Like everything important in life, poetry is difficult to define. It would be an endless task if we were to try to list the true or false qualities that have been attributed to poetry since the beginning of known history. Today we know that the Egyptians, Sumerians, and Chinese – just to name a few examples from the distant past – created poetry and attached great significance to it. In ancient India, the oldest magical and religious texts were originally written as epics, such as the Mahabharata, which contains the immortal Bhagavad Gita and Uttara Gita at its core.
Ancient civilizations imagined the entire universe to be harmonious, structured by numbers and golden proportions. This is reflected in the arrangement of sounds that, when interchanged with silence, become the source of music, song, and poetry. These are the human expressions through which man has always sought to extract from the soul the mysterious seeds that the gods have stored within it, in order to better and more correctly understand oneself, Nature, and God.
Since the model we call “classic” has a character The characteristic that unites the good, beautiful, and just, according to the divine Plato, was used with a very practical purpose – to aid in the memorization of ancient lessons. Not so long ago in Europe, and even today among Eastern peoples, it was customary to sing multiplication tables or the numbers of the days in a month to children in rhyme.
In the armorican tradition, which originated from the Druids among the Celts of French and English Brittany, and spread first to Ireland and then to the rest of Europe with the fall of the Roman Empire, old verses accompanied by the lyre reappeared. The verse and music bring back seemingly lost elements that have inspired bards and troubadours since the 5th century, among whom the latter were particularly engaged in reviving myths, advice, and stories. Because of their great power, Christianity adapted its forms to resist the new “heresy” that spread throughout Europe in the early Middle Ages. Thus, singing monks were created, who knew how to join sailors and farmers. carrying with them the gospels in verses.
In the dictionary it states: “Poetry: artistic expression of beauty through words that are subject to meter and rhythm, resulting in a verse.”
The word poetry has Latin origins, poêsis, and has a Greek root. As one can assume, there are numerous definitions of poetry, but many of them are unclear, often remaining silent rather than speaking. Aristotle recognizes in poetry a form of imitating beautiful nature. Bacon adds that, although it is a work of imagination, poetry imitates nature but exaggerates its characteristics and connects beings that are not connected within it. Marqués de Santillana embraces the ancient Platonic idea by interpreting poetry as an art that “embellishes and brings to life reality with a beautiful cover”, transforming it into fables and parables. In fact, according to Plato, poetry is connected to the Beautiful and the brilliance of the True. Thus, truth and magic would serve as a foundation for every authentic poetry.
Royer-Collard states: “Beauty is something felt and cannot be defined. It is found in everything: within us and outside of us, in the perfection of our nature and in the wonders of the emotional world, in the independent energy of solitary thinking and in the public order of society, in virtue and passions, in joy and tears, in life and in death.”
From Homer to contemporary poets, the forms have changed and the only thing that has remained is what we can call “poetic intention”. But is poetic intention enough to create poetry?
The one who is writing this, has been a poet since their childhood and knows that authentic poems come to us as if they are already composed and only need to be polished to give them their final form. Writing poetry is almost a mediumistic phenomenon that surprises the poet in unexpected situations, and prevents them in the most beautiful conditions or moments prepared for the descent of the Muses. Therefore, with the greatest respect for those who disagree with me, I firmly believe that poets are born and cannot be created.
True poetry is not created by those who only have poetic intention. Some aim to shorten prose as much as possible, hoping it will become poetry. Even worse are those who don’t write to create art, but to impress like-minded individuals, trying to surprise them with nonsensical, often crude words. They mock genuine poets and call anything that flows harmoniously from a good beginning to a better end “stale.”
What we call true poetry must be transcendent, easily understood, and beautiful. Amado Nervo left us a small poem, a possible compilation of an older one, which we can easily remember because of its simplicity and tenderness: I adore my dear mother, / I also adore my father; / no one loves me in life / the way they know how to love. / If I sleep, they watch over my dreams; / if I cry, they are both sad; / If I smile, their faces smile; my smile is their sun. / They teach me with immense tenderness / to be good and happy. / My father fights and thinks for me, / my mother always prays for me.
What magnificence Neither a poetical summary of filial love and recognition of the highest feelings and virtues that should adorn parents!
There is something that most of my contemporaries have forgotten: life is beautiful and should be celebrated naturally and beautifully. And those who cannot contribute to society in such a way, it is better for them to seek other ways of expression.
I do not want to end this little note with my clumsy words, so I will turn to one of my teachers from my youth. An old book and an old poem.
MAY GOD PROTECT YOU, POET…
May God protect you, poet,
to pour into the glass of your brother
even the smallest drop of bitterness;
May God protect you, poet,
to intercept with your own hand
the light that the Sun gives to a creature.
May God protect you, poet,
to write a verse that brings sorrow;
to disturb with your furrowed brow
and your sad logic
divine logic of a dream;
to block the path, a narrow road
that even the humblest foot passes;
to break a fragile spinning leaf;
to hinder, with the lightest
burden, the swing of a soul. Seek out a beautiful ideal that rises. Have a sacred smile of welcome for every joy that confirms it. Add a new note to the full voice that sings. And extract at least the smallest sting from every temptation that torments both the bad and the good.
Amado Nervo, March 1916.
May true poetry, dear reader, friend without a face, illuminate your life and enrich you. May only happy hours flow for you!