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Life and Art

An on-line journal

A poem is never finished, only abandoned -- Theodore Rhoetke
September 24, 2000
  • This journal entry was originally an exercise for an e-mail group I belong to called "Kalliope," an on-line poetry workshop.

According to the values I was raised with, I should not write poetry. In my Protestant, puritanical family poetry has no utility, no reason for being. It puts no food in my stomach, provides no clothes for my body and no money for my bank account. It is, therefore, a waste of time. Foolishness.

So why do it? I have come up with many complicated and high-sounding reasons, but my answer in the end is very simple -- it makes me feel better. When I write poetry, I am more focused, the world makes sense, the act of writing gives me a reason for being. I have participated in other activities that have helped me in a similar fashion, but none of them have been as fulfilling as poetry. And that's why I do it, even though from a material standpoint it has brought me little benefit.

Why poetry is fulfilling is another question. The first item on Kalliope's list of reasons why people write is "esthetics" -- the making of something beautiful. This is somehow important to my reason for writing -- writing for me is a reach, a search for the beautiful. And when I am involved in that search, I feel connected to something bigger than myself. Our response to beauty seems to me a recognition of our connectedness to something beyond us, something we are part of that is so big it is incomprehensible. Some have named it God -- I don't because that drags religion into the discussion, and I am not talking about religion.

Among the other items on Kalliope's list of reasons why people write poetry is "communication." This has never been part of my reason for writing poetry. I believe my prejudice against using poetry as communication was instilled in me in college. We were taught to look over our shoulders when we sat down to write, and if no one was there, that was good. No consideration was given that we might have an audience.

I'm not sure, but I think this attitude toward poetry may be a uniquely American. In other countries, such as in Russia and the Spanish-speaking cultures, poets develop huge audiences because of the revolutionary ideas their poems contain. In Russia, for example, there are poets who speak from train flat cars to large crowds of people. Poetry, there, is definitely communicating something, and the audience is a large part of that experience.

I have heard coffee shops and other forums in the United States have become an important outlet for poetry during the last 10 years, so maybe the audience, and therefore communication, has become more important here. But I have been living in isolation from the poetry scene, so this has not been part of my writing experience. My poetry might benefit if I thought about the audience a little bit more.