Why Poetry?

Advice from a failed poet

I’ve always wanted to like poetry. However, like many things in life, I’ve never quite managed to align my will with my desire. Poetry requires patience and a quiet soul. Resistance comes in the form of smartphones, deadlines, commitments, and that pervasive devilish inclination that I need to get more done to stay ahead. Half-read anthologies provide evidence of several failed attempts to cultivate a poetic imagination.

During the Covid lockdowns, I made some progress. I read a poem per day and even began writing my own. They weren’t good poems, but it was a start. Apparently, success in this endeavor depends on forces outside of my control. Since I can’t quiet my own soul, I need the world to stop moving. I don’t like that feature of my character.

At this point, you may be wondering why. Why try so hard to like something that’s clearly not working? Maybe I’m just not a poetry kind of person. Shouldn’t I spend my limited time on things I already enjoy? There’s always a game to watch on TV. My ‘to-read’ list will already outlast my years on this earth without the added burden of poetry. Perhaps it’s not worth the trouble.

But herein lies the problem. I believe it is worth the trouble. I’ve tasted the joy of poetry enough to conclude that the genre contains transcendent potential unmatched by prose. While reading poetry continues to escape my mastery, I enjoy it in other forms. I pray the Psalms, one per day, and discover new depths of meaning in the repeated habit. I listen to music and love the lyrics of a well-crafted song. Certain songs capture memories and experiences in ways impossible to articulate otherwise.

Certain truths require poetry. If that’s true—and I wholeheartedly believe that it is—then I need a poetic imagination to grasp aspects of reality. If I lack such an imagination, I’m depriving myself of rich avenues of meaning in God’s universe. It’s like trying to live with one eye closed when God has given me two healthy eyes. If I can cultivate such an imagination, I can see reality more fully. Poetry helps me reach my full potential as God’s image-bearer. After all, God’s a poet.

Here’s Eugene Peterson’s attempt to articulate it: “Poetry is not the language of objective explanation but the language of imagination. It makes an image of reality in such a way as to invite our participation in it. We do not have more information after we read a poem, we have more experience. It is not ‘an examination of what happens but an immersion in what happens.’”

The poet engages our ears and our eyes, our sense of taste and smell. He appeals not just to our head but also to our heart. Prose informs us of reality; poetry invites us to experience it. Peterson speculated that God concluded the Bible with poetry because we already had the complete revelation of God before us. John’s Revelation functions as a poetic invitation to enter the story through Christ.

In another place, Peterson wrote that “imagination is the capacity to make connections between the visible and the invisible, between heaven and earth, between present and past, between present and future. For Christians, whose largest investment is in the invisible, the imagination is indispensable, for it is only by means of the imagination that we can see reality whole, in context.”

We need both explanation and imagination: “Explanation restricts and defines and holds down; imagination expands and lets loose. Explanation keeps our feet on the ground; imagination lifts our heads into the clouds. Explanation puts us in harness; imagination catapults us into mystery. Explanation reduces life to what can be used; imagination enlarges life into what can be adored.” I’ll add that explanation keeps us grounded in orthodox truth, while imagination ensures that truth never becomes formulaic and stale.

Our culture, however, lacks imagination: “But our technological and information-obsessed age has cut imagination from the team.” We need both. We won’t see the majestic glory of God and his world without both explanation and imagination.

Because of our cultural imagination deficiency, poetry is hard. It doesn’t come naturally. It must be cultivated through repeated practice. It’s easier to watch another reel or stream another show. If you don’t believe it’s worth pursuing, you won’t put the work in. Hopefully, I’ve convinced you, at least, that it’s worth the effort.

Here are some tips. First, read a psalm every day. Meet Christ in his own poetry. Second, listen to hymns. Church history supplies us with a rich storehouse of poetry intended to draw our imaginations into the unseen realm of God’s heavenly tabernacle. Third, pick one poet—George Herbert, for example—and read a poem per week for a year. Of Herbert, C. S. Lewis wrote, “Here was a man who seemed to me to excel all the authors I had ever read in conveying the very quality of life as we actually live it from moment to moment.”

Don’t give up. There’s more to reality than what you currently see.