Where Bad Poetry Comes From

 

Wordsworth

Long ago, in a galaxy far away, I attended a poetry group. Each meeting, we decided on a theme for the next meeting. 

This one week, someone suggested “memories.”

And met with immediate objections.

I would not expect that. Poetry itself, after all, is all about memory. Memory is the medium of poetry, as text is for prose, or the human voice for drama. “It takes its origin,” Wordsworth said, “from emotion recollected in tranquility.”

But the immediate objection was that memories were “triggering.” They could cause “trauma.”

Another participant chimed in that he had no memories, and so could not participate. He had, he said, a form of amnesia called “anaphasia.” This was due, he explained, to a terrible childhood.

Another participant said that she could not discuss Dylan’s lyrics as poetry, because her abusive former husband used to play Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” when threatening to leave her.

This does not add up. The essential concept of psychotherapy has always been that reliving memories of trauma is healing. “Memory” is the essence of the Buddhist practice commonly referred to in English as “mindfulness.” It heals the soul. Poetry is the medicine that heals old wounds. 

I took the trouble to look up “anaphasia,” and find there is no such form of amnesia. I find the term online only in “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows,” meaning “the fear that your society is breaking apart into factions that have nothing left in common with each other.” He might have misspoken, and meant aphasia, the nearest medical term. But this is “a comprehension and communication (reading, speaking, or writing) disorder resulting from damage or injury to the specific area in the brain.” Nothing to do with memory.

And the Dylan story doesn’t make too much sense either. An abusive partner is not someone threatening to leave. An abusive partner wants control of the other, wants to nail the door shut, to ensure they do not leave. If an abusive partner leaves, the victim should rejoice—especially in memory.

Nor is there anything abusive in the tone of the song: “I ain’t saying you treated me unkind. You could have done better, but I don’t mind.” A rather gentle way to say goodbye to a lover, on the whole.

The next oddment is that anyone afraid of their own memories would take to writing poetry as a hobby in the first place. Poetry is intrinsically involved with memory, as Wordsworth says. And in the case of these poets, their own poems are most often talking about their personal past—memories. 

How does this make sense?

I imagine that recalling memories, although cathartic and healing, may be scary in prospect. 

But methinks these reactions are beyond the reasonable. Methinks they do protest too much. 

Who is most likely to be afraid of their memories?

Not be the abused, but the abuser. In the typical dysfunctional family, everyone else but the abuser is proverbially “walking on eggshells,” avoiding any mention of “the elephant in the room.” Memory is dangerous when one has a bad conscience.

That seems just what we see here. Obviously, these poets are not afraid of what memories they might stir in their poems. They are in full control of that. They are afraid of what others might say. 

They are in desperate need to control their memories, to ensure that the “narrative” does not drift to something they are actually writing to repress. So they write poems as a fabricated narrative of their past.

They are fleeing a guilty conscience.

Good poetry is written to reveal truth, especially hidden truth. Bad poetry is written to conceal it.