How has poetry persisted as one of the most timeless literary genres throughout human history? Here, we take a peek at poetry and why it remains such a popular art form as we revisit the Creatinuum podcast episode "Between the Lines and Stanzas: A Brief Discussion on Poetry."
We'd like to believe that every writer, at one point, has dabbled in writing poetry and determined whether or not to keep writing for such an interesting (if not challenging) literary genre—a "to be or not to be" (a poet) situation, if you will. Understandably, poetry is not for everyone; it can be difficult for a writer to imagine speaking to some illusory "muse" as they struggle to choose the right words to write down as well as the best order for those words to be in. That being said, the names of countless poets, such as Pablo Neruda and Robert Frost, have truly stood the test of time and are well-remembered by many avid readers to this day. Despite poetry being such an "economical" style of writing, it is beloved by many, can be consumed and cherished on the spot, and can attract (or even repel) certain kinds of readers depending on their themes and their style.
In a manner of speaking, both prose and poetry have distinct "languages" that their respective writers adopt—what is very familiar for one can be difficult to understand for the other. Imagine a novelist coming to grips with the concept of enjambment or a poet struggling to accept that a single scene can be described by paragraphs' worth of words instead of a few. Nonetheless, both styles of writing are appealing in their own ways; while prose fiction entails portraying the human experience in words, poetry does the same with the "best words in their best form." Multiple layers of meaning can be extracted from a single stanza or even a single line of poetry, whether the poem follows a well-known form or pattern (e.g., sonnets) or it is of the free-verse variety.
Speaking of which, while classical poetry has, more or less, thrived in certain "rule sets" such as meters and rhyme schemes (for example, think of the countless poems of Emily Dickinson), contemporary poetry tends to be free verse. In a way, this has helped greatly, alongside the dawn of the Internet and the subsequent ease of publicizing one's written creations, in making poetry more accessible to many—not just reading it but also writing it. Still, it is fascinating to see how modern poets try to adopt the "old rules" of poetry—imagine everyday lingo being squeezed into the humble iambic pentameter—to create completely unique and mind-boggling poems, infusing multiple meanings into the fewest words that can stun readers and, much later on, have them slap their foreheads in realization and exclaim, "I never thought about that before!"
Poets also have the uncanny ability to evoke, shape, and reshape emotions in their writing, and how they do so depends on the techniques they use to create their poems. For instance, spoken-word poetry extends beyond words on paper; the spoken-word poet stands before a rapt audience and recites their words with captivating gestures and varying intonations, lowering or raising their voices to signify subdued or heightened emotions, respectively. To them, poetry and performance are inseparable, with one medium stacking layers of meaning onto the other and vice versa, and the art of spoken-word poetry has reached such levels of appeal among artists that it has generated an entire community of fans as well as experienced and aspiring poets.
Perhaps one of the best aspects of poetry is how, in its creation, it can offer the writer a sense of catharsis, owing to the freedom of expressing one's emotions with the most fitting words that they can personally think of. What can be a challenging literary genre for some can be a healing outlet for others, especially for people who struggle to communicate their feelings with other forms of art. It also has the power to ascribe sublime emotions to everyday sights and objects, as embodied by countless poets who have written about nature and its multifaceted beauty—the serene as well as the destructive parts of it. All this is to say that poetry is as confounding as it is inspiring, and with the direction that the genre has taken in an era of freely accessible means and information, we hope this means that groundbreaking poetry will abound and be found by many.
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