Beauty for Beauty's Sake: Why You Should Study Poetry

“My cheek is cold and white, alas!

My heart beats loud and fast;—

Oh! press it to thine own again,

Where it will break at last.”

—Percy Bysshe Shelley

I remember vividly the first time I read these words. I remember sitting back in my chair, gaping at my anthology of Romantic poetry, too stunned for speech. I was absolutely floored by these words, words which were penned two hundred years before I was born. I could not even say what it was that had affected me so. Was it the flawless execution of the meter? Was it the withheld effect of the last rhyme? Was it the passionate sorrow of the final phrase? Or was it, perhaps, the combined effect of all three?

Poetry is a lost art. With the increasingly rapid pace of modern society, and the developing emphasis on practicality, students are conditioned to ask a familiar question: “When will I ever use this in the real world?” And it is becoming increasingly difficult for teachers to answer that question—particularly when it comes to the ancient art of meter and verse.

After all, how can one justify memorizing or studying poetry? What sort of career will ever require you to remember the meter of Shakespeare’s sonnets, or rattle off the first few lines of Poe’s The Raven? Will anyone pay you because you know how to write in dactylic hexameter?

Because they cannot answer the question, “Why study poetry?”, many teachers give up poetry altogether. This is a singular travesty, and one that ought to be remedied.

There are countless practical reasons to study poetry. Logical capacity, ability to form grammatical structures, creativity, and even attention span are all increased by the study of poetry. But to be perfectly honest, these reasons are all secondary. The reason to study poetry has nothing at all to do with practicality.

So why should students study poetry?

Because poetry is beautiful. That’s it. This reason, and this reason alone, is sufficient.

There are two types of value in the world—intrinsic and extrinsic. The second of these values, the extrinsic value, is usually the only kind of value a modern student is taught. An extrinsic value is valuable because of what it accomplishes. For example, driving a car is extrinsically valuable. There is nothing inherently good about the action of pressing down a gas pedal and turning a steering wheel. The whole value of driving a car is tied up in the purpose of driving that car. The car allows you to travel to distant places relatively quickly, which allows you to spend time with friends and family, form connections between people, and earn the money that is necessary to live. Now, this car could also allow you to rob banks, murder your enemies, and vandalize public buildings. The action of driving the car is not inherently good—it is only good (or bad) for what it accomplishes.

But there is a second type of value, one which is rarely discussed in school settings. This is intrinsic value. An intrinsic value is not good because of what it accomplishes, but because of what it is. Justice, truth, love—all these are intrinsic values. They are valuable per se, or for their own sakes.

Beauty is one of the most dismissed values, for the odd reason that it is very difficult to see beauty as extrinsic. Let me explain. Any reasonable person will admit that justice, truth, and love are all important, but if you were to ask this same reasonable person why, he would likely give you a list of what these things all accomplish.

Justice provides law and order in society. Truth leads to scientific advancement and human development. Love has social utility in growing the population. Hardly anyone will simply reply, “Because justice, truth, and love are good.”

But it is difficult to find practicality in beauty. By its very nature, beauty defies practicality. Of all the intrinsic values, beauty asks us either to reject it or to appreciate it, but not to use it.

When you see a sun setting over the ocean, the light dancing on the water, the soft pink glow in the clouds, your first thought is not, “What can I accomplish using this sunset?” Your first thought will not be a thought at all—it will be a deep feeling of awestruck wonder. Beauty bypasses your brain and travels straight to your soul.

The head of the modern student is stuffed with information. He knows the phone numbers of all his friends, the channels for his favorite TV shows, the street where he lives, the password to his email, the date of his sister’s birthday, and countless other things.

But when he reads or memorizes a good poem, suddenly, there is a gem of beauty tucked away in the midst of all the debris. He will find these words surfacing in the oddest places, and wonder how they got there. He has something of eternal value hidden in his heart.

Now, poetry is useful—it refines a student’s word choice and sense of tone, it develops speaking style and voice. And it does so much more effectively than any video or worksheet. But it need not do any of these things to be worthy of study. It need not accomplish anything except for its own existence.

Modern society focuses upon the extrinsic at the expense of the intrinsic. Students are taught to ask the question, “How will I use this in my career?” What they do not understand is that extrinsic values are subordinate to intrinsic values.

Aristotle once wrote that “where there are ends apart from the actions, it is the nature of the products to be better than the activities.” This means simply that an intrinsic value is inherently better than an extrinsic value. This makes sense. After all, you would much rather eat a cookie than hold a cookie. Even though you need to hold the cookie (extrinsic) in order to eat it (intrinsic), you automatically recognize that the end goal of eating the cookie is more important than the necessary action of holding it.

Schools like to focus on the extrinsic, career-focused skills. And yet we do not live to find a job. We do not live only to survive. Such a life would be pointless. We live to experience the raw joy of the world. We live to find truth, and goodness, and beauty—and poetry, in its lilting melodies, in its quiet honesty, depicts the very heart of what it is to be human.

Poetry, good poetry, showcases the best of the world. Poetry depicts a beauty that gives hope. Because if we are honest, the world is a desperately hopeless place. This hopelessness is what leads many men and women to commit suicide, take drugs, and harm themselves. Perhaps, contrary to popular opinion, these people are not unbalanced. Perhaps they merely saw the raw pointlessness of the world as it is and gave up hope. Although they do not lack for societal assistance, practical advice and therapy offer only the fleeting comfort of an extrinsic value. There is little relief in society’s promise that the right career or the right relationship will make life better. There is no hope in the attempt to mask the misery of life with an equally miserable pragmatism.

Perhaps what these despairing souls need is the light of a beauty which does not pretend to be useful. Poetry offers something unique—the knowledge that there is a glory outside of our minds, that what we see is not all that there is.

Schools focus so much on the individual. They often foster a self-centered view of life which closes students down to the possibility that some things are greater than they are. Poetry can offer these same students a glimpse of the eternal—and this glimpse will do more to shape their souls than any practical skill ever will.

So what is the proper answer to the student who asks, “How will this help me in the real world?”

Poetry is the real world.

If you are a student, you have the immense privilege to be able to examine something beautiful. When your teachers allow you to read and immerse yourself in poetry, they are giving you the opportunity to join in the chorus of the song of humanity.

In the words of Mr. Keating, the brilliant English teacher from the movie Dead Poets Society, “We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

If nothing else, poetry connects us with an image of the sublime. This image, crafted in the delicate words of a poem, is nearly impossible to find anywhere else. Poetry can provide a small taste of Heaven. The force of poetry can draw out a longing for our eternal home in even the coldest human heart—and that is a powerful force indeed.

            This experience, this direct connection to the transcendent, can really only be described, of course, by a poem:

“And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”

— John Gillespie Magee, Jr.