Mumbling in the Wind

Can you hear the sound of my poem? Will you tell me what you hear? I often find I want to know the answers to those questions. Explaining a poem makes it banal. So I rarely explain mine. And most poets shy away from elucidating theirs. A poem stands by itself, once written, detached from its composer. Like a sunrise on the horizon. Like a flower opening to the morning sun. There to be experienced and savoured. Full of meaning, yet redundant of meaning.

The creator of every work of art, whether a poem, a painting, a piece of melody, or even architecture, has already done with the thing he/she has created. It is then up to the observer, or the reader, to take that work of art from there. Giving it their interpretation, according to their life experiences, or ways of thinking.

I usually like to leave my poems standing alone for the reader to form his/her own impressions. But sometimes I’m curious to know what those impressions are. I feel a deep sense of fulfillment when a response tells me that I have connected, somehow, with my poem. And sometimes I am surprised at the different dimensions given to it, each dimension creating a new facet that I had never thought of. Bringing my poem alive to me again and again.

For, a poem is a living thing. Felt, experienced, lived, breathed. I began writing in this strange way only recently. I wrote my first poem about 10 or 12 years back. And I write only when the mood takes me. I can never force a poem out of me. It either happens, or it doesn’t. Hence, I have not been terribly prolific. And each poem that I write is a precious gift to me from I know not where. And each time I finish writing one, I always wonder if this is the last one. If there ever will be another next one.

All forms of art of course are modes of communication. The artist reaching out to the world outside. Trying to connect. And trying to let the outside world glimpse into his/her inner world. But there is something inexplicably visceral about poetry that no other art form can quite match, I feel. Writing a poem, for me, is a cathartic experience, that I do not experience to quite such a degree of intensity in the other things that I do. I paint too, look at art, listen to music deeply. Though not trained, I do have a good singing voice which I let loose whenever I feel like. All, forms of self-expression, that must find their way out from within me. Through either my experiencing it, or doing it.

But, when I write my poetry, I plummet such depths, it is almost an otherworldly experience. And nothing else can give me quite the same satisfaction as I derive from writing a poem. And yet, strangely, after finishing writing one, and on re-reading it, I’m often surprised at the sense of detachment that I feel towards it. I even often catch myself wondering, “Did I write that?” “Why did I?”

But going beyond myself and my poetry, in one sense through poetry, or any other art form, the human soul tries to become one with its cosmic origins or entity. Trying to set itself free from its corporeal bondage. Trying to overcome and go beyond the limitedness of its immediate being. Striving to find its ultimate destiny. Poetry is the emancipation of imagination. Imagination is the name we give to our facility of entering with fullness into insight, whether our own, or someone else’s.

Poetry does not seek to answer questions, and also makes questions irrelevant. “Poetry is subsequent or indeed precedent to logic ... more simple, sensuous and passionate,” said Milton. Simple, because poetry is non-analytical, the aim of poetry being, if it must have any aim at all, to express the whole tenor or nuance of an experience, not to reduce it to its elements. Sensuous refers to the propinquity of poetic wisdom which leads it to garb itself more naturally in the language of perception rather than deliberation. Or which gives thought itself the directness of the senses. Passion lends the emotional timbre which is inherent to most human self-expression. And which, in poetry, becomes a sustaining force, and a moving power.

Through poetry we transcend existence, wherein Life tries to rule, or constrain us. Or, to confine and define us within the constraints of our existence. In poetry humanity seems to be saying that there is more to mere existence than can be defined or explained. Because human imagination knows no bounds. And what can be imagined, can be experienced. Or lived. Through poetry.

While writing poetry is reward in itself, still, it is rather disheartening to find that hardly anyone reads poetry these days. In today’s mass culture of mass media, with its pre-occupation and obsession with celebrities, political imbroglios, hype, sex, violence and a numbing dumbing down of our movies and TV shows, all of which goes in the name of entertainment, who has the time or the inclination for poetry? When I write my poetry I feel as if I am mumbling in the wind. All alone.

Poetry is sold in a desolate market

Where none come to buy

And in the wither’d field where

The farmer ploughs for bread in vain

(with apologies to William Blake)

-by Rita Putatunda