The Aesthetic Directives in Vinita Agrawal Poetry

Anwer Ghani

Vinita Agrawal

Vinita Agrawal is a distinctive literary painter who draws feelings by words. The drawing of emotions by writing is one of the central stylistic features of the highly aesthetic, effective and unforgettable writing. Here, we will study the stylistic elements in Vinita poetry where the words used to draw the emotion and express the feelings and not just to deliver the meaning.

Poetry is a discovery of deep aesthetic lands in the fields of the consciousness, the subconsciousness, the memory, the soul, and the language. These hidden lands and their magic doors need a discovery - a leader who can guide the ship towards these lands and knock their doors. When the reader sees these doors, he will know how to open them because they are his doors, his soul and his knowingness where the magical lands reside and shine like white fields.

That is what is happened within the reading of the aesthetic writing and the author is the leader in this journey. By many textual tools, the poet can guide the reader to that world. The most important textual and stylistic tool to guide the reader and produce the aesthetic effect of the artistic writing is the expressive assignment of the semantic directives.

We use the term "semantic directives" to refer to any word or phrase adds any additional meaning to the essential core of a particular speech like adjectives, adverbs or any linguistic unit behaves like these units.

In the ordinary writing, the essential purpose from the sentences and their elements is conventional function, so all the adjectives and the adverbs and any additional descriptive words or phrases are involved in the field of conception  and understanding and the eyes of the writer and the reader are fixing on the conceptional value of the text without apparent consideration of the aesthetic elements. This manner of directing of writing and reading is different totally from the situation of the semantic directives in the aesthetic writing like poetry. In the aesthetic writing, the principal purpose of the semantic directives is aesthetic and there are features give the semantic directive its aesthetic function. These textual elements responsible for the aesthetic function can be explained clearly as stylistic features.

One of these features is the lyric expressiveness where the linguistic unit has been filled with a high emotional tone and a high emotions, so the words have been used to show the feelings and not meaning as a first priority and this is the central stylistic feature of aesthetic writing.

We can find these aesthetic directives abundantly in Vinita's poetry to the degree that they form the "expressive lexicon" which is an important non-conceptional expressive tool. The expressive lexicon brings the consciousness of the reader to a special linguistic and emotional field. By this process, the text will have a special linguistic harmony and a distinctive emotional expression and it is phenomenally responsible for production of the generalized emotional mood of the text. This emotional expression is an aesthetic element in its deep presence and it lies behind the level of meaning so we can say that it is located beyond the meaning. From this view we can evaluate the aesthetic value of every semantic directive in a system composed of two elements; the local and partial element where the directive guides the reader to a special aesthetic situation by the words, phrases and sentence, while the second element is general and global on the level of the paragraphs and whole the text.  Some directives express a local and partial aesthetic function while others will show only general and global effect but the highest one is the directive which expresses the two functions; the local and the general.

In Vinita’s poem; "Broken"(Inventives 4, May 2017) we can find the aesthetic directives that sum the local lyric phrasal and the general textual expressive functions. The obvious linguistic field in the poem is the" Breaking" as the title signifies. We will see how the semantic directives in this poem guide us to discover the hidden lands and their doors by  two tools; the first  is the uncovering of amazing local emotional blocks by the lyric expressiveness of the aesthetic directives and the second is the creation the generalized textual mood and its world by the expressive lexicon.
In "Broken" we can see: "broken/ broken home/ chopped tree / life ruthlessly axed / face of pain / Breath broken/plundered/cold meat / now dead / aged wind "

These words by themselves, without compound meaning of the sentence, produce a gloomy mood  and a cheerless face colors the poem. This is the transfiguration of the expressive lexicon, and all these emotional effects have been resulted from its power. The letter of the text reach us by that expressive tool before the system of meaning. This state where the letter of the text reaches the reader before the meaning is the core in the abstract writing.

This effect is the general aesthetic function of the directives which is different from the local aesthetic effect where the directives uncover the deep emotional block within the small linguistic unit as the sentence or phrase.

We see the major effect of these adjectives:
Broken in "broken home"
Chopped in "chopped tree trunk"

And we can see the major effect of this adverb:
Ruthlessly in "ruthlessly axed"

We see the powerful directing effect of these words and the important additional expressive function with strong emotions and emotive lyricism.

The additive expressive function of the linguistic elements in addition to the comprehension purpose is the central factor in the aesthetic value of these elements and the degree of the aesthetic value is proportionate with the width and the depth of  the emotional experience expressed by these tools.

While we find Vinita had used the short adjectives and adverbs to express the deep lyricism in some places in the poem, she has used longer linguistic elements to enrich the local expressive system and the general textual mood with the expressive letter and an additional emotional blocks , as we see in the following examples:

"This broken home is like a chopped tree trunk"
"Rime's leftovers straggle the trashcan like cold meat"
"So this is how things break in this world'
"This is how hope loses altitude"




The poem: Broken by Vinita Agrawal
(Inventives magazine, Issue 4, May 2017)

This broken home is like a chopped tree trunk
Showing rings of life ruthlessly axed

Leaving behind an upturned patellar face of pain
Breath broken in a cinch

Its lode of warmth is plundered
Rime's leftovers straggle the trashcan like cold meat

I sense the condors circling above, in my bones
As they scavenge for the rich, juicy morsels of a home, now dead

The aged wind is weary of reviving fires so often doused
It's shoulders too weak to carry ashes heavy with severing

So this is how things break in this world
This is how hope loses altitude

There must be someone to blame
There must also be someone who will lead me back to myself
*********
Anwer Ghani
Author Bio
Anwer Ghani is an Iraqi poet and writer. He was born in 1973 in Hilla. He is the author of "Narratopoet"; (I. Inventives Cloud 2017), "Antipoetic Poems"; (Creat Spacee 2017), "TRUMP"; a poetry collection, (Inner Child Press 2017) and "The Narratolyric Writing"; essays (Smashwords 2017). His name has appeared in  Otoliths, Adelaide, November Bees, Zarf, Peacock, Eunioa, Rabbit and many others. Anwer had 40 books in literature and religious sciences in Arabic.
Websites: https://anwerghaniwriting.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.htmlFacebook:  DrAnwerGhaniPostal code: Iraq- Babylon 51001- Box 396.

No comments :

Post a Comment

We welcome your comments related to the article and the topic being discussed. We expect the comments to be courteous, and respectful of the author and other commenters. Setu reserves the right to moderate, remove or reject comments that contain foul language, insult, hatred, personal information or indicate bad intention. The views expressed in comments reflect those of the commenter, not the official views of the Setu editorial board. рдк्рд░рдХाрд╢िрдд рд░рдЪрдиा рд╕े рд╕рдо्рдмंрдзिрдд рд╢ाрд▓ीрди рд╕рдо्рд╡ाрдж рдХा рд╕्рд╡ाрдЧрдд рд╣ै।