Poetry

What is it about poetry I don't understand? I mean, it doesn't say anything to me and I find it impossible to read. It's a dysfunctional thing of mine, something like being colored blind or having poor sight and hand coordination.

While on the subject, I was reading an article about Machiavelli and how in his day they spoke in poetic phrases. The article explained that back then "poetry was closely related to the art of rhetoric, and that poetry was not used as an ornament but as an efficient instrument of persuasion and had high political value. This sort of explains why Shakespeare wrote as he did, in poetic phrases, and why I am not crazy about reading him either.

I remember reading that the poet W.B.Yeats had a weekly BBC show in the 1930's in which he read poetry. He imagined he could change the political landscape with poetry. After reading about the use of poetry in Machiavelli's day I can understand what Yeats might of had in mind, to persuade people politically through poetry. However, as far as I know Yeats never persuaded or changed anybody's politics with poetry.

The other day I was trying to explain what materialism is. In philosophy materialism is the opposite of idealism. Simply put, materialism is based on reality and that which the world is composed of, matter. Idealism is about how thinks could be and for some how things should be regardless of reality or the material world. Materialism deals with concrete things while idealism is more about abstractions.

As I was trying to explain materialism I thought of poetry and its appeal. Materialism is basically what connects human beings, what we have in common (idealism tends to be more divisive because it is in comparison more arbitrary and subjective). We are all made of the same material, flesh and blood and organs. Because of this we generally all have the same sensations and thus can empathize with each other in how we feel, in our happiness, pain and sorrow. And then I realized something, this is what is so appealing about poetry and why it speaks to people, because it contains and expresses material empathy. Poetry deals with and expresses our common sensibilities. And this is what I think also makes Shakespeare's poetic writings so universally appealing, because his writings also contains an expresses that material disposition we share.

I remember reading something about the poet William Wordsworth. He wrote poetry lamenting the despoiling of his beloved English countryside by the Industrial Revolution. Because of the way he wrote he was considered one of the first environmentalist. In his poetry he certainly talked in materialistic terms when he wrote about the environment. (There is no choice but to talk in materialistic terms when one is talking about the environment.) That is how he conveyed a common idea, through materialism. The environment is certainly a materialism that we can all identify with, a materialism that conjures shared values and emotions in us. Wordsworth, with his poetry, had the gift of stirring the common materialistic sensibilities in us, hence the appeal of his poetry.

I am thinking of a passage from Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" that illustrates this materialism I am talking about. And as per Shakespeare, it's conveyed in poetic phrasing. Shylock, a central character in that play, pleads with those who are depriving him of dignity, ""Hath not Jew eyes", meaning, 'Am I not like you, of flesh and blood? Can you not sympathize with me? What you are doing to me could happen to you.' In this passage I read that the human condition, which is of material, is what we have in common and binds us. That sympathy is essentially the bases of social cohesion. I think I should take another look at Shakespeare to discover more about the materialism his poetic rhetoric conveys.

The world does not exist on materialism alone. It needs its idealism also. Poetry can blend the two nicely. There is a phrase that emerged from the idealism poetry conveys, "poetic justice". "Poetic justice is "the rewarding of virtue and the punishment of vice, often in an especially appropriate or ironic manner". Profound poetry tends to be a blend of materialism and idealism, the two opposites of the philosophical spectrum and the contradictions that have shaped and guided our world, the tangible and the abstract.