From Spontaneous Overflow of Powerful Felling to Recollection in Tranquility – The Poetry in Poem

Abstract

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold that no fire can warn, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

– Emily Dickinson

Whatever generates from creativity but devoid of poetry CANNOT stand the trial of time. Poetry is that internal voice in every creative experience that speaks more intensely to provoke one’s imaginative and intense perceptions of oneself, the world, and the interrelationship of the two. It is that element central to human existence; something having unique value to the fully realized life; something that one is better off for having, spiritually impoverished and administratively decadent without. However, these generic values appear to be degenerating in this part of the world. Poetry now belongs to a subculture. It is no longer part of the mainstream of artistic and intellectual life. It has deteriorated to the specific effort of a relatively diminutive and isolated group as poets ‘fade’ into the corridor of the idle or the jobless. So long as these divergence and discontent make themselves but silently felt within a limited (literary) class, the powers of reaction may frequently succeed in suppressing these manifestations. But now that the silent turbulence grows into conscious expression and becomes almost collective as a torrent of poetic voices calling for “our assessment and reassessment” of the poetic experiences, it necessarily affects all phases of human thought and action, and seeks its individual and social expression in the gradual transvaluation of global existing values. This paper has developed from this fundamental questioning seeking to challenge the poetic taxonomy of some compositions with the objective of returning poetry to its original form: deep and grave (often in very simple) words for its unique effect of entertainment and mental and emotional development. Consequently, it is designed to capture and dismember the core of the topic as a factor for rebellious awakening in poetic experimentations embodying the spirit of universal ferment and the longing for poetic function – a cradle of radical thought rousing the indignation of man's conscience for social change.