The Stuff of Poetry

April, observed T.S. Eliot, is the cruelest month; that truth is attested to by the facts that March Madness produces, in April, 67 losers and only I winner and that April showers herald not only flowers but also sneeze-producing pollen.  Those sordid truths are of course not the kinds of truths with which Eliot’s poetry is concerned.  For the focus of poetry is not on fact but on the internal truths we commonly label authenticity.  My profile contains a set of facts about my life history which are true, but a far truer statement about how I view myself internally can be found in Yeats’ great poem, “Sailing to Byzantium”, which tops the list on “My Favorite Poems by Others” page.  For me, that is authenticity, in spades. 

The poet is less concerned with the kind of facts we call history than with conveying authenticity.  It is that authenticity that we honor in April, America's national poetry month.  But we Americans, despite the number of fine American poets, are uncomfortable with honoring poetry.  One of our poets wryly noted that “Somewhere today, in some newspaper, a poet will be written about, perhaps because he was shot in a lovers’ quarrel, or was in a tragic accident or was involved in a financial scandal, but not because of his poetry.”  This week the newspapers had several articles about the exhumation of the body of Pablo Neruda, but all were about the exhumation or about Chilean politics; none referred to any specifics of his poetry.

De Tocqueville, that French nobleman who was also the analyst of all things American, observed that under American democracy the arts, which include poetry, would suffer.  Democracy can stand the charge; it has enough virtues without adding poetic sensibility. But our inner life is lessened by its absence. Perhaps the problem is our practicality; an old friend of ours, a fine engineer, always professed hatred of poetry because “they never come out and say what they mean,” That poetry sometimes says things that just cannot be said in prose was of no account to him. 

Perhaps the discomfort is due to a democratic mistrust of elite skills.  If so, it is misplaced.  Poetry is a traditional voice of democratic protest.  Plato refused poets admittance into his authoritarian Republic because of the disruption they could create.  That nursery rhyme we learned as infants, “Three Blind Mice”, originally was a protest against Mary, Queen of Scots. Lorca died for his poetry as did numberless other great poets throughout history.

The greatest dishonor we can do to poetry is to ignore it.  That is what many do every day, and they, and the rest of us, are the worse for it.  Emma Lazarus' poem, carved into the base of the Statue of Liberty is an uncomfortable reminder of what should be done about immigration policy and isn't, so it is ignored.  "America the Beautiful", with its references to fruited plains and alabaster cities is an uncomfortable reminder of what we are not doing to make America the idyllic place it deserves to be, so it is ignored.  John Donne's "No man is an island..." is, though technically prose, a wonderfully poetic repudiation of the extreme individualism practiced by many, so it too is ignored.
It is good this national poetry month to remember that poetry is a humane voice that dictators hate, and that many have died for.  It, at its best, contains both wisdom and courage that reach across cultural boundaries to remind us of the many common bonds we share, and above all, it is authentic.
Don't ignore it.