What Is a Poem?
1. What Is a Poem?
An ordering of words arranged in a certain pattern (determined by the will of its creator), which fulfils the basic function of language.
For ages now attempts have been made to determine the certain characteristics that distinguish the language of poetry from the language of, for example, prose. What is more, for ages now (in these latter ages rather than formerly) creators have been to a certain degree successful in blurring said distinguishing characteristics on behalf of the demands of liberty and unfettered creative expression, through normative recommendations in which they resemble simultaneously the famous protagonist of Cervantes and Baron Munchausen: for poetry is conventionalized artificiality after all, and to contradict this is like setting off to battle with windmills, pulling oneself out of a pit by one’s own hair. For ages again (these latter, not those former), literati have suffered from this affliction. Of their own free will.
2. What Causes Poetry to Arise?
As I see it, poetry is set in motion by an interior need, a sort of pressure, which demands expression. For if one writes poems only “rarely and unwillingly” (the first statement is objectively true, the second is certainly due to some temporary distraction of the author of these words), that only means that said pressure is not of permanent duration.
3. Whence Comes Said Pressure?
God only knows.
But so much can be said, that inspiration (and there are as many inspirations as there are inspired) must be distinguished from the “need,” “will,” “desire,” “necessity” of writing a poem.
For, as I see it, all people experience a certain inspiration to thought arising from reality (whether interior reality or the exterior reality that faces them), but not all people (or rather, only a negligible percent of people) experience the need of setting down said inspiration in written record ordered in a certain pattern.
4. Who Then is the Poet (The Poetess, The “Person Creating Poetry,” Etc., And So Forth)?
Well, of course it is that person (etc.) who, having experienced inspiration (to think about something), brings his/her hands down upon the keyboard or grabs the felt-tip pen and begins blackening a sheet of paper. A rag by nature and custom as white as snow enslaved. A white flag of resignation from future struggle.
5. Struggle? Resignation?
Well, certain things are not comprehensible by one train of thought. Certain things—the colors and sounds of a spring morning, the aroma of fields warmed by the sun, or, for example, that “swaying into openness” of Martin Heidegger’s, let’s say—initiate a process: they speak something to us, very strongly, but . . . unclearly. As if they were mumbling, and we could not suss out to the end what it is all about or why it sparks such emotions in us. Both poets and poetesses (persons etc.) are those who do not just shrug at such moments (as do the majority of us; that is, the majority of us remain at that stage of first impressions, intuitions, but we do not follow these any further in order to extract or to understand, to grasp or comprehend in images what it was that “struck” us). And they, the poets, poetesses, etc., do not shrug, they follow.
6. So in What Way Are They Different From Thinkers? Philosophers?
First, because they do what they do in a different sort of speech, and secondly, because basically they do not clarify what was going on during the stage of said inspiration, rather, they enliven that inspiration, endowing it with long endurance, which in the case of great poets, poetesses, etc., is even eternal. Capisci?
7. No, Non Capisco. Try Harder.
All right. So there is this poet R. M. Rilke. And he is sitting or standing in some museum gaping at an “ancient torso of Apollo.”
8. Ok, And So?
And so he is looking at that monument, that sculpture, and something starts churning inside him. He does not know what. Some sort of dark, fundamental experience. But what? He does not know. Something strong, something primordial, which goes beyond aesthetic contemplation. He feels, perhaps, that what he is looking at will change his life, or shape it, or—the absolute beauty of this sculpture somehow annihilates him, smashes him to smithereens, pulverizes him. He is trembling all over. But he does not know.
Because he is not a philosopher, just a poet (and if it matters, Rilke was a male person, historically speaking). And he writes a poem about this. About this moment. He records his sensation . . . and provides us with the opportunity of participating in this sensation of his. In other words, in allowing himself to be inspired, he draws along our consideration, but what it is that remains in this poem is that moment at which he realized what was going on, and when he finally begins writing (this is how it sounds in the Polish translation by Jastrun), “every inch of this stone sees you / you must change your life,” and in this way he creates his poem.
Because, in the end, he switches directions: it is not me looking at the marble, it is the marble that is looking at me. And it is “his” gaze, not mine, which is transformative of me. Despite the fact that the statue in question has no head. Or eyes for that matter. But that which was capable of expression in that moment, when the poet felt something of that sort, at this moment now takes hold of us, touches its readers, allows us a shared experience.
9. Well, All Right, But What Is It That the Poem Gives?
?
10. What Does the Poem Bring?
Can you speak more clearly? What is it supposed to bring? And to whom?
11. To Him for Example, Who’s Reading It
Nothing measurable. Maybe an admiration for the poet’s skill. A wonder at his ability, at the proper choice of words, the intriguing metaphors, or the surprising fact that something as banal as a boiling kettle can be considered in the manner that Marcin Świetlicki describes it in his famous phrase “Fuckin’-a boil a’ready!” He is speaking here to the water, the lyrical subject, that is, because he wants the water to boil already so that he can make the tea, so that She could drink it and go off already “into the gloom,” in short, be off already. It is a very surprising perspective, that. And I could probably give a thousand examples of what sort of power there is in poetry! The power of eliciting a cognitive dissonance. The portrayal of an unusual perspective or the casting of a surprising light upon people, things, or situations. That is poetry.
12. And the Poet? What Else Does the Poem Bring the Poet?
a. Nothing more than that, for sure. He comes to learn more than he knew before he sat down to write the poem. Those poems are the best. Successful ones. Poetry, please believe me, often surprises its own maker: the end creation brings a surprise to its creator.
b. And in the same way poetry (the successful poem) brings its creator great joy. The poet derives a great satisfaction from the successful poem. The poet who is fundamentally satisfied, who derives satisfaction from the poem begins to yearn when he finds himself in a situation when he is not writing poems (and such times are much more frequent than when he is writing “rarely and unwillingly”). The writing of verse is an addiction to such moments when the poem succeeds. One would like to repeat such moments. Because poetry differs from prose in this: the writing of verse is not a desk job. The immediacy of reception is equal to the brief time of its creation. We now have the poem and we experience joy or satisfaction at the fact that we were capable of writing a good poem, but then the time arrives when we are not writing a poem (because this is no desk job), and we begin to yearn for a repetition of that state of satisfaction or joy . . . and we give it another go. And we keep trying like this until we die, because the writing of poems is necessary to one’s life.
EDITORIAL NOTE: This article is excerpted 150 Poems from Poland (Arouca Press, 2025). All rights reserved.
