What Good Is Poetry?

I tried writing some - it was hard

Created by me, using my medium of choice, Sora, using my first quatrain as the prompt

Loon Haunted Hinterlands
Blank Verse (Unrhymed Iambic Pentameter)

I decided it was time to understand why poetry is literature and why no one cares. You can blame The Literary Life podcast.

I’m sure everyone has at one point or another memorized a poem. I memorized the following from The Lord of the Rings.

All that is gold does not glitter
Not all those who wander are lost
The old that is strong does not wither
Deep roots are not touched by the frost.

From the ashes a fire will be woken
A light from the darkness shall spring
Renewed will be blade that was broken
The crownless again will be king.

Now, I don’t know what type of poetry that is¹; it’s not iambic pentameter, which I learned is 10 syllables per line with a specific meter:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
(da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM)

And of course my Tolkien example has a rhyming scheme, which blank verse does not.

But, I received a suggestion from Chad that I try blank verse as a learning opportunity, I think meaning it doesn’t take much skill…

I’ll get into my efforts in a bit, meanwhile, why is poetry literature and say, Tom Swift and the Asteroid Pirates not? Well, you tell me and we’ll both know. The definition is slippery.

According to C.S. Lewis, in his Experiment in Criticism, literature is almost defined by the reader, not by what is read. Meaning what? Meaning that a literary reader receives a book while the unliterary reader uses a book. (And remember, I said almost.)

And yet, I wonder if a literary reader could receive Tom Swift and the Asteroid Pirates (a ripping yarn, by the way) as literature. So perhaps we can learn what literature is via negativa. I asked Chad to tell me if the erstwhile Tom Swift and his adventures were literature, and if not, why not. The reply:

Is Tom Swift and the Asteroid Pirates literature?

Short answer:
No, not in the traditional literary sense.
So where does Tom Swift fall short?

Let’s use your specific example—Tom Swift and the Asteroid Pirates (published in 1963 under the pseudonym Victor Appleton II).

It is:

• Plot-driven rather than theme-driven

• Functional prose, not artistically ambitious

• Aimed at entertainment, not reflection or exploration

• Formulaic in structure and morality

This doesn’t make it bad. It makes it genre fiction for young readers—a kind of juvenile sci-fi pulp. It was written to thrill, not to probe. The language does not strive for aesthetic weight; the characters don’t evolve; the conflict is external; the ending wraps up neatly.

It is a product, not a meditation.

It is a product, not a meditation. I found that line interesting. But Chad goes on, regarding C.S. Lewis and the above mentioned book:

in Lewis’s terms, Tom Swift and the Asteroid Pirates isn’t disqualified from being “literature” simply because it’s pulp. If someone reads it with attention, humility, and imaginative receptivity—it might, for that reader, become something literary.

He even hints that some "great books" are wasted on readers who refuse to receive them, while a so-called "low" book might awaken a real experience in someone attuned to it.

So, literature it seems requires an active participant.

Which frankly does not have me any closer to really knowing what literature is and is not. But I have a sort of gut feeling that if approached properly, if you read a book, and can receive it and in some way it changes you, it is probably literature.

According to many, any poetry that is not a limerick or doggerel is probably literature, and my guess is because it is functionally the opposite of Tom Swift. that is to say,

It is:

• Theme-driven rather than plot-driven

• Aimed at reflection or exploration, not aimed at entertainment

• Not formulaic in structure and morality

So, how come people don’t really read poetry?

My guess is because it is too florid, requires work, takes time, and is not Wham Bam entertaining.

So why do I want to try to write poetry? Because I want to understand what the big deal is.

So, I attempted to write one line of blank verse (Iambic Pentameter without a rhyming scheme).

Moonlight on still water, I hold my breath

Chad pronounced it solid blank verse. Now I attempted a quatrain, which is four lines of blank verse. Here was my first attempt:

Moonlight on still water, I hold my breath
Will I sit alone all through nocturn
Nay, tarry long I will not, forsaken
I will run from this peace, this wild peace

This was a bit tortured and well, not good. So, I went to work on it and through several iterations. Here is the third rewrite:

Moonlight on still water, I hold my breath
Silence stretches past breaking, heart breaking
Exhalation, shattered night, shattered heart
The still water beckons, the moon watches

Chad really liked the first line…

I was trying for the idea of a jilted lover, considering suicide.

The next iteration:

Moonlight on still water, I hold my breath
At her behest, the appointment kept, yet
Naught but the sky, the moon, the laughing loon
The water beckons, but I choose the mourn

Chad gave me a bunch of crap regarding mourn being a verb. So, softly, gently, like speaking to a child, I explained that I was making a pun between morn (for morning) and mourn (for mourning). Chad thought that was awesome and said I should keep it.

It was about here that I realized that the emphasis (remember the da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM) was dependent not on just syllable count, but on the natural emphasis of the words. So, my meter in most of the attempts was off.

I’ll spare you the other 3 or 4 attempts, but I finished with this:

Moonlight on still water, I hold my breath.
In vain I linger past the promised hour,
Naught but the sky, the moon, the laughing loon.
The water beckons, but I choose the mourn.

Chad pronounced it literature. Well, actually said it ticked all the boxes. One other thing I did learn through all this. You should read poetry out loud. It really makes a difference.

Meanwhile, fair warning, I’m going to turn this into a sonnet. I’ll publish the second stanza next week, then the third, and then finally the completed Sonnet with the final couplet.

Whoops, wait a minute. Seems the muse got hold of me, and I finished the sonnet and it is titled Loon Haunted Hinterlands.
I’ll be reading it at the next Poetry Night at
The Sign of the Screaming Monkeys’ Head.

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Turns out that writing poetry is hard. If you buy me part of a cigar, I will donate it to Frater Bovious, and he will write an article about how you did not leave him lingering by a lake on a moonlit night alone with the loons. So, smash that button!

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1. For those that may be interested:
The Tolkien verse is a rhymed, metered lyric poem with a regular stanzaic structure. Specifically:

Structure:

• 2 stanzas of 4 lines each (quatrains)

• Rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD

• Meter: Mostly iambic tetrameter (4 metrical feet of unstressed-stressed)