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What is Poetry

When we refer to “language”, we should be aware that there are kinds of languages in use, that differ mainly in function. In our everyday lives, we communicate information about the weather, the newly published books, or the best way to get a good score, through the language which is said to be in practical use. Otherwise language persuades us to buy some clothes, to visit our friend's house, or to vote for a candidate. This time, it is in argumentative use. Lastly, there is another use of language that seems to exclusively relate to literature. The language in literary use creates concentrated and organized experience in many works of literature. The language in poetry may be called, as in other kinds of literature, to be in literary use.

             As to the poetry, it is experience. When it is said to be experience itself, it is not about experience. Actually, ordinary language is frequently about experience, so the language can have it as its object. The poetic kind of language, however, may not regard to experience as a thing or an object which can be transferred, handled, and analyzed. This kind rather composes, constructs, and synthesizes experience. While ordinary language analyzes experience and puts it under the process of our intellects, poetic language synthesizes it and opens its ways to our senses, emotions, imaginations, as well as intellects, or to something else if later discovered.

             As far as the language is “poetic”, here is made the distinction between poetry and other kinds of literature. The poetry is condensed in form when compared to other kinds. When a work of literature narrates something about an experience, it simultaneously hides something as it gives us impression that it provides everything we need to recompose in our mind the reality of the experience. Though, a poem is condensed in that it does not pretend to present everything, so it does not hide anything. It retains the comparatively intact reality in relatively short length and by limited words, which is ironical. But this distinction needs to be understood as a continuum which takes purely poetic language and purely ordinary one as its two extreme ends. They may exist only in our thought, and actual works of literature may be holding their position between the two. In other words, other genres of literature tend to use ordinary language more, but the poetry rarely does.

             We may pay more attention on our definition of poetry by considering a brief and famous statement that MacLeish suggested in his poem, “Ars Poetica”: “A poem should not mean / But be.” It seems that the verb “mean” implies, for to mean is to mean something, the existence of the meaning or the content of the poem, so experience is contained in the poem and may be, when readers read it, transferred to them as a thing, a bundle of words, independent of the poem itself. The verb “be”, on the other hand, shows that there is no other thing which is on a different level than the poem. A poem is something itself. So, a poem should not express out of itself something like content, reality, or experience, but should be experience itself.

             If a poem is divided into two parts—the poem itself, and the thing it expresses—, the latter is said to be transferred to a reader through the medium of language. As the very part of the reality can be carried through the language, the poem cannot help but distort the reality, or the experience. If a poem is, however, not divided, there is nothing conveyed to a reader. What is given to the reader is the poem itself, and s/he may only participate in it. As we read a poem, we participate in an event and experience it, constructing it with our other prior experiences. We participate in the being of the poem.

             Experience, as far as we consider it as the meaning contained in a poem, is presented through the medium of language that, to some degree, necessarily reduces and distorts the reality. If we strive to catch what the poem really means, there is always something leaking and we are sure to misunderstand or partly understand it. To experience is somewhat different. Its concern is the reality before it is articulated by language. When reading a poem, we should not try to turn the whole thing into some language-concerns, but rather make it our own experience which is not articulated and interpreted. What is the most difficult is that we should do it with language. So, poetry is a struggle to grasp the reality itself through the language that never touches it without distorting it. The struggle may not come to an end.

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