ONTHE TEACHING OFPOETRY for a good many years now, I have been devoting the major part of my time and energy to the teaching of literature, and for much of that time and with much of that energy I have been concerned with poetry. Now as everyone knows, poetry is a pretty rarified business, not at all practical. We don't want poets handling our bank accounts or pressing our lawsuits, and it isn't something that is fashionable in the 'real world,' which is to say, the world concerned with money and power, which is the world that most people like to think they live in. Those who devote much of their time and energy to poetry-that is, poets, teachers of poetry, and the like-are considered adjunctive to our society, a kind of fringe group who spend their full time concentrating on what for most people is a leisure time, merely diversionary activity. As for professors of literature, which is to say, of poetry, they are said to live in what is known as an 'ivory tower,' insulated from the real world, in a world of their own. This selfsame ivory tower is what all Intellectuals are known to inhabit, and the general consensus is that this is the proper place for them. Do not misunderstand me: I am not opposed to this. I do not want Intellectuals running my government, and often-never more than in the past year or soI sometimes get very exasperated with Intellectuals. I like ivory towers, and I like the view from the windows of ivory towers, and I have no intention of abandoning mine anytime soon unless forced to do so. Nevertheless, we who live in the ivory towers, emerging only for scheduled classes, football games and an occasional fishing trip, have the necessityand feel the need-sometimes of justifying what it is we are doing there, and why it is that we think that college students ought to be willing to listen to what we have to say. Since I am a teacher of literature, including the kind of literature that is known as poetry, I must defend my right to teach it, and my willingness to insist that students be exposed to it before going on to become insurance agents, lieutenant-colonels, presidents of garden clubs, state senators, corporation counsels, pharmacists, and other such important functionaries in the "real world." The question I propose to ask, rhetorically to be sure (for I think I already know the answer), is, Why teach poetry? Why do we 10
do it? What can a poem do to justify its being taught? Can poetry be taught? Query: what is the sense in trying to teach poetry? One of the nicest things about it is that it is absurd. The absurdity is what keeps one going. If we thought that it were possible, we could not perhaps keep going, because then, since we know how poorly we do it, we would give up and go off somewhere to earn an honest living. But you see, it is absurd. We can't do it. We can't do it because no one ever taught anything about literature. Anything important, that is. I can tell you that Walt Whitman was the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. You write this down in your class notes, and you know it, where before you didn't. So I have taught it to you. If your memory is good, twenty years from now you will know it. But what do you know? Nothing that matters. The former editor of the Brooklyn Eagle has nothing to say to you or to me. The author of "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" does. But you see, I can't teach you that. I can only say, this is what he wrote, and this is what the words mean, or seem to mean, and no more than that. You have to take it from there, because unless the words mean something to you, they are of no importance to you. And I can't make them mean something to you. You must make them mean that. do it? I think that I do it only because So,thewhywordsdo Imean something to me. In this sense I am using you. I am using my class and my authority as an excuse to read the poem again and to think ab9,ut what it means to me. And if I am talking to you at all, what I am saying is, see, come share my experience, come and do what I am doing, isn't it pleasurable? Is that teaching? I doubt it. Because I am not telling you anything you didn't know. I am only saying, "this is what the poem says about what you already know it means." I am saying, "look, do you see how much I enjoy trying to discover the meaning of what I already know? Why don't you try it?" And that, you see, leaves it up to you, because there is no way I can convince you it is pleasure, if you don't already think so. And if it isn't pleasure, then what is it? I think, it is nothing. Because you can't measure it. It won't help you to launch your space capsule or raise your chil-
