Poetry: Receiving It

Article and photo by Gabriela Gueorguiev

“I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:   

It is what you fear.

I do not fear it: I have been there.”

- Sylvia Plath, from “Elm”

Do you want to get to the bottom of poetry? To know it with your great tap root? Do you fear it? Or have you been there? My assumption is that you’ve been there... 

Because there are so many aspects to poetry. Each trying to accomplish a thing of its own. And I’m sure there’s at least one of its ideals that you can relate to, and understand from the bottom of your deepest root. Let’s take a look at some of them.

minimalistic and mundane:

Some poetry is very minimalistic. It’s not meant to be deep or “beautiful” at all. It’s meant to be the opposite…to be as normal, freeing, and present as possible. These poets argue that the “real” is the most honest way to live and write, and they often do so with very little editing to their work.

Eileen Myles’ poem “The Honey Bear” (The Honey Bear by Eileen Myles) is about someone in a kitchen, listening to music, having random thoughts like “I’m not a bad looking woman,” and looking at a bottle of honey. It’s so normal. It’s such a minimalistic poem, yet, it says something. It makes us feel more okay about our awkward, boring moments.

Minimalism spoke so much to me. And my poetry prof said that “there’s just as much room for poets like this, as for poets who work in a complicated style.” So then how can we ever say that a poem is boring? Because maybe that’s exactly what it was going for... Maybe it wants to make you question what the difference between “beautiful” and “boring” is anyways. Maybe it wants to make you think outside of what you think “poetic” should be.

In that case, the poem’s beauty is found in how it succeeds to do that for you.

“I’m not a bad looking woman

I suppose     O it’s very quiet

in my kitchen tonight        I’m squeezing

this plastic honey bear”

- Eileen Myles, from “The Honey Bear” 

complicated and confessional:

Sylvia Plath is one of my favourite poets. Her poetry is fascinating, deep, mystical, even borderline fantastical at times. But it can also be messy. There’s a lot going on in Plath’s poetry, and I acknowledge that I probably don’t even know the half of it. But what I do know is that there’s something extremely unique and sensitive about her voice. 

She presents disjointed images, so it can be hard to follow. But in many ways, the messiness is entirely understandable. It lives in our heads, doesn’t it?

Sound is another important element in Plath’s poetry. Sometimes the sound alone will tell you something about life…whether it’s smooth or rough, or a nice mix. Listen:

“Is it the sea you hear in me,

Its dissatisfactions?”

Beautiful, isn’t it?

Those above two lines are from her poem “Elm” (Elm by Sylvia Plath), which fascinated me so much when I first read it. Yet, I knew I was missing something... She says:

“I am terrified by this dark thing   

That sleeps in me;

All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”

I was so confused about what she was talking about with the “feathery turnings” inside of her image. She also says that the moon is caught in her, and that the sunset is scorching her roots, amongst other striking images.

Then it hit me. The poem is called Elm, which is a type of tree. So this poem is talking from the point of view of a tree. She’s talking about a furry creature sleeping inside the trunk, and the moon getting caught in the branches.

Isn’t that so unique? Not many people write like that. And what’s even more unique is that nowhere in the poem does she say: “I am a tree.” No, the reader has to figure it out — has to do some digging… We have to pay attention to this poem. Which calls us to pay attention to life too.

life imitates art:

Did you notice that I mentioned multiple times that poetry is honest when it reflects life? That when we learn to pay attention to poetry, we learn to pay attention to life? 

Well this all depends on how you would answer the question: does art imitate life? Or does life imitate art? 

If art imitates life, then maybe we reject the “ideal” and the ‘beautiful”. If life imitates art (or rather, we’d want it to), then we might hold onto every bit of beauty there is.

Some people reject beauty entirely, and focus on the real. Others reject the real and focus on the ideal. What do you think it should be? And what do you think it is?

Either way, this I know for sure: all poetry challenges us. It might be obscure, minimalistic, mysterious, or hard to read and jump into. But when poetry invites us to understand it, that changes us. Deeply. And we need that. We need that level of depth in our lives. We need that understanding.


Sources

Myles, Eileen. “The Honey Bear by Eileen Myles.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54619/the-honey-bear.

Plath, Sylvia. Ariel. Illustration by Sarah Young, Faber, 2010.

Plath, Sylvia. “Elm by Sylvia Plath.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49003/elm.

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