A Little Comment About Poetry

Don't be alarmed - this won't be a post discussing the fine art of writing poetry, or about meter, what a sonnet is, or how many words can be rhymed with "orange." Rather, This is just about what poems are and aren't, what they have to be or don't have to be, and what they can become even in the most simple ways. To do this, I will be bringing up a simple poem. No riddles here, no nature-based subtext, no describing a sunset across twenty lines. It's fairly straightforward, but yet it leaves a mark:

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away... 

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door... (slam!) 

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away...  
-- Antigonish, William Hughes Marnes

This poem is presumably about an encounter with a ghost. However, it is a playful approach, never actually showing us a ghost nor ever intimating any detail other than that this ghost might be a small man. But throughout the poem, we sense confusion, bewilderment, and even surprise when the man who wasn't there supposedly slams the door. The narrator acknowledges the man isn't there, yet has no way to describe him other than to say that he "isn't." In the end, we get the narrator's sense of frustration and dread at the presence of this man, even though he is literally not there.

This is a poem merely because it rhymes, it presents an experience, and communicates a feeling about the world as sensed by the author. It isn't about nature, romance, flowers, longing, or any of the usual poetry tropes. If anything, it a poem/ghost story without conclusion, just the feeling someone might have if they discovered they lived in a haunted house (if you believe in those things).

I've had this poem going through my head for two days now. (Full disclosure: I originally thought it was by Ogden Nash.) Now what does that mean? Just like any piece of quality writing, the only thing it means or needs to mean is that it is good writing, and that's because it sticks. I don't need to agree with it, sympathize with it, or anything else. The poem found a place in me, and that's what good poems do.