Chautauqua-Cattaraugus Big Read: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson: Why Poetry, Why Dickinson, Why Now?

A Little Background

There’s a question that comes up in almost every English class I've ever been in where poetry was taught: Why? This question is usually followed by its’ brother question: Where? They come together to form a sentence something like this:

“Why is poetry relevant at all and where will it be useful in our lives?”

Now granted, sometimes the Where is substituted by How or perhaps subverted entirely by Who, in the context of “Who cares?” In any case, poetry has a hurdle to clear that is seen sometimes when related to literature but never as staunchly; the short version is that students, and people as a whole who do not read or write poetry themselves, have a hard time understanding the value of any poem, much less the poems of some dead writer with a big name. Admittedly, this is not a small task to handle.

So, as a good man once said to me, “What do?”

The Setup

I recognize that many of us aren't English teachers and as such the relevance of poetry has a somewhat dulled glimmer. With that in mind, however, it has been my experience that the greatest teachers I ever had did their teaching outside the classroom, in effect making anyone and everyone a teacher to some degree; whether it’s your kids, the community’s kids, the kids in your classroom, or you personally, poetry and literature more generally can matter in your life and the lives of others and it’s your task to make the connection.

But the question remains, “Why is poetry relevant at all and where will it be useful in our lives?” The simple answer is to say everywhere and to point to every example of poetry known to humanity, effectively burying your audience under sheer weight. While this effectively demonstrates poetry’s place in our lives, in its many forms, from experience I can say that the volume approach has limited effectiveness because the question shifts to “okay, I get it” for many.

On the other hand, if the question is approached less horizontally and more vertically, you can select a single instance, or handful of instances, of poetic existence which your audience can connect to. My favorite tactic, and potentially the most effective for the largest number of age groups, is to relate poetry to music.

Form and Function

Lyricists combine poetry with composition, in many cases combining the flow of verse to the beat of the music it’s paired with. Contemporary examples of this are most easily explored through the lens of hip-hop and rap music (see Eminem’s “Lose Yourself”), though the scope of poetic verse in music should not be limited there; stepping back in time a bit, lyricists have crafted soundscapes and entire worlds with their art and their audience is brought along for the ride in a similar way to that of a good book (see Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Rush’s “2112,” and Coheed and Cambria as a whole).

The obvious objection to this tactic is that a poet like Dickinson did not craft her poetry with music in mind, and to that I must concede; trying to attach measure to poetry where it does not belong is the epitome of square-peg-round-hole syndrome. However, this is precisely where the second phase of the lesson comes into play: the lines which poets craft carry meaning and in many cases those lines are very personal. That much should be obvious, but the point is that the meaning of those lines can be interpreted by the work’s audience.

So why is poetry relevant at all?

Because we, as an audience, can understand some of what the poet is trying to convey as one human being to another.

And where will it be useful in our lives?

The most important place we will use poetry in our lives is to understand ourselves and the people around us like no other form can match. Poetry takes the rawness of human emotion, gives it form through characters and symbols, and leaves the ultimate message up to the reader like no other medium can. Ironically, the open-endedness of poetry is often the greatest deterrent to its audience, because no concrete “definition” can encapsulate the nature and meaning of a poem; the ability to see something uniquely different from every other person who reads the same poem is as frightening a prospect as it is an empowering one.

Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man ended in an English classroom, where the teacher says “I had a professor once who liked to tell his students that there were only 10 different plots in all of fiction. Well, I'm here to tell you he was wrong. There is only one: ‘Who am I?’” If this is correct, like I believe it is, then poetry is one of humanity’s attempts to answer the only plot line in each of our lives.

In approaching an author like Dickinson with a younger audience, the key point to hit on is her age and writing relative to her time period because within context she says a lot of rather controversial things, made even more so because she was female; out of context, focus solely on her age and writings to draw connections between her poems and your audience. Simply put, what conclusions would you draw about who Dickinson was just from the evaluation of her poetry through our contemporary lenses? If she were a student in class, or a member of the local library, or your own child, what would her poetry say about her? Most importantly, how can you connect to her writing on a personal level? Who are you?

The Getaway

Below are some links to various things mentioned in the post, along with a few not mentioned but still worthy of consideration.

Emily Dickinson

Poets.org: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/155

Because I could not stop for Death (712): http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15395

Come Slowly—Eden (211): http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20175

I measure every Grief I meet (561): http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15394

I'm Nobody! Who are you? (260): http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15392

Eminem

Website: I’m not actually going to link to his website; you can look that up yourself.

“Lose Yourself”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmXumtgwtak

Pink Floyd