We need poems, and the fact that so often we are afraid of them, or consider them not worth our time, is something that leaves us impoverished. After all, the poems don't mind: they're just words on a page. The poets who wrote those words, if they are alive, might mind that not many people read their words -- but the poems themselves, the poems don't care. They are just there, for us to read or to ignore.
To the extent we don't read poems we are denying ourselves something important. Poems can help us get in touch with our selves. Listening to one's self, paying attention to the contours of our daily existence, is harder to do than it seems, and exploring our capacities for feeling and understanding -- well, there is usually no time for that. After all, there is so much to do, and there are so many places to go, and so many demands on our time. Too often we have only scarce opportunities to explore what is really within us, and to experience what surrounds us every waking moment of our lives.
Yet growth, which is so vital to human life: how is it possible to grow if we are not shown new possibilities, possibilities we never even knew were there? How can we try out new ways of seeing and feeling and thinking? Fostering growth: this too is the province of the poem.
In one of those fragments of poetry which many people DO know, John Donne wrote that "no man is an island." He meant we all live connected to one another. But, at the same time, we all actually ARE islands, each occupying a consciousness different from everyone else. How often do we really know what someone else is thinking or feeling? And, to turn it around, don't many of us keep most of what we think and feel deep inside us, away from the scrutiny of others? This too is the province of poetry, for of all human activities it is the most deeply dedicated to revealing, to others, what is inside a fellow human being's heart and mind.
The poets listed below, every one of them, have something to say to you. In some cases what they have to say will be important, maybe so important that it will alter your life or transform your sense of who you are and what you are capable of. But poems are not infallible: sometimes they can seem silly or trite or just plain wrong. We don't have to bow down in reverence to a poem: if we don't like what the poet is saying or how he or she is saying it, there is no reason to hide our own feelings. If a poem doesn't seem to speak to you or me -- and we have made a serious attempt to listen -- then we are surely justified in deciding you have better things to do than read that poem again.
Since poetry is, in my view, primarily an auditory medium -- how the poem looks on a page is not as important as how it sounds when it is read, or how it resounds in your mind as you recall pieces of the poem -- the following pages and programs talk about poems by literally talking about poems. You'll hear poems read, as if the poet were addressing you directly and privately; you'll hear poems talked about because poetry depends on voice, and the human voice is our best means of communicating the deepest truths about our lives.
