A Poem should say More than its Words

What is the point of writing something in poetic form, as opposed to a blog post or a tweet? Frankly, the way poetry tends to be used (in both senses of the word) is almost indistinguishable from any other written form. It seems to be in the culture of poetry groups to be blithe about the whole endeavor, preferring to prioritize people’s feelings over the art. They have ultimately become a place for people to vent into the ether, rather than do anything constructive with their emotion, or share any insights they might have gleaned from their experiences. Good poetry can enrich peoples’ lives, and good critique can enrich poetry. Ironically, the very attempt to spare people their feelings in the moment has harmful effects in the long-run.

What I can gather is that people think poetry is just a way of telling the world how you feel or your opinion on something in the shape of a poem, with the occasional rhyme. For one thing, you should not be able to sum up several stanzas with “censorship is bad,” or “you hurt me,” or “I’m depressed” — and yes, the tone is overall negative. A poem should say more than its words, not less. What do I mean by this? For a poem to say less than its words is easy — too easy — I just gave a few examples. That comes from the redundancy of language. But, to say more than its words, that would require a layering of meaning. There are many tools at a poet’s disposal with which to achieve this, first among them being the existence of homonyms (words with multiple meanings). Another is enjambment. In fact, the most important function of a line-break is enjambment, even more-so than rhyme or musical effect. A line of poetry should be self contained, not spilling over with superfluous words like but, and, his, a, etc., for no reason. It should be broken at a strategic point, to facilitate the evolution or subversion of meaning. I will allow Hart Crane to demonstrate this feat:

Black Tambourine

The interests of a black man in a cellar
Mark tardy judgment on the world’s closed door.
Gnats toss in the shadow of a bottle,
And a roach spans a crevice in the floor.

Aesop, driven to pondering, found
Heaven with the tortoise and the hare;
Fox brush and sow ear top his grave
And mingling incantations in the air.

The black man, forlorn in the cellar,
Wanders in some mid-kingdom, dark, that lies,
Between his tambourine, stuck on the wall,
And, in Africa, a carcass quick with flies.

Now, observe how enjambment serves to advance the narrative in leaps and bounds that even Aesop’s hare would envy. Line 1: creates an image in the reader’s mind, but leaves the door open for them to interpret what they will — what “interests”? Line 2: closes that door, and notice how this line ends in a period, a subtle nod to the image being evoked. Line 3: this is very cunning, perhaps shifting the blame from the world to the black man, but then line 4 only further emphasizes the poor material conditions, reminiscent of a slave ship. Line 5: we are transported from the now of the black man to the history of the white man. The reason for the break at “found” only becomes clear in the next stanza, contrasted with “wanders” — the heaven of the white man vs the purgatory of the black man. Line 6: here is a break in tone, which is subverted by line 7 with the almost sarcastic references to plants — “fox brush” (fox bush) and “sow ear” (lamb’s ear). Line 8: these being conjured up by the “mingling incantations” of Aesop’s tales with the real world, that continues long after his death, indicative of the saturation of history with ideology. Line 9: this is contrasted with line 1, and also the entirety of stanza 2, as we are pulled back to the misery of the present, in the cellar. Line 10: “lies” is a homonym, used here both in regard to the mid-kingdom’s placement between the tambourine and Africa / the carcass, as a kind of purgatory; and to its deceptive nature, referring to the negative consequences of ideology, and the white-washing of history. Line 11: of course, we see what has become of him — the white man’s sambo — but, we are also left with further questions. The word “stuck” could imply a resistance, or even an inability, for the instrument to serve its intended purpose. Line 12: because of the use of commas throughout this stanza, another tool for allowing the reader to play with interpretation, the carcass may be thought of as a metaphor for the state of Africa, upon being ravished for its resources, or as the forgotten history of the hunter, his spear replaced with a tambourine, gesturing at the colonial attitude toward primitive cultures.

All this, in a poem that barely takes a minute to read. Poetic technique can compound on itself, allowing the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts, so to speak. All art should have this quality, but poetry can do the most with the least. The dearth of rigorous critique, however, has cast poetry into its own mid-kingdom. In its absence, the merits of a poem like Black Tambourine would go unappreciated, dismissed as it has been as too difficult. It is a dimension of literacy rarely upheld.