(HOST) The upcoming public ceremony at the State House honoring Ruth Stone of Middlebury as Vermont’s new State Poet has commentator Peter Gilbert thinking about the relationship between poets and – of all people – lawyers.
(GILBERT) In a two o’clock ceremony this Thursday, in the General Assembly of the State House, Governor Douglas will name Middlebury resident Ruth Stone Vermont’s new State Poet. Lovers of literature from the general public will sit at the desks of our lawmakers. Now, not all lawmakers are lawyers, but a good number of them are, and I like the idea of their chamber being taken over by poets and poetry lovers.
One might think that lawyers and poets have virtually nothing in common. It’s a stereotype I know, but poets are often considered creatively spacey, while lawmakers and lawyers are seen as quite the opposite – the emotionless embodiment of rationality and clear thinking. I practiced law myself for a number of years, and one of my favorite New Yorker cartoons from those days shows two men in a bar and one says to the other, “I consider myself a passionate man, but of course, a lawyer first.”
In fact, poets and lawyers have something enormously important in common. Perhaps more than members of any other profession, poets and lawyers care about language used well. Each is in the business of communicating clearly, articulately, compellingly. That is the poet’s art: to distill in words the very quintessence of an idea, emotion, or experience. Novelists too, but the burden that each word carries is heaviest in a poem.
Lawyers of all kinds also need to use language well. For Constitutional lawyers, words – particularly definitions – make all the difference. What, for example, is meant by “speech” in the First Amendment? Interestingly, some talking is not considered “speech” and therefore not protected by the First Amendment, but some gestures and actions are.
The litigator, too, must use language well in court and in legal briefs – to persuade judge or jury that theirs is the winning argument. Ideas usually don’t persuade on their own; they need to be expressed clearly and compellingly. The only tool lawyers have to do that is the same tool poets use – words, used with skill.
And corporate lawyers writing contracts, bond offerings, and other scintillating texts – need to say precisely what they mean, nothing more and nothing less. The result is sometimes dreary legalese, but we all know from experience just how unclear we can be, even when we think we’re being clear and when our audience is trying to understand what we mean. Laws and legal documents need to preclude as much as possible misunderstandings and ambiguities. That’s the biggest difference between poets’ and lawyers’ use of language: poets want words rich in meaning and resonance; lawyers want each word’s meaning to be precise and prescribed.
Language gives us both the law, the foundation of an ordered society, and soaring poetry, the compelling verbal expression of human experience. And so it seems curiously appropriate to me that our state poet should be named in the State House, seat of government and law.
Peter Gilbert is executive director of the Vermont Humanities Council.