Tuesday 12 March 2013

How to get into poetry

By Anne Lewis


Poetry is many different things to many different people. As you'll see from the below quotations; everyone, no matter how great, has a different opinion about poetry: (Poetry is) "a kind of ingenious nonsense." Isaac Newton. "Poetry is what gets lost in translation." Robert Frost. "Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech." Simonides. "Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn." - Thomas Gray. "Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth." - Samuel Johnson. "Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words." - Edgar Allan Poe. "Poetry: the best words in the best order." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge. "A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him." - Dylan Thomas.

By absorbing these thoughts in detail, you could argue that poetry is explained by its unwillingness to be defined. After-all, poetry is mere imagination and only becomes something when we (the reader) want it to; when we feel it stir something deep inside us.

There are a couple of factors that determine whether something is poetic, they're not content based unfortunately, but they are aspects that can be used to decipher whether something is poetic. Firstly, we have language: all poetry considers the use of words more than any other type of writing. Certain diction is chosen because of its emotiveness, words are repeated, alliteration is used or some words are simply incorporated because they have musical value.

Another defining factor that is present in all types of poetry is purpose. There's always an underlying intention in poetry that goes much further than the literal. It aims to move us, to pull on our heart strings or linger in our brains. That's its ultimate objective and that's why it's such a popular form of writing.

So, there we have our conclusion, poetry is simply a composition designed to convey emotions, ideas or experiences in an imaginative and vivid way, characterized by the use of language chosen and the underlying purpose behind it.

A great place to go and explore your poetic prowess is Home House of Portman Square. Come and share your passion for words over wine and canaps in the candlelit and perfumed surroundings of our atmospheric Music Room, where such events have taken place since the 1770s.




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