Poetry Monthly

Thank you to Catherine Poarch for her brief on Creation last month. Seeing as it's February I feel drawn towards expressing my die-hard romantic nature in lyrical form. Don't assume I'm after Valentine's Day couplets and a table at that rustic Italian on the High Street. There's nothing more cringeworthy than a bloke with a rose threaded between his teeth. I trust there won't be a love heart or a teddy bear or gasp: an unsigned card in sight. (Anonymity = bottling it!) Here's what I'm after:

The Romantics

The German poet Friedrich Schlegel is given credit for first using the term 'romantic' to describe literature, defining it as "literature depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form." The Romantics were all about unrepressed and spontaneous feelings, those pure characteristics at the very essence of emotion. Nature was also a primary theme in their work, think of Wordsworth and Coleridge for inspiration. We're going outdoors: fresh, feral landscapes that seek to unleash your wildest imagination. Unlike the order inherent in the Enlightenment, Romanticism was its polar opposite in the way it valued spontaneity and freedom within creativity above all. In fact, you could say the movement rejected any restraints perceived to be quashing the poet's fundamental creativity. Have a go yourself this month, leave the stuffed toys under the wardrobe and unzip your skin so we can come inside and feel how you're feeling (whilst you sit on a cliff edge.)

See you March. Thanks all,

Ray

Opening Quote cited at http://www.uh.edu/engines/romanticism/introduction.html

​Photo Credit:  http://tinyurl.com/hb5kc7f