We recently blogged about the exquisite poet Mary Oliver, and moreover, what we stand to miss out on—Oliver’s thought-provoking ideology, for example—whenever we unilaterally reject a particular form of art.

Do you love poetry? Hate it? Think there’s anything to be learned from it? What do you think we might miss out on if we pass on poems—or do you have an argument for saying good riddance?

My indifference to poetry is mostly a result of a string of English teachers who didn't like poetry, and as such didn't teach it; and one who did, but who made it so boring as to keep anyone from giving a damn.  Poetry to me has always amounted to counting syllables, marking little scoops and slashes above words that would make more sense as prose.

But a lack of poetry instruction shouldn't suggest that my teachers skipped over the academic stuff and cut straight to the vocational.  These goodly old people schooled us in volumes of fantastic prose, stuff that was about as irrelevant to career pursuits as poetry.  But it was that prose that stuck with me and my classmates, making lifelong readers out of a lot of us, with few poets to speak of.  I would guess that many Americans have had similar learning experiences.

So what's the deal?  Why is it that (forgive my anecdotal evidence here) Americans opt for prose, and only like poetry when it's in a song?  My own humble and only slightly informed opinion is that, in our fast paced and concise culture, we just aren't that crazy about a mode of discourse that keeps us waiting for the pauses between line breaks and keeping count of syllables.  Surely, if we as a society cared more for poetry, teachers would teach it; parents would make sure their kids were learning it, just as they make sure little Beverly is at her clarinet lessons every week?

Is there something
about wordy
flowery
sentences broken incomprehensibly
into long
dangly
form
using literary devices never seen in actual speech
that doesn't sit well with the
American mind?

Or do we simply prefer prose because it gets to the point?

Maybe I'm older than you, but I remember learning poetry as a sort of spoken music-  Modern "poetry" seems , to me, just prose "chopped up", not even trying to rhyme or have any meter.  I learned iambic pentameter from my father's reciting of "Arma virumque cano...,Troiai qui primus ab ores!"--..

Who can forget poems they have memorized?  "It was an Ancient Mariner..." ,  or "Let me not to the marriage of true minds ", or,"I must go down to the sea again..".I could go on and on. I regret that memorizing poetry in school has gone out of style  I believe a cultivated mind should be able to bring up quotes to illustrate, teach, explain, elaborate, and delight in our daily conversation. 

ksharris@gmail.com

ps.  If anyone is counting, that was iambic hexameter.  KSH

It was probably just luck in my life that I had teachers who were able to love poetry and the ability to share their live. Love of anythiing seems to be learned from others. rythm and meter have meaning to a lover of poetry only when the listener wants to delve into the reason for the arousal of the love feelings that peotry elicit. Analysis comes too early in the education of young people. FIRST the love must be there, the excitement, the power and thrill of poetry must be experienced before there can be any reason for analyzing it to death. It needs to be taught but in these past generations even the teachers do not really experience it so are unable to pass the experience on. Most young people do not have the advantages that I personally had in my youth

   This situation can only be remedied by putting English teachers and parents of children in the position of hearing someone like Mary Oliver. And thrilling, themselves, over what they hear! Only then can they pass the experience on.

My high school English teacher used to walk into the classroom with a look of rapture on her face, reciting Evangeline, or My Last Duchess, or Pippa Passes.Another teacher played recordings of Edith Sitwell reciting Facade to the music of William Walton, and insisting that we listen to it with our heads down on our arms on the desk so we had to concentrate only on what wewere hearing. How can anyone NOT like poetry with a start like that!  But then, I suspect that most of those farm boys who were so privileged to sit in that classroom STILL don't LIKE poetry. No they are wrong who say that it is not an art form which excludes the bus drivers. It is NOT a class issue in this so called classless society. We do not have to be poets in dirty blue jeans in order for poetry to be legitimate. In all societies in all of history  people  have reveled in their own musical languages. Now, Rumi is the most read poet in America, thanks to Coleman Barks and others. Poetry is alive and well, but a lot of people are not. Yes, we work too hard, we eschew pleasure, we accept the the idea that happiness can come only from the physical  body from the pounded and pummeled increasingly dulled senses, all else is suspect, suspect that poetry is some how a waste of time and the opportunity to make money, unreal, effete, snobbish. Let us bring some more emotional and refined senses to play in our daily lives. Everybody, car mechanics, bus drivers, rich businessmen and ladies, mothers and children, I suggest to you that poetry is for all who speak a language and have ears to hear!         

I didn't have a good poetry professor in college.  I went to the first class meeting intimidated, and he tried to reassure us by saying that poetry is all about the reader's interpretation.  That did reassure me.  So I went home and did my first readings and assignments and returned for the second class meeting, full of my interpretations of our readings.  I volunteered my interpretations when the professor asked us for them; he listened quietly, then said, well, no, that's wrong.

That's what happened with every single class meeting.  So I don't feel that I "get" poetry.  I feel that I lack the aptitude to appreciate it.  That said, I enjoy Emily Dickinson's poetry, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh's poem The Unicorn.