Poetry page 1

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Poetry - Introduction

4. Poetry
Is poetry as difficult to understand as you may think it is? If now is the first time you have come across poetry, it may be difficult. But even if you have never looked at English poetry before, remember the stories and songs of your own language. Some of them are certainly poetry.
What is poetry?
This is not as easy to answer as it is to ask. Poetry is perhaps not a thing, in which we have to decide: is it or is it not. More likely it is a quality like hot and cold. We don't argue about whether water is hot or cold, we measure the amount of heat in it, or the temperature. A piece of language may be more or less poetic.
There is no certain definition by which we can be sure any particular piece of writing is poetry. For example poetry is usually printed in a special way with lines of regular length, capitals at the beginning of each line and with spaces between groups of lines, making verses. But that doesn't mean that everything printed in this way is poetry. Greetings cards often have little verses in them, but they are not usually thought of as poetry.
Some poetry, especially the older, has rhymes - but so do greetings card verses. Rhyme doesn't necessarily mean poetry is there.
Poetry also uses various tricks of language. Even if it has no rhyme, it generally has a rhythm, and it can sometimes have both rhymes and rhythms. But frequently the rhythm is hard to notice easily.
So here is a possible definition:The difference between poetry and prose is in the state of mind of the person composing it. The reader may achieve the same state of mind.
Robert Graves, a twentieth century poet, said that the test of poetry was whether when shaving it caused the hairs on the chin to bristle: that is, it produces an emotional effect. Perhaps the simplest description of what poetry is: It is language used precisely, every word chosen carefully for its emotional and intellectual effect.
Inspiration
How is poetry composed? To answer this we have to find out what a poet says about the way he works. Robert Graves said that a poet doesn't sit down and decide to write a poem. He has to wait until it comes into his mind with the words already arranged. The poet's task is, according to Graves, to write it down exactly as he receives it.
What does it mean: The poem came into his mind? If we come into a room, we come from somewhere else. Where has the poem come from?
Another word for this is Inspiration which means in its original Latin root breathing in.
The answer to questions like this needs some knowledge of psychology. According to psychologists the human mind has two levels of working (or according to other psychologists many more). One of them is known as the Conscious level. This is the part of the mind we use when thinking and talking. The other level is the Unconscious. Although we are not usually aware of the Unconscious, this may be the part which causes dreams. But it is always working away in secret. For example it can think about problems and solve them even when we are asleep. Many scientists say that they have had a difficult problem in mathematics or physics (or any science) and have been unable to solve it. They go to sleep. In the morning when they wake they know the solution to their difficulty. An explanation for this is that their unconscious mind has been working away on it while the conscious mind was turned off during sleep. Possibly the unconscious mind knew the answer all the time but was unable to communicate with the conscious mind except when the conscious mind is "switched off".
Robert Graves's view is that a poet is someone who knows how to listen to his unconscious, or allow it to communicate with his conscious part even while he is awake. At certain times his mind operates in a different way from what we regard as normal.
This explanation therefore says that the poem comes into the conscious mind from the unconscious, which is the part where it was composed. For this reason poetry is different from other kinds of writing.
Scientists who study the brain have suggested that the two sides of the brain - left and right - correspond to the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind. People who have suffered damage to one side find that they can still function but some activities are very difficult while others are no worse. This sort of evidence suggests that one side of the brain is used for logical thought; the other for artistic work, the perception of whole entities. Thus this sort of theory suggests that inspiration consists of the work of the artistic side of the brain communicating itself to the logical side.
Scientists often get new ideas in the same way. The best known example is also the oldest known. Archimedes, who lived over 2300 years ago, had a problem of finding out whether a king's crown was really made of gold. He needed to know its volume but couldn't measure it. One day while sitting in his bath, the solution came to him by inspiration. As he sat in the bath, water flowed out. He was not the first man to slop water out of his bath, but he may have been the first to notice it, and as far as we know the first to put it to use. What he had noticed of course was that the amount of water to flow out must be the same as the volume of the body put in. He is said to have shouted Eureka, Greek for I have found it.
Sitting in the bath, going for a walk alone, riding in the back of a taxi, and many other places or activities are suitable occasions for encouraging inspiration. What seems to be needed is to turn off the thinking part of the brain.
I am sure you have had experiences of suddenly understanding something which had been puzzling you.
All these are examples of inspiration. Poets say that they write by inspiration. Probably too, the best prose is also written by inspiration. What is unfortunate is that so much prose is written without inspiration and is hard to read and maybe untrue, as a result.
Inspiration may be considered as the use of more of the abilities of the mind than usual. Some teachers use it while teaching too. In the past, poets used to believe the poems were put in the mind by the action of a god (or more usually a goddess). Perhaps poets in your language may say the same.
Find out.
Write down what you discover.
How does this help us, the readers?
Meaning
If poetry is something written by inspiration, how can we tell what is poetry from what isn't?
What poets understand, more than other people, is the relationships between one word and another and the deep meaning of words. A poet is someone who understands more of the meaning of words than anyone else. If this is true, the poet is one of the most important kinds of people because it is the poets who keep the language working properly. Good language is essential for human life.

If people use language without thinking about it properly - and there are many who use English badly (including British and American people) - it becomes hard to understand and ugly. Just as important, the use of bad language prevents us telling the truth. To tell the truth the exact use of language is needed.

Confucius, an ancient Chinese philosopher, said:
If wrong language is used, what is understood is not what was meant.
If what is understood is not what is meant, wrong action will be taken.
If wrong action is taken, many will die.
Most people (including many native English speakers in Britain and America) do not think very often about the meaning of the words they use. People need to hear and read words being used exactly, which is what a poet does. A great poet can have lasting influence on the way words are used. Shakespeare's use of many words changed their meanings and fixed them for hundreds of years. A poet can make it possible for new words to be used in a language. (Though that is not the only way. As an example, people working in the computer industry have evolved a large new vocabulary to talk about a new set of concepts, by changing the meaning of words previously in common use, and developing new words from them: software, hardware, bus.)

An important difference between poetry and ordinary prose is that the words in a poem may have more than one meaning at the same time. It is true that some kinds of prose can show more than one meaning, but it is much more common of poetry. A poem usually needs to be read many times and carefully in order to understand it completely. Each time it is read more meanings may be seen in it. The reason why inspiration is important is that the conscious, or logical, mind is not good at coordinating the various meanings. The conscious mind concentrates on only one meaning at a time. The unconscious, or the artistic mind seems able to remember all the meanings at once.
Perhaps the person reading the poem needs to have the same state of mind as the poet had while he was composing it. Probably the complete person needs to be able to use both parts of his mind, which may be the real purpose of the Arts.

The main problem that you, as a second language learner, will have is that you almost certainly haven't learned enough of the meanings of words. The trouble is, words are not like numbers. They don't have a single fixed meaning we can look up in a dictionary. Words show their meanings only in the way they are used. To find out how a word is used therefore you need to read a great deal.
The native speaker has been hearing the words used all his life and has heard most of them thousands of times. This gives his mind - both kinds - lots of chances to associate the words with others. He carries in his memory a "dictionary" of associations which is activated whenever he comes across a word in a poem. Anyone learning the language in later life, mainly from books and without much experience of native speakers has difficulty in assembling in his memory such a dictionary.
The only way is to read as many as possible of the present and past usages. That's how the dictionary is compiled. The Oxford English Dictionary, a 20 volume book and the largest English dictionary, does not define words. It gives the various usages, quoting the earliest written use and the later uses as the meaning changes. As the poets and writers change the meaning of the words the Oxford English Dictionary will report the changes.
You are more likely to find it hard to understand poetry than prose, and that may make you feel it is difficult. It is also hard for you to understand the difference between good and bad poetry.

The effect on the reader
Robert Graves says that he defines poetry by how it was composed. But he also defines it by the effect it has on the reader. He says that poetry which was inspired when written affects the reader in a similar way. He says it can, for example, make the hair stand on end - something which only happens when some emotion is being felt.
The hair stands on end when you meet a lion in the bush, or a man points a gun at you; or a beautiful woman looks at her lover.
If the poet while composing the poem had a feeling for all the meanings of the words, the reader may, if he reads it at the right time and place, also have the same feeling of knowledge. Unfortunately, the classroom may not be the right place. A quiet room, or a lonely clearing in the forest may be better places to read poetry.
This too makes it difficult to study poems.

Three wrong ideas about poetry
1) It must use unusual words
A good poem uses the right words. These may be quite ordinary words. There is no need to use old-fashioned words. Modern poets use modern words. Poets of the past used words which were modern in their time. If an uncommon word is exactly the one needed by the poet he will use it, and perhaps it will become more common as a result. Shakespeare probably invented some of the words he needed.
2) The word order must be unusual
In the past poets sometimes used a different word order to emphasise the meaning of particular words, or to allow a certain rhyme to be used, or to produce the right rhythm. Even then, if they altered word order only in order to get a certain rhyme the poem is considered defective. It is only if there are other reasons - such as keeping the rhythm - for changing the order that it is acceptable. In any case, in the past different word orders were used in ordinary speech. For example nowadays we can't say: "Sleeps he?" We have to say: "Is he asleep?" or "Does he sleep?"
This is a change which has occurred in the English language. Moreover, in the past educated people in Europe learned Latin as a second language for the same reason that you are learning English. Latin can put the words of a sentence in many more different orders than English because in Latin the meaning of a sentence is not dependent on word order. Instead word endings are used. In English nowadays we can make few changes to word order without changing the sentence meaning.
The last of the poets who worked in this way was probably Gerard Manley Hopkins in the late 19th century (see below).
3) It must have rhyme
Most of Shakespeare's work is not rhymed but most of his work is considered to be poetry. Most modern poets don't use rhymes at the end of the lines of verses. Rhyme was commoner in the past. It is much commoner in other languages, such as Farsi (Persian) than in modern English.

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