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Nickoli Gates

Professor Beadle

English 115

7 December 2017

Poetic Space

As humans we tend to strive for a certain type of order and structure in situations

because its what weve come to know and understand in our daily lives, yet this is not always

the best route for communicating our values. When you think of rhetorical spaces most seem to

be structured using a set of rules or guidelines such as formal debates, advertisement billboards,

and even in a classroom discussion. Poetry however, is a space in which being unstructured is

more effective. Because of its abstract and emotional nature, the rhetorical space of poetry must

remain unstructured and free-flowing in order to compel its audience emotionally to the greatest

extent. Freedom of thought and creativity are most essential to poetry while blandness and over-

structured poems are monstrous in nature.

Poetry is by nature an emotional and artistic space which we write in, meaning

that most of the rhetoric within it is purely pathos based, pathos being the use of emotion in [a]

debate or argument (Losh 46). Pathos appeals to peoples sense of morality, humanity, and

philosophy all of which are some of the most common themes in poetry. As famous English

romantic poet William Wordsworth states, poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful

feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. What we can take away from

Wordsworths statement is that powerful feelings are what drive a poem to its ultimate potential

to relate to the audience and thus argue its point. One can say that poetry is not an argumentative

device however, stating that it is simply an artists view of the beautiful or even just pure
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entertainment. Though in some cases the intent of the author might be purely to entertain an

audience with their version of the beautiful, beauty itself is an opinionated topic. With that being

said, regardless of the authors conscious intent, poetry does in fact argue what beauty is and

how society should see or already sees it. The authors communication of the beautiful, abstract,

or even mundane and ugly, is a persuasion. The author writes poetry to communicate a way of

perceiving the world, making an argument that that way is in fact the way life should be viewed.

Understanding the pathos aspect of poetry allows us to conceive what might be

monstrous in this particular rhetoric space. If raw emotion is the tool of the artist, then the

destroyer of an artists creation must then be apathy and blandness. In other words a painter does

not paint monochromatically with structured strokes if he wishes to capture the color and

expression of a landscape. The poem is supposed to inspire and perhaps extract emotion from the

readers in order to implore them to take up a cause or see in a certain perspective, and so if the

poem were to be written as if it were an academic piece, instructional, it would lose its purpose.

Structure might not always be as bland or emotionless however. Some would say that it is merely

just a conduit for creativity, that humanity needs structure to be a sort of anchor with creativity

being the chain ascending from it. Perhaps this holds validity, but not as far as poetry is

concerned. Emotion does not have structure, it is abstract and free. If poetry is in fact based off

of emotional argumentation, then all structure would seem to do is undermine the essence of the

poetic. For example, in Understanding Rhetoric we are introduced to Frederick Douglass

autobiography which uses pathos to persuade an audience as well, stating things such as: there I

was in the midst of thousands, and yet a perfect stranger (Losh 75). Though not specifically

poetry, Douglass writes in a form of poetic free verse that is intended to persuade people to
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abolition. Had this been stated in a bland and non-creative manner, perhaps if he had just said he

knew nobody because he had been a slave, the sense of urgency would evaporate.

If lack of creativity in poetry is found to be monstrous, then what can this mean about the

values of the poetic and artistic society? Much like we find in My zombie, Myself: Why

Modern Life Feels Rather Undead, a lack of creativity in society leads us to a point of tedious

and pointless repetition. There are some who find comfort in repetition however, and that can

mostly be attributed to the idea of psychological conditioning. In modern society we are raised to

be good at whatever we pursue, and so conditioning plays its role when we fail to be good or

achieve our objectives or even when we succeed and do well. People who do not live up to the

creative standards or natural creative talents of others become conditioned into thinking that the

abstract is not their home, and thus they find comfort in the repetitive. Similar to as Klosterman

relating the death of creativity and individuality when analyzing the effect of the internet and

media on our society, and ultimately the assimilation into a mundane and standardized modern

lifestyle, we can find that the lack of aesthetic word choice and freedom from structure in poetry

can be quite monstrous. Klosterman states that zombies are mere allegories of how [our] day to

day existence feels due to the technological advancements which have aided in structuring

melancholy modern life, and this monstrous factor about media is essentially the same idea of

what is monstrous in poetry (Klosterman 41). Poetry is more of an escape from structured

thought into an open abyss of possibilities and is not meant to be tied down like other forms of

writing.

In my own experience, I find that most people my age do not appreciate poetry because it

is overly daunting for them to write creatively. This can trace back to the beginning of our

educational careers since writing is taught to us as a structured activity or formatted experience.

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There is no doubt that writing is and should be structured, we would not make any sense if it

were not, but what of the ideas conveyed in the writing? In only teaching students the structural

aspects, we are limiting their perspective on what writing is and how to use it. Since middle

school I have been expected to write in order to explain the ideas of a novel I read, or to recall

what was heard in a speech, but never has there truly been freedom of thought within a writing

assignment. I found an escape through poetry but not the style that school had taught me.

Educators have always seemed to teach poetry as a structural form of writing by demanding

students to write in forms such as sonnets, or in iambic pentameter, and so on, but I have asked

my fellow classmates time and time again if they enjoy poetry and they have almost never

respond with an enthusiasm towards the art. Carol Clark, author of Poetry in Six Dimensions,

states that poetry often has the ability to reach the heart of the young reader with more intensity

and more immediacy than some of its prose counterparts, but it seems to me that young adults

like myself never want to give it a chance because they find it draining when it should be

invigorating (Clark 1).

The standardized thought that is becoming apparent is monstrous because it is becoming

harder and harder to contrast humanity to non-sentient beings. Non-sentient beings are defined to

have no consciousness of their existence and therefore no emotion or feeling at all. They simply

live to complete a task, such as computers. Humanity is differentiated from these emotionless

beings because of the ability to empathize. When I write my own poetry in a personal journal,

my objective is to appeal to my audiences ability to empathize with a situation or event. I stray

away from what I consider informative because I am not intending to present what is happening

but rather evaluate what the consequences and fallouts of what is happening are. This reveals my

value of having a diverse and creative lifestyle, with the freedom to express my views in a
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manner I deem appropriate. The reason over-structure in poetry is so evil is because it narrows a

writers ability, meaning that instead of focusing on what is around them or what they are

feeling, they feel the need to format their writing to societal demands which takes away from

their own expression. I find that if we start with the most basic aspects of learning, elementary

education for instance, and teach standardization and structure, we will take away from

humanitys natural creative expression. Poetry is the escape from this structure, so to attempt to

structure an abstract art is essentially to give into a moderated and near dystopian future society

in the long run.

Its as Robert Frost said, writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

Poetry takes down the nets of society and allows you the freedom to express and empathize your

views with the audience, to break the rules of a society even. Poetry may have structure but

never should it be a direct approach such as an A to B analysis, as this would not be poetic.

Humanity needs to have a rhetorical space to escape into that strays from the everyday logical

necessity of formatted life, and poetry is this space.

Works Cited

Clark, Carol. Why Teach Poetry. n.d., Accessed 3 October 2017. PDF File.

Klosterman, Chuck. My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead. Monsters,

edited by Andrew J. Hoffman, Bedford St. Martins, 2016, pp 40-44.

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Losh, Alexander, and Kevin and Zander Cannon. Understanding Rhetoric. 2nd ed., Bedford St.

Martins, 2017.