Today is world poetry day, Poetry — one of the genres of literature has cut a permanent standard across each domain of human expression.
Poetry does not just portray personal expression of sadness in reflection of the torments of the unkind world; poetry also explores the lines happiness, love, life, kiss, nature, home, hate, friendship and admiration,among others.
Correspondent, Daniel Ezeigwe, in this special report, brings back memories of poetry in commemoration of World Poetry Day.
These are excerpts from two stanzas of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet Eighteen, Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day?
Poetry has brought to the world greats like William Shakespeare and W.B. Yeats to ancient poets like Homer and Dante Alighieri, American treasures like Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson and African legends like Antonio Jacinto, John Pepper Clark, Sedar Leopold Senghor, Kofi Awoonor, Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe.
Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, or to evoke emotive responses, In today’s increasingly globalized world, however, poets often adapt forms, styles and techniques from diverse cultures and languages.
Literary techniques such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects.
The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations.
Similarly, figures of speech such as metaphor, simile and metonymy create a resonance between otherwise disparate images a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived.
Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm.
Some poetry types are specific to particular cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes.
Poetry remains one of the – if not – the most intrinsic voice of the voiceless, the strength and firm resort of the suppressed, the last recourse of literary revolution and the most formidable literary arsenal ever devised by man Chinua Achebe’s Beware Soul Brother, Wole Soyinka’s and JP Clark’s Abiku, Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, William Wordsworth’s The Prelude, Y. B. Yeat’s The Second Coming, T. S. Elliot’s The Waste Land, Homer’s The Lliad, Kofi Awoonor’s Song Of Sorrow, Christopher Okigbo’s Elegy For Alto, Oswald Mbuyiseni Mitshali’s Nightfall In Sow, etc.
Ask yourself: what crucial role part have I played in the regeneration of poetry in the modern generation? What message have I conveyed through formal or informal poetry? Do I know anything about African poetry?
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