Poetry and Experience

Does poetry create experience or merely report it? It should be obvious that poetry cannot create an experience, but it can report it. Actually, the term report is not appropriate; reporting is what journalists do. “Re-create” works better, because a poem does, in fact, re-create experience by dramatizing an event or portraying a situation. And the poem performs these functions through figurative language, including image, metaphor, allusion, personification, rime, meter, and many other forms.

Creating an Experience

Just a little thought will distinguish the difference between the two ideas of creating or reporting experience. To “create an experience,” what must an individual do? An example might be to create a celebration for one’s child. The child is turning 10 years old, and his mother wants to surprise him with a birthday party. So she plans the food, entertainment, presents; she sends out invitations. She bakes the cake, arranges the candles, and decorates. Then she arranges to have her child away while she prepares the location that will hold the party. He arrives, all the guests shout, “Surprise! Happy Birthday!” And the party begins.

A mother has created an experience for her child.

Re-Creating an Experience

Suppose some years later, the child who is now a man, runs across a poem about a birthday party. It reminds him of his own birthday party—makes him remember the excitement and the love that went into that party. Did the poem “create the experience”? No, the poem reminded the man of his own experience. Even if the poem additionally makes him more aware of the love that went into the party, which he had not really noticed at the time, the poem still did not create the experience or the love: the mother created the experience, the boy-turned-man retains it in his memory, and the poem reawakens the memory.

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