Is it Better to Write a Poem Based on Experience or Based on Opinion?

A touch of heart: Experience

Is it better to write a poem based on experience or based on opinion? In this debate, I will argue that it is better to write a poem based on experience, because when poetry is written that way, it has ‘a touch of heart’.

Living can only be accomplished in terms of experience. While opinion is a part of life too, experience is the real thing.

What constitutes experience?

The word experience dates back to the fourteenth century and is rooted in the Latin word experientia or the act of trying. In the French context, it is experiens or to try. It involves some kind of a direct perception, a personal observation or the active participation in some kind of an event, that leads to positive knowledge. (1)

What constitutes opinion?

Opinion is also a word that comes from the fourteenth century, from the Latin word opinion, but this is a person's view, some kind of a judgment or appraisal that comes from a person's mind. It is more than an impression, but it really does not constitute positive knowledge. (2)

Apply both of these to the art of writing poetry and while each one may have its own place, the stronger of the two would definitely be that of experience, because it is based on direct or positive knowledge. Opinion is not positive knowledge.

In some ways, it is like making a comparison between first hand knowledge and second hand knowledge. With first hand knowledge, it is something that a person knows, because he or she sees it. With second hand knowledge, it is something that a person knows, because someone has told him or her about it.

For example, what happens when one beholds the expression of wonder on a child's face, when he or she sees a beautiful flower, for the first time. Putting that reality into poetry is different that writing poetry about something that someone has been told about. For example, the mother who sees the child's expression, tells the father about it or vice versa. The mother is definitely in a better position to write reality poetry than the father.

Somewhere along the way, another person telling about the experience, loses its potency or its power of impact. Why is that? It is because having the actual experience touches the heart of a person. Opinion may also do the same thing, but to a much lesser degree.

Here is another example. 

If I see a double rainbow or someone tells me about their experience of seeing exactly the same thing as I saw, as a poet, which would I choose to write about? To actually see a double rainbow, especially when it appears to be quite close, is a fantastic experience. It has impact. To have someone else see it and then tell me about it, is never going to have that same kind of potency or power.

First hand experience is always superior to opinion in terms of writing poetry. 

How do I know? I write poetry from my own first hand experiences, not from those of other people. I write about what touches my heart.

A touch of heart happens when one experiences something first hand. It is like love being kindled, in some way and thus, I will suggest that it is always better to write a poem based on experience than on opinion.

(1) Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Inc., Springfield, MA, 1983

(2) Ibid.