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

What makes a poem a poem? Inventive, artistic portrayal of one’s recollected emotions and thoughts bound in gilded words; but gilding and structure alone are not enough to spark that something in a reader. What makes a poem magical is its ability to engage the reader; to pull her into its vortex and mirror her emotions. “Poetry...is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.” — Salvatore Quasimodo

It is alive when it gets under the reader’s skin and erupts as the irritation of uneasiness; a disquiet that forces him out of his complacency; when it becomes a transformational tool during its interaction with the readers. A poem is the whisper of the writer’s soul; only when that whisper magnetises other souls it is imbued with meaning and purpose. Like waves, it must chip away at the rock of smugness till sands of fresh perspectives begin to lodge on the shores of another’s mind. It must teach us to look at ourselves plainly, as we are, without pretensions.

In times of chaos, violence, mud-churning turbulence — political, social or personal — poetry is cathartic, it is a saviour. It is the silhouette of insight; the deciphering of an unfathomable scrawl which when verbalised may resolve the turmoil and become a symbol of graceful restoration; of hope and peace. Poets are the chroniclers of place and time; the unauthorized, conscientious historians whose voices have often been strangulated as human records have witnessed in many places around the globe. Why are their words stilled? Because poetry has the muscle to set free the human spirit; to bring out its dauntless nature. It is the instrument of the marginalised that belts out the music of freedom and dignity; it is a clarion call to awaken integrity in the collective consciousness and thus veto moral disengagement; it aspires to deliver optimism to the discouraged and is the eye that recognises beauty in ugliness.

As we read poetry, it discovers us and widens the knowledge of our inner self. It brings us face to face with our hidden demons, beauty, weaknesses and strengths. It opens up vistas – inner and outer – that we would otherwise remain blind to. Poems must not be analysed unless for academic purposes. When bisected and dissected a poem loses its soul. If a poem begs for explanation before its meaning is grasped, it has failed. We must let its sublimity spill into us spontaneously and tune in to the resonance within. Good poetry leads to an experience beyond words. As Octavio Paz has said, we must hear poetry with our eyes and see it with our ears.

To end my blog as I began, here’s my favourite quote from none other than Carl Sandburg from The Atlantic, March 1923:

“Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.”