Virtually anyone can get lost in a novel. It is possible and even likely that you will get lost in a 300-page book with characters and feelings, jokes and sadness, love, lust, and more. During the time that you are reading it, those characters become your friend. You see their lives and a great author can make them step out of the pages. The challenge comes when you attempt to read or write poetry. Poetry is a play on words. The writer has only a short amount of space to tell you a complete story and have you understand the entire story. It is for this reason that poetry also holds a spot in the heart of many. It is also why so many areas have a program like Poetry-By-The-Sea, where poets and readers can enjoy it to the fullest.
The Beauty of Poetry
There are many who say that poetry is the most powerful form of writing to have ever existed. It is a play on words that can change the meaning of a word that we at one time believed we understood. Poetry in its purest form can make you feel the writer has implied love, lust, or sorrow without ever actually saying that they were feeling it. As you read through poetry, you must allow yourself to not see the words, but feel their hidden meanings. It is a journey that you must take.
The Writer’s Journey
As a writer of poetry, you must allow yourself to show the emotions that we all seem to suppress out of fear that no one will ever fully understand them. Your mind and the words must simply flow while you let go of your burdens, your lust, your love, and your soul in the hopes that someone else will see the words and understand your hidden meanings. You must be able to take simple words and put them into a sequence that is not something we are used to hearing. This creates a miracle in how the reader will respond and even what they will feel because of what you write.
Words Expressed, Words Treasured by All
As you look back throughout history, there are many famous poets. Elizabeth Barrett Browning with her “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” She was born in 1806 and died in 1861, but most every living soul today has heard her words. Emily Dickinson, whose poems you may not know, is still a name that you have likely heard. She was alive only from 1830-1886. The same is true for Edgar Allan Poe. If you want to venture further into history, you need only look as far as William Shakespeare, who lived from 1564-1616 and reaches out to us from beyond the grave through theater performances and classroom studies. Were they famous in their own time or are their words more important to us now? Does it really matter? They have a voice that is louder than the person sitting next to you. You simply have to listen to it and embrace what it may be saying to you.