Poetry: The Adorned Truth

Table of contents

• The secret poets keep
• Why poets adorn the truth
• Why poetry is the supreme adornment
• A poem must be spoken aloud
• The engineless train: poetry today
• The Sonnet Standard
• The secret, for those who want it

The secret poets keep

There is a secret to life, which all poets know and good poets keep to themselves. And like all mysteries, it is generative. The question the poet asks themselves before sitting down to write is: what do I do with this knowledge?

I am a poet. I call myself ‘Anthropoetry’ because I see poetry (more than any other art form) as a study of the human soul. The soul, of course, is protected beneath many stratified layers of reality, such as work, responsibility, culture, identity and other aspects of moving through this world. The soul is quite unconcerned with this world. The soul is only concerned with the truth. But again, I want to reiterate: you DON’T want to know the truth. I’m a poet, I’ve seen it.

Why poets adorn the truth

So, what we poets do is we adorn the truth. This is the function of all art forms – to adorn the truth – but I think poetry is the best, and I will explain why. Music, for example, adorns the truth by converting felt truth into lively rhythms, pleading notes and exalting climaxes where, for a moment, the truth can be experienced. Film adorns the truth by crafting an alternate reality which is a controlled reflection of our own. A skilled director will create a world in which characters, conflict and atmosphere unveil the truth through story. This creates the conditions for those in the audience who are looking for truth to glimpse it.

But what if the audience doesn’t care about investigating the truth? That’s fine. In fact, very few people walk around intensely uncovering the truth at the centre of all things. Most people want to live adorned lives and indulge in this beautiful world where we are all blessed to be living… and maybe desire a slight sense that there is something keeping it all together, a sense that there is a greater guiding force underlying the surface of their lives, a sense of the truth.

Why poetry is the supreme adornment

How does poetry adorn the truth? And why is it superior? Poetry requires no money, no instruments, no organisation of people, yet it can create worlds, music, character, climax and atmosphere, all using the most basic human faculty: speech (babies learn to speak before they even learn to walk). Speech is also an ability humans have which no other animal on Earth possesses in any real way. So, not only is speech fundamental, it is also uniquely human. In other words, speech sits at the very threshold of the unadorned truth.

With speech, one can, if one wants, after one experiences the truth, simply recount the experience. The callow artist assumes they will be thanked for their reportage. They are wrong. Remember, people do not want to hear the truth directly. It’s too… unbearable. Telling the truth is artless. That part isn’t impressive. What an artist does with that truth is what makes them special.

A poem must be spoken aloud

The poet wields the ultimate tool of truth-telling, speech, and adorns it. The poet, who can at any point say the truth directly, displays their skill with tantalising restraint. A skilled poet adorns the truth with rhyme, metre, form and metaphor, as well as character, narrative, atmosphere and new, innovative ways to use language.
Yet none of this works on the page. Poems MUST be spoken aloud to be poetry. In the same way that a film script on its own is not fully a film, and a sheet of music is not fully music, a poem exists on the page merely to instruct how the reader is to speak it. Line breaks act as measures, metres act as beats, and commas and full stops indicate short and long pauses respectively. A poem on the page is a dead thing that makes no sense until the reader brings it to life.

In the initial reading, the words of a poem should be separated from their meaning and turned into music – this is the transcendent aspect of poetry. This is what lulls the reader into a receptive trance. The ultimate adornment. Only then will the master poet begin to carefully tell the truth using the rest of the tools at their disposal. But the poem must have a rhythm; the rhythm is the engine.

Without a rhythm, a poem is like a train without an engine – a bizarre relic standing in reference to its true purpose.

The engineless train: poetry today

This is where we arrive at the artless state of poetry today. Like an engineless train, many poems are constructed to look and feel like poems (some are incredibly convincing replicas), but the true test is to say them aloud. Does it have a rhythm? Does it take on its own locomotion and tumble from your tongue? Can you convert each word and line into its constituent beat and measure and sing it? “da DUM da DUM”, “da da DUM da da DUM”, “da DUM DUM da DUM DUM”. If you can’t do this, you are reading a replica of a poem, an engineless train. This is the bare minimum standard for distinguishing between a poem and a replica.

The Sonnet Standard

For a more advanced standard of skill, apply the Sonnet Standard. Allow a poet to write a sonnet about anything. The only rules are: it must have metre, it must rhyme, it must have fourteen lines and it must end in a couplet.

This acts as a universal canvas which allows skilled poets to demonstrate mastery of the essential elements of poetry, and reveals unskilled poets who struggle with rhyme, metre, form and metaphor. Within the parameters of a basic and ubiquitous sonnet, it becomes very easy, even for a layman, to judge side by side who is a master of the craft and who isn’t.

The secret, for those who want it

There may be a nagging question within you at this point. Something this essay established at the very start and referenced throughout, but did not explain: what is the secret that poets know? I’ve mentioned how this truth is generative – and it is. Once one arrives at this truth, it impels one to create. But this truth comes at a cost. I’ve also mentioned how this truth must be adorned by artists, or else the reader will reject it. Rejection is a defence mechanism, because this truth is profoundly uncomfortable.

If you would not like to learn this truth, STOP READING HERE. You won’t miss anything I haven’t already covered in the essay. But if you want to know, it will explain the darkness of unadorned art.

All art reflects its form. The form is the container, and the content is the liquid which fills it. The form is the structure around the truth upon which the truth is adorned. A comedy is the form upon which jokes can be readily adorned. An epic poem is the form upon which matters of civilisational scale are adorned. The aforementioned sonnet is a stricter technical form that only leaves room to explore a simple metaphor that ends with a turn (volta). But a poem without form is like liquid with no container – splashing ungraciously to the ground. Making a mess.

Imagine a song with no instruments or singing; imagine a film with no camera movement, lighting, story or acting. And what if every artist simply said what they meant? It would be boring. But what’s more, if the artist has seen the truth and knows the secret, then he also knows why it must be adorned, and why formlessness is the dark reflection of the truth.

Are you ready for poetry? Because the unadorned life can only be meaningless.

– John Elkin

About the author

John Elkin is an American poet, anthropologist, musician and performer who writes under the name Anthropoetry, a melding of anthropology and poetry. His collection Cairn City / Cairn Ville is published by Cybirdy in a bilingual English–French edition, with a French translation by Alix Daniel. You can also hear John read alongside Alix in the Cyber Duets on the Cybirdy YouTube channel.

Put the Sonnet Standard to the test. Read Cairn City aloud, in English or in French, and hear whether the engine runs.

Keep reading: What is Anthropoetry? |  The Power of Bilingual Poetry  |  Bilingual books from Cybirdy  |  Poetry at Cybirdy