A renewed interest in poetry: what does it signify?

In the context of a world in crisis, young people in particular are leading a revival of interest in poetry of all kinds. In this article, Jérôme Métellus and Irene Serra explain what poetry is at its most basic level, and from this perspective consider what is driving its increase in popularity.

[This article was originally published as part of issue 46 of In Defence of Marxism magazine, the quarterly theoretical journal of the Revolutionary Communist International. Get your copy and subscribe here!]

Last summer, the French weekly cultural magazine, Télérama, and the national daily, Le Monde, pointed out that over the last few years, the little world of poetry has been experiencing a new burst of vitality.

In French bookshops the sales of collections (of ‘classics’ or otherwise) are on the increase: 42 percent between 2019 and 2022. This tendency continued in 2023, with an increase of 22 percent between January and May.

Of course, poetry still accounts for only 1 percent of sales, but nevertheless the increase is obvious.

“Independent publishing companies are growing in numbers – Seghers, Bruno Doucey, Le castor astral… – and with them the desire to write”, explains Télérama.

It's even more obvious on social media. The hashtag, ’Poetry’, has been viewed 75 billion times on TikTok and Instagram hosts numerous ‘Instapoets’. It is young people in particular who are behind this poetic revival. This is demonstrated by an increasing enthusiasm for ‘open mic nights’ in bars, where people come to absorb words as much as have a drink.

The essence of poetry

In order to explain this phenomenon, we first have to point out that poetry cannot simply be approached in the manner in which great classics are taught in schools.

To be sure, Verlaine, Hugo, Baudelaire and Rimbaud, to quote but these four geniuses of 19th century French poetry, certainly have a legitimate place in literary courses. But a too scholarly approach is all too often the best way to misunderstand them – and, as a result, miss out on what makes up the essence of poetry, which extends far beyond the shelves dedicated to it in the bookstores.

In order to understand what poetry is, fundamentally, we can consider what the German philosopher Hegel said about it. In his classification of different art forms, he included in the concept of ‘poetry’ all that we now consider as literature – including, therefore, novels and plays. Of course, literature and art have evolved a lot since Hegel. Over the last two centuries, internal differentiations in literature have reserved the term ‘poetry’ for a particular form of writing. But we have to grasp the deeper meaning of Hegel’s classification. Hegel maintained that what distinguishes poetry from architecture, sculpture, painting and music is that its “material consistency” is human speech. He insisted on this point: “Poetry, however, is essentially and according to its notion, sonorous expression”.

This characterisation of poetry isn't quite as mundane as it seems at first glance. In fact, spoken poetry isn't just ordinary speech. It frees itself from the purely instrumental functions of language, from day-to-day concerns, from worrying about efficient communication and transparent logic to give free rein to the treasures of music and imagery hidden deep inside language – and deep inside each of us.

On the subject of imagery, Hegel explains that poetry “brings before our vision concrete reality rather than the abstract generalisation”. He continues:

“In the view of ordinary common sense I understand by language, both in its impression on my hearing or sight, the meaning in its immediacy, in other words, without receiving its image before the mind. The phrases, for instance, "the sun," or "in the morning," possess each of them no doubt a distinct sense; but neither the Dawn or the Sun are themselves made present to our vision. When, however, the poet says: "When now the dawning Eos soared heavenwards with rosy fingers," here without question we have the concrete fact brought home to us. The poetical expression adds, however, yet more, for it associates with the object recognized a vision of the same, or we should rather say the purely abstract relation of knowledge vanishes, and the real definition takes its place.”

As Hegel’s example of Homer’s metaphor shows, this “yet more” is produced by the poetic image, because in the real world no dawn possesses rosy fingers! Thus, ironically, a more concrete picture of the thing described is reflected in language that, taken literally, is false or even absurd.

The resources of poetic imagery open so many possibilities that the ’thing in itself’ can be not so much ‘figured’ as transfigured. The history of modern poetry is marked by a general move in this direction – to the point where, with the surrealists, the image ceases to ’figure’ the ‘thing itself’ in order to capture its most secret and unconscious resonances.

For example, in the following verses of Paul Eluard the use of extended metaphor identifies the birds with fish and then with pearls.

“Un bel arbre

Ses branches sont des ruisseaux

Sous les feuilles

Ils boivent aux sources du soleil

Leurs poissons chantent comme des perles…”

In English:

“A tall tree

With brook-like branches

Under the leaves

They drink in the sun and its springs

Their fish sing as pearls would…”

There is no impassable boundary between poetry and everyday language. In a sense, one flows from the other. Even our most trivial daily conversations are sprinkled with ‘poetic’ images that we most often don't pay any attention to. When we declare that so and so has “blown a fuse”, we're using a metaphor. If we propose to a friend to come and “have a glass or two”, we're using a metonym, the substitution of a word for something closely associated with it - in this case, the drink contained in the glass. But the poet uses these different figures of speech to elevate his or her sentiments, thoughts and vision of the world to the great heights of a work of art.

Another central feature of poetry is the musicality of the spoken word. Once more we turn to Hegel: “We understand what the letters mean, which are indicative points for articulate utterance, by the mere act of sight, and without being further obliged to listen to their sound. Only the illiterate reader will find it necessary to speak aloud the separate words that he may understand their sense. But in the case of poetry just what seems to be here the mark of stupidity is an indication of beauty and excellence.” The pronunciation of the text adds a de facto musical dimension.

One of the great musicians of French poetry, Paul Verlaine, points this out in the first verse of his poem, Ars Poetica:

“De la musique avant toute chose,

Et pour cela préfère l’Impair

Plus vague et plus soluble dans l’air,

Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose.”

In English:

“Music first and foremost! In your verse,

Choose those meters odd of syllable,

Supple in the air, vague, flexible,

Free of pounding beat, heavy or terse.”

The greatest poets distinguish themselves by their ability to combine imagery and musicality, to play on their connections. They combine form and substance in a harmonious and original unity, which is precisely what our ‘functional’ daily language never – or very rarely – does.

Revolt and poetry

As we can see, poetry, such as we have characterised it, is not confined to the ‘classics’. It constantly pervades novels and plays, to different degrees, but also songs. Poetry expresses itself in a great diversity of art forms and it can of course have a musical accompaniment without ceasing to be poetry.

But with this in mind we should analyse the renewed interest in ‘pure’ poetry these last few years. By ‘pure’ we mean: based only on the spoken word, without either singing or music. In this sense, ‘slam poetry’ is an intermediary form between rap and poetry reduced to its essence. This movement of stripping poetic expression to the essentials is very significant. Indeed, it is not necessary to be able to sing or play music to write or recite poetry. As Hegel pointed out: “The need [of the poet] here at least is merely that of a gift for imaginative creation.”. In other words, the poet needs to have something that he or she needs to say, that he wants to be heard and that he is capable of elevating to the dignity, to the beauty, of words that have a striking impact and reach their audience.

And young people today certainly do have something to say – against exploitation, oppression, the poverty on our streets, the destruction of the environment, imperialist wars, the cynicism and hypocrisy dripping from the ruling class, the mainstream media and the speeches of all politicians. A revolt, muted but powerful, is at the root of this thirst for poetry which manifests itself not only in those who write and recite it, but also in those, even more numerous, who read it or come to listen to it over a few drinks.

This link between the different manifestations of the crisis of capitalism and the increasing vitality of poetry has been suggested by Olivier Barbarant, who presides over the Poetry Commission at the French National Book Centre: “catastrophic times create a thirst for meaning and for poetry. Our success is a comment on the harshness of our epoch”. For her part, Julia Vergely writes in Télérama that “if the world seems to be irreversibly heading for disaster, as for poetry, it is thriving.”

All this is perfectly true except that the world is not headed irreversibly towards disaster: it is headed towards a series of revolutionary crises, upon the outcome of which the future of humanity depends. The current enthusiasm for poetry is but one precursor of this, among others. As for the “thirst for meaning” mentioned by Olivier Barbarant, we have to point out that it takes on a clearly political – and often anticapitalist – character, by necessity.

It is true that poetry cannot be reduced to a political discourse. A good poem and a good slogan – or a good political programme – must meet very different requirements. Having said that, most young people who take an interest in poetry nowadays are looking for something more than just purely formal virtuosity. They are looking for poetry that, one way or another, even by humour and flippancy, speaks of the disaster of this world, its violence, its absurdity but also the hope of a better, more just and humane world.

Charles Baudelaire (1917) by Eugène Decisy

This is not to say that poetry must absolutely have a political character to be beautiful or to be appreciated. Good poetry – and good literature in general – must emerge from the depths of the poet, from his or her experience, from his or her passion. The most intimate and singular joys and sorrows are often at the heart of great poetic works. This has been true particularly since the emergence of Romanticism at the beginning of the 19th century. The beauty of the poems of Verlaine or Baudelaire, for example, is indissociable from their inner torments.

And yet, even in the case of Verlaine and Baudelaire, we're dealing with works that reflect, to a certain extent, the society in which the authors lived. These two poets carry the mark of the same profound disillusionment in the promises of bourgeois rationalism but also in Romanticism. The grandiloquent optimism of Victor Hugo, the leader of French Romanticism, was trampled upon by the corrupt and dictatorial regime of Napoleon III. In a sense, the decadence of the Second Empire found a deformed – sublimated – expression in the masterpieces of Verlaine and Baudelaire: Les fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil, 1857) and the Poèmes saturniens (Poems under Saturn, 1866).

The poet may well search in his own subjective sources, but even these are fashioned by the real world, external to the artist. As Trotsky wrote: “Artistic creation is (…) a deflection, a changing and a transformation of reality, in accordance with the peculiar laws of art. However fantastic art may be, it cannot have at its disposal any other material except that which is given to it by the world of three dimensions and by the narrower world of class society. Even when the artist creates heaven and hell, he merely transforms the experience of his own life into his phantasmagorias, almost to the point of his landlady’s unpaid bill.”

Today, as capitalism threatens humanity with generalised barbarism, the best poets – and their public alike – cannot content themselves with subtle, sophisticated works cut off from the social pulse of the real world, its suffering and its struggles. The time has come for poetry whose cries and flames answer, in vigorous protest, the ravages of a world in crisis, unjust and brutal. The renewed interest in poetry is not only the symptom of a revolutionary epoch; we can also predict that this epoch will produce, for the very same reasons, great revolutionary poets.

[This article was originally published as part of issue 46 of In Defence of Marxism magazine, the quarterly theoretical journal of the Revolutionary Communist International. Get your copy and subscribe here!]