WHAT IS POETRY?

 

WHAT IS POETRY?

            Poetry is the language of the heart, the mind and the soul. It expresses feelings, thoughts, dreams and realities in a metrical composition.  

            It is an expression of beauty and truth. It is mostly emotional but also occasionally reflective and philosophical. It deals with universal values.

            Poetry does not teach like a school teacher or a moralist. It suggests its meaning so impressively that the mind of the listener or the reader accepts its  like a religious believer.   

            There is no place in the world where poetry does not exist; and there is no being anywhere who does not take interest in poetry.

            Poetry has always been and will always be in this mysterious universe of God.

            God Himself seems to be a great poet.  Everything created by him is a fit subject for poetry.

            Flowers, thorns, trees, rivers, valleys, winds, rain drops, birds, beasts, children, men, women, dust particles, stars, the sun, the moon, the gentle breeze, the stormy weather, the innocent babe and the criminal adult , the smiles of beautiful women and the laughter of handsome grooms --- in short  whatever exists in the world from tiny insects to gigantic and ferocious animals can be a suitable subject for poetry.

            Poets are concerned with every aspect of life and death, nature and civilization.

            In short, the whole existence is a subject for poetry. It outpours various comic and tragic thoughts, feelings and ideas eternally.

            Look at the following lines by some poets:    

1.Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good,

A  shining glass that vadeth suddenly:

A flower that dies when first it ‘gins to bud;

A brittle glass that is broken presently:

A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,

Lost, vaded, broken, dead within an hour.----William Shakespeare (1564-1616).

 

2. It is not growing like a tree

In bulk, doth make Man better be;

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,

To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere.

 

A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May

Although it fall and die that night –

It was the plant and flower of Light.

 

In small proportions we just beauties see;

And in short measures life may perfect be. -------Ben Jonson (1572-1637).

                                     

3. The world is too much with us; late and soon;

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! ---William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

 

4.What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?

 

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows:

 

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

 

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance:

 

No time to wait to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began?

 

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.----W.H.Davies  (1871-1940).

 

5. Remember, no men are strange, no countries foreign,

Beneath all uniforms, a single body breathes

Like ours; the land our brothers walk upon

Is earth like this, in which we all shall lie.

They, too,aware of sun and air and water,

Are fed by peaceful harvests, by war’s long winter starv’d.

Their hands are ours, and in their lines we read

A labour not different from our own. ---James Kirkup (1918-2009).

 

       Finally, this quote by the American journalist Gamaliel  Bailey (1807-59 ): Poetry is itself a thing of God. He made his prophet poets; and the moe we feel of poesie do we become like God.

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G. R. Kanwal

5 June 2025