SOME
THOUGHTS ON POETRY
Today, 21 March is world’s Poetry Day. There are too many
thoughts about what poetry is. I call it language of the heart. William Wordsworth
describes it as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. For Matthew Arnold
it is the criticism of life, governed by the laws of poetic truth and poetic
beauty. Briefly speaking, it is the aesthetic expression of feelings, emotions,
passions, thoughts, ideas and imagination.
Some other definitions are: 1. Poetry is the music of
thought, conveyed in the music of language. 2. Poetry reveals to us the
loveliness of nature, 3. Poetry is the sister of sorrow; every man that suffers
and weeps, is a poet; every tear is a verse; and every heart a poem. 4. Poetry
is the utterance of deep heart-felt truth. 5. According to Plato the Greek
philosopher poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves
understand.
Finally, as the American poet J.R. Lowell (1819-1891) says
poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those
types of beauty and truth which God has set in all men’s souls.
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G.R.Kanwal
21 March 2024
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