Aug
4th Sailing
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Sails is a section of troutswirl that is devoted to presenting questions for discussion and debate on the nature and possibilities of haiku. Sails will be overseen by Peter Yovu. For an introduction to this section, see Sails.
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4th Sailing
presented by Peter Yovu
What is the Purpose of our Poetry?
I love the way questions arise on this blog quite naturally, inevitably, even. I come back to its guiding name, troutswirl, and think how in the animated turns of activity the blog generates, matters are raised as from a pond’s muddy floor, some shining like bits of mica coming into the sun, others still murky, fleeting, with fins. Some with teeth. One question has swirled up with great clarity, and some might say, a degree of urgency.
It was first asked by Paul Miller in a post beneath Envoy 4: “what is the purpose of our poetry?”
The word “purpose,” my dictionary tells me, is essentially the same as “propose,” to “put forward.” Certainly every time we write a poem and share it, we literally put it, and ourselves, forward. By doing so, is there something we want?
The invitation then, as I understand Paul’s question, is to explore what each of us purposes, or proposes, in and by our writing. The word “purpose” has implications not all will feel comfortable with; it may strike some as counter-intuitive in relation to art, which for many exists for its own sake. It implies a sense of what is private (personal) but also what is public, insofar as we wish to publish our work, to make it available to others, and perhaps to have an effect—to change something—but on what level, and to what degree? If there is a continuum between the personal (“my purpose is to see myself and my world more clearly”) and the public (“my purpose is to engage with the world at large in ways which may effect change”)— where do you find yourself? Of course, each of us will define his or her own continuum, or find another way entirely to enter the question.
As I mentioned before, and no doubt needless to repeat, this is an open forum wherein the guiding principle is mutual respect. The question of our 4th Sailing, I hope, will prompt discussion and maybe debate. I am curious about how you (and I) will enter it. I look forward, as always, to your response.
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When I was a child and learned brush stroke from a Chinese nurse it seemed wonderful that the images she would put on the paper could rise to what sounded like song to me. For me words were difficult as I seem to have been raised in a “silent” surrounding. My memories were created visually. During a time when I could no longer physically express myself in art I turned to poetry. I had read poetry all my life and had some success with it at school – at least the teachers thought it was good. I wasn’t so sure. Words to me seemed of endless meanings and colors and shapes…shapeshifters always. How does one walk on quick sand? But I found that life sometimes can become quick sand and during that time I discovered the French surrealists who recreated poetry during WWII. Something connected in my mind…in my spirit (if you will.) Here we all were swimming around in quick sand! How amazing that was to me. What do I want from poetry? Oh, sometimes I would wish that just the right word or phrase would come to me that could hold some of the wonder of existance in it. But I have never felt that poetry has any more purpose than just BEING. To me it is the voice of humanity. If our spirits are fed by it, so much the better. If our lives are healed by it, so much the better. If we learn things we never knew, so much the better. But to me it has got to be free of purpose other than being true to itself… If one form does not fit it, find another form. And when enough people find your form good for them you can become a choir.
Poetry for me it exploration. It will be wonderful to hear all the other responses to this question. You guys always give me so much to think about.
Mankind is a naming animal. Maybe that has something to do with it?????
For me, it’s a combination of testimony and ontology — I saw. I felt. I existed.
I was looking for one of the phrases of the French poets that I loved years ago, but came across this by Andre Breton (1896-1996)
On the Road to San Romano
Poetry is made in bed like love
It’s unmade sheets are the dawn of things
Poetry is made in a forest
Translators: Charles Simic & Michael Benedikt
Poetry is a special sort of communication.
In a comment on the discussion occasioned by Viral 4.3 (Penny Harter’s poem offered by Sheila Windsor) I wrote that “It is human nature to both seek and resist others.” I believe that poetry is the perfect vehicle for this balancing act. It allows us to suggest communion at a level not usually touched upon by the prose of “shooting the breeze,” “policy and procedure manuals,” or “instructions for assembly.” But it also, as Wallace Stevens says “resist(s) the intelligence almost successfully.”
Or perhaps, as Eliot has it, “human kind cannot bear very much reality”.
When I discovered haiku after a long career in editing and publishing (a seeming detour after a PhD in Comp Lit with a concentration on “lyric”), I was fascinated by it as a “genre” that offered something unique. Since then, I’ve tested this proposal by every known means and it still holds good, with nuances of course. Because it is a verbal construct, poetry has to deal with the problem of universals/concepts: how to make these responsible to experience? Poetry’s moral value comes from cleaning up the language, deconstructing cliches, etc. But also asking radical questions: When is a pipe not a pipe? Anyway, haiku, with its double structure, is shaped by just this tension between the univocal “eternal” (often conveyed in myth) and the equivocal happening of being in the situations we find ourself in. This is the original cut and all the various cuts analyzed by Gilbert are subordinate to it; a preoccupation with small cuts may hide from us the Big One! Anyway, my love for haiku has refreshed by love for other genres of short poem and the discussions we are now having are quite stimulating to poet and critic alike. I read and write haiku to explore the “cut” in experience: the “way” our daily narratives are animated by the gap between the finite and the infinite. Haiku in this sense is a meditative genre par excellence, not unlike the sonnet with its inward turn. On the Single Island Press blog, we invite discussions of this aspect of our current conversations.
Poetry is an vehicle that enables an audience to
share the emotions that a poet’s imagery conveys
(when successful).
from: As For Poets, Gary Snyder
As for poets
The Earth Poets
Who write small poems,
Need help from no man.
I’ve sometimes been asked to speak at schools on the topic of why I write poems. My first poem was published when I was eight years old (an anti war poem about the American Civil War) and I’ve been a nearly daily writer since age twelve. What impresses me, at ground level, about the idea of the purpose of writing poems is that the motivation can and does change at different stages of life and poetry is so flexible that it can be redirected to a great many purposes, even by a single individual.
My first motivation had to do with claiming power. We can forget how powerless we were as children. I found that a poem was a small world in which I could decide what was important – what should be included and what should be banished. I had all the powers of an adult within the borders of my poems.
Hi, John, Your comment about the “small world” reminds me of a poem I read as a child, about William Blake. The poem I read and I’m not sure I have it available any more, but it ended:
“He made a world his own.” That left an indelible impression on me since I was stuck in a body cast and had to invent my play mates etc. It does lead one to create a place where things can be adjusted to our perception of perfection, doen’t it? or at least a place easier to comprehend than we encounter sometimes in the world around us…we can isolate just that one thought or concept and concentrate and meditate on that.