Man, Woman, and Poetry!

There is an intrinsic spiritual connection between a man, woman, and poetry. I came across a few quotes trying to crack the mystery that woman is and some wanting to dive deeper into the man-woman relationship. To my surprise I found they held in their folds some spicy, tangy, and zingy lessons for men as well as poets. Poetry, as I understand it, figures out mysteries rather fast, women love figures (not always their own) and man expectedly sums up his thesis in a couple of mumbled words like ‘That figures!’

I figure you’ve figured what we’re getting into. If you haven’t, let me clarify that even if you read on there aren’t going to be any solutions offered, no titillating mysteries uncovered and no spiritual peaks achieved. Well, these seven quotes could have lying between them one of the many ways to write poetry. I just want the art of poetry writing to get spread more because poets, I believe, tend to be powerful but harmless mortals who are a tiniest bit nearer God than most of others. However, this isn’t all. You read on and I bet you’ll understand women better…

Quote #1
“Even when a man understands a woman, he can’t believe it.”

Many poets who claim to understand poetry surprise themselves. That is because every time they read a poem they understand it differently. There are nuances they had missed earlier, an emotional hue depending so much on the time and place chosen to read a particular line…and so on. It isn’t so much the limitations of a poet’s capacity to interpret but the unfathomable depth of words that have taken the form of a poem. This also happens when he tries reading a woman. Women and poetry are enigmas that compulsively defy single interpretations!

So when you write a poem, read it to see which way it prefers to be interpreted. Read it again and you’ll be surprised that the poem now wants to be interpreted differently! This is almost like photographing a woman and then concluding that you’re done with all women. Well, you aren’t. From a metaphysical point of view, every moment even in its ephemeral state is the most powerful definition of an enigma… well, so is a woman and so is poetry!

The lesson, therefore, for a poet is that if on repeated readings of his own poem he fails to interpret it differently, the poem is probably just a few words posing as one. Strip off the camouflage and rebuild on whatever your initial thought was… and you’ll create a poem. Simple. Take the pretensions out of what you are writing, and see if the poem inspires a deeper probe… every poem needs to, as every woman does, inspire a deeper probe, so to say! If your poem (or your woman) does, you’d have understood it somewhat and you can live with that wondrous feeling that you’re spiritually closer to the art of creation! And you will never actually believe it.

Even God is probably still gazing at his creation and still interpreting us. The day He knows that there is no more mystery left to ponder on, life will cease to exist! Got it?

Quote #2
“A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.”
(Jane Austen)

This one is as much for the poet as it is for the poem itself. I remember having sent one of my poems to a competition in the Midlands in UK where some good soul analyzed the lines and wrote back: ‘You are too direct. Try to just hint and link to what you want to actually say. Use metaphors. Take distant examples, connect them by a common thread and it will become a better poem than if you lay all your cards open with only rhymes and jingles to support.’ Fair enough, I thought…and here we are now with Jane Austen telling us how poetry and women must behave and become.

Though I think I have a better explanation on poetry now that I have ‘probed’ many times into what Austen is attempting to say. Poetry doesn’t really aim to solve any mystery… it actually lives in the hope of becoming one. Well, poetry also doesn’t create a complex web, it simplifies to lure you in and then makes you feel that you’ve found something important enough. You leave in triumph but return because you feel that there is yet another victory left… and this goes on and on and on…

It is thus vital that a poem, like Austen’s woman, has something to say and a lot to hide. Though I must remark here that Pamela Anderson in Baywatch has just as much to say as Meena Kumari in Pakeezah! It is as possible to create a monosyllabic enigma as one that splashes iambs and meters all around!

Quote #3
“There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature.”
(Lawrence Durrell)

Well, well, Durrell ji, you’ve missed out on the most important instruction. You don’t ‘do’ anything to a woman… you just let her ‘know’ that you want to ‘know’ her better… which is quite different from turning her ‘into literature’. When she knows that you want to know her better, she intuitively switches ON all her mystery modes and the runway lights to encourage and beckon your attention that is in flight, so to say. The paradox here is that you’ll never actually ‘know’ her as you’ll always be in a perpetual state of landing and take-off… the same is true of poetry.

There are those who love poetry but never attempt to write, there are those who grow long pampered hair and stink-nodes all over and yet unable to write even a solitary line of poetry, and lastly (according to the Durrell classification), there are those who write trite phrases, weld them together with precision tools and call them poetry that should be prescribed in Universities. Thank you Lawrence Durrell, but it is the fourth unmentioned category that actually writes poetry that is read by us all. One needs to just let poetry ‘know’ that you want to ‘know’ her better. Literature can be a by-product… though every immortal poem doesn’t always end up on academic shelves!

Poets (and lovers) must also remember that grammar and any other sort of regulation isn’t what always creates hummable memorable rhymes… even D H Lawrence wrote that ‘the cruelest thing a man can do to a woman is to portray her as perfection.’

Well, Lawrence Durrell, it is possible to love poetry, suffer for poetry, and turn your poetry outpourings into literature… you just need to let the Goddess of Poetry ‘know’ that you want to know her better! In simple terms, unless you tell her, she wouldn’t know. Got it?

Quote #4
“A woman who will not feign submission can never make a man happy.”
(Jacqueline Onassis)

Should a poem (or a woman) be unimaginably impenetrable? No. Though no mind must be able to decipher ALL that a poem has to say, a poem needn’t really behave like a fortress where entry is through a selectively distributed password! A real and a good poem, like the woman defined by Jacqueline, needs to allow a mind to want to enter it again and again… some psychologists would simply call it a win-win situation!

Poetry is free to dress itself up like anything so long as the zipper is discernable, accessible, and yieldable! Poetry too needs to feign submission and on every reading should the poem yield just that bit more to keep a reader coming back to it again and again!

Quote #5
“A woman who looks like a girl and thinks like a man is the best sort, the most enjoyable to be and the most pleasurable to have and to hold.”
(Julie Burchill)

This is by far the best definition of poetry that I’ve ever come across. Words dress up poetry and can make her look like a creased old woman trudging through a complex mesh of life and incidents unable to find her way to anything. Words can also make her look like a bright young girl dancing in the open fields but ready to stop and draw the most complex theorem on the ground with her dainty toes!

As I have said before, write simple sentences with simpler words. You will find that they caress within their cleavage the most complex thoughts and mysteries. It is this kind of poetry that tends to reach the heart and the mind. The corollary is that the heart and the mind too search for poetry of this kind. So if you do not know difficult words and have never read any of the philosophers, don’t fret… you can still win over the world with your simple straightforward words and thoughts.

Every poem ought to have a multi-dimensional approach to existence. Try to write poetry that looks perceptibly simple and agreeable like some character in a comic book…and yet have the capacity to hold and distribute wisdom as Winnie the Pooh or Snoopy do! I find women doing this with ease… no wonder they end up as muses!

Quote #6
“I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilised by Man.”
(George Meredith)

Women will love this one. Poetry is so advanced whimsically that it does not pay to even try and tame it. Poetry is emotions given a break from the stranglehold of discipline which then go on to evolve into mature verse.

As such it is not essential to become a disciple of free verse nor is it advisable to promote any sort of anarchy amongst poets…but it does make sense to realize that animals in the wild hold more attraction than those in the zoo.

And I am surely not very off the target in presuming that there are geo-regions where women do exist in chains. From fatwas against them to khap panchayats silencing them, a woman in perceived shackles is what creates cultural and intellectual development chasms!

Safe to conclude then that the day raw and untamed beauty in poetry ceases, the world comes face to face with its worst catastrophe!

Quote #7
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
(Simone De Beauvoir)

There is poetry in prose just as there are the effeminate amongst men! No, I do not mean that all men are prosaic nor am I trying to say that prose is masculine. What is important to understand here is that it is not a mere inheritance of physical attributes like verse-form that will magically produce poetry, just as silicon transplants will not make some women more alluring.

There is a certain tilt towards lilt, fathomed rhythm, lines that sing along, words that whisper magic mantras, wisdom that flows down effortlessly like a waterfall, and a recall that copy-writers dream of that ‘makes’ some lines poetry. They are all made up of words that, in a different arrangement, would be gibberish.

Poetry is thus a simple arrangement of words that have:
•    Simplicity of form
•    Connected lines with a similar thought
•    Pervasive mystery
•    Directions but no defined path
•    Stands tall yet doesn’t intimidate

All the above don’t naturally exist in a clump of words… they need to be brought into that mode of existence. It is the same with women.

Hope you have liked the way I’ve tried to interpret these seven quotes the way a poet might like. And the way any man or any woman would want to interpret the feminine enigma! Do e-mail me if you have any comments.

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An article on the art of poetry-writing by
© Arvind Passey
Written on 06 January 2002 and modified on 14 February 2011