World Class Poetry Blog

Poetry Rules: What Should A Poem Be About?
28 October 2007, the poet @ 9:28 pm

Archibald MacLeish said that a poem should not mean, but be. If we take this at its literal face value meaning, the former Librarian of Congress was saying that a poet doesn’t necessarily have to be about anything. I, of course, will have to disagree.

MacLeish developed his thesis from the Modernist view that a poet should be isolated from society. This was the view of both T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, perhaps the two most well known Modernists. While I am a big fan of Eliot (though not so much of Pound), I must take a different view. I believe that poets are as much a part of society as a baker, a politician, or a thief and must take a prominent role in its evolutions. A poet can be an instigator or a passive observer, but he is always a participant and as such his work - the poetic deliverance - is, in a sense, a journal of the events, the attitudes, the values of his time. This does not need to be intentional on the part of the poet, but is a truth nonetheless.

If this is the case, then, what should poets write about? What should their poetry be about? Must a poem carry a meaning more than simply be? Not necessarily. I do not mean by my thesis - that poets are a part of society and should be actively involved - that every poem must necessarily have some meaning beyond itself. I only mean that it should simply not be content with being.

In other words, I am not saying the meaning or the being is the primary component of poetry. Each is a valid component of a poem, though each can be nonexistent in the poem itself. If all of this seems a bit esoteric, forgive me. Nonetheless, it is the heart of my own view of poetics, which I call The Millennial School (but that is a post for another day).

In my view of poetry, a poem can be about anything, or nothing at all. It can be a poem that simply is a poem or it can carry the weight of the secrets of life. It can, if it stretches itself far enough, be both. This is not to say, however, that anything is acceptable. For that would be a huge and grievous error. If we accept that anything in poetry is acceptable then we would fall into the Modernist trap that a poem should not mean, but be. And that is precisely what I am arguing against.

A poem is not defined simply by its author. Nor is it to be consigned to what everyone else makes of it. Poetry has always been a mode of expression, a means of communication. As such, there is both a sender and a receiver. By consensus they agree on definitions and meanings and when they understand each other they are said to be communicating effectively. Poetry, then, is understood by consensus. It must be shared and talked about. It must be read silently and read aloud, pontificated, meditated upon, consumed, regurgitated, deconstructed and reconstructed, and, of course, admired as well as hated. For these are all passions that make up the human soul and have for all of history. It only seems to reason then that they must be applied to poetry here and now and forever more.

So how then shall we answer the question: What should a poem be about? If there is an answer, it lies within the hearts and minds of poets and their audiences. Let them meet in harmony.

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