Again Thinking

If I remember correctly, Aristophanes  in The Frogs makes a character state  that it is the  poets who must save the nation because they embody all wisdom. In another age the same sentiments were held but about philosophers and in our day and age scientists have the edge. 

 

Alas.

 

The truth is: (then as today) the only ones who have the power to save the world are the politicians and they are not about to. But that perhaps is not a reason for not thinking about poetry, which like music speaks to the soul (if one believes in the existence of souls).

 

Great poetry, like great art and great music resonates beyond linguistic and cultural borders, though it is easier to understand a poem if one knows the language it was written in. Early poetry was meant to be sung and many poems have been set to music.

 

But what is a poem?

 

An arrangement of words in some accepted order which has a rhythm of sorts and expresses feeling or ideas in an encrypted allusionary sort of way? A puzzle which the poet sets before us so we can uncode the language and enter into his/her mind?  Or a piece of history which helps us understand the ethos of time and place in the evolution of a feeling or synthesis of happening?

 

All of these and yet more with a magic that is impossible to define?

 

 

It depends perhaps where the reader is at that given point in time - my definition at the age of  twenty six when life had hit a blank wall, would  not perhaps be that of today:

 

           what a poem is

 

 

 

           into further suffering