SuperNova Afterglow: End Of Days

Explaining Poetry to my son

My son is taking AP Lit in his senior year of high school. He came to me with a poem 'Crossing the Swamp' by Mary Oliver that was a task master and said, "Okay, Dad. Explain poetry to me.' We got distracted with dinner and other obligations, so I decided to write my discourse on poetry to him, hoping it will help:

To Alex,

Why watch a movie called Titanic, if you know how it ends? There is more to the story than beginning, climax and outcome. It's about how they got there, what you experience along the way. A poem can be like that.

A poet wants you to feel what they are experiencing, but they don't want to just shout out the answer in these never ending games of charade. You have to guess. But, who's going to tell you you're right? It's like working a New York Times Sunday crossword alone now.

You figure out the parts that are easy to understand and place them next to other clues and puzzle it together. But, the whole time, you have to remember, you must stand back and let this wash over you. Don't strain too hard. Because a poem is like a painting that can be wild in color or muted in tone. What type brush strokes, canvas? In essence, what is their medium? Is it traditional rhyming (feel good) or free form with line breaks putting emphasis on some words for extra meaning. How do the words layer over one another like the painting?

You might feel better as you go along collecting clues, assembling them, getting a general spirit for the writer's game. In the end, they want you to feel something in your gut. It's experience. If it's something you can't relate to because of lack of experience, it would be hard to feel empathy. Sympathy is a tool for those who can feel your emotion but cannot relate. Everyone (except, maybe, sociopaths) experience joy, pain.

This is why reading poetry about stuff you know will help you understand/feel poetry -- poetry that uses form (can be lyrical), poetic devices (personification, imagery, allegory) and those words so cleverly paired to give us coined expressions. (Just Google Shakespeare and you will see.)

I'll end with this, for now. I can explain further in the days, weeks, life ahead. But, I wrote a poem in college that was my rant about people confusing my writing for greeting card stuff. Though, it doesn't prove my point (it would take many toils to come), it describes what a poem was to me then. My 25-year-old self to my near 18-year-old son:


What do you make of a poem?

A poem
is a poem, is a poem, is a poem.
Is that all you can make out of that?
Wherever you roam, you roam, you roam,
don’t forget to bring a hat?

A rose
is a rose, is a rose, is red, now dead.
Now what do you make out of that?
You killed it with your drool you fool;
slobber from your face you spat.

A dream
is a dream, is a dream, is a dream.
What a scene you made out of that.
You killed it with your vision, division;
television spawned the illiterate brat.

I woke up one day, saw daisies, a meadow;
a brook full of leaping trout in their raincoats,
trying to land on hooks. Caviar bellies
splash on the cement, bake in the sun.
Now what do you make out of that?

Nothing?
I see you, I dream you; you’re just fiction.
You breathe my air like gas,
pass out from fumes too real
for your kind of imagination.
So what do I make out of that?

A poem is a red rose, is a dream.
A poem is a field full of fish in raincoats.
A poem is nothing but what you see; not television,
it’s fiction, too real for your imagination.
Now what do you make out of that?


Indirectly quoting Gertrude Stein while thinking about Shakespeare:
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/15900.html

STATIC

What Do You Make Of A Poem?  (E) Illustrating what poetry is about to help those who don't see the meaning. #1173259 by He’s Brian K Compton

Truth is elusive. It makes you doubt it exists. (Your current dad)