The Limits of Poetry

Poetry is a craft of words (the 'word-craft' of the Anglo-Saxons) and words are limited in what they can portray or evoke, even though the range of what they can do is still very very wide indeed. Aside from the form of the text and the (optional) use of rhyme or meter, what distinguishes poetry from prose is the poetic mood: the understanding between the poet and the reader that there is a deeper meaning to the text, that it is not meant to be read merely literally.

There are several well-established devices for a poet to express the prosaically inexpressible: metaphor, metonymy, and so on. A poet may try to capture or express a mood by relating the circumstances which led to it, or by describing the kinds of feelings which it brings up in his mind or body, or by comparing it to something concrete with (hopefully) meaningful points of comparison. All these methods hinge on the necessity that for a mood or feeling to be accurately conveyed from a poet to a reader, it must be to some extent at least be based upon or start off from a shared experience, i.e. an experience not entirely unique to the poet, but something which suitably artful description and hint-dropping will enable the reader to recognise that same feeling and from there appreciate the poet's intent and perhaps how his feeling is different from our own. But there must be at least some recognition, otherwise the meaning is entirely lost.

This relates to how some poetry is untranslateable into other languages, because they depend on cultural assumptions and mindsets that would simply spoil the poem if they had to be explained at length (for instance if the 'point' of the poem is to allude to that particular aspect of the poet's cultural milieu). Likewise, if one has a unique emotion, or at least which one thinks is unique, how does one express oneself poetically, especially if that emotion is strong and yearns for expression? It is like trying to explain pain to a doctor: how painful is it? Perhaps the doctor could pinch you and ask you if it is 'as painful as that'? But the pain of a pinch is a different sort from the pain of a tummyache. What kind of pain, then, is it? A throbbing kind? or a sharp kind? And sharpness can be sharp like daggers or sharp like pin-pricks, but to some people a pin-prick hurts like a dagger, while to others daggers are merely pin-pricks. While we struggle to make the doctor understand, the pain overwhelms us.

So the limits of poetry are the limits that language places on our poetic intention. It is a limit on what we are able to share, and what we are able to evoke. Perhaps accuracy in pin-pointing a certain frame of mind or internal state is not the intention of all poetry, but a limited poetics means a limited human condition. We cannot share everything even with a lover; we are shut off from the internal intimate workings of others around us; we are individuals in the literal sense of the word. And so we come to the sad conclusion:

There are always things too private to tell, because we have no means to tell of them.