Reflections & convictions from a Mathematician-turned-Poetpreneur
One needs a stronger sense of purpose to pursue a passion and live life on one’s own terms. And when I first had the idea of becoming a Poetpreneur, I found myself wondering about the purpose of poetry.
Poetry, as I see it, is the art of stringing words together in the best possible order—to tell a story, evoke an emotion, or make someone feel something deeply and intensely.
But how far can poetry go to change the world?
Can poetry calm chaos, bring a battle to a halt, comfort a desperate soul, offer hope to someone struggling to hold on to life, help us find love, make us feel loved or, more practically, pay the bills?
The questions could be endless. But finding answers to at least a few of them was vital for me if I was going to pursue poetry not merely as a passion, but as a career.
Finding Poetry in Rhymes & Chants
As someone drawn to words, their sounds, and the unseen rhythm and harmony they bring along, poetry has always been a part of my life.
It was there in the nursery rhymes sung by Preeti Sagar, in the rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables while chanting shlokas, and even in the wordless song of silence that I feel within me.
Poetry has always enraptured me.
There was always an urge to put my feelings into words and find ways to encapsulate even everyday incidents in something extraordinary. And I did it through verse.
Believe it or not, when I started writing, I was mad enough to capture even mosquitoes and cockroaches in creative imagination, just for fun!
And, of course, nature was my first love, thanks to my alma mater, Madras Christian College, known for its beautiful scrub jungle.
What started as a passion and a way of expression soon turned into the compass of my life. Consciously or unconsciously, I began seeking poetry to understand the complexities of life.
And trust me, poetry has led me to better places.
Gitanjali — Biggest Influence on My Poetry & Life Journey
Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali is one of the biggest influences on both my poetry and my life journey.
Honestly, I don’t remember how I happened to land up with this book. But one thing I clearly remember is that the very first poem brought me to tears.
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure, This is my prayer to thee, my Lord-strike, strike at the root of penury in my heart, Clouds heap upon clouds and it darkens Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life. This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new. At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable. Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill. — Tagore
Here are the opening lines:
“Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure.”
I couldn’t move on to the rest of the poems and I didn’t force myself to.
I simply sat with that poem.
Some poems come to us to prepare us for an intense experience, while some arrive as an assurance that our path is headed in the right direction.
Gitanjali has poems that make me feel both ways.
Poetry & Its Various Perspectives
That cannot-be-worded, cannot-be-explained, cannot-be-seen kind of intense and intimate feeling that poetry brings along is what makes me want to read, write and gift poetry.
There is a certain magic in the mysticism that every poem holds. Poetry can shed light on different perspectives, and an honest poem can even make you a different person in a single verse.
Take, for instance, these famous lines from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Brook:
“For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.”
These lines have grown with me, revealing different meanings at different stages of my life.
During my school years, when I first read the poem, I took the lines literally. Human beings may visit the brook and move on, but the brook will continue to flow.
At that age, I was lured by the music of the poem—the rhyme, rhythm and flow—and I didn’t look much beyond that perspective.
When I was in college, the repetition of the line began to mean something else.
I had reached a point in life where broken relationships had left their bruises, and the words became a quiet assurance:
Men may come and go, but I can still go on with life.
The line comforted me. It helped me take things a little more lightly and move forward.
In my early twenties, the profoundness of the line left me awestruck. I began to understand its metaphorical meaning, the eternal existence of nature contrasted with the impermanence of human life.
And now, as I write this, another perspective occurs to me.
What if the “I” in the line is also a symbol of the soul?
Our bodies may perish, but the soul—the vital force of our existence—continues.
Perhaps that wasn’t what Tennyson intended. But isn’t that the beauty of poetry?
The poem remains the same. We change. And because we change, the poem changes with us.
Wow!
Poetry never fails to amaze me.
But wait. Can amazement alone bring about change?
I believe it can.
A single poem, or even a single powerful verse, is like a viable seed. It can grow within us over the years, taking root in our minds and hearts and eventually bearing the fruits of change.
That is poetry for me.
Key Takeaways
- Poetry can change the world, one person at a time or, in the case of spoken-word poetry, one gathering at a time.
- It can help us shed inhibitions, gain clarity and think laterally.
- Poetry can bring peace or start a protest. Anything with that kind of power deserves to be handled with care.
- Poetry holds different perspectives and becomes richer with time. A poem that means one thing to us today may reveal something entirely different years later.
- Poetry helps us appreciate the world around us and the world within us with greater intimacy.
- And if you ask me whether poetry can help pay the bills, the answer is yes. With technology at hand, poetry can certainly become a source of meaningful income. My own endeavour, Promising Poetry, is an example of that. [Explore my poetry services, here.]
Well, What Does Promising Poetry Have to Say?
If you want to know what Promising Poetry has to say, then read this:
Because perhaps the best way to understand what poetry can do is not to talk about it endlessly, but to read a poem and see what happens within you.
May poetry find its way to the doors—or at least the windows—of your heart.
This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon. The prompt “What if the world didn’t have art (poetry, here)”, made me take this perspective.