Poetry. Who needs it?

 "The enduring human need for poetry . . . its ancient task of teaching and consoling humanity." 

So said Dana Gioia in his essay on September 11. The human need for poetry. Why do we need it? What does it give us? The first thing I thought of was a former voice teacher; he was trying to get us, his wooden freshmen students, to understand our motivation for breaking out into song. Why not just speak the words? he asked. We were intimidated freshmen and had no answer. He said we sing when words will no longer adequately express our situation, when the emotion or situation is so strong that mere everyday conversational prose just won't handle it. Or something like that. Basically, when words fail, we sing. 

And I think the same is true of poems. Lines of poetry come to us when cliches fail and everything we try to say sounds like something on a Hallmark card. There's a certain relief in finding words that perfectly fit the situation. Strangely enough, the place I see this relief the most is on facebook - you know, the teenage girls who post those Taylor Swift song lyrics to express the anguish of unrequited puppy love  or how alone in the world they are (I was one of those girls once. Only my medium was xanga. I blush). And there's something to it. It's a lot more satisfying to type some poignant lyrics into that little box than to simply post "Anna is feeling down." 

And that's the need poetry fills in our lives - it expresses what we cannot express; it comes the closest to articulating what is beyond words. 

For example, have you ever lost someone you loved, but life is too busy to grieve and the tears won't come but then they do and you're glad, actually glad, to be crying? Well. Wendell Berry does. 

Early in the morning, walking

in a garden in Vancouver

three thousand miles from your grave,

the sky dripping, song

sparrows singing in the borders,

I come suddenly upon 

a Japanese dogwood, a tree

you loved, bowed down with bloom.

By what blessedness do I weep?

-From Sabbath Poems