Why poetry?

Writing as a form of art

What do these words have in common: rose, sweet, name? You can come up with a number of sentences where these words are used, but none will be as memorable as Shakespeare’s, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.”

This article is not about analysing verses or whole poems. Instead, it is about the beauty of poetry. One of my early memories of poetry is Wordsworth’s Daffodils: “I wandered lonely as a cloud …”. We were taught to recite this poem in primary school and it opened my mind to a new way of writing, which didn’t have to subscribe to the rules of correct grammar. Reciting poems in primary school was often boring, but poetry rubbed off on me to the extent that I started writing poems of my own in high school.

The beauty of words comes to the fore when you read a poem. Read Jabberwocky again, with its made-up words. “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves”, is the opening verse of this poem and it immediately transports you into a magical world where the unexpected becomes expected. What imagination comes up with words like these? Seemingly childlike, their playfulness emphasises the danger the Jabberwock presents. The beauty of this poem is that we can understand it despite the made-up words. This reminds me of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, a novel where he removes almost all language conventions, with words running and crashing into one another because there are no spaces between, but that’s for a different article.

Poetry is very artistic. It could explain why Shakespeare’s dramas are written in a poetic style. The use of figurative writing, imagery and symbolism elevate it to a level that is not reached by prose. Imagery can appeal to our sense of taste, smell, hearing, touch, movement, sensations or emotions. Or more than one of these. Consider the following: “The burnt-out ends of smoky days”, in TS Eliot’s poem, Preludes, presents us with different sensual experiences in one verse: visual (the colour of the burnt end), the smell of smoke, a sensation of something gone to waste and a depressive emotion.

The use of rhyme and rhythm in poetry is also important. Sometimes I like a poem simply because it is rhythmic. It’s difficult to separate rhyme and rhythm because they are interlinked. Deciding which of the two is more important is similar to the question: “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Consider the first stanza of "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Note how the repetition of “rage” delivers a jarring note to the gentle, cajoling rhythm of the first two verses and that all three verses contain both soothing and aggressive rhythms that act as counterpoints.

Poetry has so many facets that it is difficult to determine which is more important or deserves to be in an article like this one. What is certain is that many people will give it a try at least once and find fulfilment in that attempt. This is what makes poetry beautiful.

Elroy Bramwell

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

The author is a former school teacher, looking to get noticed in the freelance writing industry. He is still involved in teaching through his work as a private tutor.