According to Jay Parini in his book Why Poetry Matters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), there are a number of reasons why creative reading and writing, far from being simply a pleasant diversion, can help people meet their social and personal responsibilities. The core of his argument is that as words shape thoughts, it is important for people in community to critically evaluate what they hear and choose to listen to. In addition, the rich traditions and language of poetry have long been a reservoir to help human beings understand and voice their relationships with the natural world and with each other.
The Power of the Metaphor
Linguists such as George Lakoff consider that "analogical thinking", the use of metaphor, is fundamental to how people make sense of the world. Because they are so powerful it is important to understand that metaphors are "figures of speech", that there is a gap between the word and the thing. Robert Frost was an advocate of the importance of understanding the metaphor and exactly how far it can be stretched in conveying meaning: "unless you are at home in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere. Because you are not at ease with figurative values:....You are not safe in science; you are not safe in history". Parini observes that one "might, for example, examine the phrase 'war on terror' as an implicit metaphor in need of serious deconstruction".
Metaphors can become symbols which, because they have a range of associations, can increase their power to politicians, advertisers and others seeking to persuade. For example, in poetry the rose has been used as a symbol of many things (a woman, a country, a state of mind...). The Suite 101 article Voting and the Politics of Fear describes Drew Weston's work on how political campaigns can tap into "networks of association", bundles of thoughts and feelings stemming from single phrases or images.
As metaphor is the essence of poetry, studying it carefully can assist people to consider critically the many messages they are "bombarded with" in their daily lives.
Poetry and "Going Green"
Increasingly accepted as an aspect of citizenship in this era of climate change and environmental crisis is an awareness of the interdependence of human beings and the natural world. Poetry, Parini observes, has ever since the "pastoral" verse of the classical era, drawn people closer to the Earth. He cites as one of many examples the work of 19th-century Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins ("Glory be to God for dappled things"), who evoked "an almost pagan sense of nature's power to invade and involve, even to embody (or make manifest) the spirit".
One of the reasons poetry helps those who read it to appreciate nature is its precise use of language. Poets are required to "see" and describe what they see carefully, which is a way of staying "grounded" in the real world. George Orwell, in his essay Politics and the English Language, made an impassioned plea for the careful use of words, which he saw as an antidote to "the damage that abstraction may cause".
Poetry and Understanding Politics
It is their facility with language, "because they have spent a long time thinking about the connection between words and things", that, according to Parini, gives poets the right to speak out on political issues. In fact, he argues that poets should avoid being marginalised, as "poetry provides a moral standard for expression, one against which political rhetoric must be judged".
The work of the poet is not to offer solutions, but rather to give "voice to what is not usually said". He cites Walt Whitman's radical image of democracy in Song of Myself: "every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you". Another example of a poet providing a "depth of understanding" in relation to a political event was W.H. Auden. His words in September 1, 1939 (when Germany invaded Poland at the start of World War II) have been used to describe the experience of Americans following the horror of 9/11: "All I have is a voice/To undo the folded lie".
Voice and Experience
In hard times, poetry can provide a toolbox to assist people in their personal and social lives. Poetry, through its use of multiple voices or personae, can help in the understanding of personality. W.B. Yeats, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot are all poets who used masks or characters to create or explore aspects of themselves. Through understanding voice one can contemplate what comes from within versus what is being absorbed from, for example, the media. Parini observes that "poetry offers an antidote to the bludgeoning loud voices of mass culture, insisting on the still, small voice".
In offering "a language adequate to our experience", poetry can provide for people in community an alternative to despair or violence. It can, Parini concludes, "save us. It can ground us in spiritual and moral realities, offering the consolations of philosophy, teaching us how to speak about our lives and how--indeed--to live them".
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