Why the Obsession with Poetry?
As I've mentioned in previous posts - I'm nearing the summit of my third book (but struggling with the foreword). I was reviewing the forewords of my previous two books - and I decided that I'd share the forward of my debut "Filigree and Fire". It's actually something of my manifesto (oh how VERY teenage) and perhaps mission statement (oh how VERY corporate) as a writer.
(Artwork Title - Message and Meaning from book Filigree and Fire)
I see poetry as a lightning rod, drawing the energies of myths and intuitions to capture them in that most mundane but mystical of vessels - language. The cogs and gears of words and punctuation marks that drive the machinery of business meetings, invoicing and shopping lists become a honey trap for those blurred but dynamic creatures that hover just on the edge of our weighted, whirling minds.
While the great novelists such as Alexandre Dumas, H.G. Wells, and of course J.R.R. Tolkien can conjure great sweeping vistas for our conscious minds to gallop through, relieving the pressures and strains of our rigidly structured (yet frantic) corridors of modernity - we can through poetry encounter visions more startling and alien yet intimately familiar.
Poetry transcends the rules of linear narrative and enhances the underlying musicality of the language, drawing out the aesthetic beauty of phonetics beyond their usual function as the building blocks of descriptive words. We become swept up in the poem’s rhythm and movements, lifted to the heights of abstract thought and sinking into the roots of raw emotion. A suspension of logic created by the very tool that shapes logic - words.
Many of my poems were written as explorations of the overlap between the ordered world of action and the shifting planes of imagination. The accompanying artworks provide an additional exploration of each poem, a concrete visual symbol of the abstract and psychological ideas discussed. I hope that you will join me on a journey across that bridge between drama and dreams – poetry.
I’m interested in opinions from both lovers and authors of poetry - do you agree/disagree with the above? All opinions welcome! Thank you for your time as always.
This is a beautiful write up!
Graeme, I have always viewed poetry as the way forward. When I get tired of thinking and writing in a structured way I ask, “How does the poet in me see this?” It is a question that must be asked because as simple as it is, it gets me engaged, it forces me to look at things through a lens. I am able to see, as you said, “between the ordered world of action and the shifting planes of imagination.”
I think this helps with other forms of writing as well. If I were being completely honest with you I would say I know it does in the long term. That our short sightedness, though very focused on what is possible, we eventually need to take off our glasses to see what is happening.
Think of someone examining the world and seeing every detail of the things in front of them. Too much of this and they get consumed by particulars. When they eventually take off their glasses and are able to see the scope, there they can find the origin of experimental novels. The stuff that isn’t this or that. The stuff no one has ever done before. Poetry or not.
Just some thoughts…