To the layman, poetry is a useless device. What purpose does it serve? It does not feed or pay you, so why bother with it? Yes, without a doubt, poetry is the thoroughly worthless contrivance of penniless English teachers, pathetically attempting to use words to convey a subtle, perhaps more poignant meaning.
Poetry is often assigned to that niche containing museums, works of magnificent and expressive art and similar insanities of the Renaissance. Can these extravagances ever be appreciated by everyone? I find it very hard to understand their attraction. Yet, for a select few, poetry becomes a way of life. Are these people mad or is their infatuation merely a farce, and their supposedly emotive and expressive work all a mockery, a lazy and desperate pretence to make money because manual labour is beneath them?
It seems far more likely that they truly believe that ecstasy, abject misery and beauty can all be conveyed using the clumsy tools of language. To the uninitiated the result, poetry, is incomprehensible and boring but in the right frame of mind it is possible that the normal inadequacies of prose can be replaced by the concentrated feeling evoked in a poem. A philistine would answer with the analogy of the ‘Emperor’s new clothes.’ By this I mean that perhaps nobody reaches this linguistic heaven when reading poetry, yet everyone is afraid to say so, lest they risk ridicule and disdain. This situation is changing: our society is no longer the traditional, strictly conventional orthodoxy it once was. Indeed, rigidity has been replaced by cynicism and respect is gained by being outspoken. Now, people are publicly questioning the whole validity of poetry, and artistic expression in general. The word ‘beauty’ has been ostracised too, and is now no longer an acceptable description. Perhaps the right of free speech has gone too far, and too much scepticism is a bad thing. I believe that there will always be a place for art, or at least for some people. As to whether it is a pointless and futile exercise in the first place, how is it any more pointless than any of the other materialistic and superficial gestures we carry out during our tiny lifespans?
Maybe this attraction to the intangible is a subconscious aversion to the mundane and superficial trivialities with which we are concerned about by necessity. Could it be that although we realise the fruitlessness of stocks, economies, figures and advertising, to name just a few examples of the diversions we pursue relentlessly in aid of fruitless worthless gains, we have no way of breaking free of their confinement. Perhaps this unwitting revolt is the response to a pointless, manufactured existence and anybody of any sensitivity would really prefer not to be subjected to the machinations of an age more concerned with self-delusion than the production of anything actually worthwhile.
On the other hand, what is the alternative. I can only think of one truly pure action, spurred on by nothing but the basest motivations, that of survival. Yet, why bother to live anyway? To procure further aimless life then die. Why not just die and see what is next. Survival is ingrained so deeply into the fabric of our existence that we cannot untangle it. When we are hungry or in pain, we are miserable. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World aired the idea of creating a person who achieved his greatest feeling of well-being when being whirled around upside down, because he was indoctrinated that way by oxygen-deprivation as an embryo. Surely, animal impulses such as attempting to stay alive and disliking pain could be reversed, and just because we are subject to them does not mean that they are they best or only way to be. This leads to the point: is even poetry meaningful, or is it just a simpler and perhaps more easily justifiable (by being more in line with the sophisticated image we would like to promote) way of passing the time. People talk of it as being the concentrate of language, likening it to the fluency and pleasing motion involved in dancing, yet language is only a crude and restricting method of communication. Why talk to each other at all? Who cares about the beauty of the stars, or the simple contentment that some sentimental conformists believe they derive from a sunny (i.e. bright and uncomfortably hot) day?
This all boils down to the question: why are we here? Assuming this is unfathomable, then should we just continue, deliberately oblivious to our pointless existence, pretending that this was what we were meant for, or should we indulge in more advanced practices, conceivably no less pointless, such as poetry. I don’t believe an all-encompassing solution will be found, nor do I think anything will change. However, because of the natural boundaries placed upon us by our voice-boxes and bodies, until a higher form of communication develops, poetry remains a more pleasing and effective method of expression than clumsy speech or strictly-regulated prose.