In Althea’s post about not liking poetry, the discussion evolved to the nature of poetry. Several of you likened poetry to a Zen Koan. Of poetry Graham wrote, “… that there's the tendency to think there must be some nugget of gold hidden between the lines, or behind them." Others mentioned poetry’s ambiguity and polyfigurative nature.

However, is the big difference between a koan and a poem in that a poem does indeed say something unambiguously and outright: that there is a nugget of gold hidden between the lines?

A Zen koan, to my understanding, says nothing of the sort. It withholds comment on meaning.

Poetry’s ambiguity turns against itself at the poem’s core, inferring that there is indeed meaning in, behind, around, etc, everything, becoming at its core an unambiguous and literal statement.

That said, we can question the statement, the truism that poetry has value; if we set aside the uncritical acceptance of the value of hidden meaning.

Of course one can lead a meaningless life. Often though, it is an impoverished life. But not necessarily so.

And, do most troubles, both the personal and the collective stem from belief and the search for meaning? I, ironically, believe so. All my own mistakes have come from erecting a facade of meaning where none should have been—personal delusions, but, as no man is an island, delusions I would have had to plagiarize from our library of cultural fictions.

Accepting the above, are we forced to admit that poetry ultimately harmful? Does poetry in fact make life richer, or does it prevent one from developing the courage and immediacy to be creatively functional and helpful and creative in an ultimately meaningless life?

Does it obscure the fact that we are capable of moving beyond meaning? Or, perhaps I’m wrong and poetry is the castle from which we can pick out like distant lights flares shot above oblivion by the giants of our race, who in passing have passed into essential meaning.

Can my argument include what it brackets out? If we fell through poetry into ironically valuable meaninglessness would we lose all capacity to imagine?

Perhaps my belief in the value of a life without belief is mistaken, and comes from accepting essence, the essence of meaninglessness, the essence I wanted to escape in the first place because beliefe in it has caused me so much trouble, and I must accept that poetry is indeed a valuable tool, and to mystify and de-literalize is to be essentially human and is to manifest.

Well, these are the predicaments I get into when I think. No wonder I work with my hands!