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AN APOLOGY FOR MY POETRY: 2




Why do people write poetry...?

We all know that mankind has always felt the need to express their emotions, thoughts, ideas and fancies. That's why we have such a vast lore of literature across the world. But why poetry...? I think nothing works better than prose in self-expression. Then why complicate things by deviating from ordinary language...?
Maybe its because we don't have a choice.

Sometimes we write excellent poetry. Sometimes when we try to do the same we fail and would wonder whether it was we who wrote the former. It is like we are stumbling upon poetry.
A more proper usage would be- 'Poetry happens to us '.

I always say to my friends: "It is not I who writes poetry, but poetry is written upon me. I just copy that to paper". It is like a superior force of nature is guiding us through this task.
Religious people call it Divine Inspiration. People like me are not ashamed to admit that we really don't have a clue about what this really is.

Last day I wrote and staged a play on the life of the great Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi. In it there is a part where the central character says: "... No true writer wants to be a writer. But they are left with no choice. The things they see... The things they hear... It haunts them. It haunts them until they let it out somehow...". I also remember reading recently in the newspaper about a Malayali writer(Sorry I couldn't find his name) who stopped writing because he says, once he starts writing a story, the characters start torturing his mind. I really don't know how to explain this. But as someone who has experienced this so-called Divine Inspiration thing, I know that it can happen. 

Our Nature is full of pure energy. Sometimes fragments of this energy gets tapped into some individuals who genuinely yearn for it. "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed". It can only be transformed from one form to another. So these individuals called 'Poets' take part in the transformation of this energy into words.
True Poets know this. They know that what they write is originally not theirs but was given to them in secret. Maybe that's why they are all so humble.

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