Birdyline Book Blog

Why is ordinary language inadequate to express our deepest thoughts?

It isn’t that ordinary language isn’t adequate, but rather that symbolic language and imagery can more efficiently invoke a specific understanding or emotion in the reader. For example, when you read a well crafted metaphor your comprehension of the topic is built upon by bringing in a whole other concept you have prior knowledge on and adding all of that schematic context. It also shows how in touch with the literal emotion of the thought that the poet is, to be able to describe it in the perfect words.

What is so human about poetry? Why do all cultures have it?

The human part of poetry is the ability to creatively design new ways of expressing a thought. As a reader, being able to understand those unwritten contexts is also uniquely human. It is a form of creative innovation — one of the only things that current AI or text generators cannot do outside of what has already been done by humans. All cultures have it because it is also human to want to create new ways to communicate emotion, and to feel complex things about mundane topics. Poetry is a tool to do so, and so just like building tools or gardening tools, different human cultures have found a way to create that tool for themselves. 

Do poets expect their readers to have “prior knowledge?”

Poets do expect their readers to have prior knowledge. Like discussed in the first question, the appeal of a lot of symbolic language is that it connects to the readers’ schemata and creates a deeper, more layered understanding. A person has to be familiar with those things the same way they need to be familiar with literary devices in non-poetic literature. Many poets also write poems about topics that require prior knowledge for context. Poems about specific wars, places, relationships, and more can require some prior knowledge to fully engage.

Why do poets use “poetic” elements? 

This question’s answer can be as deep as the first and third answers, where using the poetic elements can create a multi-layered creative method for communicating a specific thing better than before. It doesn’t have to be that deep, however. Some poets use poetic elements such as rhyme and rhythm for entertainment purposes because it makes the poem more entertaining to read. It is also helpful to inspire ideas as a structure makes it easier to work within, like having a prompt for an artwork or even coloring in the lines of a coloring book rather than staring at a blank page.