A Short Thesis On Poetry

A Short Thesis On Poetry By Robert Anderson

To understand the poets mind firstly you have to analyse the poets, poetic works. Poems are like the fingerprints of the poet. They tell you what the poet was thinking, what frame of mind he or she was in, what the reason was for writing the specific piece, their passion for the poem at hand and the day and date he or she was going through these emotions. By reading the poets full volume of works you can build up a psychological profile on this artist, giving you a far greater insight into the poets life and mind, goals and ambitions. This is where the poet differs from the writer as poetry is more an expression with a hidden statement as to writing is a statement of expression.

Now this only gives you an insight into one poets mind and not what or where poetry derives from within the poetic mass as a whole, or does it? As you can see from above we have the behaviour of mixed emotions from one day to the next, we have the complexity of the subject and the passion for writing such complexity. We can now tell from this that all relevant poets must have these attributes in order to create a subject. That the poet is not just a writer but a bearer of his or her own inner feelings. We can see that the poet will show you around the inside of his or her, "inner sanctum" willingly, and is willing you to understand the workings of their selves, undressed and exposed. This honesty can only be found within the creative poet as to surmise the thoughts of the writer of an article or book would be misleading. The writer creates the character and subject as where the poet is the subject character creating the picture of his inner self and projecting this
on to you within a two dimensional storyline. Whether the story line being accurate or inaccurate is of no consequence. You now have a poem attaining to synchronize with love, life, laughter or death, a kaleidoscope of emotion from which you can relate to at some form. You have now entered into the realm of the poet becoming part of the poem and sharing your emotions of love, life, death, laughter or hate as you drift side by side, embracing the moment, and reliving a memory of your past or present tense A series of sounds has now taking over as the beat of verses lead you steadily through the stanzas.

Sound or "temple beat" as I like to call it, "sound metre" being the actual term is an integral part of the modern poet. Most modern poets would not agree with this as music has changed and showing no set rules in whether normal or chromatic scale. This been proven time and time again within our modern day jazz scene. For hundreds of years, poetic form has been defined by its cadence, its sing-song rhythms, and its sound effects. For this day and age a welcome belief although un-contemporary to what many readers of contemporary poetry believe. They believe that free verse is not mostly a random display of words and phrases; this couldn't be any further from the truth.

While it can be said ,free verse poetry does not subscribe to the set meters and forms that defined earlier forms of verse, it can only be fair to say that it has to co-inside to deal with these elements. Now if the form of a poem must rely on the aspects of the visual and aural elements of a set piece. Then the contemporary poet has now given himself a more complex assignment as he seeks to shape the poem. He has substituted the rhythmic value and sound for creative achievement. On the surface this may seem to be feasible as it gives the poet more scope, allowing him or her more choices to add more or less words to the page. But what for the reader that has lost the rhythm tic value of the poem and is now reading the piece as a story?. Have we not then lost the concept of poetry and simply turned to writing in a condensed article form?. T. S. Eliot said in his essay," The Music Of Poetry" in 1942 that, "no verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job".
Although this was written over 60 years ago, it still hold true in it's terminology today.

In the early 20th century we saw a change that would forever change our views on poetic form. Now when dealing with the aural aspect of the poem two words will most certainly come up being sound and meter. These two words can easily be mistaken or misunderstood under the many different aspects and definitions of both words. But in poetry the aural is the personification of the word, where the meter is the tempo or beat. Used together they make up the language and flow of the poem

Meter: 2 1 1 2 1
Aural: Mary had a little Lamb
1 1 1 1 1 1
Her fleece was white as snow
1 3 1 2 1
And everywhere that Mary went
1 1 1 1 1 1
That lamb was sure to go

Now we have this out of the way, all we need is a style that suits us. Again this can be a complex subject, if you are not too sure yourself. Try writing a poem using the fundamental rudiments shown above. When finished, sit back and study your piece, taking into account your wording and prose, is it contemporary or modernism?. Whichever it is you will now wish to dress your poem with a characteristic presence of it's own. This can be done by choosing a, "font" style of writing whether this being, Times New Roman, "modern" or Victorian for the more "contemporary" piece. Now you have created the perfect poem in theory, but only practice makes perfect

c Robert Anderson 2009