#Odetopoetry

I am monarch of all I survey….My right there is none to dispute

From the center all round to the sea….I am lord of the fowl and  the brute

These lines, from the poem “The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk” by Cowper, take me back three decades. To a time when I was in school, to a time when email and sms were unknown, to a time when we read from a book rather than a tablet, to a time when poetry was read, loved & understood.

What is poetry? Such a question would invite varied answers. While many would say it is just a mish-mash of words that rhyme, some would say that a poem is a painting in words. Surely, poetry is like a painting-it is the spontaneous outflow of feelings & emotions. Poetry says so much, with so few words. Just as an artist, with the strokes of his brush guides colours to a painting, a poet by guiding mundane words creates a piece of poetry.

Charles Darwin had said, If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.  There are so many types of poems, so much of food for the soul, that we need to just pick the kind to suit our state of life& our state of mind. When one is enjoying nature: William Wordsworth… And there unfurled before my eyes, a host of golden daffodils. Or if one is in a sombre mood…Robert Frost….But I have promises to keep & miles to go before I sleep & miles to go before I sleep. Or if sleep acts elusive, John Keats….O soft embalmer of the still midnight. I feel enthused everytime I come across Rabindra Tagore’s Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high! I get goose bumps each time I read Tennyson’s “Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death, Rode the six hundred”

Poetry refreshes the soul, poetry inspires, poetry consoles, poetry de-stresses. When we were kids, we all enjoyed poetry. We really enjoyed enacting the lines of a poem. Our eyes, our facial expressions, our hands moved in tandem with the lines of the piece of rhyme we recited. Those poems – Johny Johny yes papa, Twinkle Twinkle little star, are etched in our brains.

I wonder where the joy in poetry has disappeared. When did we stop enjoying the rhyme & rythm, the liquid flow of emotion inherent in poetry? When did we come to this strict prose world where everything that we say is straitjacketed into precise & exact sentences with correct punctuation & grammar.

Lets give ourselves a break. Let us travel to the world of poetry where things are not strictly bounded, where things are not always black or white, where things are not always clear. Poems leave us with questions. Let these questions in our mind lead our curiosity, remind us of life’s limitless possibilities and fill our life with beauty and rhythm.