Recently, a talented young poet asked me, “With all of the happenings in the world today, do you think poetry is important to society in any way?” The following is my response:
Yes. I think art is important to society and I don't think poetry needs any special pleading. I read an article once that answered your question by pointing out that poets have historically been mouthpieces of political movements. I didn't like the article because I felt like it said only political poetry is important. I don’t think you have to be political to be influential. There's a reason art has movements through time that overlap genres. Art influences society every bit as much as society influences art.
Jack Kerouac didn't write anything political, but it would be nonsense to say his writing didn't influence society. The beatniks were a foreshadowing of the hippies and a burst of social revolution that at the time nobody could have predicted. Sometimes it can be, as is the case for Kerouac, a kind of chicken or the egg situation, but I believe that's because the connection is so profound as to be indiscernible. An artist isn't always conscious of how they're influenced by or themselves influencing society, but they are still a product of their time. Generations later we have the perspective to see how political, philosophical, or aesthetic developments influence. This ability to be simultaneously made and making is a big part of what makes the creative process so magical (each work of art is like each artist, both something born and capable of giving birth to more). Each artist and each work of art is a proud and impassioned ripple in the illimitable waters of making.
This is true of all artists, and perhaps another time I'll explain how I feel someone can be a poet of something besides words (a painter or a dancer or a composer or probably a gardener for example). But to make poetry of words can be a powerful thing. Words do more than describe, they actually create. They shape our society because they shape our thinking. Most of us think primarily in a language of words. We nod our heads in agreement as we sing along to our songs the same way congregations affirm "amen" at religious ceremonies. We pledge our allegiance to the flag (a symbol) in very much the same way. What we repeat to ourselves we believe, and what we believe we become. Poetry has the ability to take a deep thought and wrap it up in a rhythmic, haunting, easily repeatable and unforgettable phrase. Good poetry stays with you, and ripples through you.
We poets of the English language have a particularly sculptural substance to work with. Our tool chest changes with society over time. In an older dictionary I have, the first definition of the word Terrific is: "exciting or fit to excite fear or awe, very bad, frightful." Nobody uses the word terrific in that way anymore. Our language is so odd that in newer dictionaries the word Literally has two literally opposing definitions. It means both actually and virtually. As poets we are the masters of a slippery instrument. We are attempting eternal and universal expressions of ephemeral feelings from temporal places and evolving language.
Poets are always seeking to express that part of them which is a mystery, and it is a mystery because it is too big or too present to be easily articulated. Poets go into the shadow and mud to make art (of shadow and mud). The most succinct personal bio I've yet written is this: "I plant roses in the rubble." Poetry is miraculous. It does one of the most difficult and impossible things imaginable, and that's why those of us who get it are so in awe of it. It is surreal and exciting but also profound and soothing. It doesn't matter if it's happy or sad or what it says, through its ability to be transcendent and literally meaningful, poetry itself can be an affirmative answer to uneasy existential questions. Poetry isn't about what it says, it's about what it means. (As we'd all like to be).
I should also note that as much as I really believe all of these lofty things to be true, I also feel that poetry can have value to society in the same way that a fun Hollywood movie or catchy new pop song may. I believe that the modern distinction between art and entertainment is unfortunate, and a product of how we sell things. So many great artists through time didn’t have to make this distinction (imagine Shakespeare saying "well I'll write the next play as a crowd pleaser so I'll be free to do another art house project" -- no). I like my art to entertain me, and I look for art in my entertainment. I've always wanted my own poetry to entertain people (I don't want reading it to feel like homework), but I've also felt that shouldn't mean I have to be unintelligent or shallow. In a world full of very serious problems and deep tragedy, entertainment is absolutely important.
Poetry has been around forever and will never go away. It's one of the few forms of art that requires nothing but humanity. A poet with nothing else still has poetry. Locked alone in a cell, poetry can still abound in someone's mind. I enjoy history as told through politics, but there is a history of poetry too, and if you were to read it you would see the progression of worldwide philosophy, and you would also see not just the progression but also the universality and consistency of the human spirit, of our shared nature.
In that strange and imagined realm we call History, and in our surveillance of our shared society, there is something real. There is a true connection of past and present events, and of people all over the world who are sharing experience through time or thought or art. In each of those individuals is something else shared, call it what you will: the soul, the genetic makeup, consciousness. What does it mean to be free? What does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to be?
It means every poet, and every poem, is both made and making, both water and ripple. It means yes, it’s important... all of it.
