Changing landscapes of Poetry

Sunil Sharma

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.

---Allen Ginsberg

 

This month’s major focus is on poetry, in its variety, flexibility and richness, as a field.

The modes of poetic cognition and communication of “original human mind” in terms aesthetic that are bound to give joy upon reading and listening to their flow, texture and imagery as a complex of beauty, out there as a unit in the public domain.

Art is the manifestation of the private and public in a subtle manner.

Poetry is part of art, serious art.

And it becomes a meeting place of minds.

The main objective of poetry, as Ginsberg famously declares, is the unveiling of the original human mind; an important speech act that merges the public and private, within a single gesture.

Poets experiment with genres to express their inner fluidity, influx of thoughts and emotions, and positing of the inner worlds; it is a dialectics that move the field forward and keep the poetics---writings and other forms---as fertile and irrigated.

Both the words and forms keep on evolving over the ages, in a historical succession, and creativity tends to invent, find and rediscover literary forms that best represent the ideas and images most adequately for the altered social contexts and audiences with new needs.

Lyrical pieces that fit into the matching moulds to the satisfaction of their creators and convey world views as per the given frameworks and conventions.

Of late, spoken word, slam or performance poetry as modes of engagement with the target audiences have gained traction…and critical and public attention for their spoken or performative aspects---like any significant act of speech or utterance with meaning and relevance.

Most poetry is meant for performance and text undergoes a change, whenever uttered in public, before public.

Setu keeps on highlighting these trends and also keeps on evolving and responding to the public taste.

This month features pieces performed by the noted bilingual poet and author Neelam Saxena Chandra. Evidence of the way spoken poetry can mesmerise the listeners.

Chandra is superb in her rendition of the words that come alive and are charged with intensity and deep empathy.

In another place, eminent poet-artist Sangeeta Gupta explores the sacred in art, in her inimitable style. In a heart-felt exploration of colours, moods and motifs, heritage and styles of painting, Gupta underlines art as a source of spirituality, epiphany, wellbeing, balance and peace, for a civilization struggling with hollowness and emptiness of an industrial wasteland, and, the horrors of capitalism and commercialisation, much decried by the likes of T.S. Eliot, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Williams S Burroughs, among others.

Art as a unique gateway to higher realms of truth for its seekers; realms far away from the regulated and regimented realities.

Other writers bring their own brands of documenting and realizing of visions and dreams.

Again, another rich feast for your mind and eyes.

Please enjoy!

Sunil Sharma,

Managing Editor, Setu (English)

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Setu, April 2024