Over millennia there have been poems that have taught every-
thing from the origins of life on earth to how to tune a six-cylinder
engine. Traditional societies have passed on rites and legends in
the form of poems: rhythmic tellings that traced stories everyone
in the society was expected to know. Some sorts of knowledge are
firmly anchored in groups, but there is an enormous amount of
fact and intuition that depends on the individual's perspective
and for which the didactic poem has been a natural outlet. Such
poems inform, satirize, lecture, or persuade, as they see fit. In all
cases, they have something instructional to impart, whether it be
down-to-earth or esoteric. What the didactic poet has to think
about is how a poem, as opposed to an instruction booklet, can be
the best way to impart some knowledge.

A didactic poem is one that teaches. What is taught and how it is
taught vary from culture to culture. Since we are accustomed to read-
ing instruction booklets and how-to books, the notion of imparting
information in a poem may seem odd. But if we think about some of
poetry's assets--concision, memorability, rhythmic force--the di-
dactic impulse in poetry may not seem quite so strange.

One way traditional societies have cohered over centuries is by
consciously passing on the lore of the society. This lore forms a wis-
dom tradition and all sorts of material may be included: stories about
gods, the origins of the particular society, cosmology, proverbs, rites,

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