Shanna In Defense of Poetry

To define a poem is not easy, but it is possible. Poetry, however, does not define. It does not attempt to tell the reader, for instance, what an apple is. That is the job of science. The job of poetry is quite the opposite. Truth: "Wilderness is so heavily freighted with meaning of a personal, symbolic, and changing kind as to resist easy definition" (Redick/Nash, 1). The realm of the poet is the personal, symbolic, and changing. The poet attempts to coax the reader into tasting an apple, or biting an apple, or even believing he is an apple; it does not define an apple because that is boring, scientific, and everyone knows what an apple is. Science states the obvious, poetry states the hidden. In A Continuous Harmony, Berry uses the poetry of Wallace Stevens: It was when I said / "There is no such thing as truth," / That the grapes seemed fatter. / The fox ran out of his hole. The only truth Stevens could find was found in nature. That is interesting because most would say science, in all its endeavors, harbors what little truth can be found in this world. Like Stevens, I think much the opposite. The only truth cannot be defined. The only truth is nature and its description, experience, and vibrance.