Misguided Assumptions about Poetry
* * *
“Misguided Assumptions People Very Often Bring to Poetry (Helping Explain the Continued Expectation of Rhyme and Meter and the Conflation of Verse and Poetry, as well as Bespeaking Lyric’s Ritual Inheritance)”
Assumption 1
The purpose of a poem is the sharing of secrets, feelings, yearnings, what could not be expressed openly, for the poet feels that to do so would be punished. It is precisely this element of secrecy which necessitates saying what is said in so indirect a manner—in a cipher. The reader’s primary task is to decode what has been carefully encrypted via metaphor and other sorts of figurative speech. To compensate for the arduousness of the task, the poet is sympathetic enough to render her code in rhymed meter, sweetening our sleuth work. A poem is an ingenious riddle which must be solved, a labyrinth to be navigated out of, a map which circuitously leads us to a treasure of secret sentiment. The effort is worth the pleasure of possessing it.
Assumption 2
The poem seeks to deliver some vital truth, or several. This ought to be done in heightened speech, replete with ornament, rhyme, and meter. Just as we dress up to attend a wedding, a poem read for a formal occasion must don its Sunday best—its form should be traditional. The poem must express a solemn truth, in a memorable and ceremonial way.
General attitudes can imply a great deal. The first set of assumptions, regarding poetry and the sharing of secrets, appears to relate to lyric’s particular interest in private experience. The fairly narrow assumption that the function of a poem is to cryptically, obliquely give access to secret information is surely misguided, but also partly correct, for lyric really is most interested in representing what people share in their concealed, interior worlds. In ancient times, and in traditional life, the sharing of such information, for instance what is found in dreams and visions, would have been the jurisdiction of priests whose knowledge was expressed aslant, for, to quote Dickinson, “The Truth must dazzle gradually/Or every man be blind —”
The second set of assumptions (concerning ceremony and the communication of truth) relates, yet again, to lyric’s inheritance from ancient ritual life. Ceremonies would have been led by learned priests whose prayers, hymns, and incantations freely blended with expressions of esoteric wisdom and such information as that which pertained to ancestors and gods, as well as the origin of the world and of the tribe. The seemingly instinctive assumption that one dresses “up” to take part in a ceremony corresponds to the primary purpose of verse. For each immediately signals that the ritual happening is of a sacred, rather than a profane, nature: sacred speech is rendered in verse, profane speech is not; formal occasions are sacred, thus we do not dress as we do typically.
. . .
“Misguided Assumptions People Very Often Bring to Poetry (Helping Explain the Continued Expectation of Rhyme and Meter and the Conflation of Verse and Poetry, as well as Bespeaking Lyric’s Ritual Inheritance)”
Assumption 1
The purpose of a poem is the sharing of secrets, feelings, yearnings, what could not be expressed openly, for the poet feels that to do so would be punished. It is precisely this element of secrecy which necessitates saying what is said in so indirect a manner—in a cipher. The reader’s primary task is to decode what has been carefully encrypted via metaphor and other sorts of figurative speech. To compensate for the arduousness of the task, the poet is sympathetic enough to render her code in rhymed meter, sweetening our sleuth work. A poem is an ingenious riddle which must be solved, a labyrinth to be navigated out of, a map which circuitously leads us to a treasure of secret sentiment. The effort is worth the pleasure of possessing it.
Assumption 2
The poem seeks to deliver some vital truth, or several. This ought to be done in heightened speech, replete with ornament, rhyme, and meter. Just as we dress up to attend a wedding, a poem read for a formal occasion must don its Sunday best—its form should be traditional. The poem must express a solemn truth, in a memorable and ceremonial way.
General attitudes can imply a great deal. The first set of assumptions, regarding poetry and the sharing of secrets, appears to relate to lyric’s particular interest in private experience. The fairly narrow assumption that the function of a poem is to cryptically, obliquely give access to secret information is surely misguided, but also partly correct, for lyric really is most interested in representing what people share in their concealed, interior worlds. In ancient times, and in traditional life, the sharing of such information, for instance what is found in dreams and visions, would have been the jurisdiction of priests whose knowledge was expressed aslant, for, to quote Dickinson, “The Truth must dazzle gradually/Or every man be blind —”
The second set of assumptions (concerning ceremony and the communication of truth) relates, yet again, to lyric’s inheritance from ancient ritual life. Ceremonies would have been led by learned priests whose prayers, hymns, and incantations freely blended with expressions of esoteric wisdom and such information as that which pertained to ancestors and gods, as well as the origin of the world and of the tribe. The seemingly instinctive assumption that one dresses “up” to take part in a ceremony corresponds to the primary purpose of verse. For each immediately signals that the ritual happening is of a sacred, rather than a profane, nature: sacred speech is rendered in verse, profane speech is not; formal occasions are sacred, thus we do not dress as we do typically.
. . .
No comments have been added yet.
