Why Poetry?
As I prepare to share this article about the increasing value of poetry in my life, I can’t help but feel sad. A favorite teacher of mine, poet James Longenbach, died on July 29 at age 62. Thirty years ago, as an English major at the University of Rochester, I studied modern poetry with Professor Longenbach, and it is no exaggeration to say that it was among the most joyous educational experiences of my life. In many ways, he was a model for the kind of English teacher I would later aspire to be. His passion for poetry was contagious and unwavering, and he pushed his students to take risks and express independent thought.
I will never forget one session in which he walked into class, sat down in the corner without a word, and instead of initiating discussion as usual, simply waited in protracted silence for us to start talking about the assigned reading. This was his lesson plan for the day—which brings me to my favorite aspect of Professor Longenbach’s personality. He was fun. Meaning that he had a good sense of humor, yes, but also that he possessed an extraordinary lightheartedness and a healthy taste for the absurd. As a young man with a growing seriousness about not taking things too seriously, I sensed a kindred spirit.
Professor Longenbach simultaneously kept me on my toes and put me at ease. He enjoyed returning graded papers to us by slowly walking around the classroom and distributing them one at a time, mostly without comment, but in my case, he made a habit of routinely standing before me, looking at the title of my paper, looking at me, looking back at the title, looking back at me (this sometimes went on for quite a while), and finally offering a barely perceptible smile or uttering, “Hmmmmm…,” before handing me the paper and moving on. Not until years later would I see this little ritual as more than just an entertaining bit of silliness and realize that, consciously or otherwise, it was Professor Longenbach’s way of making me feel seen, and in a style he judged (correctly) that I would particularly appreciate. For his efforts, and for his teaching, I am grateful.
My heart goes out to James Longenbach’s family, friends, and many students.
I've had some level of interest in poetry for as long as I can remember, but in recent years, it has come to mean much more to me. As with any topic of deep interest, poetry inspires questions, not the least of which is why. Why poetry? Why does it mean so much to me, especially when so many other people just can't be bothered?
Poems have the power to draw us deeply into unfamiliar contexts. Take “Blond” by Natasha Trethewey for example, in which the author, a child of biracial parents, imagines the possibility of a lighter-skinned version of herself.
Certainly it was possible — somewhere
in my parents’ genes the recessive traits
that might have given me a different look:
not attached earlobes or my father’s green eyes,
but another hair color — gentleman-preferred,
have-more-fun blond. And with my skin color,
like a good tan — an even mix of my parents’ —
I could have passed for white.
When on Christmas day I woke to find
a blond wig, a pink sequined tutu,
and a blond ballerina doll, nearly as tall as me,
I didn’t know to ask, nor that it mattered,
if there’d been a brown version. This was years before
my grandmother nestled the dark baby
into our creche, years before I’d understand it
as primer for a Mississippi childhood.
Instead, I pranced around our living room
in a whirl of possibility, my parents looking on
at their suddenly strange child. In the photograph
my mother took, my father — almost
out of the frame — looks on as Joseph must have
at the miraculous birth: I’m in the foreground –
my blond wig a shining halo, a newborn likeness
to the child that chance, the long odds,
might have brought.
The subject matter couldn’t lie further from my own experience, but the poem allows me into its private world with such immediacy that I imagine myself in the speaker's place. I ponder the same questions she does, and I begin to feel what she feels. The context is unique, but the emotions it evokes are universally human. In the space of one short poem, I've walked in someone else's shoes—someone with a background far different from my own. Every new poem offers this possibility.
I would argue that there is nothing we need more as human beings than to connect regularly with this level of depth, particularly with people from unfamiliar backgrounds. Despite the best efforts of what I hesitate to call technological advancement, we live in an age of ever-increasing social detachment. Developing a poetry habit can help to bridge this disconnect, and as with any learned behavior, lasting change requires repeated exposure. The ultimate promise of reading poetry, as Jane Hirshfield writes in Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World, is that "by changing ourselves, one by one," we might also change “the outer world” that “we create and share." It may be a cliché to suggest that poetry, or any art, has the power to change the world, but like all clichés, it contains truth. Engagement with the right poem at the right time in one’s life can spark deep and lasting change.
I will write more about poetry’s place in my life (and the world) in future posts. In light of some recent reading, particularly a NY Times column about the internet by Ezra Klein and the book I am reading now, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell, I am already thinking about poetry’s meditative capacity to promote sustained attention in our increasingly information-overloaded, technologically-distracted culture.
Meanwhile, what do you think? Does poetry do it for you? Is there another art form that moves you in a similar way? What are you paying attention to? Any books or other reading to recommend?
My book recommendations from this post:
Native Guard - Natasha Trethewey
Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World - Jane Hirshfield
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy - Jenny Odell