To say, with Edgar Poe, that poetry should be beautiful, is the most rigorous, scientific thing one can say about poetry.
Why is the idea misunderstood, dismissed, or even ridiculed, then?
Because the talkers stop talking when beauty enters the room.
Poetry wants nothing to do with beauty, we think, because beauty is an argument without words.
It is not the beauty poetry rejects, it is the wordless way beauty makes itself felt, which is the poetic problem.
Or so most poets think.
Beauty, it is true, is not poetry—but poetry can imitate beauty, which makes them the same, since all art is first and foremost, imitation.
Beauty does not mean merely “pretty.”
Beauty’s ability to argue without words is a faculty no poet should be without—because what is a poet most of all?
A poet is swift—they use far less words to make an impression than writers of prose.
Poetry, then, imitates beauty’s ability to make its point instantaneously.
In the time it takes to read a single line of poetry, we could never say we have taken the time to read a novel, an essay, or a short story.
But if in that brief moment in which we read that line of poetry, we feel we are reading poetry, then we are reading poetry, and beauty has been the midwife to the poetry—and, if we don’t feel we are reading poetry, hasn’t the poetry failed already, since poetry (like beauty) should be recognized immediately? And if the first line doesn’t seem to be poetry, what of the second line? And should we really be waiting around for the poetry? Isn’t the whole point to be poetry right away? Otherwise we might as well say we are writing a short story or an essay. An essay needs time to argue, to explain. And poetry, because it is poetry, does not.
It is not precisely beauty which poetry invokes—it is the swiftness in which something is communicated, and that something exists in a mysterious sweet spot between argument, which needs time, and beauty, which does not—and this is what poetry is, and how it comes closest to being beautiful, in fact.
March Madness contests require time. But quickness will triumph. Upsets are few where there is one factor—a towering center, a diminutive guard; it makes no difference, for quick on the ball, quick to defend, quick to shoot, quick to rebound, quick to pass, quick to get in position, is all. There is no division of labor. The blur of intention and action is the essence of physical sport. Poetry is almost the same.
Poetry conveys image, idea, feeling, originality, and rhythm in as few words as possible. This wins. Beauty of the eye? No poem can compete. Argument of the mind? No poem can compete, or would compete, since the rationale of poetry is different—it invokes what we think is beauty, what we think is argument, but which is actually a hybrid blur of the two.
Mobile, graceful, accurate, and swift is a summation of all we describe as the beautiful, either ideally in the mind or materially in nature. The excellence of which the poem is the owner is excellent in ratio to how quickly the reader grasps it.
With this in mind, we proceed to the matchups themselves:
Mary Angela Douglas “one candle grown lilac in a perpetual spring”
This is a great example of irresistible swiftness. This is not 30% poetry and 70% prose, as most poems are, but 100% poetry: “one. candle. grown. lilac. in. a. perpetual. spring.”
Sharanya Manivannan “burdening the wisps of things,/their threats to drift away.”
This is not quite as pure—the action is less focused, specific, forceful.
Mary Angela Douglas advances to the Sweet Sixteen.
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Ann Leshy Wood “where groves of oranges rot,/and somber groups of heron graze/by the bay.”
We may think we are seeing what Ann Leshy Wood has “painted,” but the aural quality is in fact fooling the eye into thinking it perceives beauty—the “o” sound is doing all the work: “groves, oranges, rot, somber, heron.” Just as poetry is a mysterious hybrid of argument and beauty, so the best poetry entices our eyes with its sound.
Jennifer Robertson — “ocean after ocean after ocean”
This is splendid. And why? It is simple and repetitive. Why is this better than a million far more detailed paragraphs? For the reasons we have just outlined. This is like a jump shot looking exactly the same three times in a row with the shooter hitting all three shots. No sports fan could want anything more.
Jennifer Robertson has made it to the Sweet Sixteen.
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Medha Singh “you’ve/remembered how the winter went/as it went on”
This is one of the most remarkable poetic utterances a poet ever thought to make. “You’ve,” a rather clumsy-sounding word lumbers out of the starting gate, and “remembered,” another slow and awkward word embraces it—the fat ground is prepared; we have almost a novel already—swift, but slow. The phrase “you’ve remembered” has the weight of someone else’s memory thrown back onto, and into, the past—not “you remember” or “I’ve remembered,” but “you’ve remembered.” The next phrase, “how the winter went” continues the funereal rhythm of the trochaic, HOW the/ WIN-ter /WENT as / and introduces winter (a funereal season) as “how it went,” which introduces memory’s movement into the remembering—which is then repeated: “it went on, so we have “went” repeated, the “w” sound mingling with the “w” of winter, overwhelming the memory with remembering how winter “went on” (continued and continued) even as it “went”!!
C.P. Surendran — “A train, blindfolded by a tunnel,/Window by window/Regained vision.”
This is also a remarkable group of lines, but compared to Medha Singh’s lines, which have the heft of a 19th century Russian novel, this is only an extremely clever description of a train coming out of a tunnel. “Window by window regained vision” is a brilliant way to cap “a train, blindfolded by a tunnel.”
The winner: Medha Singh. She’s going to the Sweet Sixteen.
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Sushmita Gupta “Everything hurts,/Even that/Which seems like love.”
There is nothing here which is not morally ingenious. All great art requires not only the moral, but the morally ingenious. The complaint is not shy: “Everything hurts.” Too often even the great love poets complain of a heart that aches, but Sushmita Gupta knows love the best:”Everything hurts.”
She then moves quickly from heavy complaint to winged, ironic wit: “even that which seems like love.” And after the heavy (“everything hurts”) and the light (“even that which seems like”) the balance of both is exemplified by the last word: “love.” It is a dazzling, yet a sober and sad and wise performance. “Love” and “seems” never seemed so attractive and hateful at the same time.
Raena Shirali “we become mist, shift/groveward, flee.”
There is transformation and action in Reana Shirali’s two short lines, enough for an entire Greek or Roman or Hindu myth. The excitement is memorable, but it is more like an action movie than a performance which is morally ingenious.
Sushmita Gupta wins. Welcome to the Sweet Sixteen!
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