What is Poetry

Poetry as a Facet of Art
Katherine Wahl

Writing of any kind is simply a means of communicating thought, experience, and emotion. Though, if you really think about it ‘simply’ becomes the wrong word, because that we have the ability to use 26 letters to express such complex things in such beautiful ways is nothing short of extraordinary. Poetry is a form of writing that is at once more expansive and more condensed then regular prose, with a simpler structure and an underground of sometimes endless interpretations. Poetry is, very simply, art, evident by its tendencies to both process emotion and make readers feel various emotions, its many interpretations, and its evolution through time.
Art has a lot of uses and purposes, and poetry can be a medium an author may use to express or process emotion. The prevailing reason a poem is written may not always be to make the reader feel, but to articulate what the author is feeling. Poetry can be used, as other forms of art can, to escape reality. Putting feelings onto paper can help an author sort through what’s going on in their life and express their inner sadness, excitement, anxiety, or anything else they may be feeling. People can write their own feelings and experiences into poems, or fill them with their own thoughts and views. It was Ernest Hemingway who said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Walt Whitman used Leaves of Grass to put onto paper how he longed to be able to feel what others felt, and how it is impossible to truly do so because of each person’s individuality, including his own. Poetry moves a reader to empathize with the author. What Walt Whitman was doing in writing Leave of Grass was helping people to better stand in his shoes, and feel what he felt. Walt was right about not being able to truly see someone else as complexly as you see yourself, but poetry can be at least a small window into someone else’s soul.
Poetry also conveys emotion. As all other art, it is often a vehicle for the author to make someone else feel, poetry specifically through the use of very few powerful words. Ernest Hemingway was once asked to write a six word story that could make people cry. The result was this:

For sale:
Baby shoes. Never Worn.

This poem was meant to allude to the death of a child, hitting a place where most people are vulnerable, moving them to sadness. In Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “The Raven” he writes this stanza:

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering,
fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, ‘Lenore!’
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, ‘Lenore!’-
Merely this, and nothing more.

This part if the poem and some stanzas before and following give the reader an uneasy feeling setting you up for the surprise of the raven flying through the window later in the story. Modern poetry is designed to make people feel as well, a lot of music has lyrics specifically written to make you feel a certain way. Lyrics such as “You crawl outta bed, and down on your knees, and for a minute you can hardly breathe” from John Mayer’s Dreaming with a Broken Heart communicate a feeling of hopelessness, and perhaps even loneliness. Paintings, a medium more popularly considered to be art, also make people feel. Nighthawks by Edward Hopper in 1942 is a haunting piece with color contrast and other subtle details that give the general feeling of loneliness in a big city. Words in general are art, but poetry especially can be a powerful tool for influencing people’s emotions.
I say that Nighthawks is a painting about loneliness in a big city, but that’s really only my own interpretation. Poetry is art because it’s interpretable. Poets often write in metaphor, and even when they don’t, readers can often interpret the poem to mean something other then what the author intended, much like a painting or a sculpture. Artists often say that a work of art is about itself and something else. There are a lot of poems that you could ask ‘what does this say about poetry?’ and get a very solid and creative answer. However, does that mean that the poem is about poetry? For example, William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow” uses beautiful imagery to paint the reader a picture of a specific scene.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

Many think that he could perhaps be illustrating the power of visualization through poetry, or the open ended nature of poetry. Others think that the form and word choice make it a vivid painting through words- a still life piece of artwork built inside your head. Others still are convinced that it asks important philosophical questions. Anyone could put a new meaning to this poem, there is no right answer. Now consider, who decides if a painting is good? Who decides if a poem is beautiful, or deep? The many interpretations of art mean that what is considered quality is changeable and difficult to grasp. The same goes for poetry. With poetry not only beauty, but meaning as well, is in the eye of the beholder.
Some of the beauty of poetry is that it has evolved just as other art forms have. From music to paintings, everything has changed and grown throughout the years since art began. Poetry began in scripture, and as a medium for telling stories and proclaiming heroes. Epics such as the Iliad and Odyssey told tales of daring heroes that defeated monsters and enchantresses on their dangerous journeys. Proverbs from many cultures and religions use poetry to communicate their meanings. Now poetry is more for entertainment value. It is something collected and brought out when you need a little extra beauty or culture. The language used in poetry was also different, more fitting to other time periods. For example one line in The Epic of Gilgamesh reads, “Who can compare with him in kingliness?”, whereas a line in Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” reads, “It don’t matter, he’s dope”. Poetry has always been poetry, it has always been art, but aspects of it have shifted as the times have.
Poetry is emotional, interpretable, and evolving, just as every other form of art. A poet can pour their own emotion into a poem, or use it to make others feel. A reader can choose what is beautiful in their eyes, and appreciate a poem’s relevance to their time or another. Poetry can do more then add beauty to the world, it can help eliminate hurt.