What Is Poetry?

What Is Poetry?

What Is Poetry? — A Common Man’s Perspective

If someone were to ask me, “What is poetry?”, I would hesitate to answer in a single sentence.

Because poetry is not something that can be confined to one line.

Poetry can be explained through grammar.

It can be examined through literary theories.

Its structure can be understood through poetic devices such as metre, rhythm, alliteration, rhyme and musicality.

But beyond all these, can we ever completely explain that miracle by which a feeling born within a human heart in a single moment is transformed into words?

I do not know.

I have never considered myself a great poet.

I have never studied poetry in an academic or systematic manner.

I have no great literary qualifications or awards to my name.

I am simply someone who has watched life.

I have watched people.

I have experienced relationships.

I have encountered moments of happiness.

I have passed through moments of sorrow.

I have understood some people.

There are others I have failed to understand.

And many times, I have struggled even to understand myself.

Throughout this journey called life, I have simply been searching for words for some of the feelings that arise within me.

In that sense, I consider myself a common man’s poet.

But I have one great blessing.

I have the poet I regard as my spiritual and literary mentor — Kaviyarasar Kannadasan.

When I listen to Kannadasan’s songs, they do not feel like mere songs to me.

They feel as though life itself is speaking.

Love speaks.

Motherhood speaks.

Friendship speaks.

Betrayal speaks.

Philosophy speaks.

Sorrow speaks.

Laughter speaks.

Human weakness speaks.

Human desire speaks.

Above all, the human mind speaks.

That is why Kannadasan is not merely a poet to me.

He is a spiritual teacher who taught me how to read the human heart.

One of the greatest lessons I have learned from him is this:

Poetry is not merely the decoration of words; it is giving a voice to the emotions of life.

Poetry Is an Act of Liberation

To me, poetry is first and foremost an act of liberation.

How many thoughts enter and leave our minds every day!

Some thoughts we express.

Some we keep locked within ourselves because we cannot say them.

Some emotions cannot find words at all.

Some pain we hesitate to share with others.

Some happiness is too great for words to contain.

Some memories return when we are alone and disturb the quietness within us.

Some questions travel with us for years without ever receiving an answer.

And then, a door opens for all those suppressed emotions.

That door is poetry.

Poetry gives wings of words to feelings imprisoned within the heart.

To free words that have been confined within boundaries — that, to me, is poetry.

And therefore, in the very moment a person writes poetry, the poet becomes a small kind of warrior.

He is not fighting with anyone.

He is fighting with the emotions imprisoned within himself.

He tries to say what cannot be said.

He tries to bring into the light what has been hidden.

He tries to capture, through words, a tiny ray of light lying somewhere in the darkness of his heart.

That attempt itself becomes poetry.

The Wings of Imagination

Poetry has another beautiful quality.

It can take us from where we are and carry us into another world.

It gives us two wings called imagination.

If an ordinary person sees a raindrop, he may simply say,

“It is raining.”

But a poet may look at the same raindrop and ask,

“Is the sky crying?”

Someone may look at the moon and say,

“The moon is beautiful tonight.”

But a poet may ask,

“Who placed a silver mark upon the forehead of darkness?”

Nothing has changed here.

Not the moon.

Not the rain.

What has changed is the way we see them.

Poetry does not change objects.

It changes the way we look at them.

That is why a tree is not the same tree to everyone.

To one person, it is shade.

To another, it is simply a tree.

To someone else, it may be a reminder of an old home.

To another, it may represent childhood.

To someone else, it may be a monument to a person they once loved and lost.

And to yet another person, it may become a poem.

That is the world of imagination.

Where Is Poetry Born?

Where is poetry born?

Does it begin when we sit at a table and pick up a pen?

I do not think so.

Poetry is born long before that.

It falls like a seed into an experience.

It sprouts in a memory.

It grows within an emotion.

It takes shape in solitude.

It finds its voice in silence.

And one day, it emerges as words.

That is why I believe that a person who writes poetry is not the only poet.

There is a poet within every human being who is capable of deeply feeling life.

There may be poetry in the words a mother speaks while looking at her child.

There may be poetry in the sigh of an elderly person looking at a photograph from their youth.

There may be poetry in the moisture that appears in the eyes when we meet an old friend after many years.

There may be poetry in the moment we sit alone at night remembering someone who has left us.

There may be poetry in the trembling hand of a father holding his child’s finger for the first time.

There may be poetry on the face of a mother who smiles while hiding her tears on the day her child leaves for another country.

There may be poetry in the fingers of a child holding the hand of an ageing parent.

Therefore, poetry does not exist only in books.

Poetry exists in life.

Poetry Is the Language of Emotion

When we speak, we often communicate through the intellect.

But poetry, many times, speaks through the heart.

We can say intellectually,

“A person has left us.”

But poetry tells us how the heart continues to search every day for the space that person once occupied.

“Mother has died” is a piece of information.

But when we say,

“Everything is still there in the house...
Only Mother is not there...”

we bring the emotion of that loss into words.

Poetry does not merely describe an event.

It expresses the vibration that the event has created within us.

That is the life of poetry.

What Have I Learned from Kannadasan?

The reason I consider Kannadasan my spiritual mentor is the simplicity of his words.

Even when he spoke about profound philosophy, he brought it into the ordinary life of an ordinary person.

Many of his songs can be understood even by someone without a deep knowledge of literature.

I believe that is one of his greatest strengths.

A poet does not have to write in a lofty manner.

He has to write deeply.

And if he can express that depth in a language that everyone can understand, that itself is a great achievement.

Kannadasan showed me that path.

Therefore, when I write, I do not search for complicated words.

I ask myself whether I can place a profound emotion inside simple words.

Because a good poem should not frighten the reader.

It should hold the reader’s hand and lead them gently into their own heart.

When the reader says,

“This is my story!”

that is when poetry succeeds.

Poetry Is the Bridge Between Tears and Laughter

Human life contains laughter.

It also contains tears.

There is success.

There is failure.

There is love.

There is separation.

There is hope.

There is disappointment.

Between these two extremes, human beings walk through life.

Poetry stands as a witness to that journey.

Some poems make us laugh.

Some make us cry.

Some make us think.

Some show us ourselves.

That is why, even after reading a good poem and closing the book, the poem does not leave us.

It continues to speak within us.

That is the success of poetry.

Who Is a Poet?

I do not believe that a poet is someone who always walks around with a pen in his hand.

A poet is someone who can look at life from a slightly different perspective.

Others may walk past a small event.

The poet stops and looks.

Others may fail to hear a certain silence.

The poet hears it.

Others may overlook a tear.

The poet notices it.

Others may see an ordinary sunset.

The poet may see a lesson about life in it.

When others look at an elderly person, they see age.

The poet sees an entire lifetime in that face.

That is the poet’s vision.

But for that, one does not have to be a great or important person.

A poet can be an ordinary person.

A worker.

A farmer.

A mother.

A father.

A student.

An elderly person.

If there is a heart capable of feeling life, that is enough.

From my perspective, after nearly seventy years of life, I consider myself a common man’s poet.

I may be wrong.

But somehow, my inner voice continues to tell me just that.

If there is one thing I can proudly say about myself, it is this:

I am still learning life.

Even though I have reached the threshold of seventy, I am still a student in the school called life.

I do not expect every line I write to become a great literary creation.

Sometimes, a single line opens the door of my heart.

Sometimes, one word brings out a memory that I have hidden for many years.

Sometimes, what I write becomes an answer to my own heart.

Therefore, whether I call what I write poetry or not is not important to me.

What matters is whether a small wave rises within the heart of the person who reads it.

If someone tells me,

“What you have written feels like my own life,”

those few words are a greater award to me than any prize.

Poetry May Have Grammar; Emotion Has No Boundaries

Poetry may need grammar.

It may need rhythm.

It may need metre.

It may need form.

But the emotion within poetry should have no boundaries.

How many words can measure a mother’s love?

How many lines can contain the pain of separation?

What scale can measure the loneliness of an elderly person?

What grammar can completely explain the depth of love?

That is why, sometimes, a poem contains very few words.

But its silence is immense.

Sometimes, two lines are enough.

Sometimes, a single word is enough.

Sometimes, a sigh itself becomes poetry.

Sometimes, a single tear becomes an entire epic.

Poetry and Silence

Poetry needs words.

But sometimes, the greatest word in poetry is silence.

There are moments when we stand unable to say what we want to say.

Within that silence, there may be a thousand words.

The silence after losing someone.

The silence when we look at our mother’s photograph after many years.

The silence of entering an empty room after a child has gone far away.

The silence of remembering an old love.

These too are languages of poetry.

That is why reading poetry requires more than eyes.

It requires a heart.

Can Poetry Change Life?

A poem may not immediately change the world.

A poem may not change a government.

A poem may not stop a war in a single day.

But it can change the heart of one human being.

If the heart of that one person changes, his family may change.

If a family changes, society may change.

Therefore, we should never underestimate the power of poetry.

A good line can sometimes travel with a person for many years.

A song heard in childhood may continue to echo in the heart even in old age.

A line that we could not understand in our youth may suddenly reveal its meaning when we are fifty.

That is the nature of good literature.

As we grow, its meaning grows with us.

Poetry Is a Mirror Through Which We Look at Life Again

To me, poetry is a mirror.

It does not merely show us the world.

It shows us ourselves.

When we read a good poem, there are moments when we feel:

“It is almost as if the poet has written this about me!”

At that moment, the poet and the reader become one heart.

Although the experience described by the poet belongs to the poet, it becomes the reader’s experience too.

That is the wonder of literature.

One person’s private tears become the tears of a thousand people.

One person’s love becomes the love of many.

One person’s failure becomes comfort for someone else.

One person’s life lesson becomes guidance for another.

That is where poetry rises from a personal experience into a universal human experience.

Then, What Is Poetry?

My simple answer is this.

Poetry is not merely words.

It is the shape given to emotion.

Poetry is not merely imagination.

It is seeing life through another pair of eyes.

Poetry is not merely sound.

It is the heartbeat of the mind.

Poetry is not merely lines.

It is an attempt to say what cannot otherwise be said.

Poetry is not merely writing.

It is a bridge through which one human heart speaks to another.

Poetry is not merely beautiful words.

Sometimes it is a tear.

Sometimes it is a smile.

Sometimes it is a sigh.

Sometimes it is a memory.

Sometimes it is a question.

Sometimes it is an answer.

And sometimes...

it is a question for which there is no answer.

That is why I love poetry.

That is why I accept Kannadasan as my spiritual and literary mentor.

He taught me not merely how to write poetry.

He taught me how to look at life as poetry.

When we look at a person, we should not see only the face.

We should try to see the life behind that face.

When we look at an elderly person, we should not see only their age.

We should see the path they have travelled.

When we look at a mother, we should see the sacrifices she has made.

When we look at a father, we should see the burdens he carried without speaking about them.

When we look at a child, we should see the future that lies before them.

When we look at a lonely person, we should try to see the untold story within them.

Once that vision comes to us...

life itself becomes poetry.

The sun rising in the morning is a poem.

The sun disappearing in the evening is another poem.

A raindrop is a poem.

The fragrance of the earth is a poem.

A child’s laughter is a poem.

A mother’s voice is a poem.

Even the silence of a life partner can be a poem.

A friend’s shoulder can be a poem.

The trembling hand of an elderly parent can be a poem.

The tears of separation can be a poem.

The happiness of meeting again can be a poem.

And finally...

Human life itself is one great poem.

Each of us is a line in that poem.

Some lines may be beautiful.

Some may be bitter.

Some may be written with tears.

Some may be written with laughter.

Some lines may not make sense to us.

But the poem is not yet finished.

We are still writing it.

We do not know what line will be written tomorrow.

That is the beauty of life.

That is the mystery of poetry.

So, my friends...

Do not search for poetry only inside books.

Sometimes, look inside your own home.

Look at your parents’ faces.

Look at your child’s smile.

Look at your life partner’s silence.

Look at your friend’s affection.

Look back at your past.

Look at your wounds.

Look at your achievements.

And look at your failures too.

Somewhere there...

in some quiet corner...

there may be a poem waiting just for you.

You do not have to be a great poet to write it.

You only have to be a true human being.

Because...

If you have a heart that can feel,

poetry will be born.

If you have eyes that know how to see,

the whole world will become poetry.

And if you know how to truly feel life,

you yourself will become a poem.

This is—

from the perspective of a simple common man’s poet,

who considers Kaviyarasar Kannadasan his spiritual and literary mentor,

and who remains, even today,

a student in the school called life—

“What Is Poetry?”

If I have been able to understand it,

you can too.

With affection,

Sakthi Sakthithasan