In W. H. Auden’s final long poem, The Age of Anxiety, four bar patrons are drinking when their ruminations are interrupted by the “banal noises” of the radio. A barrage of war headlines turns their thoughts dark, but also draws them to speak. As they begin their discussion the radio interrupts again:

HOW ALERT ARE YOU

A patron points his finger at the radio. “Listen, Box,” he says. “And keep quiet.”

–

Bombarded as we are by datum and fact, information overload, surveys, polls, opinions, talking heads telling us what to think, there’s no need to ask whether the news is important. Science and facts have shown that it is. Poetry cannot go ten days without someone asking, Does poetry matter? Can poetry matter? How can poetry matter? And, Why would you want it to?

There is no such fretting about the news. We may decry its fake brother, we may worry others get it from unreliable sources, but nobody doubts its necessity. We have channels dedicated to the 24 hour news cycle. Say what you want about poetry, but nobody wants 24 hours of it. To put that in the parlance of the day, poetry is nonessential.

And yet, despite this, James Matthew Wilson thinks that poetry and the purpose of life is connected; that poetry has something necessary to life that the news does not; that questions about the nature of knowledge and immortality and the soul are closely connected to questions about literary value. He makes a very polite case.

In his opening essay he takes us through the poetic philosophy of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, warps and all. How the immediacy of type bequeathed a sort of permanence to the brand new, and clarity to the off-the-cuff; how their eccentric understanding of science put poetry on a path to be measure by innovation and experiment; and the inevitable stagnation that occurs when the specific cannot rise beyond itself to the universal. In their urge to avoid commentary, the luminous details go dim, for to pay attention to the concrete, to see it clearly, is -as James Matthew Wilson puts it- “a matter of being thoughtful, and thoughtfulness ought to culminate… in the achievement of some actual thought.” He then concludes by freeing details from the dead end of fact, seeing them as symbols (being assisted by Wordsworth), and therein uniting heaven and earth.

It is quite an exhibit and I am with him all the way through the gift shop. Bravo. There are but two points that I would like to get a little rowdy over.

The first is a minor point, but it leads me to a greater issue. When Mr. Wilson says, “It is not news that human beings are entirely sunk down in the fluctuations of being, what Plato called the realm of becoming, such that everything on which our eyes fall is always swiftly passing away.”

I agree. It isn’t news, it is fake news. I don’t see the fluctuations of being. I know I should. I know that materialists have no account for the coherence of identity in the wrack and wash of matter’s flux. If it is true, if this world is but a passing instantiation of the Forms, the realm of becoming, then it is quite natural for us to give ear to the news cycle, quite inescapable, and quite inexcusable to try.

However, there is a greater philosopher, prior to Plato, that has a different take on the world. “What advantage does man have in all his work which he does under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth stands forever.” What follows is a list of things that aren’t in flux, but of fixed constancy: the rising and setting of the sun, the swirling wind, the rivers flowing to the sea. For Solomon, the world is not characterized by its evanescence, but its permanence. Man’s work may be vaporous, our lives a breath, but light is pleasant and it is good for the eyes to see the sun. Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it: “for all this, nature is never spent.”

I don’t expect any disagreements from Mr. Wilson on this, in fact, he demonstrates quite a lot of faith in the deepening of “raw temporality” through wisdom. He recognizes that poetry is the maturation of experience, or the deepening of events “recollected in tranquility.” Matter and moments can be a foundation for reflection. The stability and strength of the entire cosmos is seen in the words of Jesus when he says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.” It would mar the figure to think he was pairing his words with a weak and fragile thing.

I demur “the realm of becoming” because I fear that it feeds into the overweening attention toward the news (the daily, the nightly, and the online). “News is the speech that passes, such that nothing is so old as yesterday’s newspaper.” If our world is indeed fleeting, then the fleet words of the Fourth Estate would best reflect reality.

If, however, the material world can function as a symbol, where the universal and particular, time and timelessness, unite, then poetry is quite an important and irreplaceable thing. Mr. Wilson, as a poet of no mean skill, is perhaps far too humble to say it, but the duty to consider the world in well-weighed syllables and sound measures is vital, for indeed, as Alexander Schmemann observed, reality is symbolic and symbols are real.

–

“But all the fun’s in how you say a thing.”

–

If poetic Docetism is rejected and the world is charged with the grandeur of God, then another question arises. Must poets be philosophical all the time? Do the luminous details need to be couched in commentary? Even granting the deleterious track Pound and Williams sent poetry down, given steam by T. S. Eliot, does that mean that poets cannot stick to the concrete? Must I give up my Rae Armantrout, my Robert Lax, my simple, sweet, and cold plums?

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

-William Carlos Williams

Can we have confidence in the material world without a sermon? Must there be a homily or may at times we simply pass the peace?

–

If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.

–

Along with Mr. Wilson, I too will get behind Wordsworth’s complaint about the “gross and violent stimulants” that “blunt the discriminating powers of the mind.” Though I fear we have inoculated ourselves against objections to social media and cable news. Rather than rehearse the denunciations, let me take a different approach.

The primary goal of the news is to sell advertising. The secondary goal is to draw viewership. In the best case scenario, it can only be the tertiary goal to inform. There’s an argument for exerting influence, shaping the narrative, and increasing the anxiety of the masses as ranking higher than information, but for the sake of charity let us put that aside.

The language of newspapers is written quickly to be read quickly and rarely with a mind to drive one to deep thought and meditation. The speech of newscasters is couched in slogan and jargon, bite-sized and easily digestible, with no time for complex presentation and in-depth examination.

Even if it is assumed that people want information (that’s not what sells), even if it is assumed the media wants free thinking individuals (harder to control), even then what a ruinous diet for the mind. And it is made particularly deadly by the lack of peace, and not just lack, but its inability to allow for it. “Dead air” is what silence is called, a more pernicious term is unimaginable.

But poetry, born in solitude, formed of careful, crafted words, is the maturation of thought. I like how Mr. Wilson puts it: “The properly human way of facing the world is that of listening, of seeking to hear within in the literal world of created things, what they say about themselves, what they say about their relations to one another, what they say about us, and what they have to tell us about the Creator.”

And thus, we ought all to point at the machine and say, “Listen, Box, and keep quiet.”

Remy Wilkins teaches at Geneva Academy in Monroe, Louisiana.