Poetry Lives – By Clive West
Published By Casey Quinn • Sep 28th, 2008 • Category: Casey's CornerPoetry is as alive as it ever was although its modern form seems a world away from its traditional arrangement of close rhyme and tightly rhythmic verse. With the general tendency towards shortened English (eg textspeak) in common use and with the perceived (although not by all of us) reduced importance in grammar, it is not immediately obvious why anyone would want to keep alive a form of our language which is by definition circuitous. Yet, despite all this, poetry thrives.
Perhaps it is because deep down there is a poet in all of us. I think poetry comes into its own where prose fails to capture the overall picture we are trying to convey. For example, with prose, certain nouns and verbs tend to be tied together. As an illustration, let’s imagine we’ve seen a group of ducks crossing a very still duckpond first thing in the morning. In prose, it becomes very matter of fact – we need to use a collective noun like ‘flock’ or ‘paddling’ to describe the duck group and it ends up being, ‘A flock of ducks paddles gently across the still water of the pond’ whereas a poem might say, ‘A flotilla of ducks sails majestically across the mirror-smooth waters’.
Another use of poetry is where the poet alludes to a specific topic without actually naming it and where we want the reader to decide exactly what the poem is referring to. The same illustration, rewritten in this light would remove any specific naming of the ducks or even the water, leaving the reader of the poem to stop and think about what the poet is trying to say. Of course, the reader may come up with a totally different interpretation of the poetry but that is part of the charm of the poem – it is what we decide it to be. Thus our illustration now becomes, ‘Carved silhouettes of dappled feathers slice the morning mirror’.
Many of us have felt the urge to pen a few lines of verse at some time or other. Why? Why would we deliberately not choose the shortest way of saying something? The answer is similar to why we choose to play or listen to music. A poem is equivalent to a song and the poet is the musician or songwriter. I think that poetry extends beyond the simple level of just communicating a fact or message, it attempts to provide a 3-D picture. This is in the same way that a song is more than the lyrics and some notes played by an assorted motley of instruments.
Maybe you agree with me or then maybe you don’t, but that’s why we call it poetry!
About the Author
Clive West
Clive West lives with his wife, Damaris in Italy. Damaris is a published poetess and runs a busy free poetry website which gives new poets a chance to be seen and also to tell the story behind their poem. You are welcome to contribute a poem and maybe get seen by a publisher – who knows?
C.S. Lewis, in one of his more philosophical books, says that it seems like the whole universe is coming to a point, that things are more distinct, that even the line between poetry and prose is becoming sharper.
I think the line between poetry and prose is once more becoming indistinct. Often we read a short story that is like poetry, or a poem that is almost a short story. So as I see it, the essence of poetry (and the reason we love it so) is connections. When a prose writer uses a metaphor or simile, it seems poetic. When a poet states a fact, it seems bit crude, like it doesn’t fit right.
Even if a poem only presents a single image, the poem finds its meaning in the connections the reader makes. For example, reading just now about the fowl flippantly floating along the lustrous lake, I instantly connected the scene to a feeling of tranquility. I might have been lying on the warm grass by the edge of the water soaking in the sun’s caresses, lazily resting my eyes on the only other living creatures. However, once the feathers “sliced” the mirror, I got a grass cut.
These are just my ideas, but I live by my ideas. Life just makes so much sense when I make strange connections. (Have you ever noticed that sometimes clouds look like paintings? What great truth can you derive from that?).
Yes, poetry is alive. I’m not cetain is it circuitous by definition. Some try to pin tags of being elusive and obscure on poetry but poems that might bear resemblance to those words just require more effort and interaction on our part, if we are up for the challenge.
Yes poetry and songs are the same in so many ways.
If poetry can be defined at all, it is by its ability to say alot with a little, just as you have said.
Eliza,
(Have you ever noticed that sometimes clouds look like paintings? What great truth can you derive from that?)
The natural world is art and full of art.
Usiku,
I meant that sometimes are thinking is backward. The painting is an imitation of the real thing, so why does the real thing remind us of the imitation instead of the other way around?
The other day I walked outside and said to myself, “It looks like a 3D movie!” Then realized how dumb that sounded.
Maybe I’ll write a poem about it.
the ability to say a lot with a little is the essense of poetry. poetry, compared to prose, is like the use of a “reduction” in cooking. i have to disagree, though, with your comment that “deep down there is a poet in all of us”…maybe deep down there is something in all of us that WANTS to be a poet or THINKS one is a poet…but, in truth, there are very few real poets above ground these days. just a lot of wannabe’s. for my money, there’s maybe a couple of dozen true, to the bone, poets roaming the globe…the rest of us are just aspiring to the title. too many folks are taking that title and wrapping themselves up in it like a protective cloak. you see all those poetry sites where everyone is saying “here’s the latest poetry challenge for all of us poets today!” housepainters claiming to be artists.
but as for poetry…i agree that it’s very difficult to define or describe real poetry. it’s probably easiest to say that it’s something that hits you in the gut. it’s visceral. it hits you where you live. and when you see it…by god, you know it!