What makes a poet

What makes a poet
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It connotes that the art of composing a poem is sheer matter of intense feeling of pain. It is the matter of utter pining for the love and affection of whom one dies for. It is the matter of sighing and whining in the agony. It is the matter of moaning, both in ecstasy and distress. Empathising and sympathising make the feeling flow naturally in the form of beautiful poems.

Reading the write-up “Want to be a poet?” (English Matters, Young Hans, October 26) and, a few letters of erudite readers’ reactions and reflections thereon motivated me, too, to write this piece. Sumitranandan Pant, the great Hindi poet of nature, in his following famous lines has so beautifully pointed out the essential criteria of becoming a poet:

Viyogi hoga pahala kavi
Aah se upja hoga gaan.
Umadkar aankhon se chupchap,
Wahi hogi kavita anjaan.

(The person who is deprived and in great agony will be the first poet. His sigh and pain would compose the poem that would prove to be the magnum opus).

It connotes that the art of composing a poem is sheer matter of intense feeling of pain. It is the matter of utter pining for the love and affection of whom one dies for. It is the matter of sighing and whining in the agony. It is the matter of moaning, both in ecstasy and distress. Empathising and sympathising make the feeling flow naturally in the form of beautiful poems.

Only penmanship cannot ever make a person a poet. I would like to quote the beautiful line of the great English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.” But unfortunately in the mechanized world of information technology of the 21st century, those very inevitable feelings, sine qua non of becoming a poet, have unfortunately eroded, and that is why the days of the poem penning and poem relishing are pretty painfully over.

Shreeprakash Sharma, Birauli, Bihar
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