POETRY A MARGINALISED GENRE by Nidhi Mehta

                                    

 

Poetry in its most virgin sense,

Has nothing but attention as its defense.

It cannot escape its unnatural flow,

Crammed inside a box by some conflicted foe.

                                                               (Anonymous Blogger)

          Marginalisation means – the social process of becoming or made to seem less important. As discussed in my previous post that an exceptional poet may need a tinge of insanity to be more creative, do we need equally insane audience to appreciate it? Why poetry is being marginalized? What makes it less happening than other genres of literature? Whilst going through one such blog,  I was actually dumb stricken to find people who don’t like reading poetry as they can’t get it or call it intolerable, ( http://www.experienceproject.com/groups/Actually-Dont-Like-Poetry/35950)   unnatural and a waste of time.

        Reading further I came to know the various reasons that make people not to like it much. The poetry may be unnatural for our brain as it doesn’t inherently rhyme, for some it is merely a practiced art, too dreamy for realistic people, hard to understand symbolism, lack of logic , sometimes lack of grammatical rules even, have to dig deep to understand what lies beneath and so the list goes on.

        Few opine that it has to do with industrialisation, commoditisation and many such ‘sations’. Poets were originally healers in early societies; they had status, and their task was, through the power of communally understood language, rhythm and image, to knit together entire communities through the evocation of shared experience. All types of communal trauma could be mastered by this means, but now it is more of a fame game.

         Not to blame the naysayers,  I remember in my school days, I seldom understood poetry; as they were meant to be crammed and to be recited for a competition only, with  suitable gestures made by various body parts. Nevertheless, this usage didn’t end there, till it was totally marginalized by movies, browsing, chilling out and shopping.

       People prefer watching and laughing on the wit of Two-and-Half -Men than appreciating the wit of John Donne and T.S.Eliot. Poetry needs interpretation, analysis, patience and above all, a right bent of mind to do the labour. These naysayers lack the power to imagine, appreciate the abstract beauty of a verse and succumb to the idea of ‘poetic justice’ or to the justice to the poetics.