Penitence may be likened to a tree, having its root in contrition,
biding itself in the heart as a tree-root does in the earth.
— Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
Pearl-knobbed gates filigreed with Mardi Gras silver
—the oak leaves ornate the iron rails
inset the smooth stone finer than Italian marble.
Stained glass—ruby, emerald, diamond
heralded a warm glow from within. Angelic voices
ushered through the lofty sills—sirens of sea of glass.
I stood at the vestibule, its floor, fire polished in gold—
a new heaven, a new earth.
I saw him, his white robe flowed cloaking the sun,
growing in brilliance. I knelt; felt a chambered resonance—
muffled roars buffeting the mirror floor. It transformed
to uncanny transparency, cracking
with scent of sulfur; voices smoldering—
a new hell.
John C. Mannone
By John C. Mannone
The question, Why is poetry important to me, is not difficult for me to answer, but the companion question, Why should poetry be important to the world, is somewhat more challenging to answer, but in doing so, I will answer the question for me as well. But first, a few words should be said about why this is challenging.
Sadly, much of the world is frightened by poetry, which often stems back to our days in school. First, because it was often presented in the secondary schools as light, even whimsical rhyme. Second, because of the possible false expectations, that when we take poetry in college, there is this rude awakening to the difficult, if not obtuse, analysis. As Billy Collins1 would have put it, we have tied the poem up in a chair and beat it with a rubber hose until it confessed its meaning.
The fun has been taken out of poetry; it is often perceived as something inaccessible, more often serious than light or humorous, and certainly something with low entertainment value.
Even without a bad college experience, impressions have been left that poetry is either too hard, too silly, or too mushy, thanks to the influence of silly rhymes on TV jingles and billboards platitudes, Hallmark Card sentimentality, lewd limericks, and others.
Regardless, the non-poet reader often approaches poems in "fear and trembling" and with a leery feeling they've so often had from reading hi-brow poetry in their past. No one likes to feel stupid.
Okay, then why should poetry be valued as a literary treasure? There are some remarkably distinguishing features that poetry might possess that other literary forms might not. Poetry will possess, more often than not in contradistinction to prose, some of the following: emotional impact that might be revelatory about the human condition, fresh distilled language with the rhythm of the ocean, often imbued with metaphor and imagery (or a host of other poetic devices), often layered with more than one meaning and cast in an effective structural form. And it is through these things that help make the inexpressible, expressible. This allows the intensity of connecting with the reader to be amplified. In my opinion, there is no other linguistic form that allows such a wide emotional dynamic range than poetry.
Now, couple all this to content. There is beautiful order that poetry tries to extract from a chaotic world. Poetry affords the literary "scientist," if you wish, the awe of nature as a metaphor for something about the human condition. But also, the poet is often the vocalization of the social conscience.
I'll invoke a corollary of an F. Scott Fitzgerald expression of why we write. Paraphrasing, I say that we write, and let me stress poetry, not because we want to say something, but because something needs to be said. Naturally, then, this means that poetry is something that should be read, not just for the pleasure in the artful configuration of words, but for its often profound merit.
John C. Mannone writes literary and speculative fiction poetry and short fiction. He is widely published and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry in 2009 for his award-winning poem, Hauntings.
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1 U. S. Poet Laureate 2001-2003. See his poem, "Introduction to Poetry"