Why I Love Poems: the Satori Effect

Why do I love poetry? Well, it's none of the usual: beautiful words, lofty thoughts, noble sentiments. I can get all that from Tolstoy or the Bible. No, I love poetry, good poetry, because it is efficient. In a few lines one can become aware of something he or she never thought of before.This sudden realization, a hinting at some sublime truth, reminds me of what Zen Buddhists strive for: satori, sudden enlightenment. And it does not have to be something new, just a different angle on looking at the human condition. In 'to be or not to be' Shakespeare catches in just 6 words a question that has no doubt crossed billions of minds across the centuries- to go on living, or pack it in? The Bard then writes a most profound poem delineating the pros and cons of suicide. Writing this just now I had my own little satori and realized why we still read him 400 years after his death: because he captures so well that primal existential angst, suffered only by sentient beings. Of course this 'satori effect' can only hold true if your reader has some idea what you're writing about. And that is the problem with a lot of poetry today, along with much of fiction, most modern art and atonal music: the recipients have no idea what the hell to make of it. I blame Finnegan's wake and a few poets I won't name for this crisis of meaning'. The poets whose work endures, like Homer and Will and the Psalmists, did not go out of their way to be obscure and picayune: the great poets are eternal because they speak to human truths which do not change with time. Their writing may range from the simple to the sublime but it is ALWAYS trying to awaken us from the deep slumber that everyday life and our petty egos induce. So too I try to do so in those poems which 'come' to me because in a way I AM BEING ENLIGHTENED AS I WRITE THEM-- something I cannot explain but am very grateful for. How widely read, how long they endure, well, that is just ego: one of the few good things about aging is that it tends to temper one's vanity. A good life is simple: to love and be loved, all else is gravy! I learned as a young man that the problem with life is not that it's meaningless, but that there is so much meaning to our brief sentient life in THIS world that the best of us can only grasp a bit here and a bit there. My poems are written 'simple' but I hope not simple minded. [This essay modified slightly from one published by Foxtrot Uniform 001 under my pen name, October, 2017]