The Passion Of Poetry

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The Passion Of Poetry

By Paul McCann

 What is it that makes people write poetry and abandon their lucrative careers for the love of it .  Is it a divine calling or an irresistible urge .

The want to write is driven by a love that becomes a passionate lifestyle for many .

 “We love the things we love for what they are”- Robert Frost

Many poets who have loved to write have endured and suffered much for their art and  so many have died paupers, to be buried in mass graves as an unknown author . There are countless poets who have written most of their lives but have never been recognised and yet they never stopped writing . The passion of writing poetry is not about becoming famous or being recognised it’s just about the love of writing .

There are of course the great poets who have their names carved into the  literary hall of fame . Established poets have followed certain guidelines with their writing such as the formal structures that are recognised as the hallmark of writing poetry .The depth of these expressions are an inspirational source of the disciplined craft of the written word . The grammar and imagery is the beauty behind the theme and topic . Imagery paints a picture with the written word .   .    

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” -  Leonardo da Vinci

The strength of poetry is having both the knowledge of structure and the ability to adapt these structures to create new forms

Looking back into the mists of time the origins of poetry began being recited or sung rather than being written .

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.” ― Plato

The hymns and chants are some examples of those early poems  .
How lonely was the life of the hermit monks who found poetry as their only companion in their contemplative lives . How easy it would have been to embrace the love of writing . The love of writing also demands that writers find themselves in isolation from the world .

“My imagination is a monastery and I am it’s monk “ – John Keats

Buddhist monks who observed vows of silence often used small written pieces poetry known as Haiku. They would write a poem and hand it to another monk who had to reply to the one that had been given and so it went on day after day . This process is another way of living out a passion for writing . Some of the other structures used by the monks are the Sijo , Tanka and Renga .

"Poetry is the unspoken word that connects us to our soul and its whisper echoes eternally" - Paul McCann. 

The End

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