Thinking About Poetry
By: Zay Pareltheon
Tags: Essay, Poiesis News, Poetics, Prose

Sing a bold song.

Photo by Peter Fitzpatrick on Unsplash

So, what is poetry?

What do we seek?

How shall we know?

Where in hell to begin?

Poetry since the ancients has been a hallmark of a civilized life, a reflective life, an insightful life, a passionate life. If prose is the common language of life, then poetry is the uncommon language, the artful language of life. Poetry wrestles, inspires, hopes, mourns, laughs, loves, weeps, and yearns.

What other poets say about poetry is important. Here are just a few of the thousands of statements on poetry from those who should know — the poets. A bit of commentary follows each — acerbic perhaps… maybe useful. Sometimes… well, I just can’t help it.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. — Robert Frost

(Frost as the melancholy poet, wishing for the unity that living does not allow — sometimes. I think of “Death o fate Hired Hand”, pure Frost.)

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel. — Jim Morrison

(Morrison as the iconoclast, but then again, the liberator. Poetry liberates the senses and the soul. Yup, this works…

“I can summon the dead.

I can perceive events on other worlds,

in my deepest inner mind,

and in the minds of others.” )

What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music. — Soren Kierkegaard

(Ah Kierkegaard, finding beauty in the keening of life. There is that quality often seen in poetry of making the painful pleasurable, that angst is always there.)

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. William Wordsworth

(Wordsworth, recalling visions of the past, powerful stuff felt later. Sometimes the past is always better for its recollection — and then again, sometimes not. Dreams and books should form the boundaries of all our lives.)

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”

― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

(Ah, finding peace is the most difficult task. We all try to find peace, but it eludes us — for we are human after all. And we talk to ourselves, but poets are smart enough to write it down. Is this why we imagine poets talking to themselves? I never talk to myself — never, no, never.)

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

― T.S. Eliot

(Poets push limits. They see the limits and then go beyond. We follow as best we can. What hollow men/women have we become? )

“To know and feel all this and not have the words to express it makes a human a grave of his own thoughts.”

- John Donne

(Leave it to Donne to find a methodology to smash words together. The fusion of vocabulary and thought — Donne taught us that. Smashing!)

So, what are we doing here at Scrittura?

Why are we doing it?

What motivates us?

No one is the same, but that’s to be expected. No single definition of poetry exists — except that it is artful language reflecting the images, perceptions, insights, and values of the author. Yes, yes… there are schools of criticism, and more on that later, in some other piece.

Each of Scrittura’s editors may submit a working definition of poetry — I decided to take a leap. So…

Poetry is…. verbal ikebana

Poetry is not… the dictionary.

Poetry is artful language arranged in meaningfully designed ways. Someplace between birth and dust, we all have to make sense of the chaos we call life. That happens when the poet brings meaning and understanding, insight and appreciation, and clarity and compassion to the challenges we all face. Challenges do not need to be great and grand — sometimes challenges can be as big as how to fill the wood box on a cold rainy day.

What do I value in your work?

I want your best work, your creative, soulful, gut-wrenching insights and reflections on the painful, joyful experiences, feelings, apprehensions.

I want you to push limits and boundaries, to use language and thought in fresh, insightful ways that take your readers on journeys.

I want you to use the poetic devices of sound and sense that hold a mirror to the world.

Sing a bold song.

We are all listening.