (and rhyming it with "shower") is not poetry; giving expression to the numinous quality suddenly encountered within/behind a flower is.
The mere listing of maxims is not poetry either. I am sick to death of lines and lines of various yet somewhat interconnected commands and interrogatives strung together like stacked sentences. A poem is not a command; it is an expression. It shows rather than preaches. Its instruction is experiential rather than factual. Its only "commands" in the sense of incantation or enchantment, i.e., it has captured within its utterance (like fireflies in a jar) the numinous other of its encounter, and its recitation brings that quality(ies) bubbling up to the surface of reality yet again. In such a sense, its expressions are revelations, and the poet is a prophet of what they have seen and heard. What the poem expresses in these moments of revelation may very well be true (or a truer expression of the truth), but in such cases the hearer is blessed without preaching.
-Jon Vowell (c) 2009
Mere rhyme and meter are not enough to make poetry. As a child I was often asked to make "poems" on the spot, which meant I was to make a simple yet adorable rhyme scheme based on something like the attribute(s) of a flower or a person. Such creations, though childishly sweet, are not poetry, for they do not venture past the subject/object of its consideration. There is no penetration to the other side of things. Talking about a flower (and rhyming it with "shower") is not poetry; giving expression to the numinous quality suddenly encountered within/behind a flower is.
The mere listing of maxims is not poetry either. I am sick to death of lines and lines of various yet somewhat interconnected commands and interrogatives strung together like stacked sentences. A poem is not a command; it is an expression. It shows rather than preaches. Its instruction is experiential rather than factual. Its only "commands" in the sense of incantation or enchantment, i.e., it has captured within its utterance (like fireflies in a jar) the numinous other of its encounter, and its recitation brings that quality(ies) bubbling up to the surface of reality yet again. In such a sense, its expressions are revelations, and the poet is a prophet of what they have seen and heard. What the poem expresses in these moments of revelation may very well be true (or a truer expression of the truth), but in such cases the hearer is blessed without preaching.
-Jon Vowell (c) 2009
2 comments:
Hello Jon,
I don't usually read poetry, avoiding to buy poetry books, for example, from Tolkien works, or brazilian poets. In fact, I never got used to it. Do you think people need to develop any special skill to read poetry? Why some people seem to have difficult with it? And how we could achieve it?
You're asking the biggest question in all of creative writing:
"Is a writer born or made?"
My answer has always been "A little of both."
What I mean is that creative writing (incl. poetry) takes just as much inborn talent as it does learned skill.
"Reading" poetry in the sense of mechanics (e.g., scansion) does take learned skill. Good poetry has varying degrees of sophisticated technical thought behind it, and an education is one's best bet to catch all of those nuances.
However, "reading" poetry in the sense of aesthetics (i.e., to appreciate it) can be a result of education, inborn capacity, or (what is more likely) both.
Regardless, people who have "difficulty" with the mechanics and/or aesthetics of poetry should pursue a poetic education (if they care to). There is no guarantee that it will change them, however. There are some people whose minds (and I would even add souls) are simply not wired to "read" poetry. Only God knows why, and I am pretty sure He has a good reason.
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