Yesterday I called poetry a “misunderstood creature.” This stemmed from the fact that few people read poetry, and even fewer consume it. ((This is based on a completely un-scientific sampling of people I’ve known. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of people I know who read poetry on a regular basis.)) The question that arises, then, is “why do we need to learn about it?”

Here was my answer: ((I know that there have been hundreds of defenses of poetry written—a colleague recently recommended Edmond Spenser’s “the pleasure of poetry . . . inculcates forms of profitable pleasure,” which, I just Googlearned, comes from Horace.))

Poetry : absurd thinking : : Math equations : logic. To put it a different way, poetry helps us define our associative muscles, helps us better make metaphorical connections within our world. I’ve been saying for years that we think and communicate in metaphor. In order to explain something to someone else, we usually compare the unknown to something known. The example I gave in class is that a plantain is like a banana, but brown or green, less sweet, and more starchy. I relied on your understanding of what a banana looks like, then modified it to help you imagine an unknown fruit.

Poetry works the same way. When Wilfred Owen ((Who, I just learned, was killed in battle one week before the end of the war…)) tosses image after image at his readers in “Dulce et Decorum Est,” he is setting a scene that contrasts greatly with the common understanding of war. By comparing soldiers to “hags,” he undermines his audience’s image of the great and proud British soldier, and delivers the final blow by following a painfully descriptive account of the death of a soldier with “the old lie” that “it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

There is a psychological term for our image of “war” and “bananas”; it is called a schema. While mathematical thinking helps us to better think on the literal, logical level by manipulating variables and such, poetry and literature allow us to improve our metaphorical thinking. We are building schemata by vicariously experiencing new events and ideas, then breaking them down and rebuilding them as we analyze.

So what’s the point? I recently read Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, and they gave a solid explanation of what they call “generative analogies”:

Some analogies are so useful that they don’t merely shed light on a concept, they actually become platforms for novel thinking. For example, the metaphor of the brain as a computer has been central to the insights generated by cognitive psychologists during the past fifty years. It’s easier to define how a computer works than to define how the brain works. For this reason it can be fruitful for psychologists to use various, well-understood aspects of a computer—such as memory, buffers, or processors —as inspiration to locate similar functions in the brain.

Good metaphors are "generative." The psychologist Donald Schon introduced this term to describe metaphors that generate "new perceptions, explanations, and inventions." ((Heath, Chip. Made to Stick. New York: Random House, 2007. 60. Print.))

Thinking metaphorically, even absurdly, allows us to come up with novel ideas, with new ways of thinking. ((See John von Neumann’s The Computer and the Brain)) Mathematical equations allow us to better comprehend the world as we know it within the boundaries of logic. Poetry and literature help us better understand ideas an concepts that aren’t logical—emotions, relationships, inventions “that just shouldn’t work” (think DaVinci or Escher, as much artists as they were mathematicians), innovative ways of looking at the world—that, my friends, is why we read poetry.

The Assignment

Find two words with nearly identical definitions in two separate contexts (or write two different contexts around similar words) that emphasize two different connotations.

For example:

Today I told the story of Joe from Johnny Got His Gun, which presented a terrifying vision of what it means to be isolated. The connotation comes from the main character’s terror, helplessness, and inability to communicate.

In Pablo Neruda “Unity,” however, gives us a very different view of what it means to be isolated:

I work quietly, wheeling over myself,
a crow over death, a crow in mourning.
I mediate, isolated in the spread of seasons,
centric, encircled by a silent geometry:
a partial temperature drifts down from the sky,
a distant empire of confused unities
reunites encircling me. ((Neruda, Pablo. “Unity.” Poets.org. 2005. Web.))

Better example

From Shelby:

She chose the color blue. Colors are not something I considered for this project, but would work very well. If you are having trouble finding a word that works for this project, try a color, an emotion, an element (earth, fire, water, wind).

I found “Goodbye Blue Sky” from Pink Floyd and I think it works. When it refers to "blue sky," I think it means goodbye to peace and normality not necessarily a pretty blue sky.

Did you see the frightened ones
Did you hear the falling bombs
Did you ever wonder
Why we had to run for shelter
When the promise of a brave new world
Unfurled beneath a clear blue sky
Oooooooo ooo ooooo oooh
Did you see the frightened ones
Did you hear the falling bombs
The flames are all long gone
But the pain lingers on
Goodbye blue sky
Goodbye blue sky
Goodbye
Goodbye

 

Alright, my second one is Elvis’ “Blue Christmas.” In this case the word blue is used as a synonym for sad or down. Elvis does an interesting thing in this song, when he uses the colors red, green and white he means the actual color but when blue is used it could be removed and replaced with sad or depressing.

Ill have a blue Christmas without you
Ill be so blue just thinking about you
Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree
Wont be the same dear, if youre not here with me
And when those blue snowflakes start falling
Thats when those blue memories start calling
Youll be doin all right, with your Christmas of white
But Ill have a blue, blue blue blue Christmas
Youll be doin all right, with your Christmas of white,
But Ill have a blue, blue Christmas.

Post your examples below. If you have any questions, post them below as well or email me.