Poetry

                       Blocks of Poetry

                                                     By: Radicalroy         June 2000, Philippines

I’ve been in love teaching English language and English literature for sixteen years. By applying so much creativity caused my class lively, joyfully, and sentimentally. Most of my students wanted to learn how to build blocks of poetry. Here, it goes… Myth, metaphor, and images are the resource materials by which a poem achieves the structure and thought necessary for its existence.  Poem is a unit of utterance with specific elements, it manifests the pattern, a design, hidden or obvious, by which the relationship of its parts can be determined. Because it is also a semiotic code a way of saying something and meaning another-that patters must work for the verification of the meaning of the code.

The element of myth constructs the foundation of the poem, the ground of its meaning. It is the narrative structure that holds together the poem’s literal and metaphoric frameworks. The literal provides the entry into the poem and enables the readers to begin communicating with consciousness behind it through a consideration of its grammatical and compositional levels.  “The Raven,” by Edgar Allan Poe, is giving us an entrance into the story of the poem by revealing its situation or setting. All poems have stories because all poems have personas, or speakers, who make us aware of a particular reality. Often we mistake the persona for the author of the poem. The author writes the poem but is not necessarily the one talking in it. We get the knowledge of the speakers by the configuration of their words-their phraseology, terminology, and imagery. Their sense and personality show through all these, helping move the main idea of the poem along the line of its argument.

The metaphoric framework contains the code- deeper meaning of the composition. It depends of the figurative language to make its point. By analogy, comparison, understatement, exaggeration, and symbolism, for instance, an utterance provides clues to a hidden meaning. We decode it by applying our knowledge of the nature of tropes to the linguistic message. The song of R Kelly which is one of my favorite songs “I believe I can fly. I believe I can touch the sky…” we know the utterance is not on the literal level. So we try to see its meaning in the context of the fly of fancy of someone in a state of strong emotion. The poem is nothing if not a figurative rendition of a practical situation. By elevating speech to its highest possible degree, it alters our perception of things. We see through the figure of speech, and we are enlightened and instructed.

In most cases, poets depend on their situational reality for their story. Their own personal experience and the experiences of the people around them are rich sources of materials on which to build the foundation of the poem. The myth is a code, and the code relies for effectiveness on the strong application of the imagination and figure of speech. When the proper relationship between myth, image and metaphor exists, the poem can be said to be built on the strong materials, and it can produce many interrelated meanings for delectation. The poem then becomes not only a unique composition but, more importantly, a cultural item. It will inspire those it reaches and touch their sensibility.

Photos: Google