How do we assign value to poetry?

 I don’t think that’s a rhetorical question. I think I can show you how I value the work of some poets and not others.

Here’s a line from Abraham Maslow’s Religions, Values and Peak Experiences that rings true to me:

 

The great lesson from the true mystics … is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s back yard.

 

It’s the kind of thing I copied down in my notebook when I was in college. I can’t prove it. I can’t argue it. But it rings true to me, and I wanted to try to live it. When I first read that line, it seemed as if the writer had seen a part of me. I’m one of those people who mistrust sweeping visions of the cosmos but who will get into an argument about how you should eat your breakfast or how you should greet your neighbor.

I think small things are important. 

And so I like poets who write about red wheelbarrows and cold plums in the fridge. I like Williams Carlos Williams, William Stafford, Norman MacCaig, Lorine Niedecker and Wendell Berry.

That’s not a theory. It’s just a single case of how one reader reacts to values in poems.

All human beings — poets and their readers — have more than one value. I also value clarity and brevity, for example.

When I sit down to read a new poem, I’m not aware of all the values that I carry around with me. But when I start reading, my values and the poet’s collide. Sometimes there’s wonderful harmony. But not often.

• Source: Abraham H. Maslow, Religions, Values and Peak Experiences; Ohio State University Press, 1964.