A poem is a song, that is, rhythm, melody, harmony imposed on the chaos of noise. There are many kinds of song. Different cultures hear different music. Different kinds of song serve different occasions. But to its hearer, a poem must present as song or fail in its intent. A poem is not prose. Prose poem is an oxymoron.

This may seem too obvious to say. Everyone knows what a poem is. A poem is a lullaby, dance song, protest song, love song, anthem, carol, hymn. Whether its sounds or rhythms repeat, it pleases before we know what it says. Music, not meaning, propels a poem into us, bypassing reason. Its music soothes, consoles, encourages.

Are you with me so far? The profession, if you can call it that, mostly isn’t. For more than a century, all sorts of name-brand poets have eschewed singing for saying. Browse any anthology of contemporary verse in English. How many of the poems sing? How many swing and charm before you know what they’re about? Any regular rhymer risks being deemed primitive or ironic. Lyrics are not poems, but something simpler, less significant somehow.

I’m not damning the preferred poetry of the last four generations with generalizations, saddling up my polemical pony to tilt at windmills. There are memorable poems that can’t easily be sung. Free, concrete, imagist, uncadenced text-dumps are not universally dead ends. Some poets make music despite themselves, their ear is so good. (I rate Lincoln a poet, for example, though he spoke prose.) I’m just ruing the abandonment of poetry’s age-old charms in favor of patterns that displease. The profession of poetry doomed itself to obscurity. Less than ten per cent of Americans read “at least one” poem last year, according a recent survey – and that number keeps dropping. This trend makes me sad, for poetry can work on the soul like no other art. No mind-to-mind intimacy is more intense.

These observations surprise me. In college and beyond, I thought what I was taught. Who was I to demur? If I was frustrated by avowed contemporary “masters,” the fault must be mine. If Pound’s Cantos were great, I’d keep drubbing myself to discern their greatness, though I found them as liltless as the tax code and less scrutable. (Pound is my whipping boy, standing for many.)

One giddying thrill of retirement is the freedom to say what I see with impunity. And in any direction I look, what I see isn’t what I thought I thought. My opinions were shaped by my moment and milieu – and my longing to belong to a particular set. I didn’t want to be one of those nudnicks who couldn’t comprehend contemporary art – not I!

Seeing for oneself isn’t easy. It takes confidence, experience, and indifference to obloquy. Traitors to the consensus are seldom welcome, for their divergence insensibly insults the judgment of the majority. To all but a few sturdy intellects, disagreement equals disrespect. If I wanted to affiliate with the pro-poetry crowd, I’d have to toe the party line.

Old, I seek no inclusion, except in my family of friends. I’ve graduated from any need to graduate. I appreciate encouragement – who doesn’t? – but who cares what others think with dust destined so soon? This newfound freedom imbues me with unprecedented tranquility. I wonder everyone doesn’t long to be old.

I love all sorts of poems, but none that are not songs, whose music precedes their sense. I predict posterity will share this preference, though I’ll never know. Music – cadence, timbre, pitch, regularity, harmony, melody, rhyme – quiets the chaos in our souls, permitting us the delusion of grace and hope.