POETRY ITS UNDERSTANDING…..the writing of it!

            Lately we have been seeing a push (here in Belize) to try and get people to write poetry, as if every high school boy or girl has not tried to do so from time to time. The problem lies in “understanding” on how to use English properly.

            Understanding is the grasping of “literature” in the broad sense. Of having read what others have written and why! It is obvious that some have not read any of the ‘great’ books and ‘great’ poetry!

            Literature always points to something beyond itself, a pleasure, verity, judgment, vision. It is more than rewarding; it is essential. The great writers recognized these truths. Wallace Stevens observed, “The pleasure of poetry is to contribute to man’s happiness.” William Carlos Williams, in one of his last poems, “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower,” wrote:

                                    It is difficult

                        To get the news from poems

                                    Yet men die miserably every day

                                                            For lack

                        Of what is found there.

            Richard Eberhart, said in a 1968 speech: “The point of poetry is to make meanings for your life; to discover durable truth of yourself within the flux of life and time … Poetry defends the inner capacities of man.”

            Rigor in language both reflects and leads to rigor of thought, surely an urgent national need. That is reading the best of what has been written cultivates an ability to use what is best!

            The cultivation of good literature now and study of great works of the past (along with philosophy and history) could provide means to identify and resist what is false and depraved. Perhaps Ezra Pound, Vorticist, crank, asylum inmate, but wise in this respect, should have the last word: “If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and declines.”