A poet must never make a statement simply because it sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true. –W. H. Auden

“You really know how to end a poem.” After reading each new poem I sent her, my mother’s words were a constant and hopeful refrain. Months after her death, these are words to write by, and more importantly, to live by. For if ending a poem in truth is essential, so, too, is ending a life.

Sonneteers know the power and value of a good ending. Line by line, they drill down into a final couplet which delivers so much more than a poetically exciting rhyme. In these final two lines, sonneteers give us the wisdom that distinguishes the endings of the best poems. A poem should begin in delight, claims poet Robert Frost, and end in wisdom. Consider the final couplet in Sonnet 18, one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Now this is a great ending! Here, a lover proclaims that his words will forever testify to his beloved’s beauty and worth. Neither death nor time will diminish her, so long as his words live. Oh, to be immortalized by a great sonneteer who understands just how to make a final, grand statement!

In my more cynical moments, I begin to wonder if a true statement is a dying thing, an anachronism that lives solely in our memories. In the past few years, I’ve heard more people my age speak fondly of news anchors like Walter Chronkite who wrote:

As an anchorman for the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts with a simple statement: “And that’s the way it is.” To me, that encapsulates the newsman’s highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard to the consequences or controversy that may ensue.

I can’t help but envy the certainty of Cronkite’s parting words: And that’s the way it is. To leave your viewers with the truth, to live up to your highest ideal as a news anchor, that must be wonderful. When I consider what passes as news today, I salivate at the prospect of a newsperson whose integrity is forged and defined by such truthful statements.

American painter Jackson Pollock knows the value of making a statement. He writes:

It doesn’t make much difference in how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.

Cynically, I also wonder if we’ve come to value technique more than truth, style more than statement. Today, our leaders and celebrities toss out lovely words which essentially say nothing. We’re offered pieces of art and photography which may be technically good but often fail to move us. They simply don’t arrive at a statement. They say nothing. I recall an assignment for one of my graduate courses in poetry writing. We were asked to find an example of a good poem, one that exemplified the traits we’d been studying throughout the term. During the next class, one of my classmates volunteered to read the poem he’d brought. I’m paraphrasing, but it went something like this: Outside my window, a sparrow chirps. Silence filled the room as he let these words sink in. Nervously, he finally broke the silence by saying, “I mean, there’s not much here. But that’s the point, isn’t it? It seems like there’s not much here, so there must be something. Right?” If this poem were intended to be an example of postmodernist technique, it left my classmates and I scratching our heads. Did this poem actually say anything?

Our postmodern age tends to thumb its nose at anything that smacks of being sentimental or absolute. It’s simply not cool to show that you care–in art or in life. Sadly, what this often means is that we don’t make statements for fear of being called sentimental or judgmental. Actor Jon Voight countered this prevailing philosphy in this statement:

“Climb Every Mountain” is a beautiful statement of philosophy. Critics may think “The Sound of Music” is saccharine, but I think it’s profound. The message, that we can’t accomodate evil, is just as important today.

Voight challenges us to consider that The Sound of Music is more than a saccharine, feel-good film. It goes without saying that the music is wonderful and the cinematography spectacular. The film’s statement about refusing to accomodate evil, however, is even more profound. Aesthetically beautiful, The Sound of Music also has something to say.

In art and in life, we may be tempted by the styles and techniques of the times, spending our time and money on appearance, on what culturally passes as “good.” But if these things become our statements–that is, if style and technique trump wisdom and truth–this should give us pause. If our legacies are built upon things which essentially mean little (or nothing), this, too, should give us pause.

I learned everything I know about how to end a poem and a life from my father, an unfailing champion for the heroic voice in an age of indifference. In advocating for the power and usefulness of such a voice, he wrote:

Which started me thinking again about poetry, especially its usefulness. If writers write long enough, they write for their lives. If they persist in wanting the right words in the best places, they begin to sense a floor beneath their work, something more than stylish or momentarily pleasurable. In short, something solider. These are the writer’s underwritings. Every long-term poet, even one who deflects a knowledge of it, takes a discernible stand, and his underwritings, whether he knows them or admits them, become as crucial to his life as to his art.

With each poem I write, I sincerely hope that I take a discernible stand, that I give my readers something more than stylish or momentarily pleasurable, that I write for my life. And I sincerely hope that my underwritings, my statements of wisdom and truth, become as crucial to my life as they are to my art. I hope that I answer my father’s call to action: In a dumbed-down age, why shouldn’t poetry speak up? Although it may feel increasingly risky to speak up, one can seek sanctuary in statement.