hille12 – Snopes

Recently I have been scrolling through the “Words of Wisdom” at the bottom of the Shenandoah website (an activity I recommend with enthusiasm), and I came across a couple ideas that sparked my interest. The first is a quote from Logan Pearsall Smith: “What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.” The other excerpt, which I find to be more profound, comes from Louise Gluck’s essay on poetry entitled “Disruption, Hesitation, Silence.” Gluck writes “The unsaid, for me, exerts great power: I often wish an entire poem could be made in this vocabulary.”

Both these writers assert that perhaps a hidden theme or a vague notion can be the most unsettling part of the written word. This theory immediatly draws my memory to Percy Shelley’s poem, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” which starts out, “The awful shadow of some unseen Power/Floats though unseen amongst us.” This unidentifiable power, Shelley insists, is, “Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.” In this first stanza, Shelley demonstrates that poetry about a vague subject can still evoke vast concepts (and chills) in the reader.

Does a poets lack of exactititude add to a poems effect? Is there not something to be said of beautifully descriptive poetry? I will save you the lengthy essay that could ensue and instead leave you with the unsaid.

This poem by Billy Collins has been a long-time favorite of mine, but that doesn’t mean I understand it.

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

When I first read this poem, I felt like it cleared away all the murkiness of poetry for me. Finally a poet explained what to do with a poem. Now, years later, I’m reading it again, and it seems to only complicate the issue. Poets do put meanings in their works, right? Readers are supposed to be digging somewhat for that meaning aren’t we? Collins seems to be saying that I’m wrong. Maybe we’re just supposed to look at a poem and admire it’s physical and verbal attributes. After reading this poem, I feel like I’m water-boarding a poem anytime I analyze it too much. How do I ski across the surface?

The Unsaid

What to do with a poem