Sherry Chandler

Here is the opening paragraph of the introduction to The Poet’s Tongue, An Anthology “chosen” by W. H. Auden and John Garrett (London: G. Bell & Sons Ltd, 1935):

Of the many definitions of poetry, the simplest is still the best: “memorable speech.” That is to say, it must move our emotions, or excite our intellect, for only that which is moving or exciting is memorable, and the stimulus is the audible spoken word and cadence, to which in all its power of suggestion and incantation we must surrender, as we do when talking to an intimate friend. We must, in fact, make exactly the opposite kind of mental effort that we make in grasping other verbal uses, for in the case of the latter the aura of suggestion round every word through which, like the atom radiating lines of force through the whole of space and time, it becomes ultimately a sign for the sum of all possible meanings, must be rigorously suppressed and its meaning confined to a single dictionary one. For this reason the exposition of a scientific theory is easier to read than to hear. No poetry, on the other hand, which when mastered is not better heard than read is good poetry.

These sentences twine a bit but what I hear is this: poetry is alive to the “aura of suggestion round every word,” an aura which is like the atom in that it radiates “lines of force through all of space and time” and is “ultimately the sign for the sum of all possible meanings,” whereas in prose a word is held to a single dictionary definition.

And most important, poetry is a heard thing. If it is poetry, it is meant to be spoken.

A corollary thought is in Robert Frost’s letters to Louis Untermeyer: a poem is “felt first and then unfolded into form as the poem [writes] itself. That’s what makes a poem. A poem is never a putup job, so to speak. It begins with a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a loneliness. It is never a thought to begin with. It is at its best when it is a tantalizing vagueness.”