Why Poetry by Matthew Zapruder

I love poetry, and am always interested in how and why it can leave us speechless with astonishment. Anna Quindlen once wrote, People who are knowledgeable about poetry sometimes discuss it in that knowing, rather hateful way in which oenophiles talk about wine: robust, delicate, muscular. This has nothing to do with how most of us experience it, the heart coming around the corner and unexpectedly running into the mind.

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.

Blessings,