What is Poetry?

What is poetry, reader?

My loyal companion,

dear, lost, and damaged,

what is it? Is this it?

Or is this too informal?

What if I were to break

 

this thought in two?
Slice it by stanza, shred

its structure? Is it still

coherent? Will it forgive

my cruel blades, pecking

away on black keys?

 

Do I care if it does?

These words have no

feeling, do they? Can

they be crushed, ruined?

Are they not just vessels

at my disposal, ready to fall?

 

Why should I make them

fall? Do I not love these

innocent marks of language?

After all, they contain my blood.

Why not have them stand?

Why don’t they question me?

 

Can poetry ask questions?

Is that allowed? Or, better

yet, can something be poetry

if it does not ask questions?

Am I allowed to question

the nature of the very thing

 

I claim to be writing?

What gives me the right?

Regardless, why won’t the

words say something against

me? I have put myself in them,

don’t they have part of my soul?

 

When one questions poetry,

one must question oneself

as well. What is poetry?

What am I? For I am poetry,

and poetry is me, and thus

who do I think I am?

 

I am God, dear reader.

I own these words,

I own this page,

I own my heart, and,

if I’m lucky, perhaps

a piece of yours as well.

Reviews

[Rida Sarwar]

nice! Deep thoughts :) poetry is the language of heart that is felt by heart,read by eyes and perceived by mind :)

[Pax]

What is poetry, reader?

I always thought whenever I read poems here in wc, I find it spoke to me within. Like my soul is having a deep conversation, deep down to the bottom well in the water of information.

A friend told me to call a piece of writing poetry, it must have the elements of poetry in it. it must have; rhyme, meter, tone and mode, repetition, imagery, structure and style… and etc… but to me it is still a complex idea, maybe because I had little knowledge on this area, for writing was never really my thing before. I was just an aspiring artist – who paints and draws as a hobby only. Now I write to let out something of a feeling or something that really inspires me or something that greatly bothers my mind. Now it is part of my hobby, it’s part of my life.

In writing, we could learned so much more about ourselves, for who we are because we can be able to reflect on many things around and within us. For me it doesn’t matter if the piece I read has all the elements of poetry in it, the most important thing to me is the feelings that it brought the readers to feel. And I contemplate on how I understand the piece.

This piece, brings many thoughts on how you delivered your message. And I think you did a fine job on it. I think: ‘Poetry breathes life’.