The Process Poetic

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My last post was a poem. It just came when I needed it the most: my blog, as I realised, was getting more and more prosaic day by day. But then what on earth is poetry? Well, poetry does not come to somebody who wants to understand the process and then churn out his feelings. It definitely comes when the poet does not dare to explain what and why and how of his work. Anyway, every odd is poetry: don't we say every odd is a style? 

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Are poets crazy?

Oftentimes one gets to hear about that. Don’t they think more than they talk, all the time brooding over something inexplicable, something weird? Don’t they talk about matters we all think of but don’t disclose, something trivial and irrelevant? Don’t they chase people to listen to them, understand their arcane and esoteric stuff?

A poet’s wife thinks she is a neglected fellow when her husband loves her poetry with all the passion at his command. Even if he composes one ballad to immortalize his love towards his darling wife, he is misunderstood. As if he had another girl, a muse behind his composition to inspire and express.

A poet’s husband is no better placed. He starves for attention, listening all the time to her high ideas and formatted expressions. One day he finds himself transformed as an object of her wife’s poetic experimentation--a guinea pig in her poetic lab! He cannot be rude and cannot speak his mind out how profoundly he hates her poetic blabbering!

A poet thinks he should transcend the level of banality. He should tell something which is the truth undiscovered, seen and felt by the poet alone. He challenges his detractors, the critics. He is misunderstood by the men on the street.

A poet tries to define indefinable. What is beauty? What is life? What is love? What is time? And so on and so forth. Does he reach the truth ? Arrive at his conclusion? Yes, mostly he does. Like time is something that takes us from event to event; love is something that is volunteered, accepted and returned. Like an economist defining money: Money is what money does.

Poets trace the route to the ultimate. Love leads to life; life leads to struggle; struggle leads to realization; realization leads to the truth; truth leads to blithe; blithe leads to…and blah, blah and blah. Can we reach the beginning of a circle, or its end?

So, are poets actually crazy? One has to be either crazy or a poet to answer that. Or maybe contest that. I cannot admit I’m crazy and the world would need proof to admit me as a poet. So why this blabbering?

Now let me present a poetic sample:

A modern poet is asked to tell something about the poetic process. He gives his profound comparison, which is reproduced below:

Poetry is like nose picking. When you inhale the essence of the world around you it gels in your innermost province and then solidifies. It concentrates, seasons and sticks to you. But then it does not come out so easily. You have to force yourself to give out. It pains, and finally when it comes out you feel great. You look at it again and again and feel its clammy texture between your fingers. You don’t like to discard it even the world criticizes you. So goes my poem “Poetic Pick”:

I picked my nose and then the poetry came out
Out came poetry as I picked my nose.
Nose for picking and poetry for keeping
The world may go to hell the poem is mine.
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By

A N Nanda

Shimla

5-1-2014

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