The Power of Poetry
The Power of Poetry
What do you think of when you hear the word “poetry?” Maybe it brought to mind an image of your high school classroom, the countless hours spent on assonance and alliteration? Maybe it brings back memories of the lavish illustrations in your childhood Dr. Seuss storybooks? Maybe it calls to mind the flowery language and glorious ballads of your middle school performance of “a Midsummer Night's Dream,” when you first reveled in the magic of showbiz?
Poetry seems to be steeped into our lives in a thousand little ways. From your favorite song to the horrific haikus your grammar school self scrawled to your sweetheart. Poetry is powerful, no matter how it is used. Poetry is everywhere you look, waiting down each corner you turn. And we’ve gotten so used to it, we hardly even notice! But… what would happen if, suddenly, it just… wasn’t?
Imagine, if you will, the smile emoji. Dot eyes, yellow circle, line smile.
Imagine sending someone the most meaningful text OF YOUR LIFE, whatever that means to you. It was heartfelt, deep, sincere, genuine, glorious.
Imagine that they simply responded with the “smile” emoji.
Just that. Nothing else. Just one little yellow icon in response to your fabulous message. Suddenly, the smiling eyes look a little more empty, the smile a little less obvious, the yellow a little less bright.
That’s what the world would be like without poetry.
A vacant landscape. A silent world. An empty culture. A ghost town. No birds sing in the trees, no beauty is pointed out, it all just goes overlooked. What good is a sunrise when no one wants to watch it? What good is a song with no one to listen? What good is that extra detail if there’s no extra meaning to go with it?
Poetry is powerful, no matter how it is used. But, all too often, poetry goes overlooked. People hear “William Shakespeare” and just think of fluffy language and fluffier sleeves. But what I think gets undermined even more than that are the benefits such things can have on a culture and society. (Albeit more so the language than the sleeves.) Maybe the fluffy language can encourage us to pause over it and consider a deeper meaning behind it. It can encourage us to think deeply about not only the poem itself, but all things. Once our minds get thinking on something, it’s hard to stop. And what could be more important than that? That’s why we spend eighteen years of school engaging our minds. (Hopefully.)
Poetry contains the details that make up the wonderful spice that is life. It makes all our days a bit more special! For an example, imagine a day where everyone only spoke of the basic details and impressions. For instance, “There is a red car.” Everyone’s language would be stunted, with no inflections of deeper meaning behind their words! With poetry, the boring, basic sentence; “There is a red car,” can be turned into a beautiful, fantastic instrument for self expression. “The vivid red car stood out in vibrant contrast against the gray concrete, stark and bare. The smooth, tinted windows of the vehicle reflected the color in the crisp blue sky, with gorgeous orange leaves floating through it, tossing smells of orchards and corn mazes through the soft cool air.” I think that’s a LITTLE more interesting, at least.
Poetry loves to explore. It loves to engage! It’s an extrovert! It loves swirling around from mind to mind, weaving the web of humanity just a little bit tighter, but… it can also be personalized. Even the most ambiguous person can want a moment of peace and self love every once in a while. When poetry has an indoor recess day, it engages our minds in an astounding amount of marvelous little ways. It lights up corners of our minds we may not have seen without it there. It opens new pathways, explores new realizations, and even builds new connections, all by itself. Inner conversations, shower thoughts, and little rememberings and realizations! Who could resist sharing these insights with others?
And what way could be better than over a cup of tea. Imagine… a cup of tea. Before you add the teabags, it’s simply water. Beautiful, life-giving water. Water so often goes unnoticed, unappreciated. But if you add some flavor to it, it becomes more than just a thing to keep you hydrated. It becomes a staple of cultures around the globe! It’s tea! Poetry is similar. Like tea, it is steeped into our society and culture. Our worldness. The world around us is incredible, but its simple beauty often is overlooked. But if you add a little poetry, it helps call our attention to the beauty around us.
If you’ve ever read “A Wrinkle In Time” by Madeleine L’Engle, you’ll probably remember the spookily uniform city of Camazotz; a place with no space for missteps, no room for anything but solid, reliable sameness. This is a place with no culture besides fear and apprehension. Isolation and toxic hive mindsets. Now contrast this city - if you can call it that - with another. Specifically, London! The home of Keats! Coleridge! Kipling! Dickens! A city rich with history and cultures. In one of these cities, poetry is a prominent part of the cultural riches and depth. And you can bet it’s not Camazotz.
What is your favorite thing about the world? Some may say love, some may say beauty, some may say doing something they love. Some may say the feeling of sunshine on your face. Some may say the stars. Some may say music! Marvelous music. Because of course, music is one of the most powerful forms of poetry. Imagine sitting in a busy plaza, filled with people. Imagine all the sounds you would hear. Maybe as someone walks by you, they absentmindedly hum along to the song on their earbuds. Maybe a toddler trails their caregiver, babbling and cooing to “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.” Maybe a busker leans on a street lamp, strumming an acoustic rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.” Suddenly, all that stops. The only sounds left are footsteps. Scattered voices. Maybe a door opening and closing every once in a while. Even the song that was stuck in your head goes silent. Can you feel the difference? Maybe that kid brought you a smile, recalling your own hours spent watching “Mr Rogers” as a kid. Maybe the person with earbuds was humming last week’s favorite song. Almost immediately, you connected with that person, over music. Over poetry. That’s pretty incredible.
The best songs are the ones that tell a story. I think the same goes for poetry! Stories are one of the most fantastic, vital parts of not only poetry, but all life. What would your life be like without those stories you read as a kid? What smiles would you have missed out on without Shel Silverstein’s everlasting “Where the Sidewalk Ends”? Where would you be without reading “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” in seventh grade? Poetry has somehow reached each and every one of us, at some point in our lives. For some, they may have delved deep into Emily Dickinson, enthralled with the natural narrative of “Hope is the thing with feathers,” and others may have just said ‘Grace’ so often they can recite it from memory without batting an eye. In any case, it reached us on some level.
Poetry doesn’t always have to reach us on such a small scale, though. For some of us, it reaches us enough to touch our very souls, sending a shiver dancing down our bodies, planting a seed of change in our minds. While many poems can put a smile on our faces with sweetness or humor, or sentimentality, some poems can bring tears to our eyes and pain to our hearts. This effect, this ability to spark action and emotion, is the power of poetry. In just a few simple lines and stanzas, we realize the true impact of an unkind remark, or the real scars left behind by that little piece of trash, so haphazardly discarded out the car window. And these things are what really trigger change. Think what our world could have been without Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream.” Without “Still I Rise,” by Maya Angelou, or “Ain’t I A Woman?” By Sojourner Truth, or “I Am Prepared To Die,” by Nelson Mandela. This is the true power of poetry.
Of course, not every poem triggers critical thinking, or memories, or positive change, or good things at all. While poetry can be this wonderful thing that moves people to do even more wonderful things, it can also move people in the other direction. Look at Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech. Look at Sean Penn’s 2004 Oscar acceptance speech. These words illustrate how poetry is not always used in perfect eloquence, with perfect meanings and perfect goals. Quite the opposite, really. But while these awful things will always exist in some respects, our best step forward is to ensure that it never outweighs the positives. So we keep writing poems. We keep writing speeches, telling stories, singing songs, in the hope that it is enough to be louder than the pain that can come with poorly used words or stories or songs, outshining the evil.
Poetry is this huge, fantastic thing that has so much sway over our world. But it isn’t always. It means different things to everyone. It may mean the difference between life and death to the exhausted worker, who wasn’t sure if they would make it even one more day in this industrial hell, until they heard “Vienna” by Billy Joel come over the loudspeakers for the first time, and everything seems just a little bit easier. It could mean the difference between passing and failing to the stressed high-schooler frantically memorizing “A Vision In A Dream” for their English class. It could mean a good night’s sleep to the single mom, finally yawning out the last line of “Stuart Little” and softly closing the door to her kids’ bedroom, where they sleep at last after a long day of cabin fever. Or It could simply mean a few extra words to put a fourth grade book report over the required word count. But it always changes something. No matter how small, no matter how big. So we keep writing.
Poetry is so many things. It is beauty. It is light. It is pain. It is change. And yes, it could even be a ploy to dazzle that cute librarian. Poetry is all these things. It’s about the person behind the poem. About self expression. And it is all unique. Each poem is one of a kind. But each one is tied to the others in the marvelous, beautiful web of words that holds our globe together. It is everything.
And I think that is truly what makes poetry powerful.