But poetry is a way of language, it is not its subject or its

Hear the solemn words of Thomas Lynch, who peers into the heart of verse and declares: “But poetry is a way of language, it is not its subject or its maker’s background or interests or hobbies or fixations. It is nearer to utterance than history.” This teaching speaks like thunder across the valleys of time. For many confuse poetry with the things it describes—with wars, with loves, with sorrows, with the poet’s own obsessions. Yet Lynch reminds us that poetry is not about these things themselves; it is about the way words are shaped into breath, the way language transcends description and becomes song. Poetry is not history’s record, but the soul’s cry. It does not preserve events as they happened; it transforms them into utterance, closer to the rhythm of the heart than to the scrolls of kings.

The ancients knew this distinction well. The chroniclers kept annals of battles, dates, and names—these were the historians. But the poets spoke in another tongue. Homer did not simply recount the Trojan War as a matter of fact; he breathed into it the anguish of Achilles, the grief of Priam, the burning of Troy. The events themselves were shaped into utterance, into living language that carried the essence of the human experience far beyond the mere record of time. This is why Lynch insists that poetry is “nearer to utterance than history”—because history may tell us what happened, but poetry tells us what it felt like to live it.

Consider the words of Wilfred Owen, the soldier-poet of the First World War. His lines do not give us battle maps or troop movements—that is the historian’s task. Instead, his poems uttered the gasps of dying men, the haunting silence of no-man’s-land, the bitterness of youth consumed in mud. Through his way of language, the war is not preserved as statistics but as an eternal wound carved into the conscience of humanity. This is the power of poetry: to transcend the subject and reach into the marrow of existence.

The origin of Lynch’s teaching lies in the sacred nature of speech itself. From the earliest chants and prayers, language was not used merely to recount, but to invoke, to call forth. The psalms, the hymns, the chants of shamans—all were forms of utterance, where words were closer to breath and spirit than to history. Poetry, in this sense, is the continuation of humanity’s oldest act: to give shape to the ineffable, to turn silence into sound that carries meaning beyond mere events.

Thus, Lynch rejects the idea that poetry is bound to the poet’s biography or hobbies. The poet may come from any background, but once their words rise as poetry, they are not limited to personal detail. The farmer may write of fields, the soldier of battles, the lover of longing—but their greatness lies not in the subject, but in the way of language. When words are sharpened into rhythm and cadence, they cease to be mere statements and become vessels of truth.

The lesson, then, is this: do not mistake poetry for content, nor reduce it to history. Seek instead the life within the words, the breath within the line. Poetry is not the shell of events, but the fire that burns within them. It belongs not to facts but to utterance, and its power lies in its ability to make the invisible visible, the silent audible, the forgotten unforgettable.

Practical steps flow from this wisdom. When you read poetry, do not ask first, “What happened here?” Ask instead, “What is being uttered here? What pulse of humanity beats beneath these words?” When you write poetry, do not trap yourself in recounting facts or listing details; seek instead the voice of your own breath, the cadence of truth that rises from the soul. Let language be your instrument, not to preserve events, but to transform them into living resonance.

Thus, Thomas Lynch’s words endure as a guide: poetry is a way of language, closer to the heart than to history, closer to breath than to record. Let us remember that the greatness of poetry does not lie in what it tells us happened, but in what it allows us to feel, to utter, to carry forward through generations. And so poetry, unlike history, does not fade with the passing of time—it lives as long as men and women continue to breathe and speak.