Poetry

Nelma Ferreira March 28, Poetry Reflection “ Any healthy man can go without food for two days – butnot without poetry”.
– Charles Baudelaire
Poetry is a soothing tool with the help of which one can calm down one’s disturbed soul. I am also in love with poetry and poetic diction, and this love pulled me to attend a poetic session in the Rice University. Here is my perspective about some of the poems I listened to, when I attended an event in the Rice Gallery at the Rice University on March 7, 2012.
As I understand it, the poem, ‘ Lost in Space’, by D. Trinidad Hanks, mentions the link between how gymnastics play in front of us, and how they lead their emotional lives. The way they go up and down on the ropes, they go in and out of love in the same way. I feel that the poet has tried to connect the moves of gymnastics with love and life. People rise and fall in life just like gymnasts rise and fall on their tracks. The poet talks about gymnasts, who may be walking straight on the balanced beams, yet they are not so efficient to walk straight on the path of love. They may be well prepared with powdered palms, yet the path of love and life is so slippery that they find themselves incapable of dealing very proficiently with the ups and downs of life. I can very well imagine that all they have are ropes of no hope, to which they are clinging. They think that these ropes will save them from falling or that these ropes are strong support for their feet; but, what they do not understand is that there is no hope attached to these ropes. These ropes are unfaithful, or in other words, this support is weak. And I feel sorry to think that, when they grow old, broken and bruised, they look into their lives as if they were nightmares.
In the poem, ‘ Apportioned’, written by Erin Badough, I feel that the poet has talked about how he fears the quick passing of time, and future. The tick-tick-tick of the clock reminds him of his miserable present and dreadful future. It is a harsh reality of life, as I see, that man fears the passing of the time because he fears his mortality. He fears what lies ahead of him. Therefore, he feels chained to time. The narrator dreads a future filled with hammers and nails and saw-toothed blades, which are only metaphors that are talking about hardships that life offers. He wishes to put his thoughts into the reader’s mind so that the latter may well know what he thinks and feels. I feel that this poem is a superb example of how man goes from one phase of life into another, and what wishes and fears he has in his mind while he looks at the clock, doing tick-tick-tick. Anyone can relate to this poem, because it is the story of every person on earth.
Both the poems that I came across at the Rice Gallery of the Rice University made me think about life, love, and the happiness and sorrows that time offers to us. I was overwhelmed at how accurately poetry can convey a poet’s thoughts to the reader, and how well the reader can relate to what the poet is talking about. These poems provided food for my thought for many days, and I have been wondering whether I am dealing with life like gymnasts, or just fear about the future, listening to the constant tick-tick-tick of the cruel clock.