Lets Do It Again This Time Lets Do More
Whenever April comes around, and I realize that it's National Poetry Calendar month, I become a little nervous. I'm a poet, and National Poesy Month makes me think most how fumbling and inarticulate I feel whenever someone asks me what I write poems about, or why I write poems, or what'south so swell about poems. Information technology's not that the questions are unfair, of grade; it's just that I don't know the answers. I fell in dear with poetry at some betoken in my life, long earlier I knew what information technology was or how to make it. I know that poesy matters, just it'southward difficult for me to explain how or why.
This year, I'm thinking nearly that difficulty as National Poetry Month rolls around, and the springtime with it, and we sally — or, possibly, we don't emerge — from years of a footling more social isolation than nosotros're used to. Nosotros're changing, and yes, we're always changing, but at the moment, every bit a civilisation, it seems to me that we're pretty uncomfortable about it. I believe poesy might offer united states some tools for embracing modify, so I'chiliad going to give that a try here past explaining why the medium matters so much.
Poetry Is Mutual and Everywhere
First, let'due south deal with the problem of our general perception of poetry. Nosotros tend to recollect of poetry equally special or unusual, removed from the mundane happenings of everyday life. People read poems at special occasions like weddings and funerals, or they larn nearly the poems and poets assigned to them in English language classes, or they come across $.25 of poetry memed in simulated-inspirational Facebook posts.
I'm not saying that stuff isn't poetry, but I'm proverb it's definitely not all of it. The primeval forms of poetry weren't written downwards just spoken aloud: not on the page, but in the body. Poetry was — and is — closely related to music, which we readily accept is capable of making united states experience without necessarily making sense. It'southward thought that the primeval poems were cultural attempts to remember what needed to be remembered.
Put all this together, and you brainstorm to empathise poesy as an entirely necessary piece of advice. It'due south an everyday thing. Like every day of your life, poetry'due south total of experimentation and feeling. Information technology's trying to say what needs to exist said but in a way that's new, full of life, and able to exist remembered when nosotros need it most.
Learning What You Already Know
I've had the experience at present and once more of going back to look at something I wrote years agone and realizing that it contains information I've been needing. When my grandmother passed away, I happened to find an old poem I wrote that had some lines about acceptance and retentivity. I'd been feeling overwhelmed and sad most her death, but suddenly my own poem, coming to me from out of the past, seemed helpful. I felt almost similar I fourth dimension-traveled back to the past to make certain I jotted down the thoughts I'd need in the future. Almost.
Poetry is useful in other ways, though. The way we experience the world is completely entangled in the linguistic communication we use to describe it. That language is largely metaphorical, and poesy is great at coming up with metaphors. When you lot have lost someone, your middle breaks. When you finally understand something, y'all meet the light. When yous're feeling wonderful, y'all might even exist glowing. These statements are not literally true, but they feel even truer than true. The comparison amplifies the truth.
It's fortunate for u.s.a. that language works this style, considering information technology means it's capable of irresolute equally it adapts to the way we experience the globe — as our frames of reference alter, and equally our available comparisons change. Language adapts whether we resist that adaptation or not, but more and more, it seems to me that we're afraid of changing. The pandemic, our politics, and a million other things have united states of america using a lot of linguistic communication near "getting back to normal," simply our ability to change is essential. As the poet Eleni Sikelianos puts it: "Poems maximize the adjustability of language, and, as nosotros know, adaptation is key to animal survival."
Let Poetry Change Your Mind This National Poesy Month
The rules of language are always a little bit behind the people who use information technology. Grammatical rules are an attempt to capture a moment in time — to say, "Here'south how we're doing information technology now." We're alive, though. One time we've described "at present," it's already in the past, and we've moved on. Never mind the fact that there are thousands of languages operating with thousands of sets of rules.
This should exist both liberating and humbling. Nosotros should be costless to play around in our language, to dispense it and change it and run into if we can brand information technology work for us. On the other hand, we can never fully empathize it — it's an organic thing, living and changing in response to the world of which it is a function. Conversations around what pronouns people use make it clear that this stuff produces a lot of cultural anxiety. I wish it wouldn't, and I think poetry can assist.
I'll end with an case from a poem called "Facing It," by the great American poet Yusef Komunyakaa. In the poem, a veteran of the war in Vietnam is looking at his reflection in the wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
At the get-go of the poem, the veteran sees his face in the granite and thinks: "I'm rock." Then the rest of the verse form happens. Past the end of it, he thinks: "I'm a window." It's not that the pain, or the horrors of war, or the cruelties of life have disappeared, information technology's merely that the poem embodies a change in the bearing of the person. I think virtually that a lot — near the importance of knowing both that I can change my mind and that my heed can change. This April, one time again, information technology feels good to be reminded.
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Source: https://www.ask.com/culture/national-poetry-month-let-poetry-change-your-mind?utm_content=params%3Ao%3D740004%26ad%3DdirN%26qo%3DserpIndex
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