Speaking Through Poems

I regularly take part in discussions in a famous social site of experts and writes in two special groups Poetry and Literature and Language, Literature & Criticism. A discussion on ‘Whether Poetry Has To Keep Form’ became heated and I had to remain at the receiving end of severe but very polished criticism for some of my view points insisting on keeping form in poetry. 

'No offense, but it is easy to make generalizations about things you have little or no hands-on experience with. Reading poetry is very different from writing it. How much poetry have you actually written (or tried to write)?' I was asked by a very eminent and distinguished academic laureate.

At last I was asked, in plain words, ‘You do not seem to have understood the mechanics of poetry like many of us; have you ever read a poem or at least try to write one’? I decided to write my reply in the poetical form and invited the others to respond in the like manner and continue the discussion on poetry. In my native land, in Malayalam literature, there has been a long history of poets writing letters to each other in the poetical form, creating a rich branch of literature in itself. In truth, almost all Indian languages had this kind of a branch of literature, and it had become an interesting and rich feature of Indian literature. I replied as shown here:

Today I Had A Strange Experience

Today I had a strange experience, 
Not in this group but in another group. 

‘Poetry and Lit′rature’ it is not, 
In ‘Written or Revealed Poetry’ thread. 

Asked, have I written poems in my life? 
I found it fit to answer it this way: 

I’m writing this in reply to a miss, 
I have never written poems in my life. 

Have wondered where these poems all come from, 
From human intellect or nature’s store, 

To be picked up at moments of revelation; 
Or synthesized in rotten human brain! 

I was inspired to write these wicked lines, 
By those whose verses written were in sand: 

‘Myself when young did eagerly frequent, 
Doctor and saint and heard great argument, 

About it and about but ever more, 
Came out by the same door as in I went.’ 

Let us debate poetry in poems, 
I hope she’ll someday answer me in kind. 

I ′am not doing anything again, 
But asking questions all have answers for. 

I have my answers, you can have yours, 
This not an illiterate arena, 

Where someone asks questions and another from, 
Some academic circle answers them. 

Some anxious are, to questions throw around, 
Some eagerly waits there to answer them; 

This not such school or college where one can, 
En′tertain answers not from others too. 

I know I’m Alexander Pope’s close kin, 
I stop here, to read Temple of Fame again.


Note:

A few people who create poems will think that their thoughts are their own and that they are the actual creators of their poems. It is a hard thing to recognize and admit that there is a continuity of nature's induction sweeping into a person and progressing as thoughts. If we scrutinize and zoom our thoughts we can see that we cannot put a clear boundary mark on when and where it originated and when and where it ended. If we are the actual creators of a thing, we ought to have been able to distinguish when one of our thoughts originated and ended. But we cannot say that definitely or define that process exactly. We must admit that our thoughts, and therefore our intellectual creations are a continuity and culminations of the collected knowledge and thought of our society; and our society is nothing but nurtured by nature. If there is one poem created anywhere, following this logic, we can say that it was needed by society and mankind and that was why it was created by the most inducted person of that time. Not one poem created in this world is unnecessary, in this sense. As Ms...... asked, one question remains: can a person trained to become a poet and create poems? It certainly can be done, even though the world has seen hundred thousands of gifted poets who have not had any kind of training in verse creation. Will anyone be startled to hear that many lofty poets even did not have an education, including that Sanskrit epic poet Kalidasa? Poets can certainly be trained, because it is only a matter of thinking in poetic form, in addition to thinking with poetic beauty. The first can be achieved through training by skilled masters in person or by indirect distant influence. And the second can be attained by lifting human mind and giving it momentum, i.e. by moving it from inert state to kinetic; singing a lofty work or seeing a grand sunset may do it. One not having born with natural talent is not a handicap to become a poet, nor one does have poetic beauty in writing is an excuse for not keeping form.