Why Poetry?

By Marylou Motto and Karen Kaplan, Poetry Interest Group Leaders

Marylou: A student once stopped at my desk at the end of a poetry course. A psychology major about to graduate, Maggie was a loner, silent in class but a gifted writer. “I didn’t know,” she said haltingly. “If I had known, I would have taken other literature courses, more poetry.” “You didn’t know what?” I asked. “I didn’t know . . . that there were others,” she said; “that there were voices in books talking about . . . me.”

Maggie’s words have stayed with me through many years of reading, thinking about, and discussing imaginative language. At times poetry can sweep us out of ourselves; at others, it lets us see far into ourselves. Sometimes, rarely, it does both at once, and—in Wordsworth’s words—“with an eye made quiet by the power / Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, / We see into the life of things.”

I can’t wait to begin. Do join us at the poetry table. Let’s see what we can see.

Karen: Poetry has always been a second language for me: I know a few basics, but I miss most of what’s being said. Sometimes I read a poem in The New Yorker and wonder, what did they see in this? Or I look up a classic poem and think, I don’t know what this is about. But during Covid, a friend told me she had started memorizing poetry as a personal project. “I find the words of other people, deliberately chosen and arranged, to be enormously comforting. Even transportive.” More recently, my doctor suggested I memorize poems as a way to keep my brain sharp. I’m on my 5th. The more poetry I read, the more I like it – but I still want to expand my fluency. At the recent AAUW Atlantic Regional Conference, a member from the Greater Wayne chapter told me one of their members had recently started a poetry group, and I was inspired. I would love to read, hear, and talk poetry with some of you – or even all of you.