LEADERSHIP AND POETRY
What We Can Understand of Manhood Through a Poem
You can assess a man’s character by his favorite poetry
In February 2021, USA Today wrote of a renaissance of public interest in poetry — fueled in part by a generation of younger talents such as two women of color: the inaugural poet Amanda Gorman and the best-selling Canadian poet Rupi Kaur.
That could be an encouraging development for America’s culture wars. Here’s why:
The love of poetry can be a clue to the caliber of one’s character — particularly those men who aspire to political leadership.
Years earlier in 2014, that same newspaper published an interview with the Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. poet laureate, Charles Wright. He was asked a predictable question: Why does poetry matter?
His retort was that he could only answer why it mattered to him. That response was conveniently subjective, but I believe it failed miserably at giving the angel her due — particularly for someone who should have been poetry’s greatest advocate.
Poetry, in fact, has always mattered, and it has mattered for masculinity. Verse was the ancient vehicle for tales of superior manhood set in Greece (Iliad), Rome (Aeneid), India (Mahabharata), and Scandinavia (Beowulf). We first hear faint hint of its epic power in the nursery rhymes we learn — or the lyrics rap composers dare to drop. (Though they sometimes reek of toxic masculinity.)
And through years of programming at secondary schools, we may be fed some standardized offerings of authentic poems, perhaps much like the menus at their cafeteria counters.
But shifting metaphors — for many in America, the high school rite of passage marked the last time they ever looked upon a poem: or called upon her beauty to arouse the human spirit. That probably explains why poetry, until recently, existed so ignored as the Cinderella-sibling of fiction.
There are, however, those rare moments when we are reminded that poetry is essential to the soul — critical to our ability to exist within a hostile universe. Think of the Psalms; think of the Buddhist scriptures.
Yet, a no less spiritual example of this phenomenon is that testament to the human will whom the world knew as Nelson Mandela. For some twenty-seven years in a gulag, Mandela survived hell on earth by the character he forged in the holy fires of his soul.
But we now know that furnace had been fueled by his favorite poem: “Invictus,” an invocation penned by the poet William Ernest Henley. The special role of that verse for the father of South Africa was recited by Morgan Freeman in the movie clip below — titled by that same name.
I learned that poem during my sophomore year in college, a year of intense personal challenge. Granted, it was not remotely akin to the trials Mandela had to endure.
Nonetheless, I can understand how he would find a spiritual anchor in its four stanzas. It is a poem that moors the soul in courage, while facing adversity’s discharging storms.
But a century before Mandela’s struggles, another nation’s president revealed his own love affair with poetry. Abraham Lincoln was fond of the composition “Mortality.” In those lines you can hear recognition of the permanence of impermanence — that is, human death.
One wonders whether its stanzas compelled Lincoln to extract all that he could from life — while he still paced the earth. And since it was his favorite verse, did he recite it on the day he died?
So, I am compelled to ask: What noble poem has ever captured the heart of that modern Republican, Kevin McCarthy? Or Senator Ted Cruz? Or, dare I even ask, the serpent-loving Donald Trump?
Ergo, I propose there is a correlation between the greatness of a man’s soul and his bonding with a poem. I have no doubt that phenomenon operates in reverse — the most cowardly, lowliest, and most corrupted imitations of manhood are likely least receptive to the incantations of an elevated poem.
Thus, I would suggest to Mr. Wright that poetry matters immensely for explorations of character to be discovered in its lines. Of course, he knows this, and he is far better equipped to make that argument than I.
But as a witness to the culture wars and the downward spiral of American character in the nation’s capital, I can offer this: At least one of poetry’s claims on our existence is its power to remind men to be men.
Thanks for your attention. There are more meditations to come from this corner of the Enlightenment underground. I welcome you to follow me by clicking the button to the right. — Geronimo Redstone
