Shikdar Mohammed Kibriah,
Bangladesh
Definition of Poetry
Stephane Mallarme said poetry is the word. It does not mean any of the compositions that are composed with words may be poetry. It’s actually not a literally acceptable statement rather it is significantly more indicative that is, in fact, contemplative. Before placing my opinion, I would like to present here some definitions of poetry by some famous poets briefly.
According to P. B. Shelley’s 1821 essay, A Defence of Poetry , in which the essence of poetry is articulated like that of poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge that comprehends all science and to which all science must be referred. It is at the same the root and blossom of all other systems of thought. It is that from which all spring, and that which adorns all and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things; it is as the odour and the colour of the rose to the texture of the elements which compose it, as the form and splendour of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and corruption. In a general sense he said poetry may be defined to be the expression of the imagination. Poetry is connate with the origin of man. It is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted. Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it. He mentioned that high poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contained all oaks potentially.
Robert Frost defined poetry as an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. Salvatore Quasimodo said that poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own. Edgar Allan Poe depicted poetry as the rhythmical creation of beauty. He remarked Its sole arbiter is taste. With the intellect or with the conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with duty or with truth. Mary Oliver said, “Poetry isn’t a profession, it’s a way of life. It’s an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.” T.S. Eliot defined poetry as not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
William Wordsworth explained poetry in its defining that it is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. Matthew Arnold said that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life — to the question: How to live. Kahlil Gibran mentioned poetry as a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary. William Hazlitt explained that the light of poetry is not only a direct but also a reflected light, that, while it shows us the object, throws a sparkling radiance on all around it: the flame of the passions, communicated to the imagination, reveals to us, as with a flash of lightning, the inmost recesses of thought, and penetrates our whole being. Poetry puts a spirit of life and motion into the universe. It describes the flowing, not the fixed. It does not define the limits of sense, or analyze the distinctions of the understanding, but signifies the excess of the imagination beyond the actual or ordinary impression of any object or feeling. Theodore Roethke believed a poem is a holy thing — and good poem is the poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods. Some other poets wanted to define poetry as what is deeply felt and is essentially unsayable.
Now we see some splendid definitions from Carl Sandburg’s “Tentative (First Model):
- Poetry is a projection across silence of cadences arranged to break that silence with definite intentions of echoes, syllables, wave lengths.
- Poetry is an art practised with the terribly plastic material of human language.
- Poetry is the report of a nuance between two moments, when people say, ‘Listen!’ and ‘Did you see it’ ‘Did you hear it? What was it?’
- Poetry is the tracing of the trajectories of a finite sound to the infinite points of its echoes.
- Poetry is a sequence of dots and dashes, spelling depths, crypts, cross-lights, and moon wisps.
- Poetry is a puppet-show, where riders of skyrockets and divers of sea fathoms gossip about the sixth sense and the fourth dimension.
- Poetry is a plan for a slit in the face of a bronze fountain goat and the path of fresh drinking water.
- Poetry is a slipknot tightened around a time-beat of one thought, two thoughts, and a last interweaving thought there is not yet a number for.
- Poetry is an echo asking a shadow dancer to be a partner.
- Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly the air.
Certainly poetry is a wordy project. Poetry reveals itself with words. But how? Artistically. The nature of art is aesthetical that is naturally soulful and romantic. In this connection I’d like to quote here an amazing definition of poetry given by Dr. Jernail Sing Anand from India, a renowned philosopher poet in the contemporary world. He says, ” Poetry is a romance with words”.
Finally, poetry is naturally an aesthetic feeling that is revealed through the words. But how does this feeling emerge? We obviously know that as a subjective soul we perceive sensitive data from the natural objects that are intellectually analyzed, classified and related in our mind to realize them. But, for a vivid and deep understanding of the inherent truth of reality, we utmost need an introspective and finally intuitive look into it. When we are satisfied that we have touched it insightfully, we get moved with its reality that may be joyous, tragic, pathetic, apathetic or sympathetic. If we can depict it through words justly, poetry emerges.
From the study of the distinctive definitions given by the famous poets stated above and considering the nature and scope of the poetry I want to define poetry that,
“poetry is an insightful essence of aesthetic feeling which is both intellectually and soulfully combination of perception, introspection and intuition and warded more meaningfully than that of its outward appearance and which is an impression of its reality.”
