PART II: Poetry: A Valuable Form of Communication
PART II: Poetry: A Valuable Form of Communication As society’s communication technology developed, such as printing presses, access to written poetry expanded. Thus, distribution of the written verse reached others beyond the community of the poet. This gave opportunity for poetry to be exposed to a broader scope of people, widening the perimeters of emotional, intellectual and spiritual expressions.
Gradually, poetry sang further into the depths of society: the poetry of Wordsworth and Shelley outgrew the farm; the poetry of Yeats, Ruskin and Kipling sallied forth beyond country shores; the poetry of Whitman, Dickinson and Hopkins meandered beyond the village; the poetry of Sandburg, Williams and H.D. slinked into the main street of the city. The poetry of Dickey, Hughes and Wright seeped into the coal mines, hammered within lumber yards, and sweated in the cotton mills; the poetry of Plath, Lawrence and Ginsberg even filtered into the sinews of mad men and wild women. This is captured in verses written in Ginsberg’s poem “Howl”.
I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through negro streets
at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angel head hipsters
burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo
in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up, smoking
in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats across
the tops of cities contemplating jazz
(Ginsberg 2380).
Poetry is the pulse of struggles, triumphs and defeats, which span the myriad of emotions common to all human beings. Poetry grasps at the very throat of the pursuit to meaning of life within the vapors of fog, smoke and verse.
Although only a few out of so many, many poets were mentioned, poem upon poem illustrates this powerful quality, as Emily Dickinson wrote, “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that it is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry” (Dickinson 405). This observation remains a guideline for future poems created and shared.
A reader’s search to identify with another such as the poet, who expresses the same emotion, is fluid. Somewhere there exists a poem, which connects the reader’s heart to poet’s heart, reader’s soul to poet’s soul. Perhaps, a reader maintains the top of her head. Yet, she is so moved by the lines that even her own confusion fades. Poetry strives for emotional, intellectual and spiritual connection to the reader.
Latest Articles