Blog Post #4: Why Should I Care?

Question: What is the importance of writing poetry in contemporary society?

Answer: In order to convince students to take a poetry unit seriously, I think it's only fair to discuss why it matters. When I was in high school, I never understood why we had to spend an entire class period dissecting a piece of poetry that was less than 20 words long. The one that comes to mind is by William Carlos Williams called "The Red Wheelbarrow":

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

Talking about such a little poem for so long frustrated me. How many things did my teacher expect us to find? Why would someone write a poem about a wheelbarrow? Was it this easy to become a famous poet? Apparently, the 14-year old version of myself was not alone. Adrienne Rich, in her discussion on the importance of poetry, acknowledges the more popular critiques made of poetry: "it's not a mass-market "product"...it's too "difficult" for the average mind; it's too elite, but the wealthy don't bid for it at Sotheby's; it is, in short, redundant. This might be called the free-market critique of poetry." So, even rich adults don't see the significance of poetry. My average mind definitely didn't understand the importance of those words, and my classmates tried their best to tell our teacher what she wanted to hear. Then we discussed the reality of the poem, how Williams was writing what he saw and what the image meant to him. That became my definition of poetry: life in words that are short but sweet.

In the same article, Rich goes on to say that "critical discourse about poetry has said little about the daily conditions of our material existence, past and present: how they imprint the life of the feelings, of involuntary human responses - how we glimpse a blur of smoke in the air, look at a pair of shoes in a shop window, or a group of men on a street-corner, how we hear rain on the roof or music on the radio upstairs, how we meet or avoid the eyes of a neighbour or a stranger. That pressure bends our angle of vision whether we recognise it or not." Much like a photographer can make a glass of water look beautiful, or a man can put a urinal in the middle of an exhibit and transform it into an art piece, poets have managed to provide us with written snapshots of the human experience. With that understanding in mind, it makes it much easier to poems at face value.

Dave Gessner's blog was quoted in the New York times article titled "Does poetry matter?", and sheds some serious light on why writing poetry today has taken on a very universal quality. His wife makes the comment that "We are all poets now", which would be depressing for a writer seeking fame and fortune through their words in such a competitive pool. Despite this uneasy thought, Gessner makes the brilliant statement that I want every one of my student's to take with them from my creative writing unit: "If it doesn’t really matter, if it truly isn’t possible to be heard on a large stage, why not just focus all your energy on making the thing itself as great as you possibly can? You can’t please the masters anyway, no matter how hard you try, so why even try to please them? And since your efforts to win favor by sounding like someone else are bound to fail, why not sound exactly like yourself?" Individuality is something young artists can easily lose sight of; it is my responsibility to introduce as many creative outlets as possible. And even though the reputation of poetry is less than outstanding in most minds right now, a student's 16 words on a page can become worth more someday than a best-selling novel.

Below is a link to Roger Ebert's blog from The Chicago Sun-Times where he put together multimedia inspired by "The Red Wheelbarrow":

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/poetry/so-much-depends-upon-a-red-whe-1.html