Scenes from the Journey: Poetic Bias

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Now let me get this straight.

It is the poets who tell us

that poetry is the ultimate raison d'etre.

Without poetry, say the poets,

we cannot live

or if we do live our lives are diminished,

dull, dimmed.

Only through poems do we soar.

Let's take a moment here to breathe.

Deep breath, everyone.

Do I not detect a conflict of interest?

Is it not to the poet's advantage

to convince us of the power and glory

of her poem?

I sense a bias, a parti pris.

Here we have the poet—

a whiz with words, I must admit—

manipulating those words

in the service of a quite self-serving notion.

Those of us without such verbal fluency

are powerless to rebut the poet's argument.

There's something wrong here.

May I be given the words

to explore this question

at some future time.

Scenes from the Journey