|
If the writing of poetry is the natural creative expression of the human psyche, it is also a craft, and nowadays something of an industry. Poetry is awash with new ideas, whether trading on the traditional or braving the avant-garde.
Poetry, and that means all poetry, is the language closest to human experience. Aristotle said that poetry is superior to history because it uses words in their fuller potential, and creates representations more complete and more meaningful than nature can give us in the raw.
The arts provide meaning, significance and purpose in a universe that seems increasingly bizarre and hostile. Words have intentions and associations. What we understand of the world is largely through language, and poetry may indeed help clear our vision.
Language is most certainly metaphoric, and speaks through analogies and parables. Poetry is an essential, full and vital representation of the world. It is poetry that records the greater truth, being aware as it is of the past usages of words, their covert properties, their aspirations, corruptions and deceits. Its truth and wider social significance are things that grip us immediately. We begin to understand the bigger picture and our place in the scheme of things.
Love and Not Love
by Janice Windle
Love’s a dangerous word.
Spoken too soon, the flimsy bonds it ties,
sweet like candy-floss,
not substantial,
melt in the first real tears
that fall from lovers’ eyes.
Better to let love lie
and lie instead in arms that
hold no pressure but desire,
kiss lips that promise nothing,
and give and take in truth,
without a word.
Not love.
Not those promises that seek to bind
with offers of a willing warder,
inciting me to dig for freedom.
No, lust.
For lust is not a sin, and if it binds,
the knots are slack,
retied when, each hour that in
my thoughts we lie together,
I feel the stab of pleasure at my core,
remembering how joyfully we joined
in that moment when our bodies’ lust
slaked my soul’s thirst for love.
≈ |
|
|
