There Are No Accidents in Poetry

There are no accidents in poetry.

I'd say this goes all the way back to the book of Job, whenever that was written. In the book of Job, all kinds of bad things happen to Job, and as far as he knows, there's no reason for them. But it takes the whole book for him to realize this. Each of the speeches of his friends seems to posit a reasonable explanation for what has befallen him.

I recently read a poem by a fellow student, and in this poem, what happens is a woman does a strip-tease in a hotel room, throws an article of clothing on top of a lamp, it catches on fire, and it burns the apartment up, including her. An accident, right?

As the title of this post suggests, there are no accidents in poetry. I could equally say that there are no accidents in dreams. There are no accidents in fantasies. There are no accidents in daydreams. There are no accidents in wishing.

That is to say, if something happens in a poem, it is because some part of the poet wished for it to happen. Shall I add murder to the list of crimes of poets? I think I might, especially when there is no poetic justification for the death. (Incidentally, I have been guilty of destroying the entire world in a poem, just for the sake of destruction.)

Tragic loss plays a few key roles in poetry and fiction. Often, it is something for the protagonist and other characters to rail against. "My friend is dead! Why did God/the universe inflict this on me?" Other times it is a lesson for the reader to avoid circumstances. "Oh he knew that if he ate the fruit of the Tree of Certain Death that he would die! And so he has! Alas, but we cannot grieve, for the universe is just! It rewards stupidity with pain, and immorality with vengeance!"

I guess my problem with the poet as murderer is that sometimes the poet sends the wrong message with the death of a character. My friend's poem is an example of this, I think. We are given very few details of the dancer, except a few about what her lifestyle might have been like, the fact that she's in a hotel, the fact that she's willing to do a striptease, and we begin to get the picture that some folks might consider that she's almost deserving of a fate approximating what she got. It was her who threw the camisole on the lamp, after all. She accidentally killed herself.

And yet, there are no accidents in poetry. The lesson in the poem is that the dancer has transgressed against the law of the universe, and the universe has seen fit to extinguish her.

So, if I had the chance, I would re-write the poem, and include enough details to take the blame off the dancer. I would make her more like Job, even though she might still have a lifestyle filled with drugs, sex, and lies. I would be left with a very different portrait of a person, I suppose. But the fact is, I don't believe that anyone deserves to die. The closest I could get would be that those who deliberately commit suicide might deserve it, and yet I can't quite bring myself even to that point.

The problem with my friend's poem is that it is almost comical. The reader is almost brought to laugh at the self-inflicted plight of this pathetic, worthless creature. We're not sorry to see her go. We cheer the flames on. And no, I don't think this idea is coming from within me. I think it is implicit in the work of art whenever a person dies accidentally by their own hand, in a poem or work of fiction.