How to See Like a Poet:

Summary

The text discusses the poetic perspective on beauty, truth, and emotion, exemplified by Andrew Marvell's approach to love and irony in his poetry.

Abstract

The article delves into the intricacies of poetic vision, using Andrew Marvell's work as a lens to explore the depth of romantic adoration, the interplay of flesh and spirit, and the profound connections between the mundane and the divine. Marvell's poetry is lauded for its ability to convey complex emotions and ironies, such as the paradox of love's physical and spiritual dimensions, and the recognition of nature's role in preserving the soul. The text emphasizes the poet's role in revealing truths about beauty, pleasure, and piety, often overlooked by theologians, and in finding analogies that bridge the earthly with the ethereal. It also touches on the idea that poets, through their unique perception, can offer corrective insights into the act of seeing by acknowledging the necessity of tears for true vision.

Opinions

The author suggests that Marvell is self-aware and possibly satirical in his expression of romantic desire, as seen in his poem to his "Coy Mistress."
Poets are seen as observers who recognize the irony in life, such as the body's limitations and the soul's struggles, as illustrated in Marvell's "A Dialogue between the Soul and the Body."
The text posits that poets like Marvell believe in the interconnectedness of beauty, pleasure

Take 200 Years To Adore Each Breast

by Just_4_act, Flickr

I would need 200 years to “adore each breast,” wrote Andrew Marvell to his “Coy Mistress” in 1681. And “thirty thousand to the rest” of your body:

For, lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate.

But then he quickly puts the pressure on in the next verse, warning her that unless she returns his love,

worms shall try That long-preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust

Poets recognize romantic manipulation. And I think Marvell is wise enough to parody his own in this famous love poem. But poets also recognize Irony (the ability to express the opposite of what words might mean). And his poem, “A Dialogue between the Soul and the Body” (Bly 217), speaks Truth ironically by describing “hands” as manacles, “eyes” as blindness, and “ears” as deafness. The Soul, he writes, is

Manacled in hands… blinded with an eye… deaf with the drumming of an ear…

Marvell quickly detects here our ironic struggle as amphibians — flailing between flesh and spirit. And I love the subtle connections he also sees between little girls crying over fawns and The Church grieving over Christ’s death, later on in the poem. Or Merry England dying in the Civil Wars and a young girl’s sorrow over lost virginity — in other poems.

Poets see Beauty; they admit that pleasure preserves piety; that Truth without Beauty is heresy; that nature preserves the soul, and that God is probably a hedonist who created everything for his own pleasure. And if theologians won’t recognize the glory and fallenness of grass and dewdrops then the poets will raise their voices.

Poets see analogs. They notice how the yearning “upward bend” of a single drop of dew can be microcosmic heaven — -or a soul yearning to rise.

Poets believe that eyes need tears to see. They notice that “only human eyes can weep,” and that tears can, therefore, correct the “false angles” of seeing without feeling. And therefore:

Eyes and Tears be the same things: And each the other’s difference bears; These weeping Eyes, those seeing Tears.

Poets also see through other eyes. C. S. Lewis said that his own eyes were not enough for him, and yearned to “see through the eyes of others.” And poets like Marvell, Rumi, and Mirabai, help us do this.

Rumi. “Rumi Quotes: 1–30 of 114 Quotes.” QuotesCosmos.com, Last modified August 5, 2021. https://www.quotescosmos.com/people/Rumi-quotes.html#1