Of Modern Poetry Spirituality Quotes

If this is a definition of modern poetry, then it seems like poetry's job is to show us how a human mind can find some sort of spiritual fulfillment in life. As Stevens goes on to add, people haven't always had to look for meaning as hard as they do now. But the modern world has made it more difficult for people to believe in religion and endless scientific progress, so poetry will have to pick up the slack in the spirituality department.

If poetry is going to offer people spiritual fulfillment, it can't go on talking in the language of Shakespeare. It has to learn the language of regular folks at a specific historical moment and learn how to speak to their deepest desires. In other words, poetry shouldn't try to be timeless anymore. It should try to speak to people in the here and now.

Poetry can't just be all love and roses. The horrors of the modern age have made people too smart for that. Poetry needs to acknowledge all of the ugly things in life (like war) and it has to find a way of making life seem worthwhile in spite of these terrible things.

In order for it to be spiritually fulfilling, modern poetry can't go talking about what a terrible place the world is and how terrible the people in it are (are you listening, T.S. Eliot?). Poetry needs to speak to the most delicate part of us and make us feel a deep sense of comfort. It has to tell our souls exactly what they want to hear: that the universe is a good place and that life is worth living.

In the midst of World War Two, Stevens probably felt like the modern world was running around in darkness, looking for anything at all to believe in. But there weren't many examples of human goodness at the time. So Stevens says here that even when things seem dark and we don't have any clear principles to light our way, we need to keep searching in the darkness for something basic to believe in, something that can keep us all going.

If modern poetry is just like twanging a string on a guitar, then it must be a pretty crude instrument for understanding the world. Nonetheless, the hope that we find in this little bit of twang gives us sudden moments of feeling "rightness" in our hearts. The sound is comforting not because it's beautiful, but because the person playing it is bravely playing on in the darkness.