The Best Revenge, Episode 3: Why Poetry Matters Part I
In this episode of our regular series, The Best Revenge, Dr. Fleming makes the case for poetry. Not just the “poetry” that is the affectation of the dirty hippie, but the poetry that yearns to breathe deep within our souls. Dr. Fleming prescribes poetry as a “mental health remedy” and points out that there is indeed such a thing as “good poetry” that goes beyond a matter of subjective taste. If you are what you eat, so too poetry can enrich the rational animal that we are. Listen too if you wish to hear one of the rare times that Dr. Fleming disagrees with Aristotle!
Original Air Date: April 14, 2016
Show Run Time: 1 hour 1 minute
Show Guest(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming
Show Host(s): Stephen Heiner
The Best Revenge℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright 2016. All rights are reserved and any duplication without explicit written permission is forbidden.
Thank you Stephen and Dr. Fleming,
Some this conversation reminded me of an old essay by a famous Shakespeare teacher from Columbia.
WHENEVER poetry has been good, it has
had good subject matter-good for
anybody, and it has not agonized about
numbers. Today, I think, we do not hear
enough about the subject matter of poetry.
Criticism tends to ignore the question altogether.
Poets are damned or praised for
their way with language, as if language
were the aim and end of all their art. Language
is a lovely thing, and only human
beings have it; but they have it, presumably,
for something better still, and the
greatest poets are those who have best
understood this. There is no lord of language
like Shakespeare; he could and did
do everything with it; but what finally
moves us as we read him or watch his plays
is the knowledge he has of us, on a level
deeper than words. We adore Shakespeare
because he is wise, and because the world
of men is given its right value in his works.
It was for the same reason that the Greeks
all but worshiped Homer, whom they knew
by heart even though they knew nothing
about the world of which he had written.
The truth was, of course, that they did
know his most important world, for it was
the human world, and as such it was not
different from theirs. Again they had in
him a lord of language, but they noticed
this less than they noticed how well he
understood the passions, the ideas, and the
absurdities of men. They watched Achilles
learning what honor means; they watched
Odysseus coming home; and they saw the
soul of Hector reflected in the love of those
around him-his family, his comrades, and
his friends among the gods. By the same
token, what is it that in modern times convinces
a true reader of Dante that his reputation
is deserved? His verbal cunning, and
the peculiar fitness of his rhymes, his syntax?
These of course; but at last it is the
knowledge of the man, and the pity; the
power of his feelings, the unwearied work
of his thought, and the deep lake of his
heart. Without these he would merely be
ingenious, as without them Homer would
be sound and fury, and Shakespeare nothing
but incessant bustling in the scenery.
But those three are the greatest poets,
one of you may say-the very greatest;
and what can we learn from them? They
are too far removed, they are monsters of
perfection, they are studied more than they
are read, they are statues whose pedestals
only may be approached. I do not doubt
at all that one at least of you is saying
these things now. And nothing could be
more mistaken. Yet it is the custom of our
time. We do not believe that we can learn
from the greatest things. They are not for
us. Which is why so few discussions of
poetry today, even among those who ought
to know better, even mention the names of
Shakespeare, Homer, and Dante; and why
the poet is defined in terms that exclude
those masters; and why the impression is
abroad that it is somehow bad taste for
poetry to be interesting to people. Subject
matter is itself an embarrassing subject,
from which quick: refuge is sought in the
techniques of rhythm and image, of caesura
and ambiguity. Those things all have
their fascination, but it is secondary to the
further fascination of the art when ultimate
demands are made upon it. The ultimate
demand is that it be faithful to its ancient
trust; that it treat of human truth, and
more wisely and movingly than most men
treat it even when they know, as ideally
all men know, the content of such truth
Dr. Fleming,
Thank you for recommending Stevenson’s collection. I purchased it for my daughter. My mother read Longfellow’s Paul Revere’s Ride to me so many times as a child that it still sticks with me. As far as modern songwriters, I recommend James McMurtry. He is the son of the novelist Larry McMurtry.