Ep. 6/ A Love Letter to Poetry
Here’s why I love it and you should too!
Have you ever stumbled upon something—a line, a paragraph, a verse—that wielded such potency it snatched your breath away and left your mouth agape? Something curated with such sublimity that the words seemed to ebb and flow, almost as if they were running into each other. As if the words possessed a persevering push and pull, like a tide eagerly running to kiss the shore but never quite staying there before receding, leaving you sitting in the sand drenched as the droplets themselves dash down your fingers and the bridge of your nose. I just came across something exactly like that, and I think I’m going to need a good five to seven business days to recover.
I recently came across "Aurora Leigh" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This lengthy narrative poem in its totality is beyond profound and majestic, but the portion that has me completely in a chokehold is:
“Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries."
Ah, was I spellbound and then some! Come on, tell me you felt these words running down your spine like a chill. Tell me you have goosebumps because I, for sure, do.
Many moons ago, back in 1870, Emily Dickinson wrote in her letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson: “If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?” I love how, because she was a genius, she essentially uses poetry to explain what it is. I adore how it explains the job of poetry. Its responsibility to make you feel your feelings in a concentrated manner. To feel, after all, is an understated luxury!
I also appreciate that the quote above says ‘book’ and not ‘poem.’ Because it implies that words can be poetry even if they’re not called poems. This allows the reader to go beyond the constraints of poems to experience poetry. You cannot tell me that it wasn’t pure poetry when Hozier said in the song "Arsonist’s Lullaby":
“When I was a man I thought it ended
When I knew love's perfect ache
But my peace has always depended
On all the ashes in my wake.”
Summing up exquisitely the experience of thinking love will fix you when really we’re shaped by our misfortunes.
And when Taylor Swift said in "Cowboy Like Me":
“Now you hang from my lips
Like the Gardens of Babylon
With your boots beneath my bed
Forever is the sweetest con.”
Conveying how her lover is hanging on to her every word, listening attentively because they hold beauty and lushness (Gardens of Babylon are thought to have been gorgeous and are one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World) even though they might not be real or true at all (Some historians believe they were purely mythical and never actually existed), doubling down on this narrative of contradictions by juxtaposing the idea of hanging with something as grounded as boots beneath the bed and the sweetness of forever with the idea of a con.
But if poetry is all about emotions and feelings, how do you classify it as good? How do we know if certain strings of letters make up good poetry? The answer to that, according to me, can be found in what Leonard Cohen once said: “Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” Which is to say that the more a work rings with honesty, the deeper it seeps through its readers.
Rainer Maria Rilke said something to a similar effect when he stated in "Letters to a Young Poet" that a work is good if it's born out of necessity. That's one of the only ways he thought you could judge a poem. Which I think is a truly beautiful notion, after all, how can words ever carry any true substance if they aren’t burdened by the weight of the ruthless, rapturous, and relentless radiance of life.
In my experience, good poetry comes in two types, one that helps you find yourself, and second, that helps you forget yourself. When I say that I mean poetry, like life, presents a perfect paradox, offering both reflection and transcendence. Some of them will allow you to peer at your exact reflection and others will transpose you into a dimension that you did not even know existed.
Poetry is so raw, so intricate, so outrageously honest at times you will feel guilty of trespassing. They are like a window into a house you shouldn't ever look into—but you walk the driveway, kick the cobbles, and hell, there you are, thoroughly enjoying it. Poetry rings with tenderness and truth, a carefully built structure of ripping yarn and ethical parable. They cross boundaries and reclaim hope. They represent the shimmer of life. When you find good poetry, you hand over all the strings of your heart to the author but well, they know exactly how to pull them and make them sing.
Poetry creates a gallery of memorable portraits, a perfect confection of fine writings and moving themes, and gives rhythm to silence, light to darkness. To paraphrase poet Paul Celan, poetry is like a handshake: it creates bonds between people. Poetry serves as a testament to all of us that we are never alone, that amongst these collective voices, we can find those that ring at the same frequency as ours, that when we stare across the gulf there is someone somewhere who feels exactly like us and they know how to cage those feelings using just the 26 alphabets at our disposal. Tell me, dear reader, don’t you find rich solace in this knowledge?
Until next time.
Xoxo
