By Ananya S Guha
To many, writing poetry or even reading it is considered to be an ‘effiminate’ act. And again, to many poetry cannot be understood. You tell someone, that you are publishing a poetry magazine he or she will say ‘I don’t understand poetry’.
Yet most of us say that at some stage in our lives we have written poetry. And most of these seem to be love poems! So, when you are jilted you write poetry, if there is unrequieted love you write poetry. . . This is the ambiguity that poetry creates – you don’t comprehend it but you write it! What fallacy and paradox!
I simply miss the point about not understanding poetry. Many people like rhyme in poetry but mere rhyme is not all poetry. Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill for example is verse but not poetry. Perhaps, yes verse is meant for children so to that extent it is poetry for children. However, very good poetry can also rhyme as Dom Moraes did so exceptionally well. If one reads his collection of poems published by Penguin, one will discover that. Yet I do not understand why people fight shy of poetry especially what they call modern poetry. There is a difference between being modern and being contemporary. The two expressions are interchangeable. Fiction is popular, so are paintings yet they have no mystique about them, but why poetry? Why do we mythicize poetry? Why don’t we understand that all good poetry is like music as Hopkins said, all great art aspires towards the condition of music.
Poetry does not sell. That is the lamentable fact. That is because poetry is not meant to be sold, like a commodity, it is meant to be read and felt. It is the emotive experience that matters. It makes one heady. It is the cup that cheers but does not inebriate. . .