Does Poetry Make Anything Happen?

[AuntShecky]

There is a discussion going on amongst Canadian poets about whether one can actually write wilderness. The general conclusion is that though one cannot actually write wilderness, one can circle it, and come close to it, allowing for the reader's perceptions to get close enough that they can get the idea, and use their own imagination to take them over the fence. Metaphor allows for the unreal to temporarily be the real, through what Coleridge called the "suspension of disbelief". Metaphor is the soul of the imagination, and metaphor is the soul of poetry. One cannot feel, but one can relate, by means of comparison.

Only poetry can do that. Of course then, poetry then acknowledges its own failure. Ultimately it can only offer a glimpse, and ultimately that glimpse has to die. Poetry is bound to a cycle of time, and each word, line, stanza, and poem naturally has to die. But the words, through rereading, are allowed to be reborn within the reader's imagination, for a time, and to offer an outlet into another world.

This is the preoccupation of all poetry, and is perhaps done the best in great works, like Wordsworth's Inclinations Ode, Eliot's Four Quartets, Shakespeare's Great Sonnets, and Leopardi's Canti. One cannot walk into paradise through poetry, but one can come to the gate, and that is the function.

Perhaps that notion -- the poet can describe or depict wilderness but he or she can't recreate it -- could possibly bring us closer to discovering what Auden meant.
"Nothing happens IN poetry." Something happens to the poet BEFORE he writes it (cf. "Tradition and Individual Talent" by T. S. Eliot.) Something happens when an educated -- or at least open-minded--reader experiences it. But the poem itself is the mere vessel or conduit, though I use the term "mere" advisedly.

Good verse approaches the gate to the Garden of Eden, and like the shadows in Plato's cave, poetry's estimates, approximations,descriptions, "metaphors," are one level removed from the reality.

Another line in Eliot's Four Quartets describes the
poem as a "raid on the inarticulate."

So as Scher rightly asked, we have to determine what poetry is before we could know whether anything happens
"in" it. Maybe we could say that a poem helps define
the indescribable-- the same role as ancient myths thought up to explain natural phenomena for which science
had not yet developed the ability nor the tools to explain.

[AuntShecky]

However, I'm plagued by doubt. This metaphysical "that which cannot be said"; how can we be sure it has any existence? Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. I understand how metaphor conveys a sense, a mood - if you will - but is it not merely the psychology of, in this case, T.S. Eliot, and not some grand artistic existence?

This is another extremely valid and significant philosophical
question:

Can there ever be such a thing as a "thought" without words to express it?

[Virgil]

This is another extremely valid and significant philosophical
question:

Can there ever be such a thing as a "thought" without words to express it?

I believe so. My dog has many thoughts, especially about dinner. I know she does. But she has no words that I can tell to express it.

[Scheherazade]

So as Scher rightly asked, we have to determine what poetry is before we could know whether anything happens
"in" it. Maybe we could say that a poem helps define
the indescribable-- the same role as ancient myths thought up to explain natural phenomena for which science
had not yet developed the ability nor the tools to explain.

I think that would change from one poet to the other; poem to poem at times.

At times it might be a personal whisper to one person in particular or sometimes a shout over the roof tops for everyone to pay attention.

[AuntShecky]

I believe so. My dog has many thoughts, especially about dinner. I know she does. But she has no words that I can tell to express it.

Is that what conventional wisdom has come to know as
"thought" or is it instinct? Look at it this way:
Instinct: "I'm hungry."
Thought: "I wonder what Virgil will give me for dinner.
Maybe he'll give me Puppy Chow. Hope he doesn't make it
too soggy. I can't say I care much for Alpo, but at least it
smells "O-kay!"*

*Way back in the Way Back machine Arlene Francis used to do commercials for Alpo, which ended with her saying,
"And it smells. . . .o-kay!"

I don't know if you're old enough to remember the Alpo
commercials that Ed McMahon used to do "live" on the
Johnny Carson show. Occasionally the dog would turn his
nose up at the stuff, and while Ed tried to salvage the situation, Johnny would go into hysterics. One time Johnny actually pantomimed one of Man's best friends. He
got down on all fours and pretended to eat the Alpo.

[Virgil]

No it's definitely thought. My dog knows the way to places we go, makes turns, knows when its feeding time. She even makes decisions on which person to pester for certain things. She remembers people and other dogs. She knows my mother, even though she only sees her once a week and knows my mother's habits in the way she does things around the house. There is definitely cognition there. It's not human cognition, but there are thoughts.

[The Comedian]

Can there ever be such a thing as a "thought" without words to express it?

Sort of, I think. I agree with Virgil's interesting post about his dog and thoughts. Regarding humans, I think that we can have thoughts without words when we are infants and have no words. But once we have language, then thoughts without words are impossible. I don't know why, but based on my observations with the language development of my two daughters, it sure seems so to me.

Of course, I'm no psychologist.

EDIT: I'd still argue that poetry doesn't do a dang thing. It just sits there on the page. Of course, the people reading it, the people inspired by it can accomplish things. But even the emotional stuff that poetry expresses. . . . just ink on the page, pixels on the screen. . . . doing nothing, no different than the rocks by the river that runs by my house. Only people accomplish things.

[Virgil]

Sort of, I think. I agree with Virgil's interesting post about his dog and thoughts. Regarding humans, I think that we can have thoughts without words when we are infants and have no words. But once we have language, then thoughts without words are impossible. I don't know why, but based on my observations with the language development of my two daughters, it sure seems so to me.

Of course, I'm no psychologist.

But how do you know we don't have thoughts before the language comes to us? As I just read your post this thought came to me, but I really didn't formulate the language until after I started to articulate it. It's my perception that there is a millisecond of thought before language shapes it.

[rtc143]

Well, I think poetry is an expression of the writer, not something that NEEDS to be read anyways. But I agree that poetry today is to a considerable degree, pointless. Few people read it, and those who do usually criticize it for no apparent reason, like one of my rather provincial friends, who thinks anything involving reading and writing is as bad as sin! So, overall, I dont really know lol. bad answer i guess. but if you write it, write it for yourself.

[The Comedian]

But how do you know we don't have thoughts before the language comes to us? As I just read your post this thought came to me, but I really didn't formulate the language until after I started to articulate it. It's my perception that there is a millisecond of thought before language shapes it.

I don't really know. It just seems that way to me. Maybe we continue to have non-linguistic thoughts after we develop language. If we do, that non-linguistic thinking is some weird, weird, stuff. I mean, non-linguistic thinking has to have some form, right? If not language, then what?

[PSRemeshChandra]

The question, do poetry make anything happen, why and how, is a very good and relevant one. One of the chief objectives of poetry is to elevate human mind. It adds velocity to the otherwise inert mind. Mind at most times has only weight, and no velocity. We all know that weight into velocity is equal to momentum. An aeroplane lying on the ground has weight. When the motors are started and the fuel is ignited, it gains velocity and moves forward according to the momentum it acquires. At a particular level of momentum it takes-off. It cannot simply help lying there. This is exactly what capable poetry does to human mind. Poetry imparts speed and momentum to human mind and the momentum gained thus makes it take-off.

Poetry moves minds. Perhaps it's moving powers are far greater than the actual individual and social experiences of a person, considering the fact that poetry also contains reasonable arguments, logic and philosophy to master a given situation in human life. Thus when poetry moves minds, it is actually moving societies and nations. It is an undeniable fact that the great literary epics, whether it be the Ramayana, Mahabharatha, The Illiad, The Odessey, The Divine Comedy, The Song Of Roland or The Beowulf formed and decided the national character of India, Greece, Italy, France or England. They were what in which their national heritage, culture and civilization were preserved for the posterities. And they are what generations still look upto for inspiration and guidance. That poetry makes nothing happen is a fallacy. Pablo Neruda's Canto General and The Third Residence On Earth has been a fountain head, source and reservoire of revolutionary inspiration for the whole world since it's publication. Mayakovski's poems including Let The Rail Workers Awaken have been the most restricting force in Lenin's Russia. Premiere Lenin even said: I don't like this man, but his poem Those Who Hold Committees Daily tells well people's opinions about us committee-holders. This poem contained just two simple lines: Everyday committee, committee, committee: Nothing happens, nothing happens, and nothing happens.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Can there ever be such a thing as a "thought" without words to express it?

What about visual art? And music (sans lyrics, of course)? These both convey thoughts without words--often times more effectively than any words can.

As to the original query, I always think of a certain type of poetry when one asks for a practical value of poetry (I realize this is not the same query as the OP, but I think still close enough), and those are War poems, particularly some of the very vivid WWI poems. These poems convey the feelings of being in war--of what it felt like to be in the trenches and surrounded by death. No text book I've read does this.

I guess one could argue that there is no value in understanding the feelings of those who fought in wars, but I can't see how there isn't value in understanding the horror of war.

[AuntShecky]

Well the original posting appeared two years ago, but yours fooly still maintains some, if not all, the opinions expressed there in (apart from typing "latter" when I meant "former.")

There is a danger when we try to assign a work detail to art, literature, and poetry, attempt to make social workers out of literature, or teachers of youth, or consider the arts to be cheerleaders for the middle class. These issues were addressed in another different LitNet thread.

Even so, poetry does matter, but not in any pragmatic sense. It is worth reading, and in some cases, worth writing, but it is unfair to ask poetry to do anything other than to be itself.

Still, I wonder what Dr. Williams really meant with these lines:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

[Theunderground]

I really have tried to get into poetry but blake is about the only pure poet i can really appreciate a little. I much think good prose is much more profound than poetry though that may be the opposite of classical thought.

As for thought,i am 100% sure that we can think non-linguistically,i mean what is a feeling? When pain first registers you dont internally say 'ouch' do you,you just feel the pain.

[jajdude]

I read somewhere once that poetry is a good thing to study for people who want to go to law school. Both poetry and law involve difficult texts I guess the main idea was. Philosophy too of course.