How of Poetry?

Writing poetry is easy and difficult. Shackled intelligence don't fly to be imagination. It broods in fear and doesn't dare. To be able to create verse, two things are absolutely necessary viz.,

1. Reach out

2. Explore.

We have to break free of the constraints and limitations of reality and structure. We have to be like the floating clouds taking on new shapes with the comfort of a shapeshifter. We have to step out of our cocoon and connect with the chaos to create a connection between conflicts and contrasts. Poetry is like leaping from the cliff instead of clinging to it. As we fall, wings will sprout and we will fly. But without the fall there won't be flight and without the flight there won't be insight.

There are many poetic devices, figures of speech, rhyming scheme and meters. But that's not important. Important is to see the world as no one has seen it before and then find pleasure in presenting that perspective to others. Worrying about adhering to the rules of writing poetry will destroy the soul of it and make it as mundane as an office memorandum. 

FIVE simple steps LEADING to a poem

1. See an experience or emotion

2. Imagine it happening differently or with selective focus on a certain thing

3. Connect it to something else - imagined or real

4. Hear things speak their mind

5. Build a pattern of music out of that

Let's play a game. 

Can you write a poem 

using the following picture clues or cue? 

Remember the five finger rule. See - imagine - Connect - Hear - Build. 

I composed the above poem to illustrate the five finger rule of writing a poem. It begins with the fact that I saw a cat sitting on a carpet. The cat and the carpet reminded me of how cats were associated with witches and how carpets could fly in the adventures of Aladdin. After that I heard the cat speak. Now, the cat being an animal can't use language like a human but I gave the power of speech to the cat and the cat said what the poet was not saying. The cat presented an opposing perspective. The poet romanticizes. The cat brings back the reality but in doing so it breaks a law of nature as it gets to speak like a human. The poem concludes by creating an image of someone singing and playing a musical instrument using fingers and thus alludes to the five fingers rule of writing a poem. It started with a cat on the carpet and it ended with how to be a poet. That's the power and magic of poetry. It helps our imagination to fly.