by Casper Reaves

Created on: August 14, 2011

With great poets, as with all great artists, their power lies in the ability to capture the human experience.  Does the poet connect to the reader or listener to trigger emotions or images? 

The poet must create images that are clear and evocative to touch the reader. Seamus Heaney does this in “Limbo”, when taking about a mother drowning an illegitimate infant.

     Ducking him tenderly
     Till the frozen knobs of her wrists
     Were dead as the gravel,
     He was a minnow with hooks
     Tearing her open.

Great poets use the exact words to help build the emotion.  The line “ducking him tenderly” uses carefully chosen words to portray the love that mother has for her child.  The metaphor “minnow with hooks” is a powerful image to illustrate the pain and guilt of infanticide.

The poet does not necessarily have to have a particular experience first hand.  Whether from imagination or second hand stories, the poet can still build a clear powerful image.  This is mentioned in the poem, “Fallacy of Experience,” by William Harmon.

     You can’t not have experience
     It’s silly.
     Emily Dickinson knew all about the world first hand
     Without even leaving the kitchen
     You don’t have to fight to write the Red Badge
     For Gerontion you don’t need 80 winters on your head?
     How old was Shakespeare when he wrote King Lear?

Some great works of poetry come from authors who had limited experience on that topic.  Edgar Lee Masters, in Spoon River Anthology, lays “bare the dark side of small-town life, its suicides, murders, illicit loves.”(Ellmann and O’Clair)  This was an imaginary town that could be any small town that the reader may know. 

Many poets do deal with first hand experiences and the emotions they had.  Langston Hughes dealt directly with the poet recording what they are in “Theme for English B”: 

     It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
     at twenty-two, my age.  But I guess I’m what
     I feel and see and hear,

In this poem Hughes deals with the experience and reflections of living in a racially segregated society.  In her poem “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath deals with the deep family emotions. 

Emotions often arise out of pain.  It could the pain of heartbreak, death, or injustice.  Great poets respond to those pains with a wide range of reactions, just as in life.  John Betjeman used sarcasm in his poem “In Westminster Abbey” to respond to the injustice of classism during World War II.  Elizabeth Bishop used trivial losses in “One Art” to handle the pain of losing a loved one.

Great poets capture the emotions of a situation.  They use carefully selected words to build image that bring the reader into the situation.  Even when they have not had that experience first hand, they can still convey emotions that touch the reader. 


References

William Harmon, "Fallacy of Experience," as found in 3 Doz. Great Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor (1995).

Richard Ellmann and Robert O’Clair, editors, The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Second Edition (New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1988).

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