Understanding Poetry

Poetry is hard to fathom. It really is. It is easy to say that poetry is an art form in which its language pertains symbolic, metaphoric, and stanzaic effect. But here, we have to go deeper our understanding of what poetry is. Before we start, we have to answer why we should enjoy and study poetry.

First, we study poetry because it stimulates and appeals to our imaginations. It increases the appreciation of nature. It deepens our understanding of human nature and human experiences. It arouses our feelings for the good, the true, and the beautiful. It quickens the sense of kinship with our fellowmen. Finally, it intensifies our enjoyment and common experiences. However, the best appreciation of poetry comes gradually and grows with our capacity to see, feel, and understand.

What is poetry?

Poetry defines the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility. It is an art form in which meters, rhymes, sounds, language, images, poetic suggestions are much focused or even looked up to. Others define poetry as human expressions imbibed in mysterious ways, difficult to comprehend and hard to grasp.

There are ways how to understand poetry. Basically, we have to know the terms. below are a few terms of which they can help us understand poetry better.

Poetic License --is a freedom allowed the poet to depart from the rules and conventions of standard written and spoken prose in matters of syntax, word order, the use of archaic or newly coined words. This means that all poets or literary authors are held to be free to violate the ordinary norms of both common discourse and literal truth.

Poetic Suggestion --is the use of suggestive words that stir our feelings and imaginations. It is the power of words in themselves to arouse imaginations and to create feeling that the poet uses with greatest effect.

Imagery --is the concrete representation of sense experiences through suggestive word figures (Robert Penn Warren). It is also the visual content of the language (Wyndham Lewis). According to Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, imagery is the production in the mind of a sensation produced by a physical perception. In other words, the poem uses symbols in which they must be interpreted with its universal meanings. On the other hand, the function of poetry is to present to the readers the concrete world of things.

To differentiate between poetry and prose, poetry has metrical patterns, stresses the suggestive power of words, emphasizes the world and life as an imaginative and emotional experience. On the other hand, prose has no metrical patterns, stresses the exact meaning of word or words in context, emphasizes the intellectual side of human experiences.

FUNCTIONS OF POETRY

a) to delight (enjoy)

b) to instruct (give wisdom)

According to Horace, the function of poetry, which is to instruct should have a utilitarian purpose. In other words, a poem should realistic, practical, and sensible. It is realistic in a sense that the meaning is true to all, and not true to one setting, one place, or one person. It must be true to many or should I say universal.

CONTENTS OF POETRY

1) Everything is potentially poetic.

The content of a poem is all-inclusive material. Meaning, everything under the sun is a subject to poetry that deals with mental manipulations or wild imaginations. Example is a stone, a rotten tree, a withered leaf, a grass root, a scratch paper, a balloon, a comb, a snail, a strand of hair, etc. In other words, whatever subjects one has had, they have meanings and they can be subjects to poetry.

2) The core of poetry is human relevance and philosophical truth.

Human truth that is relevant only in certain times and places is not a fully artistic truth because it dos not embrace the bedrocks predicaments of human experiences. One can say that a poem has human relevance when it is true to all, to all experiences of man in general.

3) The content of poetry takes a universal and lasting viewpoints. It has timeless appeal and universal relevance.

4) The content of poetry is essentially tensive and paradoxical.

Paradoxical truth is not one-sided issue or simple, but is rather made up of two or more conflicting aspects merged into one complex unity. Example of a paradoxical truth is the maxim or proverb " Love your enemy"or "Conquer the unconquerable place".

FORMS OF POETRY

1) Simpler Form (1st level of appreciation)

Three aspects of this form:

a) The situation that is presented

b) The euphonious sound of its verses

c) The vivid array of details and images

2) Poetic Form (2nd level of appreciation)

This form renders special use of image rather than statement.

Example:

"The brilliant star sat on the moon's lap."

It is impossible that the star can sit on the Moon's lap, right? One thing to understand this is to use the second level of appreciation of poetry . The scientific pronouncement of the words or descriptions in context should not be interpreted in its literal form. This is the world of poetry.

ELEMENTS TO BE FOUND IN POETRY

1) The imagination

--This appeals to senses, feelings, and emotions

2) The thought of the poem

--The meaning or implication of the poem

3) The form

--These are the patterns, sounds, images, and other devices

IN STUDYING POETIC FORMS, ONE MUST BRING OUT THESE QUALITIES.

1) The approach of poetry is through image rather than statement.

2) The procedure of poetic revelation uses condensation and suggestion. It uses the artistic priciples of ambivalence or ambiguity and position or arrangements.

3) The conclusions or revelations of poetry are projected in terms of a special rendering of situations, details, and characters.

4) The direct statements and factual details of a poem have a metaphysical function and are not necessarily meant to be taken as factual or scientific pronouncements.

Example:

If a writer or a poet will describe the scene like this;

"The brilliant star sat on the moon's lap,

Oh, how lovely it was."

The reader of this poem must realize that this is to not be taken as scientific truth or factual basis in interpreting this wotk of art. Again, this is the world of poetry where everything is a product of the world of infinite imagination. One must take into account that poetry should be interpreted to its poetic form.

THEMES OF POETRY

a) Personal Themes -- death, love, loneliness, frustrations, nature as a destroyer, etc.

b) Social Themes -- injustice and human suffering, man's inhumanity to man, failure of traditions, culture versus culture, etc.

SELECTED POEMS

A) AUTUMN ( a haiku by Tsurayuki)

Have I been dreaming?

But yesterday, it seems knee-deep in water,

We planted rice-shoots.

Today across a yellowplain

The autumn breeze beckons us to harvest.

B) SHE DWELT AMONG THE UNTRODDEN WAYS

She dwelt among the untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove,

A maid whom there were none to praise;

And very few to love

A violet by a ossy stone

Half-hidden from the eye;

Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and oh,

The difference to me!