Toe in the Water

I Only Ask Because...

I Only Ask Because…

The thing is, a poem’s supposed to tell us about the poet, isn’t it? First the poet has to feel something and then he writes the poem in such a way that the reader gets it and experiences what it’s like to be the poet. That, surely, must be the essence of poetry.

So what do we do if the poem reveals a nature that is less than likable? If, whether the poet is aware of it or not, what he has written reveals that he is mean or self-obsessed or hateful in some way. The poem has done its job, at least. But can we say that it’s good, considering the unsavoury truth it has revealed?

I know that, very often, it’s the paintings we don’t enjoy that are actually the best. Any painting that elicits the response, “I’d not have that on my wall,” has communicated with us, whether we enjoy what it’s saying or not. Take Picasso’s Guernica for instance. It’s a powerful statement of the evils of warfare but it’s not something you’d hang in your bedroom. Who would want to wake up to that every morning?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso)

But I think the poetry that I’m talking about may be a different thing entirely. There are war poems, after all. It’s the poems that betray the smallness of the poet’s soul that trouble me, that make me wonder whether they deserve the label “good”, even though they have done their job very well on occasion. I’m not asking that poetry elevate us to a higher plane of understanding and humanity (although that would be nice) but that it should not drag us down to a lower level of existence.

Blogging is quite dangerous in that it, too, reveals the soul of the blogger. And now you know one more weird thing that occupies my thoughts.


Word Count: 307