When I saw Zapruder’s book on Kindle Unlimited, I was eager to see what he had to contribute to the discussion. I was delighted with his opening sally that Poetry isn’t in any danger, and never has been. And I’m quite sure there will be poetry as long as there are people who can speak, and probably even after. [And this delightful jab:] Probably even robots will write it, just as soon as they get souls.
The central
question of the book is how poetry creates a heightened sense of awareness (what
Zapruder calls “a poetic state of mind.”) It happens through the form of the
poem, which guides the mind of a reader. It happens through leaps of
association. And it happens as the poem explores and activates and plays with
the nature of language itself.
He contends
that there is no such thing as poetic language. The words used in poetry are
every day words, but their energy comes primarily from the reanimation and
reactivation of the language we recognize and know. In poetry, we see how
language can be made deliberately strange, how it becomes “difficult” in order
to jar us awake. One of the ways that poetry reanimates language is in its
use of unexpected associations or metaphors. (Like when Emily Dickinson calls a
snake a “whip-lash” or when Richard Crashaw writes that “Graves are beds now
for the weary.”)
He also
insists that poetry is not a secret code, and that it is not written to be
deliberately elusive or obscure. (I would agree up to a point since I find most modern
poetry to be purposefully vague. Ironically, the second half of the book is filled
with examples of modern poems, which Zapruder painstakingly explains because otherwise they make no sense.)
In general,
says, Zapruder, poetry requires no special knowledge, only attention. The
meaning of the poem resides on the page, and is available to an attentive
reader. Paying attention is essential and this close reading of the text is
essential not only for literary enjoyment, but he would add, it’s necessary for
survival in this modern world. The more we are colonized by our devices and
the “information” and “experiences” that they supposedly deliver, the more we
need a true experience of unmonetized attention.
The first half of the book was helpful and insightful; he detours off a few times to decry the evils of climate change, terrorism, inequality, environmental issues, etc. which didn’t seem to have anything to do with the topic. And, as I wrote above, the second half had many examples of difficult poetry that, instead of encouraging people to read it, would scare them off permanently. Still, I enjoyed gaining insights into how poetry makes its impact, and look forward to continuing my journey toward understanding it better.
