Why would anyone read POETRY?!

Last year around this time, I put out a book called You Want Me to Read What?!It's a short book (coming in at a mere 81 pages, including exercises and glossary), meant to be an introduction to reading--and hopefully enjoying--poetry. The book peculated for years before I actually put it down in this "finished" form, but it is mainly comprised of lessons about poetry I have taught my classes over the years.

But, as most people know, poetry isn't exactly blowing off the shelves or into e-readers. It's not like people are dying for the next Billy Collins book to be released (well, there may be a few... if you even know who he is). In fact, many people don't even see a point or a place for poetry. A few years ago I came across an article in Newsweek entitled "Poetry Is Dead. Does Anybody Really Care?"by Bruce Wexler (Newsweek, May 5, 2003). He states the case--or at least most people's view of the case--well in his one page piece. The caption on the picture on the article is telling and perhaps sums up Wexler's (the world's?) perspective well: "I can't remember the last book of poetry that created a dying mosquito's worth of hum."

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So then, why should people read poetry? Why would I, a teacher, require my students to read and be able to discuss poetry with some sort of working vocabulary? Why would I spend time writing a book about how to read it?

These are good questions. I can tell you that I don't teach it simply because it's required, although it is. And, I can tell you that I didn't write a book about reading poetry to make money. (I assure you, I've possibly made back what I put into the project... little more.)

Here my succinct answer: I teach poetry because there is wisdom to be gained from it.

From poetry we as readers gain experience and wisdom, via the experience and words of the poets. No, they don't speak as loudly or to as wide an audience as they once did, but the poets do (and did) see and they do speak. As human beings, we'd do well to listen and try to glean what we can from their observations and expressions of those observations.

This concept of gaining wisdom from poetry is one of the primary things I want my students to understand when we wrap up our poetry unit. What follows is an excerpt from my book about the wisdom we gain from poetry. 

Wisdom? What wisdom could poetry possibly impart? Good question. After all, we don’t learn to add or subtract, fix an engine or repair a toilet, run a computer or change a baby diaper by studying poetry. What practical wisdom is there to be had, then? Well, probably the most important wisdom that poetry produces is that of experience. When we read poetry, we are shocked into being alive. Okay, that’s likely overstating the case, but somewhere in the words on the page we can find the realization of humanity and reality. Poetry is a portal into reality and experience beyond our own limited reality and experience. A poem can capture a glimpse of what is not quite expressible in our world. It can glimpse it and give it form. Therein we find problems and fears, hopes and expectations articulated. Therein our own experience is broadened, deepened, sharpened. 

But a poem doesn’t simply tell about experience; it is the experience and the vehicle into further experience. Through a poem we are allowed a little deeper into our own world—into our memories, our feelings, our hopes and longings; into friends, strangers, enemies; into questions, concerns, and quandaries; sometimes, into answers. A poem allows us to know about people and to see into their eyes, to see through their eyes. This comes back full circle, for when we see the world at angles and perspectives other than our own, we understand our own angle and perspective better. 

Yes, there is more to say about the topic (as always). For now, I encourage you to find a poem and seek to find the experience it offers, whether it is ideas or just sounds.

And, just for kicks and if you're so inclined, leave a comment about your experiences reading poetry.

Haiku... a gateway into teaching and learning poetry?

Haiku! Haiku!

Anyone got a tissue?

This is what I came up with--an original American haiku (which doesn't necessarily follow typical Japanese haiku form)--back in 1999 when I first looked at a little book by Gary Hotham called Breathmarks: Haiku to Read in the Dark. It was my first year teaching, and though I still had that wide-eyed eagerness of a new teacher, I was also somewhat of a, um, snot-nosed punk. Arrogant. Cocky. I wasn't aware of this at the time, but looking back on it, I see that's what I was.

Hence, when my friend and headmaster handed me this little book (measuring in at 4" x 6", and a little over 1/4" thick), I chuckled aloud and thought "What a waste" on the inside. Through snickers and scoffing--my own and the students'--I read some of the 80+ haiku to the class. We all had a great laugh at this silly little book.

But later that day (or that night or that week--I don't really remember), I read all of the haiku. I came to the end and I read one of two little essays Hotham included in the collection, called "Why haiku?" Great question, right? In this five page essay (probably only 500 words at most), I came across such things as

"All his art is to recapture a moment and seize upon particulars and fasten down a contingency" (a quote by historian Herbert Butterfield about historians)

"So the historian and the haiku writer are after the same things" (Hotham's interpretation of the above quote)

"the essence of a moment keenly perceived" (part of the Haiku Society of America's definition of haiku)

"There is a lot of emotional energy, excitement, and depth in the small events, the brief moments of life. And why not--they are all part of the sweep of history. They are all part of what is significant and important in our lives as God's creatures. The haiku is a great form of poetry with its pinpoint focus for capturing those brief moments in time and recreating the associated states of being" (Hotham again)

I don't know about you, but I'd never thought of poetry or haiku in this way. When I thought of haiku, I thought of three line "poems" of seventeen syllables, five in the first line, seven in the second, five in the third. I thought of nature. I thought of little kids doing sorry imitations of sorry, stupid little poems in a stiff form. Hotham got me thinking--and seeing--in a new way. 

Capture an instant in time. Capture a flash of insight. I can get on board with these concepts. And Hotham doesn't limit his own haiku to the traditional Japanese pattern. He uses one, two, three, or four lines. His view is, the more words you have, the more ideas creep into the poem; the sharp edges of the moment get dulled.

Another thing I noticed from Hotham's own haiku was that his few words really do create an image in my head. Not all the time and not each poem, but some of them really do. They just resonate and I have an entire scene or a moment in a scene flashed into my head from his very few words. Take this one for example:

through

tall grass taller weeds

her feet wet

her legs wet  

When I read this (or hear it read aloud), I picture a young girl coming up from the beach, through the tall brush grass that grows on the outskirts. And, even as I write about what I think of, the image is changing, and I'm picturing a young girl wearing a sun dress, running through grass and weeds that are so high she has to do that awkward high-knew running to get through. Oh, and she's laughing or grinning at--me!

Crazy, right? And my descriptions can go on. But Hotham said little about any of this. So what is going on? I think what we're getting into here is how literature works, and how poetry works to a heightened degree. Somehow the few words of a lyric poem tap into our consciousness, our imagination, our perception. The few words trigger something in us that allow for an image to form in our minds, often a very detailed one.

I don't want to get into why this is, partially because I don't exactly know how to explain it and partially because this isn't my point here. What I do want to suggest is, try haiku. Teachers, students, children, adults--everyone reading this--try haiku. Read some. Write some. Follow the traditional Japanese form, don't follow the traditional form. But DO try to see the capture moment or flash of insight in the haiku you read, DO try to capture your own.

I think you'll see that haiku is a good gateway into seeing the value and importance of poetry, and the splendor of the human imagination.

How about this: Write a haiku and leave it in the comments below. I'll not judge. 

Here's one I wrote:

Thunder rumbles closer;

Sleeping little one

          Breathing in my ear.

Still learning "real life" in the stories

I'm an English teacher. To be more exact, I teach literature. At least, the names of the courses I teach imply that this is what I do.

However, over the past few years I've found myself primarily interested in my students seeing more clearly, more fully, more deeply, more insightfully. In many ways, texts have become simply my means to this end. I spend much more time discussing characters and situations and cause and effect than I do the various literary techniques and devices I used to think of when I thought of literature. I tend to lead students into the texts presupposing an awareness of the literary devices, the elements and parts of stories.

No, I'm more interested in students seeing literary texts as a means to or a mode of knowledge. To borrow an image from Leland Ryken, I'm more interested in my students seeing texts as the windows on the world, windows to the world. Somehow through these texts we're able to plumb the depths of human experience in ways that elude us in many other academic ventures; we're able to see and experience and understand life in ways that are often beyond our perception in day to day living.

Sure, I've mentioned some of these things before, but I'm rethinking them again tonight as I read through student essays about Oedipus Rex. The essays were meant to be short discussion question responses--twelve to fifteen lines or so. Several of the students went above and beyond my expectations. More than that, they are seeing what's going on in the text and--at least a few--are able to see the connections between Oedipus's story and the stories we live in "real life." No, most of us--thankfully--don't murder our fathers and marry our mothers, but we do struggle to understand our identities and our place in this world. We do come face to face with the horrors of some of our actions and the consequences we must live with thereafter.    

As I've been reading these essays, I remember that I'm a student, too. I remember that I'm still learning the very thing that I try to teach. I'm still learning to see. And though Keanu Reeves says otherwise in the movie Point Break, vision is NOT highly overrated. I need more of it.

Sacrifice... from God's perspective, part 3

In this third installment looking at Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac from God's perspective, we begin to look at the angel of the LORD's puzzling statement to Abraham when he interupts the sacrifice.

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So how are we to understand the angel of the LORD’s words when he says, “now I know that you fear God”? Is God learning something here about his servant? Was this something he didn’t know and now he does? If so, does this mean that he is not sovereign in knowledge, as many evangelical Christians believe?

Time and again the Scriptures testify that God does know all things and that he works all things according to the council of his will (see Psalm 147:5, Romans 16:27, Ephesians 1:11, Philippians 2:13, among others). He is a sovereign God, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. Nothing catches him by surprise and he is certainly not taught new things:

Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD,

Or what man shows him his counsel?

Whom did he consult,

And who made him understand?

Who taught him the path of justice,

Who taught him knowledge,

And showed him the way of understanding? (Isaiah 40:13-14)

Because these things are so, we must be careful in our interpretation of the angel of the LORD’s words “now I know that you fear God.” This statement doesn’t necessarily imply that God had no inkling of how Abraham would respond and now he does. It could mean, as Calvin explains, that God is speaking “not according to his own infinite wisdom, but according to our infirmity” (see his commentary, Genesis, p. 570). In other words, God speaks from human’s limited perspective of moving from ignorance to knowledge; he is not speaking from his sovereign perspective, knowing the beginning from the end. Or, as Leupold interprets, the word for “know”—yadhati—is used “in the sense of ‘know by experience,’ and so we have here not even an anthropomorphism” (see his commentary, Exposition of Genesis, p. 630). This is not God speaking of himself in human terms, but God actually experiencing the knowledge that he already had of Abraham’s faith.

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To further tease out this answer is going to take some time and space, so I'll discuss more on Monday. For now, consider some of the ways that God seems to gain experiencial knowledge early on in Genesis... and why he might do such a thing. If you can think of examples, please leave a post. Maybe we can generate some discussion.

Literature is a mode of knowing

There are many ways of knowing--of coming into knowing or knowledge--and reading literature is one of them. Many of us often neglect this sort of knowledge or the pursuit of it, because it's less facts-based, apparently less useful for the here and now, less pragmatic. Rather--or so the common line of thinking goes--literature is just stories or poems and not much good for day to day living.

I say otherwise. If anything, literature is exactly about day to day living. Students often ask, "When are we going to use this in real life?" With literature, the answer is simply, "This is real life." At least, literature deals with the particulars of life, giving them form for us to grasp and understand and, well, something from which to gain knowledge.

Emotion, Imagination, and Experience

Knowledge is communicated through literature differently than it is through other sorts of writing. The primary difference is that story and poetry show human experience, while the other types primarily tell about it. We don’t generally read a story to get information, as we would a newspaper article. Rather, a story or poem is a sort of portal or window on or into the world (an idea I got from Leland Ryken of Weaton College). We look through this window, and yes, we see a world depicted which may be a world of elves and dwarves, heroes and villains, princesses and knights, or common men and women with common lives in a world just like our own. But more than that, we also see our own world in a new light as a result. In many ways, literature helps us to better contemplate and understand our own reality and experience, even if the stories are far-fetched fantasy adventures of orcs and talking trees. Literature does so by showing us life.

Also, stories and poems usually deal with what is concrete. It takes human experience and doesn’t simply define or explore the philosophical nature of such things as love, conflict, suffering, family, etc. Literature puts ideas and emotions, which are abstract, into a determinate shape in the imagination. It shows us these things—and more—played out through the lives and experiences of characters or poetic speakers. An author will have characters going through actions, living life in a setting of some kind. He will use sensory details—words and descriptions that appeal to the five senses—to bring the characters, the action, the setting to life. And this “bringing to life” occurs in our imagination as we read or hear a story. With such in our imagination, we can somehow “hold” onto it, understand it, almost “touch” it, as if it had more substance than an idea or emotion.

To be sure, as we read stories we are moved in our intellect, just as we are when we read other types of written language for facts. But in addition to our intellect, our imagination and our emotions are also moved. In this way, a story or poem expresses the whole of reality, the whole of life. A story may not express exactly what we personally think about reality and life, but it certainly does express a sense of life. We experience a sense of the way things truly are.

Again, like most (maybe all) types of writing, literature communicates to our intellect, but more than that, it communicates to our emotions, our imaginations, and our experience. This is how literature is a mode of knowledge, and such knowledge is what we desperately as human beings trying to live in community in our schools, churches, towns, cities, states, countries.