The skill of weaving...words

Just like every other person in the world, I have my idiosyncracies that are so uniquely me... that are at times endearing (to a select few), at times just about tolerable and to quite an extent, vexing to other people. 

To me, doing "my own thing" is important. I need to have opinions that are so different from other people's as to provoke them to thought, to use words that others have scant heard of, to have hobbies that I  share with very few people... and so on. In short, appearing intriguing and throwing new light is "my thing".

So, when I write poetry, I want it to be refreshingly different, to have a style that piques the reader and gives her/him a sense of literary gratification. And, of course, I want to belong to a select few who are able to do just that. 

Imagine my consternation, when I find every other person professing poetic skills and composing couplets and quatrains, and claiming they wrote whole "20-line verses". I, of course, turned grumpy and withdrew from poetry as a certain animal withdraws into its shell, offended that my special skills were being "commoditized" and were being wielded with a fake sense of expertise by mere novices. I took a year-long break from poetry and also, got thinking. 

Do I really have a "style" of writing that I imagine I have? Or was I merely  averagely gifted at stringing  words together, and just possessed an exalted sense of my abilities? 

It also got me thinking on what makes poetry, well, poetry. Poetry is  an expression of oneself. Just as an idle doodle can be as much art as a Renaissance masterpiece, so can poetry range from the Vikram Seth-style rhyming verses to Keatsian poetry that draws you gently into its eddies until you yourself become a part of the whirlwind of words. 

I know all about the fact that everyone has got the right to use words anyhow as a form of poetic expression. However, I cringe at such grotesque extensions of poetic licence that result in "poetry" that sounds totally contrived. 

Poetry is not complete without the play of words that bring out vivid imagery, the alliterations that make you take a new look at the words that you once thought were mundane, the metaphors that sound so perfect that you wondered why those words were never used that way all the time! 

Poetry is all about evoking emotions... the magic wand that draws the reader out, makes him flow with the lines, live the experiences, be in harmony with the words. 

But of course, if the purists had their way and were to set the rules of the game, we'd lose some beautiful lines that don't truly conform, but are works of art, nevertheless. Poetry  has eluded definition always. And it will forever remain to be so... 

Poetry is as much about the reader's discovering his love of the language as the ability of the poet to fashion words together into a beautiful rendering. Let the words flow..  take your threads of words, and weave them into patterns of verse, embellish them with the sequins of imagery, be lavish with the tassels of your rhythm... but, most important be true to yourself... be true to the language...  be true to the one who will read it...