Necessary Poetry

There are certain songs I cannot listen to anymore because they remind me of someone associated with the pain of loss. R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” reminds me of an old heartbreak in college, Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” of a more recent heartbreak, and listening to Luther Vandross’ “Dance with My Father” is my quickest trip to tears because it speaks to the emptiness I feel after the death of my own father. Music, it seems, owes its popularity and success to the way it can be absorbed by the listener and given a personal context. We give intimate meaning to a song, responding to the sentiment of it in the same way we will mouth the lyrics—we make it about us.

I believe that a slightly different dynamic becomes established in poetry. We read certain poems because we wish to experience the emotion. I am not referring to elation or nostalgia, since music can fulfill that need as well. I’m talking about the poetry that gives us permission to be moved, perhaps to help us understand or at least give language (when our own words fail us) to our feelings of grief or confusion or distress. I will go ahead and call it catharsis since this relationship is set by the reader, not the writer. I will go ahead and call it bibliotherapy, which acknowledges the intent of the reader, not the writer. And I believe there is nothing wrong with this. In fact it is necessary. Certainly it gives reading a poem a function aside from reading for pleasure or for artistic appreciation. It gives the poet and the non-poet alike a personal reason to turn to poetry.
I recall that after the tragedy of 911 (the 6th anniversary fast approaching), poetry was suddenly in demand. Billy Collins made an appearance on national television to read a poem. Former poet laureates offered poetry suggestions in newspapers. People began to make sense of the aftermath by writing poems that spoke to the recent events or by reading old poems that offered solace because they were suddenly endowed with new meaning. Poets were sent out to the schools in NYC to use poetry in helping children make sense of the shattered safety of their homes.
I suspect it’s because of all places, even in cold-shouldered New York City, poetry is where emotion is still allowed. Song as well, of course. I remember listening to Bette Midler’s heartfelt rendition of “Wind Beneath My Wings” at the televised Yankee Stadium ceremony for the families and friends of 911 victims. And then the fundraising followed via poetry readings and the sale of poetry anthologies.
I witnessed a similar communal healing effort after the tsunami of 2004. A notable project that came out of that was In the Arms of Words: Poems for Disaster Relief, edited by Amy Ouzoonian. More recently, similar organizing efforts were made after Hurricane Katrina.
In all three of these instances I saw the humanity of the poetry world once again. These tragedies inspired both verse and activism. That’s what I always thought poetry was for—the expression of emotion to move and mobilize people through art. It certainly has been used that way in many politicized communities in this country.
There are nay-sayers, of course, people who don’t believe poetry and politics should mix, or who negate the power that poetry can have in the daily lives of an ordinary citizen. And that’s fine. I’m not going to argue with a dissenting perspective, though I find it interesting that those nay-sayers always seem to have time and motivation to argue with the rest of us.
Anyway, a poem I keep going back to is an old standby: from Bertolt Brecht’s “Motto,” which he wrote, I believe, while in exile after the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany:
In the dark times,
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times
Certainly, with the current political situation at home and abroad, we are living the dark times. A more contemporary example for me is from Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/ La Frontera, a poem in Spanish titled “En el nombre de todas las madres que han perdido sus hijos en la guerra” (rough translation: “In the Name of All Those Mothers Who Have Lost Their Sons to War”). It is a beautiful healer’s blessing and an impassioned offering of consolation and peace that begins:
Le cubro su cabecita,
mi criatura con sus piecesitos fríos.
Aquí lo tendré acurrucado en mis brazos
hasta que me muera.
Parece años desde que estoy sentada aquí
en este charco de sangre.
Esto pasó esta mañana.
I’m wondering if you could tell me about a poem that you need at certain times in your life. What is your necessary poem?