Is it better to write a poem based on experience or based on opinion?

Experience

1 of 71

by Elizabeth M. Young

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Poetry is packed with the stuff of fact, rhythm, smell, sound, sight. Poetry is far more effective in triggering memory than in describing the intellectual concepts that cause people to form opinion. Even when poetry is written to form opinion, readers respond far more readily to triggers that bring up their memories of events and experiences that caused them to form their own opinions or feelings about matters of life, love, and our place in the universe.

Poetry addresses complicated matters, in some cases, leaving out more than it includes in order to trigger the reader to ponder his or her own remembrances of major events in life.

"Maybe he believes me, maybe not.

Maybe I can marry him, maybe not.

Maybe the wind on the prairie,

the wind on the sea, maybe,

Somebody, somewhere, maybe can tell.

I will lay my head upon his shoulder

And when he asks me I will say yes,

Maybe."

- Carl Sandburg, "Maybe"

Poetry is packed with the stuff of the emotions and the senses, even when the goal is the pass on the heavy intellectual concepts of political opinion, history, national pride, or showing manners during sports events.

"The Rocket's Red Glare, The bombs bursting in air..."

James Brown wanted to motivate African Americans to experience being included in America. During times where people were experiencing events that came from inequity, rage, and disappointment, his "Living In America" became an anthem that would trigger those who felt excluded to create their own feelings and experiences of American Unity. There is powerful rhythm, tonality, and expression even when a person speaks the poetry. Others automatically respond by filling in with the music, as the joy of previous celebrations of American unity comes back to people.

"Living in America - eye to eye - station to station.
Living in America - hand in hand - across the nation.
Living in America - got to have a celebration - rock my soul!"

This lyrical example evokes far more in feeling and positive memory than it does in forming opinion. The words can cause people to forget about their opinions for a while, and to actually experience feelings of pride as part of a larger whole. The words can trigger deep, intellectual discussions about national unity and whether it will ever be achieved.

Whenever the words are heard, they actually trigger new experiences as people sing along to forget negative things and to express unity and pride. And all people remember the experience far more often than they remember the intellectual concepts of national inclusion, unity and pride.

Even when poetry is written directly and compactly to express an opinion, poetry is a powerful trigger of memories of those events and experiences that caused us to form our own opinions. In twenty five words, Ogden Nash says everything that needs to be said about why we should do what we have to in order to save the trees, but the words are far more powerful in evoking our own thoughts and memories of events that caused us to form our own opinions about billboards and saving trees:

"I think that I shall never see

A billboard lovely as a tree.

Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,

I'll never see a tree at all.

-Ogden Nash, "Song of the Open Road, 1933

In summary, while poetry has been a powerful engine of expressing opinion, the best of poetry serves up powerful sensual triggers that bring out experiential memories that caused us to form our opinions, to summarize our intellectual understandings, and to remember major events that formed us as human beings.

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