Poetry: To Read or Not To Read

 

Poetry: To Read or Not To Read

“Poetry.”

What comes to mind when you think of it? Old, dusty anthologies with complex lines and verses that you could not understand in school?

If this image keeps you away from the enchanting world of words, then maybe it’s time to reimagine what poetry really is. It isn’t something that’s localized to classroom discussions or books with fancy words; poetry is everywhere. Right from a Shakespearean sonnet to that one lyric that makes you feel understood—it’s all poetry. It’s all art. 

For us, as humans, poetry can be a cathartic form of expression when regular language seems too flat. It lets us pour out emotions that don’t always find a place in our everyday sentences, and sometimes, even a few broken metaphors can express a feeling better than endless pages of explanation ever could. Poetry is a magical form of art. It does not demand skill or perfection; it only asks for you to be honest and raw. It is this honesty that ultimately fosters meaningful connections, even with complete strangers who find their story mirrored in your words.

What comes across as an intimate and liberating composition is usually part of a greater discourse. Poetry is like a constant reminder that our deepest emotions rarely ever belong only to us, and often metamorphose into a shared feeling. Feelings, when expressed through poetry, can touch the lives of people we’ve never met and also resonate with those who will live long after us. Poetry encompasses a certain continuity in the way vulnerability persists through time.

The voices of poets long departed still reverberate in our present, harbouring the timelessness of human adversity and yearning. Their words remind us that the sentiments of the torment of bereavement, the ignition of love, the feeling of desolation and the desire for freedom are not bound by centuries but belong to all of us. Poetry, in this sense, becomes the thread between what ebbs and what perseveres, turning silence into eloquence and fleeting moments into perpetuity.

The sublimity of poetry lies in its freedom. A poem may adhere to certain rules with delicate precision, or it may breach them unreservedly, cascading across the page like an unbridled river. In both forms it resists confinement. Poetry is a release, offering space to explore and envision, and to speak without apprehension.

At its heart, poetry is both balm and fire. It softens grief by shaping it into language that heals, yet it also unsettles, urging us to feel more deeply. It makes the ordinary luminous and the overwhelming bearable. And when we share poems, we share fragments of ourselves. Like a river joining distant lands, poetry connects humans to humans, dissolving solitude and binding us through the intimacy of shared feeling.

The right words are often hard to find, and yet, in poetry, they are waiting. A few lines can capture a feeling too large for ordinary speech, or reflect a thought you didn’t know you had. Reading or writing poetry opens small doors to one's soul. It doesn’t matter if the words in a poem are perfect, what matters is that they are honest. Let yourself linger there, even briefly. In poems, one may discover fragments of themselves, and a quiet reminder that human experience is meant to be shared.

Written by– Divita Nandgaonkar & Stacey Stalins 

Edited by- Harshada Viswanath