An Apology for Poetry

An Apology for Poetry by debgrant

First, a definition:

apology: noun

#1: an admission of error or discourtesy accompanied by an expression of regret.

#2: something that is said or written to defend something that other people criticize.

Certainly, I do not apologize for poetry. I like to write poetry. It turns me inside out. For an introvert, that is risk-taking. I splay myself out like a bug beneath the slide of a microscope. I keep doing it because I like being seen once in a while which includes being willing to be seen at my best and my worst. As the poet Yosa Buson wrote, “My arm for a pillow, I really like myself under the hazy moon.”

I have been reading anthologies of poetry lately. When I was a child, in the summer time we would drink from the garden hose not by turning it on but by suctioning the open end, listening for the gurgle ascend, the water surfacing gently and earthy cool into our mouths. That is how I read poetry these days, I vacuum the words into my face until the water I need for the day surfaces. A sentence or two gurgles and quenches my thirst for putting words to a dream.

I have learned that poetry is an acquired taste. Most people I know smile politely or honestly admit they are not “fans.” It takes a great English teacher sometimes to stir such fandom. I had many teachers who taught me how to listen for the gurgle and surface the water and take it in. Anthologies of poetry begin more often than not with a defense of poetry, I imagine because those editors have spent their whole lives defending what they do to others. This defense, or apology if you will, by Matthew Zapruder, the co-editor of The Best American Poetry of 2022, is a good example. In his introduction, Zapruder links poems to dreams - another art form of the mind which is often dismissed as a source of insight or spark.

“…dreaming is a least a step toward change. A poem is a dream made manifest in the world for oneself and others. Before we dismiss dreams as a source of knowledge and power and change, we should remember that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did not say he had a thought or a plan or an idea….In the direst of circumstances, poems are available to everyone, and can help us resist and survive, and see and forgive each other and ourselves.”

The scriptures are one of many anthologies of the dreams of God made available to everyone. The Psalms are unapologetically poetry. Hip Hop and Rap are the thundering beat of poets turning themselves inside out and risking being seen and judged or dismissed and ignored. Poems are current and old, diverse and still small voices saying, “I am here. I am alive.” Bodies of water that want to surface, to connect with others who are thirsty to resist the troubles, who seek to survive and forgive.

###