Poetry and Rhetoric

What I was really surprised about while reading Aristotle’s third book of The Rhetoric was how many of the elements he spoke of can be also seen as crucial parts of poetry, and indeed, he compared and contrasted these element to poetry quite a few times. With the exception of Plato hating both of them, I wouldn't think poetry and rhetoric would have much in common. However, Aristotle makes good points about how some of the crucial elements of poetry can be used in rhetoric, though in a different manner.

For example, in chapter eight, Aristotle talks about “prose rhythm,” the rhythm of delivery and finding a structure consistent enough to keep the listener both listening and understanding. Rhythm is also important in poetry, even in free-form, though especially so in more structured forms where syllables for each stanza are carefully measured, but it is a way to engage the listener’s interest in a way that normal speech or dialogue might not.  Now you don’t want that kind of measurement for rhetoric, for as Aristotle says, “prose, then, is to be rhythmical, not metrical, or it will become not prose but verse” (180). However, you want just the right amount of varied rhythm – varied enough for the speech to not become monotonous, similar enough so nothing sounds disjointed. Rhythm in speech, whether it be poetry or rhetoric, helps engage the listener and keeps them actively engaged during the delivery of the performance.

The element that surprised me the most in this book, but one that Aristotle mentioned quite a few times, was the use of metaphors and similes (which he considers to be basically the same) in rhetoric. I would generally consider metaphors, while useful in poetry and literature, too frou-frou for rhetoric; however, Aristotle makes some good points for their rhetorical use. While he does caution in chapters 2 and 3 against metaphors that are non-fitting or unnecessarily poetic (that could confuse or distract the listener), he also considers the metaphor a way to make your language or the spoken subject seem more impressive (Ch. 6), an important part of clever sayings (Ch. 10), and crucial to allowing your listeners/readers be able to see what is being discussed (Ch. 11). 

I'm actually taking a creative writing class this semester (the intro class, an experienced or skilled creative writer, I am not), so since that class is on our poetry section, it's interesting to compare and contrast how Aristotle speaks of metaphors in ancient rhetoric vs. how it's spoken of today in my creative writing class. Besides the obvious of how poetry is, in it's nature, preformed more artistically than rhetoric (in its vividness and use of abstraction), I feel that a main difference between poetry and rhetoric is that poetry's main purpose isn't necessarily to convince, but perhaps more of to make us think? Rhetoric tries to convince us of a specific point, while poetry is an illustration of a point, but I feel that generally poetry isn't used to drive a purpose home but to get us to consider something. 

It brings me back to our discussion of "is there such thing as communication that is not rhetorical in some aspect." I almost feel that poetry can apply for that, for while stories often have a point or moral, a poem doesn't necessarily have to, and often doesn't, but is pure abstraction. Not to say that a poem can't serve any rhetorical purposes, there are poems, good poems, that serve a larger purpose to make the reader see something from the writer's eyes (to do as Aristotle says, make the listener see the argument), but there are other poems that I'm pretty sure are simply pure abstractions. We've talked before about writing poems that even the writer doesn't necessarily understand what they're writing or why they're writing in, and will accept almost any interpretation of it. Thus it is inherently not rhetorical since the author is not trying to achieve a specific goal. I'd definitely love to hear any counter-arguments to that point though. 

Questions:

1. Do you think poems can be considered largely rhetorical or non-rhetorical? 

2. What do you think about poetic strategies in rhetoric? For example, the use of metaphors or Aristotle's suggestions of, "describe a thing instead of naming it: do not say 'circle' but 'that surface which extends equally from the middle every way'" (176), and "when mentioning anything ugly or unseemly,  use its name if it is the description that is ugly, and describe it if it is the name that is ugly" (177). Do you think they are good strategies for helping the audience see/understand your point, or too evasive and likely to be misused for deceptive purposes?