Poetry is a dying art form and back in the 2000s it was pretty much extinct. The once applauded form of literature is now considered pretentious.
But why? Is it because we have tweaked its definition so all deeply resounding one liners are considered poetry? Does poetry even need a rhyme scheme anymore?
Insta-poetry is now making rounds with poets such as Rupi Kaur and Nikita Gill spearheading the trend, and this is singlehandedly the only thing keeping poetry from being deeply buried into the earth. This return of the long-lost translation of emotion has come back with a bigger bang than Taylor Swift’s ‘Reputation’ album.
However, some critics dispute that such ‘micro-poetry’ should not be prepended as poetry at all. Rupi Kaur’s debut poetry collection Milk and Honey is a classic example of this. ‘I am water/ soft enough/ to offer life/ tough enough/ to drown it away’. Traditionally, poetry was meant to arouse our emotions and micro-poetry quite successfully does so. While it lacks a rhyme scheme and often even meter, there is no written record of poetry having to conform to strict regimes.
Modern poetry is indisputably rawer and more authentic as compared to Shakespeare’s acclaimed sonnets. Especially because our own lives do not flow rhythmically. Thus, today’s poetry provides something for everyone. Additionally, its everyday lexis makes it easier for anyone to comprehend, making it suddenly extremely popular.
I believe that beyond a point there is no boundary between poetry and life. As Patricia Lockwood says in her renowned essay What do we write now?, ‘the place in yourself where metaphors wait is a place where all things in the world are one’. I am convinced that this place inside ourselves- that we do not explore on a regular basis, unfortunately – is where poetry stems from. Pages just aid in blooming them, we are the seeds and we are the soil and we are the sunlight.
So, in the end, it should not matter what a poem’s structure is and whether it sounds fancy. If it makes you feel something you do not ordinarily feel: it is poetry. It does not have to be words arranged on a page. It can be a butterfly spreading its wings for the first time. It can be a sunny morning after the worst thunderstorm. It can be that ‘A’ you really wanted on the last test. It can be a stranger smiling at you down the lane.
Let us not choose between Milk and Honey and the sonnets. After all, we are surrounded by all forms of poetry; let us take a moment to appreciate them.
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