Why Poetry?

I've been having a hard time thinking about what to write this week. We talked about some great things, but I just wasn't feeling a particular one...do you know what I mean? Haha. But then I thought back to a completely different class last week. I'm taking Introduction to British Literature with Dr. Stutz this semester, and it is an incredible class. I have it right after Honors Lit on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So I walked into class last week...after we've been reading poetry all class in Honors...and guess what we're reading in British Lit. Poetry. Go figure. I'm not going to lie - poetry is not my strong point. But between the two classes, I learned something...something so important.

Dr. Abernathy brought up what poetry is - it's place in the "circle" of literature. Dr. Stutz asked us "what exactly is poetry?" I couldn't find the answer! It thoroughly frustrated me. But I think I'm on the right track to the answer now, after reading Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry. Between that and Dr. Abernathy explanation, some dots are starting to connect.

Poetry aggravates me sometimes. It bothers me that I have to read the same thing over and over and over again to get the meaning - or even a possible meaning! Why not just tell it in a story? But that's the point! To quote Dr. Abernathy, "It''s when you want to skip that word or line that you need to go back and search it out." The poet and the writer of prose can both powerfully represent Truth. But perhaps the way the poet presents the Truth is what makes it so confounding...and so beautiful once it is understood. The poet limits his language; he uses rhyme and rhythm to surround his message and symbolism to display it in a new light. The poet can say the same thing - the same Truth - in fewer words. It seems to me that it is like a treasure. A person could run aground on an island and find a heap of gold and jewels on the shore. But what if he ran aground, found a cave, and inside it was a huge chest that was locked. What if he searched the entire island for they key, or for some way to open it...and when he did, the treasure itself was of no more value than the treasure on the shore. But to him, it was even more precious because of the process it took him to discover it. It was locked and hidden from him, which made him desire even more strongly to open it. Dr. Abernathy used a phrase Thursday referring to a line in Coleridge, "forbidding something in order to excite desire." Perhaps that what a poet does...writes his words differently...conceals them in a chest...encloses them from the obvious...forbids us from knowing the Truth easily...hiding the key so that we have to search for it...making the treasure all the more beautiful after the journey to open the chest.