i have wasted my life

Today we were asked to consider whether there is a place for poetry in a world where the genius of the age is expressed by prose. Perhaps this is just opinion, but it is here none the less.

Poetry grants a sense of timelessness. When you read prose, you exist as part of the scale. You read a bone at a time and the prose that you read becomes part of your personal narrative. You read a chapter, put it down and make soup, read another chapter. The reading has become part of your personal narrative. The best prose wrinkles us between it like this. But prose has a scale. Poetry has no scale. The poem is the infinite moment. Poetry is the attempt to render that “other” state, that feeling of a dream that you cannot express in the morning with words. It is that feeling, more than anything. Poems are the multitude, they feel the weight of their own vision. Poetry is about creating silences. Prose, not even the best, Not even Joyce or Faulkner could do what James Wright does in his poem “Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota”. This is tranquility:

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.