What’s poetry?

close up photography of woman holding string lights — Photo by Myicahel Tamburini on Pexels.com

What’s poetry? You inquire.

And such a question you dare,

Staring at me with blue hued eyes?

Poetry is you[1]

POETRY

Poetry is… something ineffable (besides the little stealing I just did to open the entry)

It can be so so tiny as two words like the famous Mohammed Ali’s “me-we” in a very emotional speech about unity and friendship.

It can be longer and contain 5,7 and 5 syllables as haikus do. Or be kilometric as the Iliad and something mythical called The Fairy queen[2].

WITHOUT IAMBIC STANZAS

Can it be done without metrics? Is music poetry? Rap? The cuisine? Can AI rhyme up poetry[3]?

A poem sounds nice. It is some kind of hybrid Pokemon where words play their games and gift us with nice sounds. Either by rhythm, translation of sound /rhyme) or sequence patterns (metrics). It can even be horrible but true.

IS THEN MUSIC POETRY?

If you ask the guys giving a Nobel to a singer… yes. And there won’t be a lack of complainers saying the next Nobel to this one could go to a comic drawer (back then it wasn’t time for the next Nobel yet). That won’t make a lot of change in the way storytelling works but it might change this or the other country’s PIB.

SENSORY AND ABSTRACTION

And again, I’m updating this entry. You’ve seen what Scott McCloud says in The invisible art of reading comics about abstraction. The more abstract, the more intimate. The more intimate, the more we identify with.

Such is the power of poetry, It evocates. It summons from nowhere the scalding cold of rain drops. It is the drained tuna or the novel without the blah blah… Niet. Not that last one sentence.

It has flow. It is relentless. It requires a more sophisticated literacy than anything. And it has survived conquests, darkness, religious debates and many other happenings. It can be heretic and still adore a being. It has evolved from chants accompanied by choruses and music to simple drawings ordered with an intention (poemojis). It has taken the shinkansen of rap and staid exactly the same as crocodiles. No changes.

Such is poetry, ineffable but something we know upon sight or hearing. A bundle of words [I know…stanzas]. Something idiotic. Something sublime.

How much poetry have you done this year? No matter of written or drawn. Pasto kalo.

[1] Gustavo Adolfo Becquer. All his poems are called Rima (rhyme)… and numbered. I don’t remember the number. Not sorry. My memory is not Asimov’s memory. It is mine.

[2] Mythical since I’m not reading it ever. And I won’t pretend I did.

[3] In the video I watched trying to define a poem, it was a no. But I wonder if the money people [I know, invertors] behind the movie Free Guy had a Chinese AI as CEO [AI’s can be nepotist already]. And, a lot of years after I wrote this entry in Spanish; Sunbaenim, my friend’s ChatGPT, can write short stories.