C. G. Vaillancourt
Poetry as an art form is possibly the most demanding, requiring sustained effort, a varied apprenticeship and unusual gifts. Rewards are pleasure the work affords to a wide readership, a deeper understanding of literature generally, and a kinship with past writers.
Discussion
Poetry comes in many forms. Much turned out in schools, creative writing courses, prisons and rehabilitation units aims at something other than art. The poetry attempts to teach the rudiments of literary composition, to encourage self-expression, to explore the writer's psyche and to penetrate the sources of distress or antisocial behaviour. Splendid. So why is poetry that has none of these more generous aims given critical acclaim? Why do we prize something that has no practical benefit?
Because the arts are one way of expressing our larger humanity. Poetry, and that means all poetry, is the language closest to human experience. Poetry, said Aristotle, is superior to history because it uses words in their fuller potential, and creates representations more complete and more meaningful than nature can give us in the raw. Man needs coherence and consistency in his affairs, and the arts provide meaning, significance and purpose in a universe that seems increasingly strange and hostile. Words are not neutral entities, say the Postmodernists, but have intentions, associations and histories of usage. What we understand of the world is largely through language, and poetry may indeed clear the portals of vision.
Poetry may even achieve a special mode of knowledge — an essential, full and vital representation of the world where other representations are abstract and abbreviated. Facts are not rendered more exact by being expressed in a grey, abstract, bureaucratic language, and indeed philosophy's extended attempt this century to find a logically transparent language has been an heroic failure. Language is irremediably metaphoric, and speaks through analogies and parables. Poetry is aware of the past usages of words, their latent properties, their aspirations, deceits and corruptions, and it is therefore poetry that records the greater truth.
Or can do. We call serious the poetry that causes us to see ourselves and the world in greater depth and clarity. Its truth, its moral dimensions and its wider social significance are things that seize us immediately. The blood is chilled, and we see for the first time what should have been obvious. Life and poetry occupy very different spheres, but with poetry we travel with our eyes open through a world that is cruel, uplifting and beautiful. We understand our place in the larger scheme of things, which was possibly our birthright before science and the minutia of everyday life locked us out.
Some Points to Bear in Mind
Remember that:
1. Dedication to poetry is a vow of poverty. Scant reward comes in money or reputation. As in other arts, a more decent living is to be found on the periphery — in teaching, commentating on and/or performing poetry.
2. Poetry is a calling, not a career, and only adolescents strut around as "wannabe" poets.
3. Despite exhortation, hype and extensive funding, poetry is no longer the queen of the arts. It has minority status — worthy, but not courted by publishers or the media.
4. The rewards of poetry are those of a skilled craftsman in a difficult medium, one that gives great opportunities, and enormous pleasure when the work succeeds.
5. Poetry is still the workshop of language, and things can be explored in poetry that escape prose. Indeed, for all the current difficulties, poetry has the most innovative, exciting and significant of today's writing. To contribute here is to join a select community, and to enter into a kinship with the serious writers of the past.
