Richard E. Miller
219 Principles of Literary Study

Defining Poetry

Moore, "Poetry" (590)
MacLeish, "Ars Poetica" (621)
A.R. Ammons, "Poetics" (768)
Reed, "beware : do not read this poem" (834)
Silko, "How to Write a Poem about the Sky" (852)
Baraka, "Black Art" (handout)

In each of the poems listed above, the poets reflect on the activity of writing poetry. The poets write about what poetry is and what it should do; they write about how they find inspiration and about how they want their readers to respond to their work. And, just as our class discussions have brought to light competing definitions of what constitutes a poem and conflicting senses of what the work of reading poetry entails, one finds similar disagreements among the authors of these poems about how best to define poetry and about what comprises the best response to a poem. Indeed, the questions that have begun to surface more persistently in class and the questions that preoccupy the authors of these poems are central to the literary study of poetry: What makes one poem "better" than another? What is involved in the act of writing poetry? What is involved in the act of reading poetry? What kinds of demands might or should a reader make on a poem? By what means does one distinguish between different readings of the same poem? That is, how does one draw a line between the poem as written and the poem as it is read?

For this essay, I would like you to work closely with at least one of the poems listed above, articulating the poem's definition of poetry and then providing examples of poems assigned in this course that would or would not meet with the requirements of the definition. For instance, one of the ways that Marianne Moore defines poetry in her poem, "Poetry," is as the presentation of "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." Were you to work with her poem, you would need to explicate this definition, discussing it in relation to the rest of her poem and arguing your interpretation of this line. You would then illustrate your argument by referring to other poems read in this course, selecting examples of those where you feel the poet or the reader's transaction with the poem successfully produced "imaginary gardens with real toads in them" and other examples where the poet's efforts or the reader's transaction with the poem were not so successful. Your goal, in short, is to articulate a definition of what a poem is or of what it means to read a poem and then to apply this work to other poems read for this course.

In pursuing this project, it is of central importance that you provide a detailed reading both of the poem you select from the list above and of the examples you then use in relation to this poem. In other words, since you will be making connections that are not obvious between the poem you have selected from the above list and the other poems in the course, you will need to provide an argument for the connections you are presenting. Thus, your work will include both closely reading a set of poems you have selected and carefully arguing the connections between the poems you elect to discuss. Finally, you will want to reflect on the work you've done: What does the poet's definition of poetry help bring to light about the other poems that you feel is particularly important? How does working within the poet's definition influence the questions you ask of other poems? Is the poet's definition of poetry and the poetic transaction complete or do you feel that work remains to be done in this area?