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Isn't prose-poetry nonsense? Is there poetry other than metrical verse?
P. S. Remesh Chandran
Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum
Music is the first born in the poetic subject. Human mind’s attempt to repeat it culminates in poetry. If there is no music, it is not a poem, not poetry. If it cannot be sung it is not a poem, it does not have the status of a poem. That is the position of at least this writer. And this is not a new position: it has been the position of human society for centuries. The same is the position of Plato, who determines the wording, order, melody, pitch and meter- everything connected with music and poetry- that can be given to citizens in a model Republic. It is clearly stated in detail in The Republic in the section on ‘Beginning Stage of Education’. That is why there was no such thing as prose-poetry for the next twenty five hundred years. During these long centuries, it was never thought that those who did not have any knowledge of poetry or poetical skill would join together and compose poetry. Now it happened.
Previously excluded from their sequence, who they said paved the way for prose-poetry and were a validation and justification for them, Mathew Arnold's Forsaken Merman, Tagore's Where The Mind Is Without Fear, Govinda's Disciple and Leave This Chanting, Sarojine Naidu’s Coromandel Fishers, Indian Weavers, Humayun To Zobaidah and The Queen’s Rival, and Khalil Gibran’s songs Song Of The Wave, Song Of The Rain, A Poet's Death Is His Life, Creation Of Woman, Creation Of Man and Lover’s Call from his Tears and Laughter, are all not prose-poems as they say and like to portray them but beautiful and melodious verse poems. In order to dispel this superstition, even this author has rediscovered the tunes hidden in them purposefully by these gifted poets by perseverance, recorded them vocally in studios, and released them through Bloom Books’ Channel in You Tube, as a model for recitation students, all released in the public domain so that anyone can use them and modify.
In order to prevent such unsophisticated, mentally disturbed, and unwilling-to-work-in-poetry from reading and even enjoying their poems- in short, to exclude the whole academic community altogether from their connoisseur's society- they have cut their lines in many ways and locked them in their own ways. Kahlil Gibran, who has a multi-national background and is a poet of US-Arabic-Lebanese origin, did this cutting and locking as if he was taking a revenge on his own generation and future generations. Only in front of the hard work of the true poetry lovers, who leave the pride of scholars behind and humbly strive in front of poetry, will these locks unlock themselves, lines and words get rearranged before their eyes, and the poems become readable and enjoyable to them.
T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land, Dylan Thomas’ The Force That Drives The Water Through The Rocks, and even Wilfrid Wilson Gibson's Lode Star are not prose poems as they tried to mislead us, but metrically perfect verse poems with beautiful tunes, but skillfully locked by the poets themselves. There is no wonder in many school teachers in India and abroad who are proponents of prose poems, tell little school students that if they look up in the Internet and sing like as in Bloom Books channel they will not be given marks in recitation, and instructing that poetry should be lectured or preached as prose instead! Indeed it’s recognition.
Bloom Books Channel’s Link:
https://www.youtube.com/user/bloombooks/videos
Sahyadri Books Online Trivandrum has more useful articles on this subject in the Literary Articles Page.
Link: https://sahyadribooks-remesh.blogspot.com/p/list.html
Written on 04 February 2024 and first published on: 15 May 2024
Original article in Malayalam written on 04 February 2024 and first published on: 23 February 2024
SM1538. ഗദ്യകവിതയെന്നതൊരസംബന്ധമല്ലേ? പദ്യമല്ലാതെകവിതയുണു്ടോ?
https://sahyadrimalayalam.blogspot.com/2024/02/1538.html
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