poets, poetry, & religion ~

… all poets are sending religious messages,
because poetry is, in such great part, the comparison
of one thing to another …
to insist, as all poets do, that all things are related …
comparable to each other, is to go toward
making an assertion of the unity of all things.
~ Richard Wilbur

So it’s a kind of unified field theory, poetry. My family teases me that I see analogy everywhere: this is like this! And this is like that! It’s true; I even used analogy to teach grammar — grammar is like a strong skeleton (it is).

But analogy is just our old poetic friend metaphor. And as Lakoff notes, metaphor is the way we think: we ‘lose’ time; we ‘spend’ time. We ‘wage a war’ on drugs; we ‘fight’ cancer. Status is ‘high’ or ‘low’, which is impossible, literally. Status simply is… So metaphors are  we are, really, how we even think. And poetry? It’s metaphor & image. In other words: poetry is in our bones, folks.

Hence my assertion that if you just learn poetry, your world suddenly takes on colour as if you were a bit blind before… ❤️ The world opens up a bit, like seeing in colour, or hearing music after silence. Try it — find a poem (or ask for one! I’ll give it to you in comments!), about something you love, and see if the poem doesn’t illuminate as if with a bright light your passion. Just sayin’…