Intersections

Volume 2013 | Number 37 Article 4

2013

Valuing Poetry
Allison Wee

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Wee, Allison (2013) "Valuing Poetry," Intersections: Vol. 2013: No. 37, Article 4.
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 ALLISON WEE

Valuing Poetry
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
—William Carlos Williams,
from “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”

Here at California Lutheran University, By these measures, even I, an English professor, must
’tis the season of departmental reviews admit that poetry is not of much value. But market forces
and pre-accreditation preparation. As are not my concern when I step into a literature classroom.
we collectively reflect on our institu- This is not naïveté: I understand that higher education is an
tional mission and evaluate our cur- increasingly expensive endeavor, and I agree that we have
ricula, including core requirements and an enormous responsibility to provide our students with
student learning outcomes, our constant question is whether meaningful tools to survive in the increasingly challeng-
or not we are offering our students what they will need to be ing environment that awaits them. Yet if we let our students
successful in a rapidly changing world. Almost a quarter of graduate thinking that even we—faculty, staff, and admin-
our students are first-generation college students, hoping a istrators of Lutheran colleges and universities—believe that
California Lutheran degree will net them a job better than a good job is the best measure of a good education, we will
what their parents could find, and thus enable their families’ have failed them. Our stated University mission is “to edu-
lives to improve. On our campus, providing pathways that cate leaders for a global society who are strong in character
might allow students to graduate in three years instead of four and judgment, confident in their identity and vocation, and
so as to lessen their student loan burden is framed as a justice committed to service and justice.” I do want our students to
issue. No doubt it is. And yet I worry about an undercurrent get good jobs. But more than this, I want them to find ways
noticeable in many of our conversations about these issues, to make meaningful contributions through work they feel
both formal and informal. As external voices increasingly call called to do. I want them to be able to think carefully, feel
into question the value of a college education, it seems that deeply, reflect honestly, know themselves, and listen and
“value” has come to mean “can it get you a job?” and “how respond to the voices and needs of others. Perhaps most of
much money will it make you?” all, I want them to seek, know, and value the immaterial,

ALLISON WEE is Associate Professor of English at California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, California.

6 | Intersections | Spring 2013

ineffable, and transcendent dimensions of their one sweet, poetry allows us to have a relationship with people from past
brief, beautiful human life. times and other places; it allows us to see and feel, even briefly,
This is why I teach poetry. It really can help us not what others have seen and felt; it helps teach us what we hold in
“die miserably.” common with others, and invites us to appreciate what is unique
Introducing typical undergraduates to poetry is a fasci- to each individual. To dismiss the genre outright is to seriously
nating and challenging task. I have discovered, as no doubt limit our opportunity to encounter and be challenged by all the
many others have before me, that by age 18 or 20 students have big questions humans have asked about life and the universe,
accrued a strange array of preconceived notions about the and to benefit from all the rich and multifarious ways people
genre that I must work against every day. One common idea have explored and attempted to answer those questions.
is that poems “can mean whatever you want them to mean.” In the lines I selected to open this essay, William Carlos
While good poems are open to interpretation, the options are Williams suggests that poetry is far from superfluous, a mere
not endless. If the activity of interpretation were truly so open nicety, just a pretty little thing that people who are comfort-
that meaning was contingent only on readers and not on the able or nostalgic jot down for the fun of it to show their friends.
poem itself, we would have to assume that poets have nothing Poetry is not practical, not newsy; yet, he argues, “men die
in particular to say, no specific impact they wish to make on miserably every day / for lack of what is found there.” One
readers, and no ability to create or communicate meanings of might easily question this claim. I once had a skeptical student
their own. In this view, there is no value in reading a poem; they say, eyes narrowed at me, well, if the person I love has a heart
have nothing to offer but pretty words. A second common belief attack, the paramedics had better not pull out the sonnets of
is that poems are “puzzles” or “tricks” that must be figured out. Shakespeare and start reading! Of course not. But imagine
In this view, poems are intended to be difficult, poets want you yourself in this same situation, and consider the next several
to feel stupid so they can feel superior, and the whole business is hours or days: when you are sent home from the hospital
therefore to be avoided at all cost. No one wants to feel stupid, without your loved one and you cannot sleep, and you lie there
after all, and students who assume they won’t understand in the dark—or perhaps you sit up all night with every light
poems usually don’t even want to try. This type of student sees on, hoping to keep darkness at bay—and you wonder if your
no value in poetry either, and usually adopts an attitude of beloved is still alive, if he or she is in pain, if there really is a just
dismissal or ridicule; it is much more comfortable than risking and loving God in this world full of suffering—marketable job
taking it seriously. skills will be of no value at all. Yet the sonnets of Shakespeare
might bring you some real, even life-saving, comfort now.
“From the epic narratives that shaped You might steady yourself, for example, by remembering the
profound strength of your love, turning to some lines perhaps
ancient cultures to ecstatic or
read at the ceremony that bound the two of you together:
prayerful expressions of religious
devotees to elegies of deep grief to the Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
simple or subtle insights of personal
Which alters when it alteration finds,
lyrics, poems speak to us about the Or bends with the remover to remove:
human condition and the miraculous O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
world we inhabit.” That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
The truth is that poets have a lot of specific and valuable Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
things to say, and they actually want readers to listen and con-
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
sider and understand. Indeed, some of the most significant and
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
memorable things human beings have ever said, felt, thought, or
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
believed have been expressed in poems. From the epic narratives
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
that shaped ancient cultures to ecstatic or prayerful expressions
If this be error and upon me proved,
of religious devotees to elegies of deep grief to the simple or
subtle insights of personal lyrics, poems speak to us about the I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
human condition and the miraculous world we inhabit. Reading (Shakespeare, Sonnet 116)

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 Or those who value the Bible might turn to the poems unique witness they bear to the world. We need their imagina-
sung by the psalmist: tions to stretch our own. Poets look at the world in uncommon
ways, and see things there the common eye does not always
The Lord is my light and my salvation— see. In the same essay Wordsworth wrote that his “principle
whom shall I fear? object” was “to choose incidents and situations from common
life, and … to throw over them a certain coloring of imagina-
The Lord is the stronghold of my life—
tion, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind
of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1)
in an unusual way” (289). In other words, the poet’s task is to
Though I walk through the valley of death defamiliarize the world the reader thinks he or she knows, to
I will fear no evil… (Psalm 23:4) give us a fresh view of the things we see, and perhaps through
this sense of newness, this fresh attention, we might gain new
The hard truth is that there are endless things we must insights and a new sense of appreciation for things to which
survive out there in the real world that money and job skills we have grown desensitized. The gift of fresh perspective is of
can’t touch. We must survive, for example, all the ways in which untold value; it keeps our minds and hearts limber and helps
our lives don’t turn out like we’d hoped or planned, or like what us resist complacency. Poets look carefully at the world around
anyone prepared us for. We must survive worry, fear, and lack of them, and the poems they write both invite us and teach us to
security due to a troubled economic climate, a divisive political look and see and pay careful attention in turn.
climate, and our suffering planet’s physical climate. We must
survive long dark nights of the soul filled with loneliness and “The gift of fresh perspective is of
betrayal, anger and sadness, defeat and despair. We must sur- untold value; it keeps our minds and
vive illness, our own and others’. We must even survive death.
For until our own death embraces us, each one of us will live to
hearts limber and helps us resist
watch many others die: people we know, people we love, people complacency.”
we work with, people we admire; good people, young people,
our parents and children, friends and lovers; cultural and politi- To my mind, the skill of paying close attention might be
cal icons from our youth and from our own communities. It what our students need most; they seem in remarkably short
will be a long list. And yet poetry, I tell my students, really can supply. In my Environmental Literature course, the assignment
help us live, and live well, in the face of death. It can offer much I give over the first weekend is simply to find a natural outdoor
comfort. It can remind us of everything good and beautiful in environment and spend an hour sitting still and paying atten-
the world. It can reassure us that we are not alone in our pain tion. I ask them to leave their phones and electronic devices
and suffering, even in times when no one else can be present behind, find someplace with as little evidence of humanity as
with us. It can help give voice to our voiceless longings; it can possible, sit down for one hour, and look around and notice
give shape to our deepest and most complex feelings and give things. Their brows immediately furrow. I don’t get it, they
us means to reach out to others when otherwise we might be always say. What are we supposed to do? My earnest students
left mute and isolate. are desperate for more information than this. They are used to
In a frequently-cited essay on poets and poetry entitled teachers spelling out exactly what to do (and often exactly what
“The Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,” first published in 1800, the to think). We would do well to remember that our incoming
Romantic poet William Wordsworth defines a poet as “a man students have been schooled by the policies of No Child Left
speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively Behind ever since kindergarten, which means their instruc-
sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater tors have been trained to teach toward tests; those students
knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, who are able to get into a liberal arts college have most likely
than are supposed to be common among mankind… [and] achieved their success by keeping their heads down and follow-
from practice, he has acquired a greater readiness and power ing instructions well. They are unprepared to be asked to look
in expressing what he thinks and feels” (300). This power of around, and to notice what they notice.
expression, what I often describe as the poet’s skill of transla- I offer them guidance by way of questions. When you sit
tion, is invaluable. We need poets’ eyes, we need their knowl- still and look around, what do you see? Grass, flowers, trees?
edge, and we need their expansive word-hoards. We need the What are their names? What are their colors and shapes? Are

8 | Intersections | Spring 2013

there many or few? In what season of growth? What color And beech, squeeze into the dark
is the sky? What quality the light? What shape the horizon? Bone of my breast, take their perfectly
Are there clouds? Still or in motion, skidding fast or oozing Secured stitches up and down, pull
and morphing slowly like amoebas at low temperatures? All of their thousand threads tight
Do creatures appear as you wait and watch? Do they notice And fasten, fasten.
you? Do they interact with you? Do you know their names
as well? Tune in to the rest of your physical senses: what can I ask them to read these texts thoughtfully, to underline
you smell? What does the air feel like on your skin? What do details that stand out or seem interesting, and then to draw
you imagine or know to be making the sounds you can hear? on these three models of observation and reflection as they
Notice, too, what happens in your body and in your mind as sit. I also instruct them to bring pen and paper, but they are
you sit. Stay still. Don’t look at your watch. Just take it all in. not to use these for at least the first 30 minutes. After that, I
I also give them a few literary texts to prepare them for suggest that they jot down some notes about their surround-
this activity. I assign readings from three esteemed American ings and thoughts, anything that will help them remember
nature writers: an excerpt from Henry David Thoreau’s essay the experience and return in their imaginations to that place
“Walking,” Annie Dillard’s essay “Living Like Weasels,” and and that hour after they have left it physically behind.
Pattiann Rogers’ poem “Knot”: The results of this modest task are remarkable. The students
return to the classroom completely wired, wanting to talk and
Watching the close forest this afternoon talk about their experiences, where they went and what hap-
and the riverland beyond, I delineate pened in their heads and bodies and hearts. Many freely admit
quail down from the dandelion’s shiver they haven’t gone anywhere without their phones in years,
from the blowsy silver of the cobweb and being unplugged causes a range of reactions, from relief
in which both are tangled. I am skillful and pleasure at an unfamiliar sense of freedom to temporarily
at tracing the white egret within the white increased anxiety. Most of them report experiencing a deep
branches of the dead willow where it roosts calm after a time and say they can actually hear themselves
and at separating the heron’s graceful neck think. Is that rare? I ask. Yes, they all nod vigorously. What are
from the leaning stems of the blue-green the implications for that, I ask, given the fact that you are stu-
lilies surrounding. I know how to unravel dents, and your primary work is presumably to think? Do you
know what your mind really needs in order to learn well and
sawgrasses knitted to iris leaves knitted
to do its best work? The questions give them pause. Two years
to sweet vernals. I can unwind sunlight
ago, out of 30 students, two didn’t think they had spent a single
from the switches of the water in the slough
hour outside alone in their entire lives. Several hadn’t done so
and divide the grey sumac’s hazy hedge
since childhood, and reported being rushed with a profound
from the hazy grey of the sky, the red vein
and simple happiness they hadn’t experienced since then.
of the hibiscus from its red blossom.
Two women, too afraid of the possibility of rape or violence to
risk being away from other humans alone, had decided to go
All afternoon I part, I isolate, I untie,
together, and, once they found a quiet place, separated just far
I undo, while all the while the oak
enough to get out of sight of each other behind trees, so they
shadows, easing forward, slowly ensnare me,
could hear one another call out if they needed to. For these two,
and the calls of the peewees catch
being able to be alone and even semi-relaxed outdoors felt like
and latch in my gestures, and the spicebush a great gift. This seemed bittersweet to me. I asked all of us to
swallowtails weave their attachments reflect on the implications of a culture of violence that prevents
into my attitude, and the damp sedge people from accessing all the dimensions of deep rejuvenation
fragrances hook and secure, and the swaying we had just collectively described.
Spanish mosses loop my coming sleep, After the primary experience of immersion and reflection,
And I am marsh-shackled, forest-twined, we turn to literature again in order to study the strategies
Even as the new stars, showing now poets employ to translate into words their experiences in the
through the night-spaces of the sweet gum natural world. We notice how poets attend to concrete detail,

9
 avoid clichéd language in favor of more fresh and striking The words “for lack” stand apart as the shortest line in the
words, and how they use the rhythms and sounds of language excerpt, and they are also inset, suddenly lining up with the
to try to recreate for their readers not only physical details beginning of the statement. Our eye is drawn to them, and as
and ideas, but also the subtleties of feeling and mood. Then, we read, especially if we read aloud, our voice lands on “lack,”
much to my students’ surprise and worry, I ask them to turn leaving the word and its meaning hanging sparse and lonely
their own notes into poems. Environmental Science majors in the air while we must pause briefly to swing our eyes back
always outnumber the English majors in this course, and to the new line. While our eyes and mind moves, the question
creative writing is not familiar to them. Yet most report that lingers: lack of what? We come to the final phrase of the sen-
the process of reading poetry and then trying to produce it tence with a sense of seriousness, though the answer given is
themselves helps them to grasp on a deep and organic level, not like the answer to a math equation. The poet is not trying
not just intellectually, how to look carefully at their sur-
roundings, appreciate even the smallest of details they might
“...readers are invited to engage with the
normally overlook, and not just reflect on but really take
responsibility for their relationship to the environment. At question, taking on the responsibility
the end of the semester, many cite this exercise as one of the of approaching each new poem with
best things they’ve done in college, because it helps remind specific attention, on the alert, actively
them of valuable things their current choices and lifestyles
simply don’t allow them to access: the spirit-renewing beauty
seeking an answer for ourselves: what
of the natural world; the body-renewing pleasure of stillness; of value can you offer me?”
the mind-renewing gift of quiet and solitude.
Poetry is, most simply, language put together in a form that to “trick” us, or make us feel stupid, but is rather trying to
differs from regular speech or prose. And the differences are open up our linear minds and the assumptions we carry
important. At a glance, we see that lines do not simply start on around in order to take in a challenging and serious claim:
the left side of the page and march in a row all the way to the poetry is important. A matter of life and death. The fact that
right like the prose sentences of an essay. Instead, poets use line we might have hoped for a clearer answer is part of the poet’s
breaks in order to produce certain effects. The placement of purpose; if we go away with the question nagging at us—what
words and ideas outside the confines of a conventional sentence is it, then, in a poem that matters? what could it be?—then
causes our minds to encounter them more slowly and in less Williams has done his job well. Rather than passively take his
linear ways, and allows for a range of associations to flow in explanation, whatever it might have been, as “fact,” readers
ways that the form of prose does not invite. Sometimes, in are invited to engage with the question, taking on the respon-
poems with a traditional or closed form, such as a sonnet, there sibility of approaching each new poem with specific attention,
are fixed rules of rhyme and meter the poet must follow, and on the alert, actively seeking an answer for ourselves: what of
line breaks occur at regular intervals; in what is called open value can you offer me?
form or “free” verse, an author need not follow any set pattern, Williams entices us, with just five brief lines of poetry,
but may rely on instinct and purpose as guides. Line breaks to approach poetry itself with an earnest question as to its
organize the content of a poem, and play an important role in value and its capacity to do meaningful, life-saving, misery-
establishing the pace and mood of a work. Line breaks produce diminishing work in you and in those around you. If you
pauses within sentences, slow the reader down, and give special do this, I tell my students, I promise you will not be disap-
emphasis to certain words or phrases due to their placement. pointed. Poetry reveals to us the great big world, everything
Consider, for example, the lines from William Carlos Williams extraordinary and everything mundane. Poets speak for
that opened this essay. The units of words our brains encoun- us, offering us good strong memorable words to express the
ter are not complete sentences, but shorter bits. In the space it depths and heights of feeling and ideas that often expand
takes for our eyes to move back and forth, our minds have time beyond the rational dimension of language. The special
to consider the relationship between each unit and the next, construction of poems stretches how we think, how we see
and the next: “difficult,” “news,” “poem”; “die miserably every relationships and make associations, and ultimately how
day”… each phrase increases in importance and weight, and we make meaning. For all these reasons, poetry is perhaps
we cannot just skim past on autopilot. our best tool to give voice to those aspects of the human

10 | Intersections | Spring 2013

experience that are most meaningful, most necessary, and Listen to the voice
sometimes most difficult to express. of each dead poet
I leave you with two favorites. I hope they speak to you. as if it were your own.
It is.
You do not have to be good.
(Philip Dacey, from “Notes of an Ancient Chinese Poet”)
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
Works Cited
love what it loves.
Dacey, Philip. Notes of an Ancient Chinese Poet. Bemidji, MN:
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Loonfeather, 1995.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Oliver, Mary. “Wild Geese.” Wild Geese: Selected Poems. England:
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
Bloodaxe, 2004.
are moving across the landscapes,
Rogers, Pattiann. “Knot.” Splitting and Binding (Wesleyan Poetry
over the prairies and the deep trees, Series). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989.
the mountains and the rivers.
Shakespeare, William. The Complete Sonnets and Poems (Oxford’s
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, World classics). Ed. Colin Burrow. Oxford: Oxford University
are heading home again. Press, 2002.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, Williams, William Carlos. “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower.”
the world offers itself to your imagination, Asphodel: That Greeny Flower and Other Love Poems. New York:
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – New Directions, 1994.
over and over announcing your place Wordsworth, William, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads
in the family of things. (Routledge Classics). New York: Routledge, 1991.

(Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”)

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