What is Poetry?

Whilst teaching in England I found that poetry and poetry teaching was generally a well enjoyed part of the curriculum. Like any discipline some teachers saw it as a strength and some saw it as their weakness but schools on the whole studied and experienced poetry to quite high standards. Here in Doha, I have found that the common place opinion of poetry is that it is not a useful part of the English language. So what is poetry? Where does it come from? What are its roots?

I am not looking for a definition. This just contemplates its place in today's society. At the end of this article you'll find a poll and I would be really interested in your opinions. Just tick a box and click vote.

We know that poetry expresses emotion, particularly the emotions of love, lust and longing. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" being a chat up line that I feel is well under used. Poetry often overly complicates description of thoughts, feelings and situations- doesn't it? Hmm let's see. It is not just a stereotype that it is often associated with angst ridden young men. Although when you peruse the blogs of today, you will see that it is often dominated by women expressing their angst, ire and melancholy at loneliness, being misunderstood and under appreciated. But poetry is the lost art. It does not have a presence in modern popular culture. Or I should say that it doesn't have a presence with the denomination or labelling as poetry. (I'll come to that later.)

The earliest form of Poetry can be seen in commentries by Aristotle. He spoke about poetics and rhetoric in a similar fashion. Poetry was a means of bringing talk to life. It added drama or created mood or tension for a tradgedy. He felt that poetry was a way of imitating real events. Therefore ealry poetry focused on rhythm (as is the main focus today), and verse form and rhyme came much later.

Today Poetry is a global art form. Aristotles Poetics was appreciated in the Middle East and Poetry is held in high esteem within that culture today.We all know the petite but wonderful Haiku of the Japanese. The common English form of haiku being a seventeen syllable, three line 5-7-5. From norse Kennings (that replace a normal noun with a colourful metaphor) to shorter poems intended to be sung developed by the Greeks: from the word Lyre comes Lyrics.

Lyrics and song is a whole new debate: Can modern song lysics be considered poetry? I will deal with my thoughts on that on another occassion.

So what do I think Poetry is today? Poetry paints ideas and moments in words. It does so with care and precision. But what value does this have? Value! I remember the birth of modern pop culture. It started with video killing the radio star. And then a largesse gave us Dire Straight's Money For Nothing and gone was the pedestrian pace of yesteryear and in blew the modern pop era. The MTV era. The frantic, in yer face, 100 mile an hour, soundbite, tweet and your out of here era. I have to say as a young man I loved it as any generation loves something new. Then there is real life and by that I mean quality real life. As a society we no longer stop to smell the trees. We didn't absorb or fawn over natures' ambiences. We tick off - been there done that (got the t-shirt) had a niiice day. But to really slow down. Oh no. We don't do that. We love to take a book on holiday and lose ourselves in that. But that's not appreciation of what's around us. That's us escaping our own deep thought because they go so fast we can't handle them anymore. We can't turn them off so we distract them. We love to turn up the music or even step into those bubble, ex-pat, pseudo societies. Anything that avoids connecting. Never mind all those kids and teens blissed in their video games, we as adults are no different.

So what has that got to do with the price of cod and fish at the Laurel and Hardy chippy in Patricroft? Sorry I meant to say what has that to do with poetry? Well. Everything. Poetry are those moments that we miss. Poetry captures those moments between seconds that mean so much. Poetry captures what that glance means, not just the glance. Poetry divides the atom of the moment into glorious pieces. Poetry is the appreciation of the moment.

I'll leave it to Larkin:

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Although Larkin can't help but add an after thought to step out of this celebration of life:

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Days
by Philip Larkin

Question - Does Poetry matter to you?