In his essay “The Poetry of the Future,” Walt Whitman writes that poetry is not only a reflection of our lives but a shaper of them, pushing the boundaries of tradition and advancing societal reform. In his words, “Democracy waits the coming of its bards in silence and in twilight — but ‘tis the twilight of the dawn.” Though poetically put (of course), this claim seems a bit difficult to believe. Especially now, in a time of such vicious international turmoil, constant uncertainty, and undeniable oppression, it seems impossible that something as trivial as a poem can change the direction of the world.
Truly, why should we care about poetry?
Well, to begin, poetry isn’t just simply a medium of expression; it stands at the very root of expression itself. The word ‘poetry’ originates from the Greek verb “poiein” only meaning “to make.” It first manifested in song, predating the written word at the very beginnings of orality. Poetry is explicitly and inherently intertwined with the building of language — it makes language an active entity that evolves by discovering tiny discrepancies in words, opening them to constant definition and redefinition. Language is its instrument; poetry rejects honesty and straightforwardness, moving our communication in unanticipated directions by sculpting our gestures, our speech, and ultimately our worlds into states that are endlessly open and exciting. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it in his 1844 essay “The Poet,” “Every word was once a poem… Poets made all the words and, therefore, language is the archive of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses.” Because that was what poetry was and is: creation.
Historically, however, this form of innovation has been majorly limited by the “Western canon,” in which centuries upon centuries of poetry were exclusively defined by white, European men. In this context, poetry was something structured, entrenched in exclusionary tradition, and inaccessible to the common person. Poetry was only acknowledged when it stuck to strict meters, such as the famous iambic pentameter, or structures, such as ballads; thus, only produced by particular intellectual communities. This failed to identify non-Western forms and rhyming patterns used by Native Americans, Africans, and other minority communities that practiced more oral, free-verse, song-like creations as poetry, shunning those works as “primitive,” “non-literary,” and “artless.” This Eurocentric hold on poetry is often seen as naturally universal, but in reality, it happened through the purposeful marginalization of non-white contributions and perspectives, largely through violent methods such as colonization.
But, not only does the lack of historical diversity in what we classify as poetry downplay the lived experiences of minorities, it steers the direction of language into a dehumanizing and ugly technology. This can be done through implicit subtleties or vague imagery, but most of the time, it’s egregiously blatant, coming from even the most celebrated poets. In fact, Shakespeare’s sonnets, particularly Sonnet 130, focus on his “unconventional” love interest called the Dark Lady, with “dun-colored breasts,” “wired hair,” and an absence of rosy cheeks, implying a drastic contrast between this woman who is implied to be of darker skin, and the era’s idealized “fair lady.” Even in a poem seemingly about love, Shakespeare does not use the typical romantic statements, saying that her breath “reeks” and that music has a “far more pleasing sound” than her voice; these descriptions are based upon unflattering and offensive stereotypes regarding Black women. T.S. Eliot, one of the central figures of the modernist movement, also creates these racist caricatures in his poems, including vividly antisemitic sentiments (notably in his 1920 works “Gerontion” and “Dirge”). Bret Harte, a well-known 19th century poet, perpetuated xenophobic comments against East Asian immigrants during the Gold Rush, framing them as objects of ridicule with descriptions of “slanted-eyes” and “simple-mindedness.” These authors are among many, many others who falsify narratives and contort words to stereotype entire communities.
But just as poetry can be wielded by oppressors, it can be even more powerful in the hands of the oppressed. As social movements have risen and progressed greatly in the 20th and 21st centuries, poetry has been reclaimed as an act of defiance. As Randell Adjei says in his poem “The footprints of a stolen tongue,” “This once foreign tongue used to oppress me. / It is a stolen tongue I now use to speak of my oppression.” Minority communities are now able to steer the direction of poetry, a weapon used against them for centuries, into more progressive and productive avenues. One of the most impactful examples of this was during the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, where African American bards were seen as leaders in the protest against racial inequalities by highlighting black struggle and curating a strong sense of cultural identity. Claude McKay, in particular, utilized traditional European structures such as the sonnet to address the (obviously) non-traditional topic of African American exploitation. In “The Harlem Dancer,” he unveils the profound abuse behind the beauty of Black performers in Harlem nightclubs, hinting at the fact that although these institutions contained a majority of Black performers, their displays of “cultural” dances and songs were, in actuality, mockeries directed by the club’s white owners. Langston Hughes’ “Negro” is also a site of radical reinvention; it redefines a historically derogatory word to instead be used as a label of empowerment and pride. Again and again in this poem he embraces the qualities and background of people of color that were previously written of as insulting. Proudly referring back to his roots in Africa, his labor in slavery, and his suffering in lynchings as symbols of grit and determination, Hughes tells the story of interminable perseverance in himself and all African Americans.
Hughes, along with James Weldon Johnson, further incorporated African American culture through the jazz-like rhythm of their poems, a unique novelty that subverted traditional conventions and innately referenced Africans’ song-like poems that were previously devalued by Europeans. In this, Hughes and Johnson, alongside many other future poets, built upon the very foundations of what makes poetry, poetry: Its innate non-conformity. By definition, poetry bypasses traditional grammar and traditional literary structures, thriving instead in its openness and fluidity. In the European attempt to standardize such an art form, it made poems stagnant and unevolving, adhering to the same meters over and over again. Poetry, in its constant definition and redefinition, is inherently an act of rebellion; to separate it from such has made it stale, uninteresting, and ultimately “artless.” Thus, it belongs in the hands of advocates, dissenters, and rebels; their job is not to state what is already done or known but to reveal what we have yet to grasp, spaces of protest where no words have yet dared to penetrate. Poet Rebecca Lindenberg captures this precisely: “The ‘unsayable’ thing at the center of the poem becomes visible to the poet and reader in the same way that dark matter becomes visible to the astrophysicist. You can’t see it, but by measure of its effect on the visible, it can become so precise a silhouette you can almost know it.”
Hence, poetry becomes not only the most impactful medium of expression but also the most human. Though writing has the power to humanize and bring forth the self to one’s consciousness, it has its limitations as a technology — it can never truly encapsulate all the nuances of our thoughts and emotions. Words are futile devices in this way, weak when faced against real experience. But poetry, in its innately non-conforming, abstract nature, is the closest we can get to conveying ourselves in our entirety — to seeing ourselves sprawled out on paper. That’s why in activism it becomes this powerful, raw, and evocative driver of authenticity, because natural intensity, rhythm, and emotion pour out of it, something so wonderfully imperfect and capricious. Tanaya Winder’s “Love Lessons in a Time of Settler Colonialism” does exactly what only poetry can do; it conveys the human spirit in such loud transparency that it needs no translation through rigid semantics: “We breathe and speak and sing for survival. We crave out in lines; we write — I know joy I know pain I know love / I know love I know — lessons we’ve carried throughout time.” Winder cuts off her words abruptly, she repeats her words constantly, and yet in every line, in every purposeful stop, she spills out this meaning, this desperation to be heard and known and seen.
This is all to say, we’ve been here before. When powerful forces have tried and are actively trying to distort the past and obscure the present, poetry is where we should look to define the future.
So, you should care about poetry because poetry fights to be human, alongside the rest of us.
Featured Image Source: Digital Public Library of America