"Introduction to Poetry"
by Billy Collins (1)
Read the poem HERE.
Reading poetry, reading science
These pages, along with the course One Culture: Science and the Humanities, grew from efforts during my teaching career to share some of my favorite poems with students of biochemistry, students who were not likely to be particularly interested in poetry. The students I worked with, by their choice of course and major, professed to be interested in science. I hoped that they, like I, might be drawn to poetry if they saw connections to the things that interested them most
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I don’t recall ever giving students any advice about how to read poetry, or how to find poetry they might like. I simply gave them examples of poems or essays that superficially had no relationship to the science we studied, and tried to sneak up and surprise them with connections. I never told them that the connections might be quite vague, even far-fetched, and that the common ground between science and the humanities might not be the solid, analytical ground of scientific data, laws, and theories.
The poem “Introduction to Poetry,” by Billy Collins, which I discovered after I retired from university life, would have given me a good opportunity to talk to them about reading poetry, and to compare and contrast reading styles and goals pertinent to science and poetry. Although it fits into that vast category of things I wish I had said, I want to talk about what I might have told them.
When I picture myself reading science, often at the breakfast table, I see a hint of a frown on my brow—a concentrating, criticizing, questioning, let’s-get-this-straight kind of frown, perhaps a little like Martha at work with her microscope:
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Martha was in her laboratory.
"What are you doing?" asked George.
"I'm studying fleas," said Martha.
"Cute little critters," said George.
"You don't understand," said Martha.
"This is serious. This is science." (2)
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In my science-trained way to doing all things, I am looking for an interpretation that makes the poem’s pieces fit together. But I am not, or hope I am not, torturing the poem for a confession. In fact, even when I find a comfortable interpretation, one that turns the poem into an understandable message, I do not assume that my interpretation is the only satisfying one, nor that it was what the poet had in mind. It is my interpretation, one that gives me—but perhaps not you or the author—a feeling that the poem says something coherent.
There is definitely a parallel between this way of reading a poem and a scientist’s way of modeling the unseen world of molecules and pathways (see What is Science?). I am examining the words (analogous to data), trying out meanings or definitions that will make the words of the poem form coherent ideas (analogous to laws). I am trying to make choices that spread this coherence across the whole poem. As with scientific models and the evidence on which they are based, congruence is a pretty thing, and the wider its expanse, and the finer the fit, the better.
In a scientific setting, I would also be seeking an explanation of why the observed laws hold—a theory, an answer to a question like, “What is a gas, that it should obey Boyle’s law?” In reading literature, I am seeking something that is theory-like, but more personal. I am asking “What or who am I, that I should find this poem interesting, clever, powerful, funny, or moving?” I am also hoping to reconstruct some part the author’s creativity in my own mind, and thus to partake of that creative act. (3)
In encountering all art, while I hope to be surprised and delighted at some creative notion, I happen to prefer in addition that coherence, consistency, and craftsmanship are included in the bargain. This combination draws me back again and again to my favorite art works. Even in a Jackson Pollock painting, there is a consistency of tone and texture that marks the result as intentional, not merely haphazard. But that’s just me, this preference, and it is not a requirement for art or for the enjoyment of art.
Pursuing further the comparison of reading poetry and science, if a poem evades my attempts to construct one or more coherent interpretations, I don’t decide that it is too obscure, and then push it aside. If it’s Friday, I might close the book, pick up my phone and and log in to check out the new issue of Science. Meanwhile the poem, like a puzzle or an unsolved chemistry problem, will have attached itself to me like a benign parasite, and will continue to travel with me and burrow into my skin. I will come back to it, later or in a few days, and try to reopen my mind, casting off the efforts I made before, reading again. Amazingly, the poem will still possess a freshness, sort of like a new-car smell. Untried ideas will come as I face it again.
This does not happen when I read science. Even when I have trouble following a complex scientific article, and set it aside for a later attempt, and let it follow me around and gnaw at me while I do other things, when I return it is the same article, and maybe I have figured something out or can understand an argument that was defeating me, but it is not a new article. It is too unambiguous to seem fresh. I am re-entering a fray—a struggle with complex ideas and esoteric terms—with the goal of wresting clarity from material that many readers might find impenetrably obscure. By the way, this is not the kind of science reading that I recommend to non-specialists in the Reflection Bringing Science to the Public, but for me, this kind of struggle is just plain fun.
With the poem, as it stalks me through the day, I am still trying to let it happen to me. I am trying not to try, but instead to open myself to the experience, the evoked emotions, the linguistic experiment, the intended ambiguity, the juxtaposition of contrasts, the rhythm, the sounds, whatever it is that I find—and that maybe the author intended, either overtly or intuitively, for me to find—in the poem. All of this mental work is easier to do than to describe; in fact, it just happens.
Any small act of creativity gives its producer a hint of what creativity feels like. One area in which many people are creative— even though they might never have thought about putting pen to paper, or fingers to word processor—is in light, humorous conversation. A pun, a play on words, a wise crack, a friendly tease—all of these bits are acts of creativity, completely ephemeral unless someone is taking notes. If you make poems, or paintings, or music, or even jokes, you know that feeling. Jacob Bronowski argued in Science and Human Values that the appreciation of a creative work brings that feeling, because deep appreciation entails recreation of the idea in your own mind. (4)
To the creator, a creative act feels created, not constructed or invented. For me, it feels not like something I produced, but like something that happened to me, came naturally, unforced—sometimes in a flash, sometimes a slow dawning. My father would sometimes tell a funny story in which the punch line was something he had said in conversation. I thought that he was being vain—”Hey, look at what I said.” But I have said things that I think are funny or clever enough to repeat, and I don’t feel vain, because I have the distinct feeling that the idea just fell out of the sky, and I happened to be in its path. It’s not “Look at what I said;” it’s more like “Look at what I found.”
When you read a poem, stand underneath and let it fall on you. Be a mouse and try to probe your way out through the maze of words and lines. Pull on its guy-wires and see where it gives and where it resists. And in particular, if you sense a connection to something else among your interests, but can’t readily express it in words, jot down a note about the poem and the connected subject. When you have a quiet moment, try writing about it. Try talking to an imaginary reader about what you find in the poem and how it is tethered to something else you like to think about.
Good things might happen. For me, many of the writings here at One Culture happened.
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(1) From The Apple that Astonished Paris, by Billy Collins, University of Arkansas Press 1988, 1996, p. 58.
(2) From "The Experiment" in George and Martha Rise and Shine, written and illustrated by James Marshall, collected in George and Martha, The Complete Stories of Two Best Friends, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008, page 119.
(3) The fiction writer Italo Calvino recounted that, as a child, he enjoyed looking at cartoons in the English newspapers to which his Italian parents subscribed. He could not read the English captions, but he would try to make up a story to fit the frames of the cartoon. But that was not the end of it. When he had a satisfactory story, he would set it aside and try to make up a completely different story to fit the same cartoon.
(4) J. Bronowski, Science and Human Values, Harper and Row, Publishers, 1956, p. 19.
