Last April I attended a virtual poetry gala hosted by the Academy of American Poets, which featured a plethora of celebrity readers. Liam Neeson quoted Billy Collins in his distinctive brogue, and John Lithgow, in his deep voice, recited Lucille Clifton. I laughed out loud at the exuberance of Ethan Hawke as he dramatically read W. H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening.” But what changed my perspective on poetry entirely was something Ada Limón said:
We need poetry—in order to reveal ourselves to ourselves.
I am guilty of approaching poetry as a way to reveal myself to others, which poetry does accomplish. But Ada Limón’s simple admission made me realize something very important: poetry is also something outside of ourselves. Mary Oliver writes that “poems arrive ready to begin. / Poets are only the transportation.”
To think “I’ve made it” is a primitive way to approach an ever-changing ancient art. Poetry is not something that’s mastered; it’s something that’s personalized. You don’t conquer the art; you make it your own. Every poet needs poetry—to reveal themselves to themselves. What is revealed can (and should) be articulated as a poetry aesthetic.
Defining a poetry aesthetic
Aesthetic is an artistic or literary concept which describes “what is valid and beautiful” relating to the nature of art. A poet’s aesthetic involves her artistic judgment, outlining the principles upon which she bases her work. These principles are deduced from the artist’s body of work and, by serious poets, codified.
In college I took an upper-level poetry course that outlined five main components of a poetry aesthetic:
Purpose — Why does a poet write?
Poetic Means — What are the poet’s techniques?
Preferred Subjects — What are the poet’s topics and themes?
Process — How does the poet write?
Power — What effects does the poet believe poetry can have?
Each of these components says something about the poet, her poetry, and what she ultimately communicates through her poems.
Deborah Hickman and Wayne Ready refer to an aesthetic as “a constellation of choices” that results in “imagery and expression that is unique.” An aesthetic is first governed by poets’ choices and then governs poets’ choices. For example, perhaps I am writing often about trees, faith, and sorrow. These images and ideas become integral parts of my personal aesthetic. My artistic choices have created—and thereafter sustain and continually describe—my aesthetic.
Many famous poets, whether intentionally or not, articulate a poetry aesthetic. One of the most famous is from William Wordsworth’s preface to Lyrical Ballads:
I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.
The Romantics are notably vocal regarding their beliefs about poetry. As another example, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote—literally and figuratively—a flowery aesthetic:
Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things; it is as the odor and the color of the rose to the texture of the elements which compose it, as the form and splendor of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and corruption.
I’m more inclined to identify with the Italian poet Salvatore Quasimodo, who writes that “poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal, which the reader recognizes as his own.” These words resonate with Mary Oliver and Ada Limón’s espousal of poetry as a revelation—a deeply personal revelation—that reveals us firstly to ourselves and secondly to others.
The need for a poetry aesthetic
In my review of Lucille Clifton’s book of light, I say that “the dream of any half-serious poet” is to be indistinguishable from her work, something Clifton remarkably accomplishes through her structural and thematic choices. But for a poet to be her work requires a great deal: a poet must firstly know herself and her work, and her tone must be undeniably her own.
But I can’t grip poetry in a chokehold and demand the all the answers. I don’t believe poetry is something to be broken like a horse or conquered like an occupied territory. Rather, I am trying to approach poetry as a cosmic mystery to be pieced together (but never solved), or as a wealth of scholarship to be studied (but never mastered). Poetry is much like faith—we must grow and mature in our pursuit.
Thus, a poetry aesthetic is a sign of a maturing poet. It will naturally arise. Serious poets are not only writing poems; they are also cultivating a growing awareness of the nature of poetry and the role of poets.
Robert Frost, for instance, says poetry results in “a great clarification of life.” By this, he is referring to the poem as “a momentary stay against confusion.” This is why poets need an aesthetic. An aesthetic clarifies the poet’s experience of life, and it serves as a “ballast for the body”—both for the body of the poet and for the poet’s body of work.
Ultimately an aesthetic is a poet’s momentary stay against the uninhibited flow of words inundating the literary community: “In a world of millions and millions of poems, here am I: one human voice amid an ensemble.” Poetry is and will always be enigmatic—a shared space of many momentary stays—a diverse and elusive genre that invites each poet to “be” and thereby “write.”
If you are a poet, do not lose yourself in the childish quest to be “as great as ______.” You were not given the gift of words to be a second incarnation of someone else. Lean into the themes toward which you gravitate. Draw deeply from the well of your personal experience. Delight in your finished poems and glean from them insights into your philosophy of art and of being an artist. Write these insights down. In the end you will have codified a revelation of yourself and your work—one momentary stay against myriad others, but something uniquely your own.
My own poetry aesthetic
When taking a college-level poetry course, I had the opportunity to articulate my personal aesthetic. It has changed since I wrote it. Since human beings are constantly learning, maturing, and growing, so will our views of all art, but especially our own. I’m recording what I wrote here as an example aesthetic and to remind me where I’ve come from. I encourage all artists to do the same.
I want my poetry to explore the difficult emotions of the human nature, including those regarded as “positive,” such as love or forgiveness. I want my writing to be accessible, easy to understand, and universal in application. If anyone reads a piece of mine on grief, for example, and for a moment, feels as though he or she is finally understood, I have met my goal. I want my poetry to communicate to every reader that he or she is never alone.
I seek to accomplish this using primarily free verse, with exceptions for stricter forms of verse, such as sonnets. Some forms I’ve experimented with include poems where the lines are cut off where I can make end words rhyme, meaning line length is ragged, and the poem appears like a free verse poem on the surface.
Content-wise, I write much on grief, forgiveness, love, and social or religious issues that have touched me personally. Some of these issues include legalism, being a minority, and a proper view of femininity. I wrestle much with what Scripture has to say, while never denying its truth. I question God, I believe, respectfully.
All my poems start in my head, often with a line or two that I can’t get out of my brain. Sometimes I witness something that I know could serve as a good image. I write down what I can on the page, and the poem typically unveils itself right then and there.
Nature imagery presents itself often in my works. I believe this sort of communion with the natural world enhances the meaning of my poetry and gives me a deeper understanding of the processes of life and death. Poetry itself is a life-giving and life-sustaining force. Mary Oliver believed that poetry could save one’s life. I wholeheartedly agree. I would not be who I am today, and it is even likely that I would not be living, without the outlet and life-saving power of poetry. Readable, sincere, and genuine poems, with an adequate density, can change lives; not just of the reader, but also of the poet.
Select aesthetics by famous poets
Matthew Arnold: “Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life—to the question: How to live.”
Emily Dickinson: “If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it.”
T. S. Eliot: “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.”
Robert Frost:
“There are only three things, after all, that a poem must reach: the eye, the ear, and what we may call the heart or the mind. It is the most important of all to reach the heart of the reader. And the surest way to reach the heart is through the ear. The visual images thrown up by a poem are important, but it is more important still to choose and arrange words in a sequence so as virtually to control the intonations and pauses of the reader’s voice. By the arrangement and choice of words on the part of the poet, the effects of humor, pathos, hysteria, anger, and in fact, all effects, can be indicated or obtained.”
“A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”
John Hollander: “A great poem is topical, occasional, or not, but it must transcend that occasion. It has the power of generality, and the power to make myth in itself. In the presence of great poetry, we feel pleasure not unmixed with astonishment or terror.”
Philip Larkin: “Every poem must be its own sole freshly created universe, and therefore have no belief in ‘tradition’ or a common myth-kitty or casual allusions in poems to other poems or poets, which last I find unpleasantly like the talk of literary understrappers letting you see they know the right people.”
Mary Oliver:
“Poetry isn’t a profession; it’s a way of life. It’s an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.”
“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”
Edgar Allan Poe: “I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is taste. With the intellect or with the conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with duty or with truth.”
Dylan Thomas: “Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.”
Christian Wiman: “In the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both.”