A Treatise On Poetry For Beginners

ATreatise
onPoetry
forBeginners
by
Dr A.V. Koshy

A TREATISE ON POETRY FOR BEGINNERS DR A.V. KOSHY
2 3
Copyright © 2012 Dr A.V. Koshy
All rights reserved.
ISBN-10: 1463797192
ISBN-13: 978-1463797195
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Some General Thoughts on Poetry
Two asides
Mnemonics
Rhyme
From Rhyme to Rhyme Schemes
Sound and Imagery 1
Sound and Imagery 2
Sound and Imagery 3
Figurative Language
Form and Structure
Form and Voice
Voice and Style
Back to Poetry
Poetry today, & on FB
Addendum

4 5
Foreword
This little book wrote itself. I typed it straight into my fb wall
posts, hence the dates, days and times given, and it came largely
out of a life-long love and fascination for and addiction to poetry
and last year’s teaching.
Hope every reader enjoys reading it as much as I loved
writing it. The aim is to amuse, entertain, delight, instruct,
educate and hopefully provoke good poetry reading and writing
habits.
Acknowledgements
Dedicated to my Dad, the best of men in my opinion.
Thanks are in order to James Joyce - fb name - (K.V.K.
Murthy), first and foremost, for inspiring me, Michele Baron
in advance for helping, and my six faithful readers who kept me
going namely Dr Madhumita Ghosh, Reena Prasad, Zeenath
Ibrahim, Rukhaya MK, Gopali Ghosh and Payal Pasha. Thanks
also to Shyama Edtl (fb name), Bindu Nair Varma, Panjami
Anand, Khushrav J Writer, Sangeeta Suneja, Oindrila Ghosh,
Dr Sayantan Gupta, Prathap Kamath, Ravi Shanker, Vasudev
Murthy, Nancygail Katzin- Nystrom, Chris Glover,Yagni
Brat, Gary Robinson, Bharat Ravikumar, Mritunjoy Medhi,
Jagdish Keshav and Mary Jane (fb name) for love, support and
encouragement. Thanks, last but not least, to Rehmat Jamal who
promised to come all the way to KSA to kick my butt if I don’t
bring this out in book form, to Prodipta Banerjee (fb name) for
her constantly helpful or critical giggles and to Bina Biswas for
everything...not only clicking like on some ‘parts’ of the treatise,
but also - especially -for believing in me and wanting the book
to “see the light”, even before reading it. :) Finally, thanks

6 7
Gorakhnath Gangane - for putting up with my unique brand of
insanity. :)
I thank my readers Pratapaditya N Deb, Erronius
Nomenclature, Harish Srinivasan, Harish Bhatia, Gargi Dutta
Kundu, Gerda Casier, Taseer Gujral, Alhassan Albin Korem
Jacob, Priyanka Dey and Susma Sharma Gurumayum. Thanks
to Mahesh Dattani, Archna Pant, Anamika Silwal, Pravin Lama,
Angel Meredith, Sudam Panigrahi, Yaash Gaur, Yaseeen Anwer
and Poulome Mitra Shaw for always being an encouragement.
Thanks to Anu, Reu, Joe, Abi, Mol, all my beloved nieces and
nephews, Chachan, Chris and all the others in the family for
everything. I wish to mention Atindriyo Chakraborty, Binodan
Sharma and Sumeet Panigrahi for giving me some hope regarding
the younger generation of Indian poets. I also thank Anilkumar
Paypappilly Vijayan, Sudeesh Kalashakkaran, Mohandas
C.B., Sreepriya Warrier and Shamna Narayanan for various
philosophical, psychological, literary and critical theory inputs,
keeping me abreast of latest developments in the field.
Note: The book is not a-s-exciting as the posts were, because
the best part was the “dialogues/ fights/conversations” we had
underneath or around each post! (puns intended.)
Somegeneralthoughts
onpoetry
Posted 2012 Monday, June 18, 8.17, 8.25, 8.53, 9.42, 9.59
and 10.30 pm
1. The word poetry has, broadly speaking, two meanings.
One is the meaning given to it in a wider framework, in which
it is possible to speak of everything as poetry and of the poetry
of - and in - everything. This is the meaning a few students - not
all - in a creative writing class sometimes make use of to justify
slipshod writing. Although it is pleasant to speak of ‘poetry in
motion’, the poetry of football, the poetry in and of moonlight
and the poetry the cosmos is, after a while it palls on me and I
prefer to speak of poetry in the narrower literary sense or meaning
of the word.
2. Frankly speaking, I do not want to consider or equate
the poet with the Aristotelian maker or creator - a demigod -
because it seems too egotistic a trip. It also leads to bringing in
Tolkien, in the modern context, with his idea of a subcreator
and the epic poem or as in his case the epic prose narrative, and

8 9
personally speaking, I wish that all these old forms were once
for all dead simply because I see people still foolhardily trying
them out and trying to read their mostly botched attempts is
extremely painful to my frayed, aging literary sensibility! I prefer
to just cop out. :)
3. Having read Aristotle, Longinus, Horace, bits and pieces
of Jakobson, Sidney, Dryden, not to mention Pope, Poe, Eliot
and various others, including bits and pieces of Bloom - why leave
out Sanskrit and Dravidian aesthetics? - I came to the conclusion
that reading metapoetic criticism wasn’t always helpful, for one
like I. Why? Truth to tell, while I remember poems I do not
remember prose. I was enthralled by “Sound and Sense” by Pope
and “Ars Poetica” by MacLeish but apart from the titles nothing
much remains in my head of the great works of criticism except
for the relevant concepts and ideas, which is still quite a lot,
contradictorily. Which brings me to the first thing about poetry
that makes it matter to me - its felicity in sound or phrase or
image that makes at least a part of it stick in my rapidly- losing-
all - of- its- memory- of- a- mind.
4. While one hit wonders may be possible in pop music, I
do not know if it is an achievable feat in the world of poetry. A
poet writes and over time what he writes is considered to be or
becomes known as Poetry, even if only one of his many poems
happens to be remembered after he dies. Example: “Hound
of Heaven” by Francis Thompson. It is an art he cultivates
assiduously, a passion he thrives on by practice; the ones who died
young like Ernest Dowson or Keats or Keith Douglas only go to
prove the rule that there is no exception among poets... I may be
wrong but so infinitesimal will be my error that I can very well
easily discount it, or so I feel.
Why I think a poet needs a body of work to show is because
he obviously cannot exhibit all the aspects of excellent writing
related to poesie/poetics in a single poem.
5. You may argue that I am wrong by quoting to me the
example of the epic poem or the long poem, but in today’s
context I think it is better to let one’s work add up to epic
proportions the way a musician like Bob Dylan has let his
work grow, becoming gigantic when magnified by others in
elucidation and interpretation. I agree that even today there
are plenty of young writers and poets who keep on writing
and have a body of work to show others but when it comes
to matters of the craft and a sober judgment of themselves as
poets, due to the absence of mature critics who will deal with
their work unsparingly, they do not manage to make much
progress. I do not plan to take on this thankless task - the
burnt hand teaches best - but I do think of keeping on writing
these brief notes in the hope that one or two get illuminated or
benefits from them, both regarding expanding their horizons
of reading good poetry and re: the many endlessly different
and enchanting things that can be tried out in poetry, making
it an addiction to those really hooked on it. I would like to
start with just three examples. John Cage wrote recipe poems.
He also wrote mesostics, where the alphabet in the middle
of each line aligns with the one below to finally form a word
he wanted! Samuel Beckett wrote the shortest play on earth

10 11
with only stage directions/description and no dialogue called
“Breath” on (the back of) a postcard. A+ to both of them for
creativity. Borges wrote excellent tankas. And Auden, no one
could beat Auden at this game regarding forms to try out and
the ease with which he could try them out, as witnessed to by
his oratorio and libretto!
Twoasides
6. An Aside: It may be a pity that I have to write in
fragments, like this. Or that I write poems on FB and leave them
lying around to be decimated by time or stolen. But it has its plus
points.
Though people don’t realize it, it is a new challenge, with its
own limits and potential and hence fascinating. An FB poem or a
poem on FB is even more orphaned and illegal/illegitimate than
its predecessors. It competes with vicious opponents. It has no or
very limited shelf-life or any other kind of a life. :) To move in the
midst of this total flux and temporality, realizing it and daring to
write on in this space itself, despite the desperation that could be
caused by this realization of its practical non-existence, is itself
something exacting and exciting.
Tuesday, June 19, 8.15 am
7. Aside 2: Flaunting one’s reading may get one the name
of a scholar. But I have met so many fake ones that I want to
disavow all claims to be one. Having a poor memory as one gets
older doesn’t help. I also eschew writing in literary theory or
criticism mode, and am averse to using the language of specialists
and of jargon, the kind found in sociology research papers,

12 13
psychology etc. I don’t mind using philosophical terms where
and when necessary, but only if and when needed. I also do not
believe in quoting much or foot-noting, end-noting etc., having
my own things to say and knowing how to say them. I do want to
say that having read countless books and poems and on poetry I
have learned a lot about poetry and want to share it. This is not at
the expense of being a poet. The two activities go hand in hand.
I would prefer it written for me as an epitaph that he knew about
poetry and wrote good poetry rather than just the latter one.
In writing prose I stick to simplicity of expression, clarity and
communication as guidelines, mainly.
Tuesday June 19, 10.03 am
Mnemonics
8. Starting with what people consider small things in the
realm of poesie, one needs to talk of rhyme, punctuation, spelling
and grammar. One calls the latter three the nuts and bolts, the
mechanics, of writing in any language. The arrival of Englishes,
registers, dialects, subject specific jargon centred variations, chat,
email and sms does not free one from the prerequisite of using
some kind of grammar, spelling, punctuation etc. If these are
not used it leads to what is commonly known as ambiguity and
to very funny situations in which poetry that is supposed to
be pathetic becomes bathetic and that supposed to be bathetic
becomes pathetic etc. As for rhyme, it is a much misunderstood
adjunct or ornament of poetry - rhyme is what made students
of the past remember such huge numbers of verses, of staggering
proportions, in the oral tradition or even in the times of the
scribes and the copying of manuscripts. If not the mnemonics of
rhyme it is the use of a technique like parallelism and the idea of
the unit, usually the couplet, with its tight binding of sound that
enables remembrance with repetition -anaphora or epanaphora -
and alliteration (consonance or assonance) that aids the learning-
by- heart process.

14 15
9. The difference between what I write here and what others
have written earlier on the subject is simple - I use my own vast,
or so I think, reading and will cull examples only from the same.
By reading, I simply mean anything that I have read and the drift
is sometimes not canonical, cannot be, simply because I also deal
a little bit with new topics in terms of language use and not much
study has been done on them yet.
Please do note that I am not going to deal with poetry
writing in any other tongue than English, mainly.
Let me start with my idea that something written must be
memorable. Here is an example of Hebrew parallelism in the
English Bible, the old King James version of it, which to me is the
best one to come out so far, even today.
In the book of Proverbs we find a simile for wisdom:
“Wisdom is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.”
Two kinds of parallelism work here, one in comparison and
the other in contrast. The result, with its emphasis on preciosity
(rare metals) and indispensability (food), is pleasing to the inner
eye and ear, making use of a figure of speech - the simile -, and
has a small but neatly rigorous structure and form that somehow
refused to leave my mind, ever after I read it.
Tuesday June 19. 11.35 and 50 am
10. Continuing on the track of memorable lines, couplets
or tercets primarily, a method vaguely reminiscent of Arnold’s
“touchstone method” unwittingly, I would also like to quote,
contrary to my earlier resolve, something famous from
Chandalabhikshukhi, meaning the Chandala beggar or asker of
alms, a poem by Kumaran Asan, the greatest poet of Kerala so far,
in my humble opinion. I can’t help it, it is too appropriate in this
context not to quote.
Allalenthu kathayithu kashtame! Allalaalangu jathi
marannitho?
Neejanarithan kayyaljalamvangi yajamikkumo
chollezhumaaryanmaar?
The alliteration, the rhythm, the form of the couplet, the
meaning, the tone and the simplicity of expression make these
climactic lines (where the woman at the well - an archetypal
Eastern figure that receives salvation from but also in a way offers
salvation to saviours by recognizing them in a world that cannot!
- is wondering how the bhikshu can dare to as well as stoop to ask
for/receive a drink of water from her) unforgettable/memorable.
It may convey something even to those who don’t know
Malayalam, I feel, in the transliteration, because of the alliteration
and the brevity, at least partly.
I would also like to quote from Dante and Pope. To begin
with, Dante from the famous Paolo-Francesca scene.

16 17
“One day, to pass the time away, we read of Lancelot -
how love had overcome him.
We were alone, and we suspected nothing.
And time and time again that reading led our eyes to meet,
and made our faces pale,
and yet one point alone defeated us.
When we had read how the desired smile was kissed
by one who was so true a lover,
this one, who never shall be parted from me,
while all his body trembled, kissed my mouth.
A Gallehault indeed, that book and he who wrote it, too;
that day we read no more.”
And while one spirit said these words to me,
the other wept, so that— because of pity—
I fainted, as if I had met my death.
And then I fell as a dead body falls.
- Dante, Inferno V.82-142 translated by Allen Mandelbaum
It is exquisite writing like the two quotes found in the Bible
and Kumaran Asan - even in translation - and one can only
marvel at Dante’s “sweet new style.” This is what we speak of as
poetry blended or mixed or composed perfectly; image, sound,
meaning and emotion/bhava all tempered and kept in admirable
restraint and yet capable of creating/evoking in the reader the
appropriate emotion/rasa.
Last, but not least, Alexander Pope in “Rape of the Lock:”
“At every word a reputation dies.”
The use of implicit metaphor carries that one, of course, -
(word for shot and reputation for man/woman or warrior/soldier/
citizen/civilian) but how short and sweetly powerful and in its
own way a bit onomatopoeic the line is in its rapidity!
11. I think the point I want to make - an old one - is,
although poetry nowadays is becoming more and more blatantly
a visual medium, its roots were in song, music, rhythm, rhyme,
metre/meter, worship, magic - it was a companion to dance or
ritual and rite and has a strong connection to the body. In fact
its aural/audio /auditory/acoustic element, meaning the element
of sound, is as important as its visual one or its mental and
emotional appeal.
Thursday June 21, 9.21 am

18 19
Rhyme
12. It is the best of rhymes and the worst of rhymes - to twist
Dickens - that help make or break a poet’s lines. Rhyme is a topic
that people don’t care much for but fascinates me. A rhyme is
the Fatal Cleopatra for which I sometimes am ready to lose the
whole world or my soul, to misquote the learned Dr Johnson
on Shakespeare. So how many rhymes are there? There are end
rhymes, first. End rhymes are things you use at the end of lines in
poems. Now the really interesting thing here is the syllabic count.
You can rhyme mope with cope, dope and rope, to start with. The
fun here is the SINGLE SYLLABLED END RHYME making
sense
There was a lad who used to mope
They thought he was a retarded dope.
When they finally couldn’t cope
They got together and got him some rope.
Written by yours truly. :D Just now.
To illustrate. Okay, enough boasting.
Now imagine the glee of someone like me when I find I can
extend this little game to TWO, THREE, FOUR AND EVEN
FIVE SYLLABLES!!!!! Five exclamation marks, therefore!
For instance:
A lady I knew had a dimple
on her chin and on her ass, a pimple!
When she back-slided
Her skirt up-rided
And she lost her face, it was ‘zimble’!
See what an interesting limerick I got simply by playing with
‘two syllable’ and ‘three syllable’ end rhymes, not to mention
the form. Of course poetry is never simple. There is always more
going on as with ducks under the surface than on it. Risque
though this sounds it’s very apt. A lot of busy paddling. Notice
how in my first example I use INTERNAL RHYME - “thought/
bought.” I could give more examples of four and five syllabled
rhymes but I don’t have the time! Which brings me to another
kind of rhyme!
There was a lady of Kansas
Who attended all the local dances
When the lady was fed
She upp’d and ‘sed’
In life you gotta take chances!
Now how I rhymed ‘Kansas’ and ‘dances’ is called SLANT
RHYME and fooling around with the spelling is called making
it an EYE RHYME. EYE RHYMES are things whereby words
look alike but sound different. A typical example is ‘put/cut’. The
opposite would be words that look different but sound alike or
almost the same. This is more likely to happen if one in the pair is
a foreign word and we could call them EAR RHYMES if it wasn’t
downright stupid, because all rhymes are EAR RHYMES! :)

A TREATISE ON POETRY FOR BEGINNERS
20
We can have rhymes in the beginning of lines. We can have
them in the middle of lines. We can have one at the end and one
at the beginning of the next line or one at the beginning of the
first line and the other at the end of the second. We can have
them in the second part or fourth part of the line if a line has five
parts and contrast or repeat in the next line. In modernism some
gave up rhyme! I would have them serve some time! What is it if
not the worst of times if one can’t rhyme rhyme with rosemary
and thyme?!
Rhymesters rule!
Rhymesters rock!
Rhyme makes you king and
cock of the walk!
FromRhymeToRhymeSchemes
13. Last time I spoke of rhyme and the inexplicable interest
it holds for me. I did not explain eye rhyme properly or give
examples for four syllable and five syllable rhymes, and I still don’t
feel up to it. So let me skip a little and go on to rhyme schemes.
A couplet of course has an aa or ab rhyme scheme. The fun starts
here again. It is called interlocking.
The cow started to moo
when it slipped on some goo
for example is the aa rhyme scheme, whereas: The cow
started to moo/ when it slipped on some dung - is ab and not a
rhyme scheme unless you add to it another couplet like: A child
started to boo/ and the cow’s bells were then rung. This interlocks
the two couplets with an ab ab rhyme scheme and fills my
childish or child-like poetic heart with more glee.
An example of real mastery in this interlocking business of
rhyme schemes used to create something extremely powerful
is its use by Robert Frost’s in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening.” The poem is famous but maybe for the wrong reasons!
Just joking, but look at this and your eyes will pop out of your
head and you will marvel and maybe assign it a place among the
wonders of the world, maybe as the first one. :)

22 23
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know. - a
His house is in the village though; - a
He will not see me stopping here – b
To watch his woods fill up with snow. –a
My little horse must think it queer - b
To stop without a farmhouse near - b
Between the woods and frozen lake - c
The darkest evening of the year. – b
He gives his harness bells a shake - c
To ask if there is some mistake. - c
The only other sound’s the sweep -d
Of easy wind and downy flake. –c
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. -d
But I have promises to keep, - d
And miles to go before I sleep, -d
And miles to go before I sleep. -d
Now this looks simple but, believe me, it isn’t! To start with
the end rhyme in line three of a stanza and make it the end rhyme
of line one, two and four of the next stanza is no mean feat but
what a thing of beauty and a joy forever it is, when well done!
Such beauty is truth and such truth beauty, indeed. :) Writing
a content driven poem and finding rhymes to match is difficult
enough. If you let the rhymes lead you won’t get the meaning
you want. If you let the content rule the rhymes usually have to
be simple like abab or abba. To pull off the complex interlocking
rhyme scheme he has, and still say what he wants to say, Frost
must have pondered, worked and struggled a lot, I imagine. If it
came easy to him, he was, is and always will be a master.
The thing is it’s so fascinating, his pattern. One could say the
last four lines are a cop out but not really since he has nothing left
to prove and honestly to keep going with one rhyme is sometimes
more difficult than to vary the rhyme for a real poet. His use of
single syllabled end rhymes creates another difficulty. One runs
out of words. (Unless one has happened to read ‘Finnegan’s Wake’
to learn the secret of how to find rhymes, or if they don’t exist to
make them up.) To do that one uses the secret of the Sinbad the
Sailor progression. It goes like this in Joyce’s book. Ainbad the
ailer, Binbad the bailer, Cinbad the cailor, and so on and so forth
till we come to Zinbad the Zailor! Using this gnostic formula I
can rhyme to match the masters any day because I am privy to
this equation that cannot fail. I am purposely being not clear -
obscure, hermetic, esoteric etc., :) - here, because if you get this
bit you will rhyme as well as I. :) Frost solves this difficulty by
repeating - just once. And how beautiful that sounds - “sweep/
deep/keep/sleep/sleep”....
I could go on to tercets, quatrains etc... but won’t because
“brevity is the soul of wit.”
Friday June 22, 8.57 pm

24 25
SoundAndImagery1
14. I want to treat of them together, because for some as yet
un-investigated psychological reason they are connected in my
mind. Maybe the reason will come to me as I write.
Sound is connected to rhythm, music, measure, metre
and beat, of course; but for me it’s connected to alliteration
in the form of assonance, consonance and dissonance as well
as to onomatopoeia, euphony and cacophony. In my view,
Indians needn’t try to write metre but can use a syllabic beat
or a metronomic one to get the required rhythm, if they want
a musical quality to their poems. Hopkins’ sprung rhythm is
actually an interesting one in that it suits Indians more than
the stress/accent and unaccented/unstressed metrical trope
traditionally used by the British, provided we decide for ourselves
where the stresses or accents should fall. I understand I have
become a wee bit technical but hopefully things will become
clearer as I plug/push on, regardless of the reader’s seeming,
possible incomprehensibility of what I’m talking of at this point
in time.
The best way to illustrate things is through a poem:
Masters of sound in English verse are Swinburne, Dowson
and the Pre- Raphaelites.
Here is a poem by Dowson.
Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae
Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was gray:
I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee Cynara! in my fashion.

26 27
A very fine poet’s work, this. Dowson’s famous poem breathes
euphony. As in the case of Frost’s rhyme scheme in “Stopping by
Woods on a Snowy Evening” which I went all lady GAGA over,
this one too makes me feel short of breath like I just saw a lovely
damsel and makes my heart go pitter patter, if you get what I
mean. I know, I’m crazy but there it is. I mean one can even get
goosebumps reading poetry, so some of my friends tell me, so let
me tell you getting the feeling of falling in love while reading a
poem is nothing much, comparatively! I’m not as insane as the
goosebump crowd yet! :D
Why does the poem sound so sweet? Impeccable metre,
rhyme, rhythm, syllabic count, beat, consonantal and assonantal
alliteration - and a soft liquid dulcet tone that is as smooth as
velvet or a lover’s gentle touch, or the rustle of skin against skin or
lips against lips or skin running continuously through the poem
with the help of the consistently skilful use of anaphora and its
variations get it that honeyed sound.
The poem celebrates sadness, a lost love and melancholy but
its silken satiny sound celebrates a delectably debauched erotic
celebration of lovemaking at its best. That is why this poem makes
my heart beat faster. Think of the interjection ah, the synonym
‘yester’- used for last in the first line, the archaisms of yesternight
and betwixt and the repetition of night, twice, and then the
climax, “her lips and mine” - followed by the two sh, sh sounds
in “shadows” and “shed” in the next line and you will get what
I am talking of, the pure sensuousness of this poem that is like
“kisses and wine”! This is what Omar Khayyam may sound like
in Persian, and we have it here in English too. This poem makes
love to women the way men should with its sound throughout.
Faithful with a ‘bang’ to Cynara, after its fashion :)
Monday, June 25 10.58 pm
SoundAndImagery2
15. To recap things I think I’ve said so far, a good poem
automatically cares for or takes care of the mechanics of writing,
meaning the minor things like titling, punctuation, spelling,
capitalization, grammar and syntax. It also uses rhyme or the
lack of it and thus takes care in any of the elements above where
one may be weak or in all of it, ensuring as far as it is humanly
possible that mistakes are not palmed off as experiments and
poetic license. the latter two/too/duo - experiments and poetic
license- are also done in a spirit of knowledgeable, meaningful
thoughtful rebellion and appropriateness, not in ignorance.
Now to come back to sound and imagery.
A good example of how dissonance and cacophony can also
work in or as a poem is found in Browning’s lines “ Irks care the
crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?” in “Rabbi
ben Ezra”. Some have told me that these are among the worst
lines ever written but they are pretty onomatopoeic - meaning
they simulate in their sound the feeling of having your mouth full
of or “crammed” with food - with their consonant clusters, and
to me the cacophony and dissonance helps and doesn’t hinder
here. This reminds me of something funny. Critics are often
pompous windbags in that they find the meaning of what is being

28 29
said in the lines in the sound at places where it obviously isn’t
there at all. The most ridiculous examples are often when animal
poems are read out aloud. They will hear the elephant in a poem
on an elephant and even write about it copiously. Now whom
am I to say they can’t. I don’t. But I just want to point out that
the onomatopoeia might not have been in the mind of the poet
at all and the proof offered isn’t textually conclusive, usually. In
other words there is no shred of evidence and it’s just a far-fetched
conclusion! This makes the dead poet turn over in his grave and
the lives of many students miserable, and critics and teachers
should be shot, drawn and quartered for such crimes of imposing
their far-fetched flights of interpretative fancy on the former
twain, if they do it.
Imagery is an allied kettle of fish.
The six kinds are:
1. visual - related to sight, insight, foresight, hindsight etc.
2. auditory - related to hearing and listening.
3. kinetic - related to movement.
4. olfactory -related to smell.
5. gustatory - related to taste.
6. tactile - related to touch.
SoundAndImagery3
16. The trinity is sound and imagery and meaning with
figurative language coming in as the glue. I mean something
like this. Let’s imagine the lonely poet going out on a stroll. This
time I shall consciously try to abstain from sensual and sexual
imagery, the erotic kind, the kind that interests me, and talk of
the romantic imagination people have of poets and what it means
to be one. So the poet goes on a stroll and hears the breeze. S/he
sees a tree. S/he sees some flowers. S/he smells the flowers. They
smell like Denim, or Axe or like Chanel. S/he tastes the fruit and
s/he touches the bark of the tree. S/he also sees the leaves moving
in the breeze. The sky is moving, as is s/he! LoL. Gets a peculiar
feeling in the pit of her/his stomach, gut, heart, wherever, that is
going to result in her/his writing some of this or it coming out
somehow in bits and pieces in his/her writing in some way or the
other.
Now we come outward and inward in both sound and
imagery.
The outward describes, it tells.
The inward shows.
The outward uses adjectives, usually, for instance.
This is where the wheat is sorted out from the chaff, even
as it is in other matters like figurative language, form, structure,
content, layers, meanings, themes etc. Just as one goes for the
meat of a poem, a poem’s meatiness is dependent on the poet’s
deeper ability displayed in his adroit handling of these elements.

30 31
Visual and kinetic image - “a crowd, a host of golden
daffodils, ten thousand...nodding their heads in sprightly dance”
(Wordsworth/ I wandered lonely as a cloud.)
Musical, rhythmic, auditory and onomatopoeic image
- “Faster than fairies, faster than witches, hedges and houses,
bridges and ditches, and charging along like troops in a battle. all
through the meadows the horses and cattle” (R.L.Stevenson/From
a Railway Carriage)
“Can you hear my train a-coming?” in those lines? I hope
you can ‘cos I sure do.
The best examples are usually of sight and sound and
movement. This is because human beings give more importance
to these three - senses? - than the other five. Senses like
proprioreception and the vestibular sense remain unexplored
as yet in poetry except maybe, though I doubt it, in hypertext.
Evoking ESP or the world of the spiritual/mystic or the supra
normal or paranormal, of auras, has been explored by some -
one or two- mystic poets, like Blake. It is done better by music,
I feel, with no words involved or by an abstract and perfect
language like maths or the language of chess or abstract painting.
Great poetry is thus automatically connected to music, maths,
linguistics, other varieties of literature, the visual arts, and all
branches of knowledge, especially humanities, the arts, life, the
referent world, time, space, the universe and the ToE (Theory of
Everything).
But let me ground my flight to a simpler level first. A
baby’s skin is soft. A flower smells unique. A kiss tastes special.
A ride on a boat has a peculiar- to- itself motion never to be
replicated. How am I, poet, not robot, to write them? If one
beings to ponder the history of poetry and compare it with
that of developments that occurred in the history of Occidental
painting, in the light of these/such and other questions one may
understand a poem like “Voyelles” by Rimbaud better.
The point in the poem is not the arbitrariness and
subjectivity of the colours assigned to the vowels by Rimbaud in
his synaesthesia but his daring attempt to arrive at a poetry that
arose, strangely enough, through “the systematic derangement of
the senses,” if his claim is to be believed, that would try to show
all the senses in its fluidity and not just the usual few.
Vowels
A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels,
I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:
A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies
which buzz around cruel smells,
Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley;
I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips
in anger or in the raptures of penitence;
U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,
the peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the
furrows
which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;

32 33
O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,
silences crossed by [Worlds and by Angels]:
–O the Omega! the violet ray of [His] Eyes!
Taken from
“http://www.doctorhugo.org/synaesthesia/rimbaud.html”
The jacket of flies - is black. The jacket is velvet to the touch!
Flies buzz. Smells are cruel. Cow parsley shivers. Seas shudder.
The Trumpet is full of strange PIERCING sounds. Almost
complete except for the adjective connected to smell. But at least
there is a nod to it.
A new world of poetry.
Benison of sensuality.
Showing.
“Does it click? If it doesn’t click take clicker from pocket and
click it” - John Cage
Tuesday June 26, 2.35 pm
FigurativeLanguage
17. Just as the arrival of print media signaled a shift in poetry
from the auditory to the visual, from music to image, from
calligraphy to font and from few too many readers, due to the
concept of aesthetic duplication that Walter Benjamin talks of
being introduced, it also signaled a shift to the meta - in terms of
interpretation, analysis, criticism and literary theory whereby the
arrival of linguistics, socio-linguistics, new criticism, formalism
and structuralism made poetry not a mystery with anything
magical about it, foregrounding instead the text and the readers.
As a result of critics like the close- reading variety in England
arriving on the scene poetic tropes like metaphysical conceit,
enjambment, caesura, ambiguity and irony were discussed ably
by scholars like William Empson. Gradually it was seen by these
analysts that poetry was a particular kind of language - (Pound:
“language charged to the uttermost with meaning”) that primarily
highlighted figurative speech. The commonly used ones were
noted to be simile, metaphor and metonymy, the third being the
kingpin especially studied by Roman Jakobson and so affirmed or
declared.
Figurative language is one of the deadliest weapons and best
tools in the hands of a poet. Yesterday I had said that sound,

34 35
imagery and meaning - by meaning I mean themes and the
possibility for layers of plurisignification - were the three powerful
things a poem should have. This is a biased view. Figurative
language, structure and form are as important. The last or seventh
thing that matters is, of course, the bringing it all together into an
awesome whole or the absence of a whole, but more about that
later.
It is worth my while to look at the power unleashed by
figurative language in a short example. Hope it is worth yours
too.
There is no Frigate like a Book (1286)
BY EMILY DICKINSON
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human Soul –
Two similes and one metaphor. Everyone knows that. But
the hidden dynamite is the metonym in line six.
Simile one - book as frigate. One thinks of pleasure cruises,
pirates and their stolen treasure bearing ships, and colonialism’s
sea borne plunder and people carrying ships.
Simile two - A page of poetry as a courser or horse - what
could be more evocative?
*A courser is a swift and strong horse, frequently used during
the Middle Ages as a warhorse.
Metaphor one - The chariot as the body and as book.
We see the romantic side of Dickinson in these three figures
of speech - coupled with a surprising (?) love of adventure.
Metonym 1- “Toll” - But what makes the poem subtle and
great is the deadly subversive element in it brought in against
rulers and kingdoms and governments and politics by her use of
the metonym “Toll.” The whole poem is a study in how to carry
on a gender fight surreptitiously but this is a masterstroke, as
we expect travelling on roads to be free as God willed or made
or wanted it to be. But man has been fettered, not by God but
other men of POWER so that only “books” or in today’s world
audio cds/movies/games etc., offer free or affordable roads and
adventurous journeys that are not time or space bound, and can
be sea voyages or quests for us anymore. Yet these powerful men

36 37
who hinder us from travelling freely on land and sea cannot
imprison the human soul in its fragile chariot of the body or in
the preserved fragile, compressed (“frugal”) form of the book.
This is the power of figurative speech, it opens up a text to
multiple and beautiful interpretations and levels and layers of
meanings/themes. It often works in tandem with imagery, and
can be made to work in tandem with sound too if one knows
how to do it, as she does. This is really “two inches of ivory”
made perfect. I also need to devote a single sentence on good old
Emily’s liberal use of capitals and dashes in her punctuation -
showing again a militancy that is worth noting. :)
So there it is, one more possible tool for you to use in
making your poems better. Figurative language, figures of speech
or figurative speech, whatever you want to call it!
Wednesday June 27, 11 am
FormAndStructure
18. While writing free of form and in free verse is attractive
to the novice who is usually compounded of ignorance and
rebellion, partly out of fear of non- acceptance, rejection and
censure; the more one reads and learns to appreciate great poetry
the more one is attracted to form and structure. So it seems to
me. A very great poet may make his own form and structure or
one may do it after a long stint but the truth is there are so many
readymade templates out there already to play around with that
I for one don’t feel so impressed with the free of form and free
of structure approach unless I am convinced it is being done by
a poet who already does know how to write in traditional forms
and has attempted them successfully.
But wait - what does one mean by form? The sonnet, for
instance, is a form. I echo Beckett here gleefully - “what is
needed is some Malherbe of free verse to put it out of action for
another ten thousand years.” But Beckett wrote sonnets and then
abandoned them. It isn’t surprising that the last major use of the
sonnet after Hopkins and Berryman came from India, from none
other than Vikram Seth! Other forms are elegies, threnes, odes,
epics, lyrics, ballads, haikus, tankas, senryus, cinquains, limericks,
nursery rhymes, villanelles, acrostics, kennings etc. My personal

38 39
favourite is the villanelle, a liking which came about after reading
one by DylanThomas.
“Dylan Thomas was a funny-looking chap, but chicks dug
him.
Do not go gentle into that good night [A Villanelle]
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Dylan Thomas (1951 or 1952)
A Villanelle is a 19-line poem consisting of five tercets and a
final quatrain on two rhymes, with the first and third lines of the
first tercet repeated alternately as a refrain closing the succeeding
stanzas and joined as the final couplet of the quatrain. The word is
French, derived from Italian villanella, the feminine of villanello,
rustic; from villano, peasant; from Vulgar Latin villanus; from
Latin villa, a country house.”
The entire section is taken from: http://www.liebreich.com/
LDC/HTML/Various/Thomas.html”
It looks easy and has that interlocked rhyme scheme I love
but writing one is a sure test of one’s mastery of language.
And structure- what is structure? A question that drives
people mad because no one really structures their poems
anymore. Some simple structures are - linear, circular, cyclical,
interleaved etc...
Take this poem by Beckett that uses a beautiful structure or
pattern familiar to us from childhood if we have learned round-
songs like the German “Abendstille Uberall.”

40 41
Roundelay*
on all that strand
at end of day
steps sole sound
long sole sound
until unbidden stay
then no sound
on all that strand
long no sound
until unbidden go
steps sole sound
long sole sound
on all that strand
at end of day
-Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)
(*round song)
This is Minimalism and its structure is - perfect! Beckett’s
round song/poem has a beginning, middle and end, is eternally
recurrent, so cyclical and circular and also interleaved. Sends you
into raptures - or should -that kind of thing!
The structure and form can be overt or implicit but having
them makes the poem weightier and the game of poetry worthier,
with less of the slapdash horsing around of a person who may
or may not hit the target and more of refined marksmanship, to
borrow a simile from archery.
Thursday, June 28 3.25 pm

42 43
FormAndVoice
19. To come back briefly to form, of course it cannot be
limited to the external or outer forms of villanelle etc., but is
something deeper, amorphous and pretty much summed up as
the oppositional face to content, meaning, referentiality that
includes allusiveness and inter-textuality etc. For a long while,
during the time of Modernism, form and content were considered
as a Janus-faced entity and sentences like “here form is content
and content form”, and “form is more important than content”
etc., were bandied about without much clarity about what was
being talked of, to such simple folks as I. Questions like can the
two be split neatly like an apple, or even like an orange, used
to bother me. But after reading two kinds of critics or reactions
to poetry, one that dealt only or mainly with semiotics and
hermeneutics or meaning and another that dealt only with what
others mistakenly call technical aspects but I know enough about
now to call formal(istic) and structural(ist) aspects, I began to
understand the difference. To cut a long story short, the plethora
of elements that make up poetry, knowingly or unknowingly,
intentionally or unintentionally, whether acceptable to those who
want it to be so or don’t (want it to be so), are made up mainly of
two kinds. They are meaning-centred or oriented ones, the kind
that makes fb readers read a poem and comment in the comments
section sometimes rudely, nastily or pretty meaninglessly (!),
asking how it is related to the life of the poet or form-oriented
or centred concerns which mayhap lead to the meaningless
comments like “beautiful!”, “superb!”,” lovely!”, “great!” etc.,
behind which is presumably, often, only the commentator’s desire
to convey the fact that what has moved him or her is not just the
meaning but also the formal elements of the “composition” of the
poem, the final composition the poem is.
I think the poems that I have quoted in this series of notes
that make up my treatise have this balance between the two -
namely form and content - or the inseparableness and entwining/
entanglement needed.
Coming to tone, a poem has tones both musical and as in
painting - its colours - but it may or should have a primary tone,
or shade of meaning, especially if it is a short poem. That is what
I mean by tone. Look at this haiku by Basho, for instance.
Morning and evening
Someone waits at Matsushima!
One-sided love.
The environment, situation, ambience, milieu, atmosphere,
mood and tone are so clear. It is full of longing, desire and
unrequited love.
A poet uses many tones over the entire gamut of his work.
A Voice is different. I capitalized the v on purpose. After
reading a hundred or thousand Eliot feel-alike poems and sound-
alike and look-alike poems by aspirants to his throne I began to
understand that one could hate Eliot if he wanted to but he had

44 45
what no other poet had - a Voice that was not only unmistakable
but seemingly easy to imitate! Seemingly easy! But no one can
catch that strange Voice, so unique that it haunts every new poet
a hundred years after ‘Prufrock’ and destroys many permanently.
An example?
T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets
From Little Gidding
Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year.
Between melting and freezing The soul’s sap quivers.
There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing.
This is the spring time
But not in time’s covenant.
Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?
This kind of stuff has been written by so many that it palls,
but the weird thing for me is that after reading it, many poets
before Eliot and after sound like Eliot to me; even great ones (!)
sound to me Eliotesque!
He is the single, most influential, most murderous poet
I have ever come across; but when I want to speak of Voice I
cannot think of an apter choice.
Thursday, June 28, 8.34 pm

46 47
VoiceAndStyle
20. First off, this time around, I would like to talk of
criticism and critics. Critics are just as great as poets and as
creative as poets the whole world knows it except for people on
fb. The good ones are, at least. They often handle language better
than poets do. They love poetry, that is why they read it and talk
of it. They do not approach poetry, unlike what people think,
with a biased view. That may or may not have been true in the
old days. Nowadays, critics are much better equipped to approach
poetry with a charming and judicious mix of subjectivity and
objectivity due to the many developments in critical theory
and other allied disciplines. As a critic one reads and reads and
develops one’s taste and judgment and discernment, which goes
on side by side with the practice of creativity and one’s own
writing, so the critic is not one who talks into the air but one who
is himself aware of the pains and rigours of writing, being very
often a practitioner of the art he criticizes so robustly. When one
puts up one’s work up on a public forum like a blog or fb, that is
“publishing” it. It is from then on open to criticism of all kinds,
appreciative or a critique or of a variety that offers suggestions etc.
There is no point in objecting to being critiqued after something
is “published,” that too by oneself, without prior review by others.
It is literary criticism that finds new poets, makes poets, builds
poets up, and criticism is not narrow like people think but broad,
knowing very well that in poetry’s heaven there are many, many
mansions. But criticism is also rigorous.
In poetry’s hell or Babel; there are many egotistic poets
talking, or not talking to each other and not understanding each
other because there is no proper foundation laid as to what the
basic principles of poetry are. Unfortunately. However where it
really matters dialogues and conversations between poets and also
the dialogues and conversations between critics and poets and
critics and critics and the other possible combinations, as for
example with artists and scientists and so on and so forth, go on
ceaselessly, enriching both or all concerned.
Having one’s own voice is the precursor to style. Hopkins has
it. Pound has it. Eliot has it. Dylan Thomas has it. R.S. Thomas
has it. One can call it the signature, the brand whereby one knows
this “belonging” belongs to such and such a person and him or
her only. It is very difficult to stamp an impress or a personal
die-mark or watermark or cast or mould on language which is
an abstract medium but some poets do manage. I appreciate it
greatly.
Style is the man, said Bacon, meaning a man’s style tells us
who he is.
Style is the poet, I say.
Meaning also - if you read enough poems by someone
you understand that person’s view of poetry, or his or her view
of its architectonics primarily. It is made up of how he or she
combines or arranges all the things I spoke of till now - and
more - into his/her combination, knowingly and/or unknowingly

48 49
and thereby stands or falls in securing an audience that will give
him or her popularity or credence or immortality. Attention and
popularity seeking, award mongering games played by poets or
cliques to become famous or in the limelight etc., fade away in
the uncertainties of time that ultimately decides “for reasons
unknown” what will survive or won’t. But meanwhile some poets
and critics or poet-critics or critic-poets seek relentlessly for what
is good, better, best, excellent, more excellent, most excellent in
poetry, criticism and literature and even for ‘perfection’ (!) and
this keeps them busily engaged, happy and occupied.
So to return to style - since style is the entire wardrobe of
a lifetime being scrutinized, in my sense of the word, to enjoy a
poet’s style I like reading all or many of his works and seeing how
he puts all the elements under discussion to play and to form his
kind of a whole or absence of a whole and then I appreciate it
with all the extensive and considerable resources at my command.
For instance, I somehow happen to have read every poem written
by TSE and every verse play of his. By going through all his
poetic works in this manner merely out of my love for his style
of writing, and of poetry and of literature, I began to really
appreciate his Style as a poet. He was limited in his ability to be
an omnisicient, omnipotent stylist - a jack of all styles and master
of all - unlike Joyce, as he himself admitted, or even unlike his
mentor Pound but he made up for it by something both did not
have, which was to push his strengths into colossal advantages,
unlike anyone else before or after. His background in philosophy
and knowledge of religions and reading in the masterpieces of
many languages etc., is partly what made this possible. From style
we can move to Ideology and purely from style we can gather that
Eliot was “Anglo Catholic, a royalist and classicist” without his
having to tell us these things as he did in his famous self-defining
statement, whether we agree with these disturbing religious,
political and literary/aesthetic positions or not.
These aren’t so much things he became overnight, but all the
same one can see the drift towards these positions in his style and
work right from the beginning. His subtle opposition to Pound’s
“Make It New” in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”,
his agreement with Pound on not doing what had been done
before and better still, his eventual predictable disillusionment
with Imagism and Vorticism, his reifying the positions he had
taken once on Milton and Whitman etc., all show his ability
to backtrack, be a turncoat, move increasingly towards total
conservatism etc. But my point is they are seen first as tendencies
not in his critical writings but in his poetic style’s fluctuations,
from his moving from prose poem to the meticulous old
fashioned craftsmanship of the classiciist in the later poems like
Little Gidding, in the change in themes from sexual exploration
to religion in his works and in the political statement that is
occidental and Eurocentric that a poem like WASTELAND
is, suggesting his monarchist leanings and the criticism is only
accompaniment, therefore - or defense of his ideologically
drenched poetic style. Yes, Style is indeed the poet, in this case.
And the Poetess! :) Thank you Ga-el-Shamir (fb name), for that
one!
Friday, June 29, 11. 12 am

50 51
BackToPoetry
21. Poetry, its history, the body of international poetry, the
concentric rings of knowledge surrounding it, and an appraisal of
modern trends.
or
On the contexts of poetry, its history, the body of poetry in
weltenliteratur, the concentric rings of knowledge surrounding it
and an appraisal of some modern trends.
In the last post I spoke of, for the first time, the
understanding of style leading to knowledge of the writer’s
ideology - thus entering the world poetry refers to, the real and
imaginary world/s surrounding it.
Poetry is only a pre-text and cannot be understood apart
from its contexts. The contexts are too many but include for the
sake of objectivity knowledge of the author’s bio, the historical
conditions of his time, the state of literature and of poetry in his
time etc., and as for subjectivity, it is good to know one’s own
weaknesses, prejudices and biases as a reader. The contexts can to
some extent be traced out by looking at references, allusions and
inter-textuality but one also needs to work from applying contexts
of one’s own liking to the poem. Thus does one give birth to
primarily mixed or feminist readings or pomo or poco readings of
a work etc.
Knowing the history of poetry and criticism makes its
diligent student humble. To know that when one starts to write
poetry, one is in the ancient and so-called august company of
writers starting from the authors of the Bible, Ved Vyasa, Valmiki,
the authors of the Vedas, Shastras, Sutras and the Upanishads,
Mohammed, Kalidasa and Bhasa, Homer, Virgil, Ovid,
Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Pushkin, Kabir, Rumi, Ghalib,
Thiruvalluvar, Kumaran Asan etc., to name but a few of the really
big guns (and a million other equal or only slightly lesser greats)
leads one to a healthy lack of complacency, if it is all taken in
the right spirit or way. To know, along with this, that even in
the present there are genuinely great writers around you like a
Geoffrey Hill, also helps. Then one will not be a pretender or a
poetaster and try to palm off the fake article as the genuine thing
or refuse to have a sober estimate of oneself. The most difficult
thing for a poet to do is to cultivate distance from his own art.
This is true of any artist - one has to walk a fine line between not
getting discouraged and not thinking too highly of oneself if one
is to progress. If one finds good mentors on the path one can
consider oneself lucky. I have been fortunate enough to find one
or two like Nakulan, and also good peers.
Poetry, like anything else, is only a portal. It leads one to
literature first, then art, history, philosophy, psychology, critical
theory, theory, sociology, all the humanities, the arts and the
sciences and finally, very often, to religion, in India. Some are
enamoured of it, like me, and go on to something rare, which is
to study its present situation in a limited way to try and gauge its
importance, merely for the fun of it.

A TREATISE ON POETRY FOR BEGINNERS
52
I have been on FB for many years now, ever since JS - that
great free subculture of a blogger’s heaven and haven folded
up - and it is exciting to see more or less everyone here writing
and reading poetry again. What is sad is to see is that there are
no critics. The FB world goes on blissfully unaware of the real
world of literature where everything is tested. But at the same
time it may be changing the real world of literature also. The
arrival of publishers like Blurb and Lulu and anthologizers like
Barry Mowles, Yaseen Anwar and Brian Wrixon have given
some new and young poets, many from India, a break. One
can also self-publish on FB and tag hundreds and actually get
read without going through tortuous long-winded channels of
meaningless publications red tape. Vanity publishing has also
come to stay whether people look down on it or not, as has FB
and new players, like the three above mentioned who are doing
an interesting and welcome job. The drawback that traditionalists
fear is that, when everyone publishes and reads, standards will go
to the dogs. Popularity today only means knowing how to use the
medium well to get sales, or votes, or attention, not on whether
what one writes has quality or not.
But the truth is that quality always surfaces.
I know that FB poetry is being keenly read and so are the
anthologies and publications of my three friends. But only if they
are sufficiently good will serious academicians and critics like
me look at them and praise them and they become grist for the
academic mill, intellectual analysis, appearance in text books and
the common man’s - man on the street’s -reading diet and heart
and without reaching these four places, they will die out.
The genuine poet who is not a Buddhist strives for a laurel
by doing his best so that what he has to say which is of relevance
- although what in all his poetry will really matter may or may
not be hidden from him - will be preserved and have its influence
and for that he learns, as Rimbaud who knew what to say learned
the how from Verlaine, (in Final Eclipse at least) or as Ginsberg
learned from Kerouac who learned from Miller and Eliot and
Bunting and the latter Yeats did from Pound; and the laurel he
strives for is that acknowledgement from peers and critics and
theoreticians who are experts in their field because he knows that
his sensitivity and sensibility are then as on target as he thinks or
is sure it is. This certainty - not ego - tempered with good sense,
ultimately benefits mankind through the riches of great poetry to
which he also adds his valuable or invaluable two mites.
Friday, June 29, 7.12 pm/ Saturday June 30, 9.47 am

54 55
PoetryToday,&OnFB
Saturday July 7, 12.36 pm
22. I said the last time that while it is a good thing that
poetry is being written again in abundance - that anthologies
are being written and individual and group collections are being
made and published, and that there seems to be no end to poetry
journals online and in print etc., and fb poetry groups and
initiatives - what is lacking are sensible and mature critics. This
is not really true. What is true is that most poets today seem to
believe that everything they write is automatically perfect and
beyond any criticism of any sort because they are seemingly the
last word in creativity and originality and it gives them a special
right to make mistakes. The real truth is that poetry is no longer a
major or powerful discourse, many write it, but few get published
and the readers are just a handful. Poets don’t make much money
and are not very influential public figures in ninety nine percent
of these cases. Their heyday is over - especially since the Second
World War. However, many poets on fb seem to be blissfully
unaware of the real world, and fight tooth and nail over anything
remotely resembling criticism, which is absurd. They seem to be
totally unaware that poetry is also an art that has its own kind of
exactitude and can be measured, in part, objectively.
This has resulted, for instance, in me slowly not being
able to comment on the poets and poems here except in social
forum format because it is seen as antisocial behaviour and has
resulted even in people like me who may want to try their hand
at criticism who are for improving literature and against its
detriment being threatened, slandered, receiving hate mail etc.
In this context the fb group ‘ The Dreaded Poets Society’ -
Vasudev Murthy’s humorous and brilliant brainchild - is actually
doing a better job at educating its members as to what poetry is
by asking them to consciously write or post only un-poetry, non-
poetry, bad poetry, mediocre poetry, trash, crap etc. The point
here is that most people on fb and elsewhere write bad poetry and
try to pass it off as good and in such a context what may be more
fun and actually produce more interesting stuff is the effort to
write stuff that makes others dread you and your outpourings or
publish bad stuff that you wouldn’t have the courage to otherwise
in that safe zone but at least do it knowingly, whereas now
many are dreaded without their knowing it but think they are
considered highly. I wish I could give examples but can’t for the
obvious reason that these are presently practicing ‘poets’ (!) and
would rend me apart :). Thus The Dreaded Poets Society is doing
poetry a good turn, albeit a wee bit unwillingly.
23. The length, the width, the height, the breadth, the depth,
the highs, the lows, and the shape, size, smell, colour and volume
of poetry.

56 57
The Dreaded Poets Society, of course, has in it only poems
that are mainly absolute trash, whether written consciously or
not, but it points to what poetry is by showing what poetry is not,
i.e.; via negativa.
What is poetry? My aim is not to be prescriptive. I have been
a little descriptive previously but I would like to repeat certain
metaphors like the body of poetry is a kingdom with many
mansions and it extends across all of time, all of space and runs
like a golden thread through all the languages living and dead.
I have been canonical and traditional in naming many of
the great poets but I would like to state now that I am extremely
universal and so the modern and post-modern types, schools or
kinds of poetry also have now to be dealt with briefly, in passing.
I enjoy them as much as I do the traditional kinds and it is here
that my criticism of most poetry written today gets virulent.
A-historicism in the knowledge of poetry leads to difficulty in
meeting standards even in producing good experimental poetry.
I know that a poet will say that I only need to write poetry and
do not need to read other poets or know poetry’s history. While
this is true from his point of view, no idea comes to anyone out of
the blue. Let us take for instance a poet who tries out mouldy old
forms like the sonnet. He or she does so because he or she comes
across it somewhere first. The same with one who abandons old
forms and goes for new ones like the prose poem. But the trouble
starts in both cases with the fact that once you write it you will
be compared with others who have. The one who writes prose
poems will find his compared with Mallarme’s, Baudelaire’s,
Rimbaud’s, Eliot’s prose poem, Tagore’s and those by a host of
others, often to his or her detriment, because the others probably
offer better imagery or figures of speech or even music/rhythm
-yes, prose has its music too -, unless he is a genius or incredibly
able like Hopkins to change form itself by creating his own new
ones like the curtal sonnet, or he is like a Robert Kroetsch whose
poetry shocks the living daylights out of you by its sheer, startling
originality.
In the light of all this, I am almost tempted to consign
poetry to the dead or extinct art category – to the dustbins and
trashcans of the garages of mankind’s history - but refuse to
simply because despite all my bitching about all these things
and grousing about it, poetry and poets still continue to write
on madly and prolifically, like dinosaurs who are not only not
ready to die but try to tell me they are today’s Jurassic Park. Their
survival now seems dependent and possible mainly only on six
things, namely, shocking originality or degeneracy/bias in form or
content, collaboration, networking, interactivity, volume, and size
– meaning that, for instance, when 10,000 Poets get together For
Change as organized by a Michael Rothenberg poetry does matter
temporarily, and so too when many anthologies are made and
brought out or when groups operate, or groups operate not only
singly but together. In other words, poetry is no longer about
individual poets or poems or even readers but about offering in
its overall form an equivalent of the internet where it is the sum
aggregate of its hopefully large number of readers, who matter,
and it is most successful where it allows them to browse poetry
in small chunks and doses as they do wall posts on facebook and
twitter. This is why there has been some small amount of success
in those who pander to the shift in methods of reading by starting
poetry groups, or offering kindle versions of anthologies or etexts

58 59
or design both poetry reading and poetry making apps etc. The
magical mantra of collectivism and the possibility for capitalist
and seemingly democratic, liberalist and humanist contributions;
where the power is in the hands of the consumers and users is
what makes this the recipe for the future. In conclusion let me
say: under these circumstances all I write is a kind of epitaph
which goes in the words of the old adage thus: Poetry is Dead.
Long live Poetry!
To end, against all odds, I make a controversial statement.
No poet is a bad poet and no poem is bad provided it is properly
edited.
I enjoy reading poetry on FB, for different and varied
reasons, including the one that bad poetry makes me laugh, my
conclusion being that none of the poets writing on FB, including
yours truly, are yet great poets – though a few may become
that, some at least posthumously. But each day, when tagged or
otherwise, as I read them they make for very enjoyable reading
and a glorious pastime like playing tennis ball cricket which I
used to love and at their best they show me that I have changed
and I prefer reading them now to reading greats, because the
possibility of commenting and real-time interaction and dialogue
with them singly or in groups makes it somehow more interesting
than reading all those insufferable classics written by dead people,
especially in this brave new technological world!
Signing off, yours truly, happily addicted to FB poetry.
Addendum
24. Some FB trend makers like adding illustrations or pics to
poems and putting poems on pics, but these are ancient ideas and
add nothing new to the world of poetry actually. Unfortunately
some of the people doing it seem to think it’s new. The real
issue is it makes it enter a new art-form altogether, according
to me, not poetry per se as I understand it which is primarily a
purely linguistic phenomenon. It’s one thing to illustrate your
own poem or work with an illustrator and quite another to pull
out a pic and use it. Both processes would have to be judged by
different parameters. To be “seen” and “read/heard” in the new
ways of pic poem, audio poem and video etc., makes it an audio-
visual construct which moves it outside my narrow definition of
poetry, but I want to stick to my narrow definition.
Sunday, July 8, 2012 1.30 pm
25. The river or ocean of poetry flows on, regardless, with
its poems, poets, collections etc. But some truisms hold good
for me. Pound: “Make it new.” Don’t bother to try out or
repeat what others have done before and better than you, again.
“Logopoeia, phanopoeia, melopoeia.” That still works for me
as one of the best definitions of poetry on the whole. “Poetry

60 61
is language charged to the uttermost with meaning.” Still holds
good and makes sense. For oldies it was chant, invocation, mantra
and music, for moderns it was image, for those who came with
the rise of (literary) criticism and theory it is figures of speech/
figurative language but for the common man it is and always will
be about heart, emotion and feeling. And for the genuine poet?
It is about everything poetry is, the happy combination of all its
many elements that make it poetry with all its history and not
something else.
My summing up for myself: Read poetry carefully, even
while enjoying it fully, so that you do not get carried away by
the second rung of poets into a corruption of its highest, widest,
broadest, lengthiest, deepest and lowest potential and possibilities.
Belong to poetry wholly in all its greatness, not to compartments
of it only. Leave that kind of bias to the “lesser read” poets.
Finally, believe only in the entire body of poetry that exists
already that is ‘most excellent’ and try your best to embody and
build on and extend its powerful universe in writing your own
poetry.
Monday June 9, 2012, 9.51 am
TheEnd.
(c) Dr A.V. KOSHY (2012)
Sole copyright belongs to me and me ‘wonly’, no part of this
document in any form etc., may be blah blah blah unless you
want your poetry torn apart unmercifully by me in a never- to-
be- forgotten- by- you- ever- again- way.
#####

62 63
AbouttheAuthor
Dr A.V. Koshy is an established author and writer who is
a poet, critic and artist. He has a doctorate in Samuel Beckett’s
Poems in English from the University of Kerala. He has published
a monograph of essays called Wrighteings: In Media Res and
has several, published research papers to his credit. He has
also published poems in India, UK, America and Canada in
poetry journals, magazines, e-zines and anthologies. He has two
certificates, one in entrepreneurship from the World Bank, and a
diploma in education, partly from the USA, besides his expertise
in teaching English Language and Literature in different premier
institutions and parts of the world like KSA, India and Libya. His
greatest desire is to build a village for people having autism where
all their needs are met and he runs an NGO called Autism for
Help Village Project with his wife for this dream to come true.
He can be contacted at terrestrian@gmail.com
Wrighteings: In Media Res is a book for intellectuals on
theory and an experiment as to whether anyone is left in the
world who can still differentiate between wheat and chaff. Is the
reading worth it? Yes, if you are interested in Psychology, Design
by Development, Art, Politics, Creativity, Creative Writing,
Sexuality, English, Literature, Education, Critical Theory,
History, India past and present, philosophy, intertextuality,
transdisciplinarity and a host of other things. In other words, if
you are interested in eclecticism, serious thought, hermeticism,
esoteric writing, auto-didacticism and hermeneutics, this is the
book for you. Read carefully to get the most out of this enjoyable
but densely written book.
* * * * * *

64 65
AboutthePublisher
Kelly D. Boykin is the founder of Speak Up Publishing, as
well as a published author. Her first book, “Confessions of a Sex
Addict,” tells the story of abuse, addiction, survival, and recovery
from childhood sexual abuse and years of sexual addiction. (The
book was also re-titled “The Death of Innocence” for those too
timid to purchase the original title.) Her second novel, “7000
Miles since September” is due out in the Spring of 2013.
If you’re interested in publishing your unique story, Speak
Up Publishing is the place to go.. Whether it’s non-fiction,
fiction, self-help, poetry, business and entrepreneurship, or
anything in between, Speak Up Publishing has the staff to assist
you. We hire only the most qualified editors, writers, graphic
designers, and proof-readers in the industry, and we’re ready to
help you become a published author. Send your inquiries to:
kellydboykin@gmail.com.
*****

A Treatise On Poetry For Beginners

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

More from Natasha Grant

More from Natasha Grant (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

A Treatise On Poetry For Beginners