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In Sri Aurobindos idealist schema, spirituality is the truth content of a poem: The poet writes with Godlight, illumines human sight, and makes all things divine. He is the craftsman of the magic stuff of self/who labours / in the wide workshop of the wonderful world/Modelled in inward Time his rhythmic parts. He feels everything with an intuitive discernment, with a mystic sense from the regions of illumined certitude and seeks to transform all experience to delight. Delight, which is Gods sweetest sign and Beautys twin, is his objective, which he can achieve by seeing all objects like bodies of the God and interpret them with an authenticity of intuitive Truth.He draws his fiction from the spirits authentic fact and utters the syllables of the Unmanifest to be identified in soul-vision and soul-sense. By trying to lift the human words near to god,s, he can turn them into syllables of the cosmos speech. He composes with universal sympathy and works for the fulfillment of the human race by an inner oneness, devoting himself to raise man out of animal consciousness to the glories of spiritual existence:

In the symbol pictures drawn by work and thought,

It seeks the truth to which all figures point;

It looks for the source of Light with visions lamp;

It works to find the door of all works,

The unfelt Self within who is the guide,

The unknown Self above who is the goal.

The spiritual quest of the poet lies in understanding the inner vital principle which controls and expresses the soul-language of man. In Sri Aurobindos inwardly disciplined concept of poetry, spirit is its own evidence just as thoughts and emotions coalesce to dive deep into the depths of life; the poet expresses not merely the earthly but what is hidden and beyond the visible:

This bodily appearance is not all;

The form deceives, the person is a mask;

Hid deep in man celestial powers can dwell.

The poet does not waste time in crude earthiness and muddy thrills or incurable littleness of trivial amusements or petty wraths and lusts and hates ; he does not probe the world for mere sense appeal, nor does he try to turn lust into a decorative art. Rather, he seeks to present the world that exists in the idea, the imagination and vision, and attempts at going beyond the known. He promotes the cause of the souls search for lost Reality.

In Sri Aurobindos literary order poetry is a means of spiritual expression that helps to open the consciousness. The spiritual realizations of a poet get here a more real, dynamic and intimate nature than the physical things present. The imaginative activity, said to be the personal experience of the poet, is carried far beyond the personal self and its private perspectives, and what is expressed is the intuitively experienced truth, the truth of the universal human soul. It is the mimesis of human activity not as it is but as it can be in its ideal best. Transformation of the self to the soul, and of the soul to the greater soul, is the pervasive tone and thrust of poetry. The process involves an understanding of the evolution of the spirit in harmony with all things and the expression of the crises and conflicts on the way.

Imagination in its highest form is spiritual and is made to delineate the patterns and processes of inner evolution, reflecting the fundamental passion of humanity for something beyond itself, something that is a dim foreshadowing of the divine urge which is prompting all creation to unfold itself and to rise out of its limitations towards its Godlike possibilities. The poet, to Sri Aurobindo, is a seer and a revealer of truth who addresses himself to the inner senses; he struggles for a heightened, meaningful psychic identity with his unrestricted imaginative range, and opens the inner sight in us, feeling himself its intensity first. He tries to understand the content of his consciousness by turning within and the creative process admits of interpretation of the quotidian perceptual experiences, the ideas and impressions, through imagination. Every poet has a powerful interpretative and intuitive vision of Nature and life and man, says Sri Aurobindo. He transmutes the material observed into vision or poetic insight and his poetic expression, words and rhythm, gets the spontaneous form of his soul, innate, inspired and revealed, with the high emotion and radiant intuition and the force of vitality. He does not withdraw from life but lives life by the light and power of the spirit. He shows preference not for the fleeting or momentary, but for the everlasting, eternal, and tries to realise the immortal spirit, the infinite conciousness in him. He searches the world through and within him; he seeks to symphonize the natural and the divine, the outer and the inner, the limited and the absolute, the mental desires and the fullness of peace and eternity.

Vision is the raison detre of poetry as conceived by Sri Aurobindo, the nuclius of poets creation; other elements like moods and attitudes, tone, thought, theme or argument, imagery, rhythm and language group round the vision to accommodate and amplify it. A poet is a seer because he can envision and interpret experiences that may have external association but internal effect, vision and reason merging into one. The ideas come from within and from above and the cause of expression is within,as Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria also suggests. The poet can write only when there is a genuine expression or coming of power to write, when his spiritual imagination or the power of insight (which Emerson calls a very high sort of seeing) is active, when there is the Keatsian spark of divinity, the intelligence that comes from God . The intuitive seeing or the vision is the shaping spirit of imagination. What is Shelleys expression of the imagination in poetry is Sri Aurobindos expression of the spiritual, which is the expression of the Overmind, an intermediary between the mind and the supermind.

Poetry to Sri Aurobindo is a part of Sadhana, a means of contact with the Divine through inspiration. The idea is closer to that of Aristotle, who says in his Rhetoric that poetry is an inspired thing. It is not mundane as it expresses the ideal of the inner being. The self-effective language confers on it a spiritual character when the sound and the sense conjoin and there meets the unity of a divine rhythmic movement with a depth of sense and a power of infinite suggestion welling up directly from the fountain-heads of the spirit within us, when the poet reveals the truth of the spirit itself, capturing the effects in poetry of what the Vedic poets considered as mantra (incantation), expressing their own realization as well as the realization for others, enkindling the spiritual within and bringing out the effective vision in words illumined and illuminating; it is writing with Gods voice, sound and silence wending his poetic progression to create a vision of the spirit. Explaining the mantric quality in poetry, Sri Aurobindo writes:

“Its characteristics are a language that says infinitely more than mere sense of the words indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of Infinite and disappears into the Infinite and the power to convey not merely some mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the thing it speaks of, but its value and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind them all. ”

The mantric effect in poetry is the intensest spiritual effect; it is the expression in
a state of perfect identity with the object.

Referring to the same inner structural harmony, V.K.Gokak points out that in the rhythmic revelation of Reality that mantra is lies the closest possible union of music and meaning, of thought and image, of sense and suggestion, of imagination and intuition. It is the intuitive perception of some aspect of Reality; word, rhythm, idea, image and attitude arise simultaneously and body forth the moment of vision . The process of turning within culminates in the vision that reveals truth or beauty. Sri Aurobindo says: It is sufficient that it is the soul which sees and the eyes, sense, heart and thought-mind become the passive instruments of the soul. Here poetry is the soul in action, lying not in the intellectual thought-matter but in the spiritual sight that inheres its conception, thought, emotion, presentation, structure and form.The process of creation is subjective because the poet really creates out of himself and not out of what he sees outwardly; the outer objects only stimulate his inner vision. He metamorphoses into higher organic forms the things he sees externally. It is most important that the poet should be able to go beyond the word or image he uses or the form of the thing he sees, not be limited by them, but get into the light of that which they have the power to reveal and flood them with it until they overflow with its suggestions or seem even to lose themselves and disappear into the revelation , and a stage comes when his personality is lost in the vision, or poetic imagination, which is, as Blake calls, sensation.

In poetry Sri Aurobindo feels the need of a strong tradition of form, which is the shaping principle or which, as Frye says, manifests the universal spirit of poetry. It is the organization of experience, the other face of content, the exterior visible sign of inner spiritual reality. It provides inner continuity to literature and expresses what is called beauty. Like Edgar Allan Poe, Sri Aurobindo wants the creation of Supernal Beauty, beauty that is beyond and above, through the form and subject matter of poetry. In Sri Aurobindos conception, beauty is an effect rather than a quality for the elevation of soul and not of intellect or heart. It is the form that assimilates beauty to give joy: Beauty is Ananda taking form, i.e. joy is the spiritual principle of the structure of a poem, seeing the divine everywhere, the original bliss of existence, the beauty of eternal existence in all things. Ananda is the essence of expression or form.

Sri Aurobindo does not endorse intellectualism — richness of images and symbols without the corresponding essence of experience of ideas and feelings that are in the spirit. The poetic vision of life is not a critical or intellectual or philosophical view of it, but a soul-view, seizing by the inner sense. The intensity of rhythm and word is important but what is more important is the intensity of vision, the classic quality of comprehensiveness, concealing the whole genius of a people, to use T.S. Eliots phrase. Spirituality in Sri Aurobindos poetic design is not something abstract, nor is it intellectual or philosophical, but vivid, living and concrete and the use of images and symbols is inevitable in that it is the straight way to avoid abstractness. Formulated by the mind, images and symbols are the harmonizing elements in the structure of any poetic creation. The objects and ideas contemplated by the creative mind turn into symbol standing for something different from and beyond themselves, as Kant also points out in this Critique of Judgment. The poet realizes his images as very real and concrete to express his spiritual vision.

The aesthetics of Sri Aurobindo propounds not only the dynamic mythic quality of languages but also its mythopoeic possibility as an index of cultural and spiritual evolution. Poetry-making is a symbolic act as long as it is a means of spiritual upliftment, the raising of consciousness to the ideal divine and the heightening and concentrating of simple sense experiences in truth. The poetic imagination, to quote Northrop Frye, presents us with a vision, not of personal greatness of a poet, but of something impersonal and far greater: the vision of a decisive act of spiritual freedom, the vision of the recreation of man. It is archetypal to the extent it concentrates on the motifs of totality, spirituality, universality, mythic consciousness and vision; symbols and images that appeal to the soul-culture of man, that bring out the spirit of the universe and the inner life, the essence of the eternal in the synthetic or harmonizing vision of the poets: poetry as the imaginative projection of mans desires revealed in the form and expression of the poet.

Symbol in Sri Aurobindos ideal is the natural body of the inner truth or vision, itself an intimate part of the experience. It is no intellectual abstraction but the native medium for the expression of the experiences of things realized inwardly. It induces inseeing and brings the high feeling of significance to what would otherwise be mere ordinary perception of the world. He wants an imaginative use of tale and legend and aspires after a noble kind of poetry with the power to lay a great hold on the ancient figures and re-create them to be symbols of a new significance. His concept of intuitive- spiritual poetry, that is the product of a direct spiritual perception and vision, stresses the total image which alone can bring out the beauty and power of thought and make it one with life. The spiritual reverie blends with the poetical, the personal fuses into the universal, and the self-knowledge leads to the cosmic knowledge.

Poetry is the rhythmic voice of life, but it is one of the inner and not one of the surface voices. The creative-interpretative use of myths, legends and symbols opens up new realms of vision, new realms of being and not mere crude actuality of life. Sri Aurobindo drives at the interpretative function of the poetic imagination which is identical with the power of representation in terms of images and symbols. He uses myths to manipulate a relationship between antiquity and contemporaneity, and at the same time as a symbolic device to seek self-knowledge and express the emotions experienced in the process of intuitive perception. As an evolving form myth adapts to the inner voice of the poet, as Lillian Feder confirms. Sri Aurobindo believes that the use of myths and legends will reconstruct the world for us and interpret the realities behind the veil. He writes:

The poetry which voices the oneness and totality of our being and Nature
and the worlds and God, will not make the actuality of our earthly life less
but more real and rich and full and wide and living to man.

This enlargement of consciousness is characteristic of that archetypal process which expresses itself through a genuine language with its own principle of structure and its own logic. There is no need of any intellectual sequence or linked-argument or even logical structure. What is significant and most desirable is a sequence of feeling and of ideal perceptions with an occult logic of their own that sustains the lyric and makes it a faultless whole. The poet attempts to effect the eternal spiritual reality. What is realized as the mysterious sense of the aspects of existence by Mallarme is the spiritual reality Sri Aurobindo comprehends in the poetic vision. The sense of eternity in words is basic to Sri Aurobindos poetics that treats the poet as a voyant or seer, capable of revealed seeing and visioned thinking in terms of words and symbols, howsoever primitive in their derivation, from the Vedas for specific effects and purposes.

Imagination gets a new dimension in Sri Aurobindos mantric organization of poetic material, which is the revival of a primitive phenomenon. Archetype is the formal cause. Life can be divinized by assimilating all that is around us: all life is one and a new human mind moves towards the realization of its totality and oneness. The idea of mantra as the highest intensest revealing form of poetic thought and expression imbibes an archetypal concept that envisages the individual self, the self of man and the self of the universe, intellectually. Beauty, Reality, Truth, Ananda all are expressions of the fullness of experience that he calls mantra. It is a penetrating and comprehensive discovery of the realm of the
spirit by the instrumental use of the overmental or supramental mechanism that helps to see the truth vision: Poetry turns into Mantra only when it is the voice of the inmost truth and is couched in the highest power of the very rhythm and speech of that truth. The Vedic mantric effect that Sri Aurobindo seeks to exhibit in poetry is itself, in its origin, symbolic; the Vedas themselves have a symbolic significance in that their verse, creation of an early intuitive and symbolical mentality, are intended to give a divine meaning in words and images that are sublime and project the poets cast of vision. The poetic creation of the Vedic bards is not the result of a logical reasoning or aesthetic intelligence but of intuition and inspiration. Myths were images in their poetic utterance, very much real and full of suggestions and colours: Image and myth were freely used, not as an imaginative indulgence but as living parables and symbols of things that were very real to their speakers. The Vedic ideals, the constant sense of the infinite, cannot be captured unless the literary sensibility has an infinite expansion and the experiences are expressed in archetypal symbols.

The lever of Sri Aurobindos poetic philosophy is evolution (like Emersons ascension) or the passage of soul into higher forms. The process of the evolution of soul or the poetic creativity is not only after the nature of myth –quest mythbut also vibrantly alive in the recreation of the conscience of human race. Sri Aurobindo says :

The archetypal poet in a world of original ideas is, we may say, a Soul that sees in itself intimately this world and all the others and God and nature and the life of beings and sets flowing from its center a surge of creative rhythm and word-images which become the expressive body of the vision; and the great poets are those who repeat in some measure this ideal creation.

This widening of imagination to an all-embracing level, leading to a direct intuition of essences what Overmind can capture, equips the poet with what Allen Tate calls an angelic imagination. It is a cosmic awareness, a plane of consciousness from where the poet can derive the experiences of universal beauty, universal love and universal delight. Poetry exhibits the development of mans psychological motive and power in words and ideas that form the aesthetic expression of his soul and mind. Mere intellect cannot create poetry unless it gets impetus from the spirit within.

The assimilation and creation of the world in a symbol is what is suggested, Man and nature conjugate to experience in full what is spiritual. Poetic activity is what Emerson calls the activity of the divine energy in man, and three elements, according to Sri Aurobindo, go into the making of poetry: the original source of inspiration, the vital force of creative beauty which contributes its own substance and often determines the form, and the transmitting outer consciousness of the poet. If the inspiration is perfect, the form, substance, rhythm, words all will come automatically from the plane of consciousness. The source of inspiration may be anywhere: the physical plane, the higher or lower vital, the dynamic or creative intelligence, the plane of dynamic vision, the psychic mind, the illumined mind, the intuition, or even the rare superhuman consciousness which is the ultimate source of mantra or intuition with its characteristic undertones and overtones, not analyzable through the inner sight and inner ear. In true poetry, however, form and content will reproduce the inspiration exactly. It is the power of inspiration that differentiates between the poet and the verse writer. A poet cannot be effective if he has no mastery over the language and technique of poetic and rhythmic expression. Poetry may originate from any plane of consciousness, but if it is to be alive, it must always come through the vital which sustains the joy of expression of the psychic being. All the same, without the proper poetic handling, emotional sincerity and poetical feeling, he cannot appeal to his readers. Poetry is an art and a poet ought to be an artist of word and rhythm, but what is enduring is perfection of both form and substance without any harshness and roughness or aggressiveness.

Rhythm is of primary importance in poetic expression. Poetic rhythm or word-music reflects the mental emotions and inner experiences, the sound and sense that have a direct spiritual bearing. Like Ezra Pounds, Sri Aurobindos genius was inclined to the use of quantitative metres of the Greeks. He points out that in ancient times quantitative metres were used for expression and that there was no necessity for rhyme but the present-day languages need the use of rhymes to support their metrical form. He does not appreciate the modernist metreless verse as it is ineffective in most poets, though he admits that it may be successful if it has the fundamental quality, power, movement of the old poetry which is the eternal quality of all poetry. Expression in a metrical mould, according to Sri Aurobindo, is natural for creative emotion and vision: it is much more natural and spontaneous then a non-metrical form; the emotion expresses itself best and most powerfully in a balanced rather than in a loose and shapeless rhythm. Rhythm and imagery springing from words are the basic formal units within the metrical convention of the Blank Verse, which is his ideal, though, he adds, it can be used effectively only by a very masterly hand. He praises the cadenced beat and concentrated rhythm of the ancients which has not yet exhausted itself. The experiments for innovation in recent poetry to revolutionize the fundamental method of poetic rhythm are unsatisfactory as they fail to reveal the creative vigour, the essential faculty of artistic form and poetic beauty. Sri Aurobindo notes: There is an inspiration of language and there is an inspiration of rhythm and the two must fuse together for poetic perfection to come. Sri Aurobindo, like Ezra Pound , believes in an absolute rhythm, a rhythm, that is in poetry which corresponds exactly to the emotion or shade of emotion to be expressed.

A mans rhythm must be interpretative; it will be, therefore, in the end, his own uncounterfeiting, uncounterfeitable. Seizing the soul of rhythm, that which lies behind the music of words and sound and things, is what is more important than mastering the technique of metrical construction. He allows, nevertheless, for experimentation and adds that the technique does not go by any set mental rule for the object is not perfect technical elegance according to precept but sound-significance filling out the word-significance. If that can be done by breaking rules, well, so much the worse for the rule.

Apart from rhythm and word-music, there should be supreme inevitability of expression, that is, a quintessential essence of convincingly perfect utterance which is unanalysable:

Any rioting in words, colour, images, emotions, sound, phrase for their own sake, for their own beauty, attraction, luxury of abundant expression, would, I suppose, be ..ucchvasa.

Sri Aurobindos systematics echoes the Longinian sublime which comes from the power of noble conception, inspired emotion, formation of figures, noble diction, and rhythmic and harmonic composition. As far as length in a poem is concerned, Sri Aurobindo is one with Poe, and opines: Length in a poem is itself a sin, for length means padding a long poem is a bad poem, only brief work, intense, lyrical in spirit can be throughout pure poetry . To be perfect you must be small, brief and restrained, meticulous in cut and style. Coleridge, too, nearly thirty years before Poe, argued in Biographia Literaria that a poem of any length, neither can be, nor ought to be, all poetry.

Sri Aurobibndo refers to five kinds of poetic style: the adequate, the effective, the illumined, the inspired, and the inevitable, and prescribes simplicity as a sound basis for poetic style. He cautions: Even if one has to be complex, subtle or ornate by necessity of the inspiration, the basic habit of simplicity gives a greater note of genuineness and power to it. Contrary to Goethes view that a poet should keep philosophy out of his work, Sri Aurobindo, like W.B. Yeats, allows the poet freedom to philosophize but asks him to be careful not to be flat or heavy. For the sake of philosophy or spiritual thought, a poet should not sacrifice the essential poetic force that appeals through beauty implicit in form. A poem is a poem, nor a doctrine, and it should be treated as such.

As for the critics job, Sri Aurobindo lays down that he should first take note of the spirit, aim, essential motive from which a type of artistic creation starts and asserts that he must know the technique of poetry. He must judge a poets work by the ideative truth and the power, the perfection and beauty of his presentation and utterance of it. His criticism must be suggestive and discerning and objective enough to force one to see and think. He supports the objective and contextual approach. The critic must be able to do away with all that is accidental and unessential for right poetical appreciation. Sri Aurobindo seems to endorse the spirit of Eliots statement that the emotion of art is impersonal:

It is, we may say, the impersonal enjoyer of creative beauty in us responding to the impersonal creator and interpreter of beauty in the poet, for it is the impersonal spirit or Truth and Beauty that is seeking to express itself through his personality, and it is that which finds its own word and seems itself to create in his highest moments of inspiration.

The movement of poetry from the objective to the inward , from the inward to the spiritual through the souls of the nations and peoples necessitates a view not so much of things external to poetry, but of its own spirit and characteristic forms and motives. As the process of creative faculty of the mind is itself mysterious, the critic cannot appreciate a poetic work without a spiritual feeling and sensibility. In fact, Sri Aurobindo repeatedly refers in Savitri to spiritual sense for discovering the truth. What is most desirable is a change in critical sensibility and development of an archetypal aesthetics:

A fundamental and universal aesthesis is needed, something also more intense that listens, sees and feels from deep within and answers to what is behind the surface. A greater, wider and deeper aesthesis than which can answer even to the transcendent and feel too whatever of the transcendent or spiritual enters into the things of life, mind and sense.

Sri Aurobindo seems to be sympathetic to certain modernist trends in writing and study of poetry and, in fact, himself adopts some of the methods followed by the modern poets. If the critic chooses to compare one poet with another, the purpose of comparison should not be to ascribe any superioty in poetic excellence to one over the otherbut to illuminate the readers understanding of the poet.

To sum up, at a time when the woods of England, and even more of America, are teeming with critical wolves, in numbers exceeding their literary prey, Sri Aurobindos views on literary creation, analysis and evaluation are of considerable significance. He considers poetry writing somewhat closely related to the creative perception of meaning in the world, with emphasis on individual passion and inspiration, a taste for symbolism, and historical awareness. A poet derives his strength from his luminous vision; his appeal lies in his spiritual insight into the dynamics of mankind, in bringing about integral change in human nature to effect the change of collective consciousness, as evidenced in Savitri. As in the Romantics, the poet in Sri Aurobindo has an inner urge to live more deeply, more fully, more richly, and with greater awareness, going away from the beaten path to make a new path.

Sri Aurobindo reestablishes in our time the autonomy of the spirit in the in the self-contained literary universe just as he defines the job of a critic in interpretation of a work of art; while the critic must be familiar with the art of the past to be able to provide a perspective on the present, he must also demonstrate some kind of a universal sympathy to be relevant. In his idealist-spiritualist scheme, the critics response, though analytical and text-based, is not devoid of the synthetic-perceptual component of criticism. The proper task of criticism, the poet-philosopher seems to endorse, is to offer not authoritative judgements of works of art but insights into how an experienced and informed individual who holds certain conviction, responds to the work of art he is discussing. Sri Aurobindo seems to reconcile the critics interpretive stance with actual experience (affirming the enjoyment of a poem) which is a healthy sign for the vitality of criticism.

Author: Ram Krishna Singh
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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I love good poetry. I can spend hours at a time reading excellent poetry, particularly reading it aloud to taste its musicality and experience the words in three dimensions. Few among us are capable of writing good poetry, though. I know because I’ve also seen my share of bad poetry. As an editor, I occasionally am called upon to edit a series of poems. I approach such an opportunity cautiously, for I have come across few contemporary writers who can actually write good poetry.

Well, maybe I should modify that last sentence: I have found few contemporary writers (except for those already published and/or famous) who have written good poetry. Maybe they could write good poetry if they had a better understanding of how to go about it. Anyone who can communicate through poetry has achieved the ultimate writing craft, so creating a fine poem is a worthy goal.

I’m not a poet. I am a connoisseur of fine poetry. I can help readers fully enjoy a good poem, and I can help aspiring poets dramatically improve their craft, but I don’t claim to be a poet myself. Still, I’ve had enough success with inexperienced poets that I think I have some insight to offer, and that’s the point of this article. If you feel, deep inside, that you could write a really fine poem, you probably can. If you sense an inner need to write effective poetry, then you probably should try. If you have not yet mastered that art, perhaps you simply need some guidance.

Verse is not Necessarily Poetry

Let me first distinguish between poetry and verse, because I believe that is where most people go wrong. Verse, you see, is the musical arrangement of words for a melodious or metrical effect. We all like to play with rhyme and economy of words and imagery. If you take a well-known tune and write new lyrics to celebrate your best friend’s birthday, you’ve written verse, not a poem. If you hit upon a rhythm and a clever theme and then arrange funny or mushy phrases around that rhythm and theme so that they rhyme (or nearly do), you’ve written verse, not poetry. What you read in greeting cards, 99.9% of the time, is verse, not poetry.

That, of course, begs the question: What is poetry? In my opinion, poetry often (but not always) includes all the characteristics of verse, but it has so much more, insight and emotion being the two most critical factors. So, can you take a little piece of verse, inject a bit of insight and a dash of emotion, and end up with a poem? I don’t think so. Maybe that’s why the world is immersed in verse but poetry-poor. Many of us can write verse; I have done it often. Few successfully write a poem, however. The reason for that phenomenon, I believe, is the sacred and mysterious process of birthing a really good poem. While verse can spawn from a scrap of music or a second-rate jingle, poetry is born of things precious and rare.

Insight Born of Experience

A true poem begins with an experience. We all have a thousand experiences a day so, I suppose, each of us comes across the raw material of a thousand poems everyday. Why don’t those poems materialize? Why do a handful of such experiences evolve, a little later, as cute or clever verse, but most just disappear? What transforms an experience into a poem? Consider what the icons of poetry have done with a jar of cold plums, a red wheelbarrow, a stone fence, grass. Truly, it is not the experience itself that ignites the poem. I see stone fences everyday, yet I’ve never written anything to rival “Mending Wall.” Most wheelbarrows I come across are not red, but, even if they were, would I realize how much depends on a wheelbarrow? Have you or I ever seen Chicago as Carl Sandburg saw it, “husky… brawling… city of the big shoulders,” or a snake as Emily Dickinson saw it, “a narrow fellow in the grass”? I’ve heard a fly buzz – I’ve heard many flies buzz – yet I’ve never associated the sound with my own death. Hmmm…

What transforms an experience into the stuff of poetry, I am quite certain, is the insight the experience brings. And here I use that word very literally: to see into the experience. Thousands of people ride ferries everyday, but Edna St. Vincent Millay saw the ferry-riding experience as a metaphor for her crowd’s Roaring Twenties lifestyle: “We were very young, we were very merry/ We rode back and forth all night on the ferry.” And so her experience, offering insight, became the stuff of poetry. Thousands of us, at various points in our lives, look at spiders weaving their webs, but it was Walt Whitman who took insight from “a noiseless, patient spider” as he did from a starry night sky viewed right after a boring lecture on astronomy. A poem begins, very often, with the insight gained from experience, but it is insight so crystal clear that you know it to the depths of your heart and the soles of your feet. Often that insight comes as suddenly as a punch to the jaw; it can even take your breath away.

A Psychic or Emotional Response

Most all mature adults have gained insight from their experiences, yet few of us write poems about those insightful experiences. So what comes next? We generally learn from experience, grow from the insight therewith provided, and evolve as persons, but do we write poetry about it? No, and I’ll bet many of us could! For reasons I will not try to identify, the vast majority of us fail to respond to insightful experiences as poets respond: A poet is immersed in the insight, filled up with the experience, bowled over by the new understanding, consumed by the emotion, inspired by the possibilities. So that, I believe, is the next step: an emotional or psychic response to an insightful experience. Writers of verse probably skip that step.

The highly charged response of the poet does not have to be a lesson learned. It might be the awakening of a new, hitherto unfelt emotion, or a deeper level of pleasure from the same old experience, or a sense of wonder or humor or understanding. The point is that poets stop to fill themselves with the feelings and thoughts – fill themselves up until something has to give. And that takes us to the fourth step in the birth of a poem: the need to express the new insight, emotion, understanding or desire. Only when we are filled up do we have the urgent need to express.

Still, we haven’t yet reached the crux of the poetry issue. Many people are moved by an experience, do take the time to feel the emotions and insights, and do produce some sort of communication directed at the rest of humanity. What is produced is often prose: a letter to the editor (or, on a more personal basis, a letter to a relative or old friend); a screaming, raging email message; a carefully composed essay; a glowing testimonial. All prose. Others now make a stab at poetry, and they produce things made out of words, arranged in stanzas, desperate to communicate, not quite there. All prosaic. What does the successful poet do differently?

Connecting Insight to Image

The poet makes a connection that others fail to make, and that connection gives genesis to the seed of the new poem. In his or her need to communicate this overwhelming experience, the poet seeks and finds an image to which this new insight can be compared – something of the everyday world, an object or event or process the reader will recognize as familiar, understand, and readily grasp. Now we have the birth of figurative language, the metaphor or simile or personification that lies at the heart of the new message. In a sense, this comparison, never before made, is the message. This is the new connection, a deeper level of insight, a creative way of seeing; without this, a would-be poem is merely words. So, when we read that “the fog comes in on little cat feet” we share a unique connection made by a poet who saw fog in a whole new way. Now the poet (in this case Carl Sandburg) has found the vehicle of expression: a unique, creative comparison that instantly brings his experience to our doorstep. We all know something of little cat feet. Sandburg’s connection between the fog and the little cat feet is an act of creative genius.

Musicality Enhances Insight and Image

That creative accomplishment, however, is not yet the making of a poem. Now the other elements of poetry come into play. Economy of words is, of course, the hallmark of poetry, the feature that most differentiates it from prose. And when words are used economically, there is not a word, not a letter, not a sound to spare. Every carefully selected word has a sterling ability to convey the sound and sense of a particular facet of the idea. Next come the musical qualities: rhyme, rhythm and meter, repetition, alliteration. Now, all of these forces can be developed simultaneously, but this is the important thing to keep in mind: the insight comes first, then the image or vehicle, and only then the words and music. Those verbal tools must elucidate the insight and support the image.

Words and music without insight and image produce only verse (or drivel, sometimes). The same is true for cute similes and metaphors embedded into the text for no other reason than poetry’s traditional use of similes and metaphors. Figurative language that is not part and parcel of the message – born of the insight or inherent in the fundamental image – is only window dressing, sure to fade as the seasons change. The same can be said of forced rhyme, lines manipulated all out of proportion to make the ending sounds alike: mere decoration, but not the stuff of poetry. Using onomatopoeia because you can, or personifying an inanimate object because you can – these are techniques of verse, not of poetry. All the verbal and musical components of a good poem serve the central insight and interlock naturally with the central image. That is poetry.

It would now only make sense, I believe, to present to you a poem that I think is outstanding in every one of these ways, and so I shall. I choose “Gold Glade” by Robert Penn Warren, not a popular poem (although a famous author), but one that stirs my heart and my intellect with every reading, so near to the perfect poem it is. I should warn you: it takes several focused readings to gather it all in.

Gold Glade

Wandering, in autumn, the woods of boyhood,

Where cedar, black, thick, rode the ridge,

Heart aimless as rifle, boy-blankness of mood,

I came where ridge broke, and the great ledge,

Limestone, set the toe high as treetop by dark edge

Of a gorge, and water hid, grudging and grumbling,

And I saw, in mind’s eye, foam white on

Wet stone, stone wet-black, white water tumbling,

And so went down, and with some fright on

Slick boulders, crossed over. The gorge-depth drew night on,

But high over high rock and leaf-lacing, sky

Showed yet bright, and declivity wooed

My foot by the quietening stream, and so I

Went on, in quiet, through the beech wood:

There, in gold light, where the glade gave, it stood.

The glade was geometric, circular, gold,

No brush or weed breaking that bright gold of leaf-fall.

In the center it stood, absolute and bold

Beyond any heart-hurt, or eye’s grief-fall.

Gold-massy in air, it stood in gold light-fall,

No breathing of air, no leaf now gold-falling,

No tooth-stitch of squirrel, or any far fox bark,

No woodpecker coding, or late jay calling.

Silence: gray-shagged, the great shagbark

Gave forth gold light. There could be no dark.

But of course dark came, and I can’t recall

What county it was, for the life of me.

Montgomery, Todd, Christian-I know them all.

Was it even Kentucky or Tennessee?

Perhaps just an image that keeps haunting me.

No, no! in no mansion under earth,

Nor imagination’s domain of bright air,

But solid in soil that gave it its birth,

It stands, wherever it is, but somewhere.

I shall set my foot, and go there.

Robert Penn Warren

A Life-changing Experience, not Mere Technique

I had read this beauty at least six times before I ever realized the absolutely perfect rhyme scheme: ababb. Attention is so focused on the discovery of the achingly beautiful tree that the rhyme is barely noticeable. The simile so perfectly complements the feeling and actions of the speaker that it hardly calls attention to itself: “heart aimless as rifle.” The “grudging and grumbling” water is so naturally personified that it does not shout “personification!” The same can be said of this subtle personification: “where cedar, black, thick, rode the ridge.” The metaphors are both brilliant and inherent: “leaf-lacing… bright gold of leaf-fall… heart-hurt… eye’s grief-fall.”

“Gold Glade” is a wonder of musicality, yet those techniques always serve the insight and image. The alliteration (“rode the ridge… boy-blankness… ledge/Limestone… foam white on/Wet stone, stone wet-black, white water tumbling… glade gave) and assonance (“woods of boyhood… grudging and grumbling… mind’s eye… glade gave… far fox bark… late jay”) serve to communicate the wonder of the unparalleled tree-beauty, not to call attention to their own cleverness or to intellectualize a barren line.

Reading this poem is to vicariously experience the speaker’s boyhood discovery of a tree so powerfully lovely that it has haunted him and drawn him back throughout his lifetime. As precisely and musically worded as Robert Penn Warren’s poem is, it is absolutely the recounting of a life-changing experience rather than a display of words or poetic techniques. There can be no doubt this poem was born of the discovery of a serene glade, filled with the golden rays of the setting sun, dominated by an oak tree of breathtaking magnificence. From that experience developed the birth of a superior poem.

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If you’re a beginning or intermediate pianist interested in learning and playing hymn tunes — particularly those relating to the Christian faith — there are several issues working in your favor. First, as the words and tunes of hymns generally date back to pre-20th century times, most hymns live entirely in the public domain. For this reason, thousands of free hymns and gospel songs in the form of sheet music and music books, both popular and obscure, are readily available from countless publishing sources.

Of course, prospective hymnists will still have to pay for comprehensive, paper-based collections of hymns. However, with the growth of the Internet it is now possible to find extensive collections of free hymns in all corners of the Web.

Meanwhile, before embarking upon a serious study of hymns, it’s important for the pianist to build a solid foundation of historical understanding. After all, devotional music goes as far back as Christianity itself. Accordingly, many of the hymns that are played and sung today have long, rich histories, as does the hymnal tradition itself.

As many students of the Bible already know, the origins of the Christian musical tradition are found in the poetic passages of the Bible, specifically the Psalms of David and other poetic portions of the scriptures. The Psalms — a word whose original meaning comes from the Greek word for “songs sung to a harp” — are believed by Biblical scholars to be direct transcriptions of chants sung by pre-Christian Hebrews in the Holy Land. Thus, when we play and sing hymns, we are following in a musical tradition that predates Jesus’ time.

More modern hymnody has its origins in Gregorian chant, as well as in the works and writings of Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and other theologians of the Middle Ages and the Reformation period. Then, during subsequent centuries, as the melodic and harmonic range of music itself expanded, many church hymns developed a higher degree of musical sophistication, including multi-part harmonies, and detailed musical notation.

As Christianity spread to the New World in the 17th century and later, hymnody went in new directions, the effects of which are now heard in churches throughout the world. In fact, the first book published in the Americas was a collection of original translations of hymns by Puritan clergy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Known as the Bay Psalm Book, the collection took the hymnal tradition in new directions, including a standardized rhythmic structure that is now used in many of our favorite hymns, including beloved songs such as “Amazing Grace,” and many of our perennial favorite Christmas carols.

This brings us to another issue working in favor of the beginning pianist who is interested in hymnody. The beauty of many devotional hymns lies in their accessibility. That is, as they are designed to be sung by the masses, people who only sing once a week are able to wrap their voices around them. In other words, hymns generally contain few difficult flourishes, and their rhythms and melodic structures are usually as simple as can be.

This simplicity works in favor of the beginning or intermediate pianist. As most hymns are designed for maximum singability, their chord structures are also relatively simple. Depending upon the transcriptions that you find, hymn accompaniments can be as simple as four chords repeated, one measure each, throughout the song. Other accompaniments are designed to provide more emotional and aesthetic enhancement to the hymns, utilizing such devices as more complex chords, or melodies in counterpoint to the sung tunes.

Again, transcriptions of hymn tunes are available for free on the Internet, and from other sources. Some transcriptions require the pianist to be familiar with chord notations — many church hymnals use such notations — while other transcriptions use the standard bass and treble clef notation employed by most non-devotional piano books. In short, whatever your piano skill level, a brief perusal of available hymn transcriptions will reveal the perfect hymns for you to play.

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Index

Introduction: What Makes Poetry-Poetry?

Commentary: Perhaps my Style

Free Verse

Definition of Poetry I

Definition of Poetry II (effect)

Substance of a Poem

The World of Art in Words

Separate Excitement

On Poetry’s Form

Figurative Language

What is Confessional Poetry?

Reading Poetry

Understanding the Poets

Introduction

What Makes Poetry-Poetry?

I find-in my minds-eyes, what can make splendid poetry is: irony, symbolism, resemblance, metaphor, meter-arrangement, expression, confession, spontaneity, but at the end of the poem-like at the end of a day-when the reader looks back and all is said and done, he needs to ask, “Has it affected me?” if not-why? A poem should bring some kind of a chill, if not, some kind of voice to the reader. Again I say, if not, go on to the next poem or page of the book, each poem may not be suitable for you, like every song a singer sings is not necessarily the song that influences you.

Poetry at its most raw and rare form, and wickedest, is from spontaneity.

Perhaps my Style

A Commentary on Poetry

I prefer to join the ranks of the naturalness, spontaneity, free from rhymed couplets, romanticism, and passion, leave the Elizabethans, to them. I prefer to shift a bit to the 11th century, or just before that era, when rhyme was becoming modernized, but not quite in place. Right there, there was a world of nature and mysteries and emotions to be written, told, and stories to be handed down, and memorized: addressing the times, its cultures, and heroes; and so I must take that period, with my era, and mix it with fragments and dreams, and all such things, and let the dead bury the dead. Let the artificial reproduce half the literature (they will anyway) and my kind the other half. It can be hard to live in a world where critics who write mostly criticism, discard themes, dignity, manners, this perhaps is a strong protest against all such things, but poets must reassert their right to represent the world, in a clear and genuine tone, it is our duty. We are only passing through, we leave behind what we write (we infect minds, or produce wholesomeness), the irate citizens will always get their full of whatever, but those who wish not to have their pockets picked, wait on us to circulate literature that is filled with swimming thoughts of such things I’ve already mentioned. And to these readers, and the generations to come, I write.

Free Verse: Today’s poetry, often it has no voice, theme or even recognizable form. We call this free Verse, which is the dominate form of Postmodernism; prior to this, we had of what was called Modernism, where we reexamined what poetry is.

Definition of Poetry I: Each poem is a story, a short story, which involves density of language and intensity of imaging, or imagery (mental images); and descriptiveness, metaphors, similes (comparisons).
Effect (definition of Poetry II) as a poet, you need to ask ‘Did I get the effect I wanted out of my poetry?’ perhaps you did, and if so, you are on the right track. I mean I never ask a person this, I rather listen to see what they say about my poetry, and I then can answer the question myself.

Substance of the Poem

A poem has to have substance to survive…! Some of this substance is in the theme and in the insight of the poem.

-In writing a poem, like anything in life, one must have a plan, destination (where do you want to take your reader?), again, this is part of the substance, that will come out later.

-A poem perhaps is the secret life of the poet; it can be his black twin, his detached self-this is often the case. Thus, the poet and poem become more of a riddle of despair than a work of art.

The World of Art in Words

The world of Art, in words, has a definite meaning for me; it is a romance, produced during its stages of creation. Like a book. As I write it, refine it, proof it, and then finally victory comes-an opening and closing romance has taken place. Idleness is never involved, it is a horrible sin, an enemy of the soul. Man should not be idle, if so, the phantom comes out of him, not art.

The World of Art in Words

The artist appeared upon the land

from behind the sea-

the sun passed over him,

it shinned only for a moment

to clear a path for words.

#1718 3-5-2007

Separate Excitement

If you are looking for the poet inside the poem, look for the undercurrent he has left, the continuous hint of feeling, it should be everywhere, but seldom does anyone look for it, it is called separate excitement; or poetic art. Yeats uses it. If you missed the fountain and the beauty, and the exact riming in the poem, which is sometimes called ‘duty,’ go back and look for it, if you need to. I do not use as often as I used to and for various reasons, I do not take pleasure in the ordinariness.

On Poetry’s Form

People get obsessed with structure, trying to choose the correct form they want to use in poetry (perhaps trying to learn their style, or approach in the process). I prefer to let go and blend one idea or event into the next, lest I lose the soul of it trying to fit it into something that never should have been.

I try to listen to my voice, the one speaking inside of me, if I can find the silence, I will find the voice with no pretense, and inside that voice, are the syllables, letters, words, rhyme, and other elements of poetry you may want to use.

Figurative Language
(An Example): figurative language, meaning words used to refer to something that you don’t really mean, is used here to make noises, as are metaphors sometimes

Derivative Echoes

I would show you love in a handful of clouds-

Could I find the clouds, and find the love

And is it love one is really looking for?

Fallen angels had love from heaven

And chose lust in place, on earth…!

In hell one loves lust and thus, would be

Unhappy in Heaven I imagine…

Ah! Maybe allusions is the strand we’re

Looking for…? We’re living for…

We live in the age of imagined howling

…with aches and pains in the mind

Fear of death-nymphs (well dressed)

Schoolmasters serving children a blotted

Light; perfect pitch, more questions than

Answer; disrupting the harmonic balance!…

(Perhaps under all this is love.)

#728 6/2005

What is Confessional Poetry?

((And why do we write it?)( 3-1-2007))

What is Confessional Poetry? It is when you set yourself up for the big fall, when you get daring enough to tell all. Sylvia Plath, Anne Saxton, the perverted Allen Ginsberg; Robert Lowell, whom I have several books by, was a little calmer in his verse than those poets I just mentioned. Often the “I” is used or “You” in Confessional poetry. I find most of this poetry is unflattering, and that is why I do not do a lot of it; it wasn’t meant to be. It is usually personal and autobiographical. The poet usually is speaking to you directly, the reader.

When I read Plath, her confessional style seems more fantasy than fiction, but be that as it may, it is her soul talking; one must forget the themes and subject matter in confessional poetry, it explores certain details, processes past emotions, events, the author is actually exploring and processing his life in front of you.

The question has arisen, “Why do they write it?” and a fair question that should be answered perhaps more from a psychologist, than a poet, for at times one needs to be brutally honest. To me, it seems it would clear the brain, and make one’s guilt duller. Often times the more you write out something, the less potent it remains. A form of processing your pain.

Reading Poetry

In Reading poetry, first read it slowly, give it your attention, like you do when you eat dinner, then read it slowly again a second time, with an open mind, third, read it again, this time, as you would read prose, it will now jump out at you.

Many poems are complex, and perhaps ambiguous, if they are too much for you, trash them (unless you want to suffer through them, then you are asking for pain, and may receive it).

Know the poet you are reading, his history will help you understand why he is writing as he is, his mind perhaps will come clearer to yours.

Get rid of your preconceptions (bias and so forth) as you read-enjoy the experience. If you like the poetry and not the poet, because of your prejudice, you’ve got an issue.

Understanding the Poets

-To understand some poetry, or poets, one must have experienced what the poet has-identical experiences; or you must be shaped like the poet-, the exceptions are from the old school of poetry-one shoe fits all (thus, understanding the theme, plot and insight of poetry becomes much easier); from the contemporary scene, you must have the same shoe size of the poet to understand where the poet is leading you, and in poetry the poet should have a destination for the reader-lest he doesn’t care (and he should).

-The poet survives perhaps because he or she is oblivious (or not connected so much) to the world, and all its compulsions (suicide is often on the other side of this coin, if not drugs and alcohol).

-Poetry has accomplished something if it causes one to mull over it…; stretching this a little further, there is (it seems) coming a day (not so far off in the future), when poets will not even need to know a thing about literature (most don’t today); yet poetry is (or should be) considered the highest form of literature.

-Most poets write about love and death-which perhaps are the two main ingredients (or themes) to poetry; some write on social issues, which make for bad poetry; but it is “Beauty” that shines above everything, and that is often, too often over looked in place of self-interest, or a combination of negative delirious confusing thoughts put into writing by a poet under the influence of some kind of chemical. One can get a high off the beauty that surrounds them.

Last words: we as poets should not forget, we influence people, young people in particular, and owe an obligation to (if not duty to), set a good example by the way we live and write.

Author: Dennis Siluk Ed.D.
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There are many forms of poetry. Some are best read while others are best viewed and in the future we may add that some are best felt or experienced.

Some think that “good poetry” must rhyme while others think that “good” poetry “speaks” giving a clear or profound message. Others may call poetry that behaves like a springboard, launching creative responses in those who share it, the best, but however it is viewed, poetry like fashion is clothed in styles that affect its acceptability and/or respectability and promotion, and all poetry is about communication. It publishes, records or makes visible our experiences as well as showing things that have not necessarily been seen or noticed before, triggering that “Ah ha!”, eureka or identification experience.

The exploration of image triggering and message transmission as an artistic form of communication can cause a blurring of the boundaries between poetry and art, if we can say that they in fact do have boundaries. We have created words to say this such as word art, concrete poetry, visual poetry, pattern poetry, visual riddles and puzzle poetry.

The concept of concrete poetry and word art has been around a long time although the words to define it as an art form may not. It is believed that the word “concrete poetry” began to spread as a new term in the 1950’s helped by an exhibition of concrete poetry and a manifesto that was published in Brazil.

If we looked closely at some of the ancient forms of poetry we might see that many have relied on the visual aspects of the written language to communication, but more recently beginnings have been attributed to Apollinaire, who created calligrammes in 1914.

In visual poetry, the juxtaposition of letters, sound and shapes may be played with. The synergy of these words, letters and shapes trigger images, sounds and messages that can be called the art of the poet….making more from the sum of the parts in a visual communication.

The key element in visual poetry is the visual nature as apposed to the sound the words make. However some poets, as I have, use their homographical and homophonical discoveries to make poetry that needs to be read and seen:

Here/hair

is light

on

hair/here

as

light on

here/hair.

Performance poetry also relies on visual and oral communication. The difference being that aspects of the poem must be seen in the poet rather than on other forms of published material.

With the development of communication technologies, we can embed aural and visual stimuli into unique still or animated artistic expressions….what shall we call these new art forms? We already have words such as digital art and new media to talk about some art forms but do the words digital poems really communicate all that they can be? We have the technology to bring more senses into the poetry equation, touch for instance. What terms will we use for the touchy feely poems….experiential poetry?

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The structure of a poem is essential. Structure pertains to observing a poem’s patterns in lines and stanzas. The way a poem is presented visually, and the way the poem sounds can affect the way the reader comprehends and perceives the meaning of your poem. Whether you are reading or writing a poem, you should pay close attention to the line breaks and the patterns within each line. There’s always reasons why writers use line breaks where they choose to, and reasons why writers describe things in the manner they do throughout a poem.

Narrative poems are poems that tell stories. They reveal a particular degree of detail when it comes to structure. It is helpful to contemplate why the poet focuses on certain aspects and decides to not address others. Analyzing the lines and considering why could reveal something important about the story being told in the poem.

Poems that aren’t narrative can be more difficult to analyze. The events aren’t always set in chronological order and things aren’t always evident to the readers. Sometimes the events used aren’t even related to one another which can make it tricky to analyze.

As you read the poem, look at each line separately. See if you can notice any patterns that develop. Below you will see some common patterns. Ask yourself these questions and think about some of these things next time you analyze a poem:

Visual Patterns: Analyze the poem’s appearance on the page. Does it seem to represent anything?

Rhythm and Meter: Analyze the rhythm and meter of the poem. Does either thing change how you perceive the speaker or the tone?

Rhetorical Patterns: Do the words or phrases follow a similar format or persuade you by their choice of language?

Rhyme: Think about the importance of the ending words in rhyming poems and in poems without rhymes. What is the writer trying to connect within the end of each line?

Patterns in Sound: Onomatopoeias, alliteration, and assonance create sound effects. Why would the writer choose to use them where he or she did?

Alliteration- Repeating initial sounds in surrounding words:

Time twists together

Dreams stream in depths of darkness

Assonance- This device is used to stress words or imagery. It’s similar to alliteration. Repeating vowel sounds in a poem: road & boar, farther & harder, partial & facial

Onomatopoeias- Using words that sound like what they mean: Bees buzzed through the air. Bees make a sound which resemble the sound of the word buzz.

Challenging yourself to use different poetic devices, forms, and meters can teach you to grow in creativity.

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Poetry has emotion, imagery, significance, beauty, dignity, rhythm, sometimes rhyme, a different arrangement which can include inversion, and concreteness in its images.

One way to attain the qualities so essential to making words poetic is through the use of poetry devices. We won’t begin to cover all the known poetic devices or terms. Rather we’ll discuss and use some of the more commonly known and used ones.

Below are the more commonly used poetic devices and terms. Hopefully, with the examples given, everyone can better understand some of the ways to make poetry, well, more poetic. The examples used are my own poetry and are copyrighted in my name.

Poetry devices (a major sampling):

alliteration: the repetition of a beginning sound.

Rain reigns roughly through the day.

Raging anger from the sky

Partners prattle of tormented tears

From clouds wondering why

Lightning tears their souls apart.

In the first two lines, the r sound is repeated. In the third line p starts two adjoining words.

allusion: a casual reference to someone or something in history or literature that creates a mental picture.

A Common Woman

No Helen of Troy she,

Taking the world by war,

But a woman in plain paper wrapped

With a heart of love untapped,

She waits, yearning for her destiny

Whether it be a he on a charger white

Or one riding behind a garbage truck.

Perhaps instead a room of students

Lurks in the shadows of her life

Needing her interest to be shown.

Yet other concerns may call

No, no Helen of Troy she,

But a woman set the world to tame

Wherever she may be.

Helen of Troy brings to mind a woman so beautiful that two countries went to war over her.

analogy: the comparison of two things by explaining one to show how it is similar to the other.

Day’s Journey

The day dawns as a journey.

First one leaves the station on a train,

Rushing past other places

Without a pause or stop,

Watching faces blur through the window,

No time to say goodbye.

On and on the train does speed

Until the line’s end one sees,

Another sunset down

Without any lasting memories.

The whole poem creates analogy, the comparison of a day and a train journey.

caesura: the pausing or stopping within a line of poetry caused by needed punctuation.

Living, breathing apathy

Saps energy, will, interest,

Leaving no desire to win.

All that’s left are ashes,

Cinders of what might have been.

The punctuation within the lines (in this case, all commas) are the caesura, not the punctuation at the ends of the lines.

enjambement: the continuation of thought from one line of poetry to the next without punctuation needed at the end of the previous line(s).

Looking through the eyes

Of wonder, of delight,

Children view their world

With trust, with hope

That only life will change.

Enjambement is found at the end of lines 1, 3, and 4 because punctuation was not needed in those places.

hyperbole: extreme exaggeration for effect.

Giants standing tall as mountains

Towering over midgets

Bring eyes above the common ground

To heights no longer small.

Arms of tree trunks wrap

In comfort gentle, softness

Unthought of due to size,

Yet welcomed in their strength.

Giants aren’t really tall as mountains, nor are arms tree trunks, but the use of the exaggeration helps create the image wanted.

metaphor: the comparison of two unlike things by saying one is the other.

Sunshine, hope aglow,

Streams from heaven’s store

Bringing smiles of warming grace

Which lighten heavy loads.

Clouds are ships in full sail

Racing across the sky-blue sea.

Wind fills the cotton canvas

Pushing them further away from me.

In the first stanza, sunshine is compared to hope while in the second, clouds are compared to ships.

metonymy: the substitution of a word for one with which it is closely associated.

Scandals peep from every window,

Hide behind each hedge,

Waiting to pounce on the unwary,

As the White House cringes in dismay.

White House is used in place of the President or the government, and readers understand what is meant without exactly who is being directly addressed.

onomatopoeia: the sound a thing makes

Roaring with the pain

Caused by flashing lightning strikes,

Thunders yells, “Booooom! Craaaashhhh! Yeow!”

Then mumbles, rumbling on its way.

Grrrr, the lion’s cry echoes

Through the jungle’s den

Causing creatures small

To scurry to their holes.

Roaring, rumbling, cry are not examples of onomatopoeia, but are verb forms. Boooom, craaaashhh, yeow, and grrrrr are examples of onomatapoeia.

oxymoron: the use of contradictory terms (together) for effect.

Freezing heat of hate

Surrounds the heart

Stalling, killing kindness,

Bringing destruction to the start.

Freezing and heat are contradictory, opposites, yet the two together create a mental image.

personification: the giving of human traits to non-human things incapable of having those traits.

Anger frowns and snarls,

Sending bolts of fire from darkest night

That bring no brilliance,

Rather only added blackness of sight.

Frowning and snarling are human traits that anger cannot experience; however using them as traits for anger creates the imagery needed.

simile: the comparison of two unlike things by saying one is like or as the other.

Sunshine, like hope aglow,

Streams from heaven’s sky

Bringing smiles of warming grace

On breeze whispers like a sigh.

Clouds are like ships in full sail

Racing across the sky-blue sea.

Wind fills the cotton canvas

Pushing them further away from me.

These two stanzas of poetry and those for metaphor are nearly identical. Both metaphor and simile are comparisons of unlike things, but metaphor states one thing is the other while simile says one is like the other, or as the other.

symbol: something which represents something else besides itself.

The dove, with olive branch in beak,

Glides over all the land

Searching for a place to light.

Storms of war linger on every hand,

Everywhere the hawk does fight.

The dove is a symbol of peace, and the hawk is a symbol of war. Using them in poetry gives an image without having to explain in detail.

Other terms:

elegy: a poem of lament (extreme sorrow, such as caused by death)

free verse: a poem without either a rhyme or a rhythm scheme, although rhyme may be used, just without a pattern.

blank verse: un-rhymed lines of iambic pentameter (ten syllables with all even numbered syllables accented)

imagery: the use of words to create a mental picture

mood: the emotional effect of a poem or a story

Understanding and using these devices and terms can help improve and strengthen poetry. Imagery is essential for vivid poetry, and devices help develop imagery.

Author: Vivian Gilbert Zabel
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Science poetry or scientific poetry is a specialized poetic genre that makes use of science as its subject. Written by scientists and nonscientists, science poets are generally avid readers and appreciators of science and “science matters.” Science poetry may be found in anthologies, in collections, in science fiction magazines that sometimes include poetry, in other magazines and journals. Many science fiction magazines, including online magazines, such as Strange Horizons, often publish science fiction poetry, another form of science poetry. Of course science fiction poetry is a somewhat different genre. Online there is the Science Poetry Center for those interested in science poetry, and for those interested in science fiction poetry The Science Fiction Poetry Association. In addition, there’s Science Fiction Poetry Handbook and Ultimate Science Fiction Poetry Guide, all found online. Strange Horizons has published the science fiction poetry of Joanne Merriam, Gary Lehmann and Mike Allen.

As for science poetry, science or scientific poets like science fiction poets may also publish collections of poetry in almost any stylistic format. Science or scientific poets, like other poets, must know the “art and craft” of poetry, and science or scientific poetry appears in all the poetic forms: free verse, blank verse, metrical, rhymed, unrhymed, abstract and concrete, ballad, dramatic monologue, narrative, lyrical, etc. All the poetic devices are in use also, from alliteration to apostrophe to pun to irony and understatement, to every poetic diction, figures of speech and rhythm, etc. Even metaphysical scientific poetry is possible. In his anthology, The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics, editor Timothy Ferris aptly includes a section entitled “The Poetry of Science.” Says Ferris in the introduction to this section, “Science (or the ‘natural philosophy’ from which science evolved) has long provided poets with raw material, inspiring some to praise scientific ideas and others to react against them.”

Such greats as Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Goethe either praised or “excoriated” science and/or a combination of both. This continued into the twentieth century with such poets as Marianne Moore, T. S. Eliot, Robinson Jeffers, Robert Frost and Robert Hayden (e.g. “Full Moon”–”the brilliant challenger of rocket experts”) not to mention many of the lesser known poets, who nevertheless maintain a poetic response to scientific matters. Says Ferris, “This is not to say that scientists should try to emulate poets, or that poets should turn proselytes for science….But they need each other, and the world needs both.” Included in his anthology along with the best scientific prose/essays are the poets Walt Whitman (“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”), Gerard Manley Hopkins “(“I am Like a Slip of Comet…”), Emily Dickinson (“Arcturus”), Robinson Jeffers (“Star-Swirls”), Richard Ryan (“Galaxy”), James Clerk Maxwell (“Molecular Evolution”), John Updike (“Cosmic Gall”), Diane Ackerman (“Space Shuttle”) and others.

Certainly those writing scientific poetry like those writing science fiction need not praise all of science, but science nevertheless the subject matter, and there is often a greater relationship between poetry and science than either poets and/or scientists admit. Creativity and romance can be in both, as can the intellectual and the mathematical. Both can be aesthetic and logical. Or both can be nonaesthetic and nonlogical, depending on the type of science and the type of poetry.

Science poetry takes it subject from scientific measurements to scientific symbols to time & space to biology to chemistry to physics to astronomy to earth science/geology to meteorology to environmental science to computer science to engineering/technical science. It may also take its subject from scientists themselves, from Brahmagypta to Einstein, from Galileo to Annie Cannon. It may speak to specific types of scientists in general as Goethe “True Enough: To the Physicist” in the Ferris anthology. (Subsequent poets mentioned are also from this anthology.)

Science poetry may make use of many forms or any form from lyrical to narrative to sonnet to dramatic monologue to free verse to light verse to haiku to villanelle, from poetry for children or adults or both, for the scientist for the nonscientist or both. John Frederick Nims has written for example, “The Observatory Ode.” (“The Universe: We’d like to understand.”) There are poems that rhyme, poems that don’t rhythme. There’s “concrete poetry” such as Annie Dillard’s “The Windy Planet” in which the poem in in the shape of a planet, from “pole” to “pole,” an inventive poem. “Chaos Theory” even becomes the subject of poetry as in Wallace Stevens’ “The Connoisseur of Chaos.”

And what of your science and/or scientific poem? Think of all the techniques of poetry and all the techniques of science. What point of view should you use? Third person? First person, a dramatic monologue? Does a star speak? Or the universe itself? Does a sound wave speak? Or a micrometer? Can you personify radio astronomy?

What are the main themes, the rhythms? What figures of speech, metaphors, similes, metaphor, can be derived from science. What is your attitude toward science and these scientific matters?

Read. Revise. Think. Proofread. Revise again. Shall you write of evolution, of the atom, of magnetism? Of quanta, of the galaxies, of the speed of sound, of the speed of light? Of Kepler’s laws? Shall you write of the history of science? Of scientific news?

Read all the science you can.

Read all the poetry you can.

You are a poet.

You are a scientist.

What have you to say of the astronomer, the comet, of arcturus, of star-sirls, of galaxies, of molecular evolution, of atomic architecture, of “planck time” to allude to other poetic titles.

What does poetry say to science?

What does science say to poetry?

Author: Susan Shaw
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Is poetry too complicated for the average reader? Is it too cryptic, scholarly? If you ask a large group of average people what they like or don’t like about poetry, you’ll get a few different answers, but there is an overwhelmingly common category of responses.

One of the main reasons that people say they aren’t addicted to contemporary poetry is that they feel it is too cryptic. The language, they say, isn’t tangible. Despite the fact that there are a great many contemporary poets out there writing and performing poetry that appeals to the non-cryptic taste of many would-be enthusiasts, this poetry isn’t highly visible in the popular media.

The second reason that some people say they aren’t interested in poetry is that their idea of poetry is based on the old classical stuff they were forced to read in high school. Who can relate to ‘thee’ and ‘thou?’ People feel that poetry is an abstract language that has very little relevancy to the modern world.

So, what is out there, and why don’t people bother with it? The answer is that, for a very long time, poetry has been seen as a literary playground directed toward other players. Publishers recognize that poetry doesn’t sell very well, and so, they are apprehensive about publishing a great many books of poetry. The problem, though, is that while there may or may not be a market for poetry, no one really knows for sure. In short, no one is making an effort to shove it into mainstream media.

Perhaps if people knew the kinds of poems being talked about in the literary circle by poets such as Ted Kooser, Louise Gluck, or many of the other poets (yes, there are poets who are still living, thank you), then maybe the people would be a little more apt to purchase a book or two of poetry.

What Can You Do to Help Popularize Poetry?

Author: Devrie Paradowski
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Poetry is the mastery of words in all their variations and subtleies to express in an eloquent manner that which cannot be expressed in silence. Emotions of the heart, a looking glass into the soul, a way to make amends, and a way to build vistas exploring humanity and all it’s relationships. Poetry is all this an much more. Poetry is also much less, and in a more simplified manner, it is only words. Just words. But used in such a way, as to make us think and feel about others, events and things in a way we could never have imagined. Poetry cleanses, fortifies and inspiries the reader, while at the same time fuels the creative passions and allows for cathartic emotional release on the part of the writer. Poetry is powerful, poetry is petty, poetry is loving, and poetry is hateful. But above all, poetry is human, it is a reflection of of the human experience in all it’s glory and all it’s shame. But, it’s something else as well. It’s words.

It’s Only Words

Words are what define the internet. It’s not technology, it’s not servers, it’s not protocols, it’s not browser wars. The internet is made up of words. And words are poetry. So, is the internet poetry? In a sense yes. Sure it’s pictures to, but words were there long before there were pictures. An internet of pictures would be pretty, but it wouldn’t be poetry. It would be thousands of words yes, but what would it say? Words are a business now online. We bid on words, we sell words and information. We sell poetry. Entire industries have sprung up based solely on words. Google is in the word business, as is Yahoo, and MSN. But, these guys are no poets, and long before them their were others in the business of words.

Words Are All I Have

For generations, authors and poets have been in the business of words. For that matter musicians were to. Music is really just poetry with a beat. And these guys and girls have never really prospered from a financial perspective. Oh sure, a few like Shakespeare and Stephen King did pretty well. But just being the tip of the ice cube, there were countless thousands of creative literary genuises languashing in poverty. Starving artists include poets, writters, and musicians. But hey, it’s a new day, and all that can change. The internet has open the door for artists of all inkling to support themselves with their passions of calling. Few have taken up the guantlet though. Perhaps, for poets and the like, suffering for their art is core to their being. A cruel but inspiritional muse. Dosen’t have to be that way though. It’s time for the poets to embrace the world wide web, and voice their words to the masses. The internet is about words, and words are about poetry. Arise poets, your time has come. Write you poetic fools, write.

About the Author
For more on poetry visit http://www.poetryfunonline.com or read other poetry articles at http://foolishmumbles.com/category/poetry/

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Poetry vs The Internet