a matter of utility

To me poetry, in and of itself, is a nonentity, a great, massive nothing. What does poetry say that has not been said before? What does it focus on that has not been thought before, felt before? Even its conduit, language, is something that relies on millennia of repeated, learned, accepted meanings and notions. I do not assert that poetry is a static void, unmoving and bare. What I intend to say is that poetry, its essence, the thing that makes it work, profound, hated, loved, imitated lies not in the words, structures, tropes, sentiments, themes, but in the approach. This approach, jarring by nature and focused by mechanics (I use the word mechanics to mean the poet’s craft, skill, process, etc.), may take the form of iambs or sonnets or other physical attributes of a poem but it is not these things themselves that make poetry. What makes poetry is the view, the distance between the poet and the reader, the distance between experiences. How that distance is connoted, how that distance is framed, how it is defined, approached, and understood, makes a poem. And with the approach comes the utility.

Poetry is a tool and, as such, has its station, function, and use in a larger scheme. Because poetry is not new (not new in the sense that everything that goes into a poem has been seen, felt, understood before) the scheme in which it takes part in is just as old, if not older, than poetry itself. Matters of truth, beauty and human understanding have been debated since language existed, and, possibly before, in one’s head, before there was a spoken language. In light of this, the function of poetry must be focused, pointed, almost inherently oriented toward its goal, whatever goal that may be. There is no room for repetition, no place for prattling along an aesthetic divorced from utility. There cannot be poetry for the sake of poetry, beauty for the sake of beauty.  Poetry cannot exist within itself. There is no art without ritual. Poetry must exist in the greater scheme of transplanting the truth of human understanding from the writer into the reader. The ritual is the poet observing, the art is the distance (or lack thereof) the poet creates within the approach.

poetry as language

I think that, and I could be wrong, poetry is language, as opposed to a construct derived from the refinement of language. Although made up of nouns and verbs, objects and phrases, words and tropes, it itself is a language. Poetry is the language of the un-expressible, a language elusive, one which we have dire need for; yet only realize its previous absence when we discover it. It gives us language to express raw emotion, a conduit to discuss that which is wordless. Poetry names the nameless, defines the indeterminable, the infinite so that it may be thought. “The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems” –from Audre Lorde’s “Poems are Not Luxuries.”

East at Sunset

I can't remember the last time
I had time to read without the racket
Of worry and hospital silence. I've forgotten
How the sun sets, how it explodes the sky
In a tapestry of brazen oranges and golds, bronzes
And warm crimsons, then lulls itself into soft pinks
That aren't sure they should be. I've missed
A century of these sunsets, a century of being.
Too caught up in sorting myself out, in
Making myself a mystery so that not even I
Know what happens next. Sunsets require
No calculation, no planning, no three-hour
Surgeries. Sunsets are simple. They need no language,
Save themselves, yet inspire language beyond understanding.
Sunsets are simple. I want to be simple.

West at Sunset

Looking west at sunset
One can see a brilliant yolk
Spilling out of the sky, running
Over everything; gold glistened
Leaves etched in light, and a dying blue
Who knows not to overstay its welcome.
One can see shadows
Stretch toward you, reaching
To pass you up, to swallow you whole.
A sun at sunset is like no other,
The blazing bronze-gold, the soft orange-butter
Melting into trees and clouds, melting
Into the eyes. Truth has never seemed so bright
As in the west, has never been so brief
As in the moments of passing light
When the earth rises to please us, to show
Us that we are not so static, not so
Stoic as to remain immobile in a time
Of such silent, swooning melodies.