The Rewarding Depth of Poetry

More than a comfort for these times.

Gene McCarthy, Minnesota Senator and one-time candidate for President claimed that baseball and poetry were higher priorities than politics. You can imagine the reaction. But there is truth in this, at least for poetry.

Politics is seldom more than prose, often at the most debased level. It is the comma among clauses in a scroll of legislation. It is a “message” on political billboards. Even good persuasion is careful analysis of problem and solution. It is not beauty. It exists within the formal parameters, and awful limitations of the written and spoken word

Formal writing is limited.  That cluster of intuition, idea and hope that make our lives beautiful and believable are lost in the thickets of proper grammar and syntax.  Prose gives us our marching orders, forms ranks for our disciplined advance. Talking points emphasize repetition and the tight weave of logic.

Poetry is different.  It resists organization into “useful” ideas, the kinds that start with assumptions and end with prohibitions (or narrow permission for action).  It is truly difficult, because the reality it reaches toward is far greater than any mere construction of meaning. 

Reason can prod and pull us along many dark places.  There is no reason to bewail clarity, as there is no reason to cringe at complexity.  But reason cannot resolve the mystery of our lives. On the beach-heads of our lives the wind and the sea deposit debris scattered in patterns never imagined by a well schooled mind.  Our deepest sense of right disregards good manners, cheerful dispositions, and clever aphorisms. Perhaps even disrespects all such offerings.

I am reading books by seven Ohio poets as part of a panel choosing an Ohio poet of the year. Only writing that escapes from these “earthly” bonds sets fires in my mind.

It is for these reasons that Senator McCarthy turned to poetry in moments of tragedy and despair. A deeply grieving Senator Robert Kennedy upon the death of Martin Luthor King, quoted the Greek poet Aeschylus from memory “And even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

A simple word of advice. Take time out in these days to put down the partisan drum rolls and the Facebook sniper shots. Make time for art, music and poetry.

For art bears a beauty and truth as no partisan flag can stake on the frontiers of life.