Singer on Poetry

“While the poet entertains, he continues to search for eternal truths, for the essence of being. In his own fashion, he tries to solve the riddle of time and change, to find an answer to suffering, to reveal love in the very abyss of cruelty and injustice. Strange as these words may sound, I often play with the idea that when all the social theories collapse and wars and revolutions leave humanity in utter gloom, the poet—whom Plato banned from his Republic—may rise up to save us all.”
Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel Laureate from his acceptance address, 1978.
Our singular strength as poets is the capacity to justify our presence and value in words with beauty, grace and the force of rhetoric. It is pure blind faith that makes me embrace Singer's fantasy, his "play with an idea." But at some profound level, we all want to believe it is true.

So he offers us a short list of commandments for the poet:
1. The poet entertains
2. The poet searches for eternal truths
3. The poet searches for the essence of things (that confounded Platonic "isness")
4. The poet "in his [or her] own fashion"
5. The poet tries to solve the riddle of time and change
6. The poet tries to find an answer to suffering
7. The poet reveals love in the face of cruelty and injustice
8. The poet will be found in the hurly burly of collapsing theories, the gloom caused by revolutions and wars.
9. The poet will save us all
10. The poet will be banned from the Republic
Brawta
11. The poet will save the Republic
I do like the balance here--the movement through the lyrical, the philosophical, the political and the spiritual. I am moved by the impossibility of the task--the call for the poet to make that quixotic entrance to save the day. I like that poetry sets itself lofty, largely unattainable goals, and I like that there is no illusion about the world in which the poet must function. I especially love that Singer admits that he is playing with an idea. At some meaningful level, I believe that poets should be doing some of these things all the time. If we are not, then I am not sure what we are doing.
I leave New York tomorrow moroning. I return to South Carolina. For another stretch at home, I won't have to answer the question: "South Carolina? So how is it for you there? I mean are you okay there?" And the answer is yes, all the time it is yes, but I know I am not answering the question as these folks want me to answer it. That is because they don't want to ask me the question in their head--the question about race, the question about the racism of the south. So I entertain, because there is no simple way to answer the question, and it is why I am a poet, because I know I can sing the beauty of South Carolina in all its imperfect strangeness in poems. And in this sense, I do not always have to answer the question.
Every people, every village, every district, every city, every community needs a Singer-poet--a poet who will play with things and find a way to somehow rise up and save us from ourselves.