Day 307
What can be explained is not poetry
…
The Unexplainable Truth: Why Yeats Said ‘What Can Be Explained Is Not Poetry’
W.B. Yeats, the towering figure of Irish literature and a Nobel laureate, often seemed to speak in riddles that contained profound universal truths. One such truth, delivered not from a stage but in a quiet moment with his son, Michael, cuts directly to the soul of creativity:
“What can be explained is not poetry.”
This deceptively simple statement is not merely a critique of literary analysis; it is a philosophy of art, a defence of mystery, and a guide for how we must approach the most cherished parts of our existence.
If poetry is built from words—the very tools of explanation—how can the final product simultaneously resist understanding? The answer lies in the fundamental difference between information and resonance.
1. The Reductionist Trap: Explanation as Destruction
When Yeats dismisses explanation, he is pushing back against the modern impulse to dissect, categorise, and summarise. Explanation seeks clarity, certainty, and a definitive endpoint. It wants to give you the meaning in a neat bullet point.
But for the poet, this act of definition is fatal.
Think of a poem like Yeats’s own “The Second Coming.” If you were asked to explain it, you might say: “It is about the breakdown of societal order, historical cycles, and the fear of a looming, savage future.” This is factually correct. But by the time you have finished this explanation, the poem itself—the terrifying rhythm, the shocking image of the “blood-dimmed tide,” the sheer visceral dread of the “rough beast, its hour come round at last”—has completely evaporated.
The Elements That Resist Explanation:
- Rhythm and Sound: Poetry operates on the level of music. You can explain the notes on a score, but you cannot explain the feeling of the music’s vibration in your chest.
- Ambiguity: A great poem holds multiple, often contradictory, truths simultaneously. Explanation forces a choice, killing the rich tension that gives the poem its power.
- The Ineffable: Poetry deals in the realm of the subconscious, the spiritual, and the deeply felt human condition—areas that words can only point toward, never fully capture.
As the great poet Archibald MacLeish wrote, “A poem should not mean / But be.” If you can swap a poem for a paragraph of summarised meaning without losing anything vital, it was never truly poetry to begin with.
2. The Domain of True Art: Mystery and Aura
If explanation is the enemy, what elevates language into poetry? It is the successful creation of Aura—that inexplicable shimmer of authenticity and power surrounding a work of art.
Poetry, painting, and music—when successful—establish an immediate, emotional connection that bypasses the logical mind. They don’t give us facts; they provide us with an experience of being human.
A true poem resonates because it touches a nerve we didn’t know existed. It uses familiar words in unfamiliar arrangements that create a shock of recognition: Ah, yes, I have felt that thing, though I lacked the words for it.
This resonance cannot be taught, explained, or quantified. It is a mystery that the poet labors to create, and a mystery the reader must consent to receive. The poem’s job is to compel you to stop asking why and simply start feeling.
Art as a Sacred Language
For Yeats, an artist and a mystic, poetry was a sacred endeavour that tapped into universal symbols and mythic memory. This is why his poems are so dense with swans, spirals, gyres, and masks. These are not symbols to be easily decoded; they are portals meant to shift the reader’s consciousness.
To demand an explanation of a spiritual experience is to completely misunderstand the nature of the sacred. Yeats viewed poetry in the same light.
3. Beyond the Poem: Embracing the Unexplained Life
Yeats’s dictum is not just a lesson for the classroom; it is a profound commentary on how we live. The things we value most highly in life are often the things that defy bullet points and clear definitions.
If we can fully explain something, we often lose our sense of wonder for it. The minute we treat life as a logical equation, we forfeit the magic.
Love, Grief, and Beauty
Consider the deepest human experiences:
- Love: Can you truly explain why you love a particular person? You can list their qualities (kindness, intelligence), but those are merely the ingredients. The love itself—the specific, irrational, overwhelming devotion—is the chemical reaction that cannot be explained. If it could, it would be a transaction, not love.
- Beauty: Why is a specific sunset breathtaking? You can explain the atmospheric condition, the refraction of light, and the Rayleigh scattering effect. But none of that science touches the awe you feel when watching the sky turn orange.
- Grief: Grief is not a set of stages to be rationally completed; it is a primal force that washes over you. No explanation can contain the depth of loss.
These are the poetic aspects of life. They are what make living rich, maddening, and profoundly meaningful. They require us to accept ambiguity and to tolerate the fact that the most important truths lie just beyond the reach of language.
The Call to Wonder
Yeats’s quiet lesson to his son remains a powerful challenge to us today: In an age where every phenomenon is instantly broken down by algorithms and summarised in 280 characters, are we losing our capacity for wonder?
If we insist on explaining everything, we risk reducing the rich tapestry of existence to a dry instruction manual.
True poetry—in literature and in life—requires us to put down the defining pencil, step away from the summary, and simply stand in the presence of the powerful, beautiful, bewildering thing that is.
The challenge of the reader, the lover, and the appreciative human being is to honour the mystery that remains when all the explanations have failed.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 