Yesterday was the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), a writer I have been thinking about a lot over the last few months and who has always influenced me when I read him. For this reason, I wanted to talk about his poems and present the style of poetry that has been on my mind for a long time.
Literary works are created by mixing emotions, questions, inquiries, answers, assumptions and lies (fictions) with different genres, themes and subjects. Here, both the author's style and the methods used create a fresh unity and reveal different flavours.
Although I don't want to make an assertive statement like "each author definitely has a unique style", I think we can say that the points that make them stand out (especially when analysed in detail) become more visible in some of their works.
What shapes this may be a mixture of personal taste, understanding of life, the type of works they consume, the way they live, the language they use and their culture, so it may not be clear. It is not clear because there is not just one factor, but many.
On the contrary, sometimes there are structures that clarify it. They may be methods that someone suggests in some way, that are liked, that are adopted, that seem logical, or that come about by chance. Let's talk about poetry. In fact, the literary form in which emotions are intense does not have to be entirely like this. Although the complex factors mentioned above play a dominant role, some logical rules and forms also help to form the structure of poetry.
When we talk about logic and poetry, some of you may feel strange. You may have wondered, “Isn't poetry just sentences in which we pour our hearts out?” True, but we can write them within rules, regulations, measures and even restrictions.
Think back to your school days and your literature/language classes. There were different forms of poetry based on rhyme, syllabic metres and themes. You may remember some of them; they were written in a relatively simple style. For example, the “acrostic”, in which the first letters of each line are interlaced to reveal the title of the poem, the name of the poet or the person the poet is addressing, is probably one of them.
Lyric poetry dealt with romance and love, epic poetry with wars and heroes, and pastoral poetry with nature and the beauty of the environment. Satirical poetry complained about things and contained irony. Of course, what I have mentioned here are poems divided into themes. There are also branching details such as syllabic meter and rhyme scheme. You may remember some of the rhyme types. We used to make sequences: ABAB, AAAB and so on.
The syllabic meter was also related to the number of syllables we used. In this way we made sure that when we sang the phrases there was harmony and rhythm in the ear. When you found a good rhyme for your poem on the subject you wanted, the process was complete.
Poetry is sometimes aesthetic, it goes beyond the paper. Concrete Poetry example - Source
To refresh my knowledge, I researched forms of poetry and this time I analysed them in English, because there would probably be other forms of poetry that I would come across than the ones we were taught at school. Of course, the forms of poetry would be different because of the difference in the language and the difference in the famous old works written in that language. And this is quite understandable.
After all, some were much loved, others were little used or found confusing. In fact, there are more forms than we know. This is not to say that there are fewer forms in our literature, only that different paths have been taken, or that forms have been adopted from outside our literary culture.
As you know, Shakespeare left a deep mark on English literature with his lyric poetry and sonnets. James Joyce, an Irish writer who mastered the experimental form, is the subject of literature courses in every university in the world. Americans T.S. Elliot (free verse) and E.A. Poe (rhythmic presentation of gothic narrative) have also found their place on the world stage with their original forms, distinctive pens and striking sentences.
When you write a poem, how do you approach it, do you work through most of the elements mentioned above or do you focus on what you are feeling at the time?
Personally, I don't have any particular order other than a certain context (what I want to write about), theme (whatever my dominant emotion is) and rhyme. I find free metre too prosaic, I look for harmony in what I write, I want it to ring in my ears like a melody when I write a poem, I eliminate themes that don't fit my subject and write as much as I can think of. I try not to break the context by adding more.
As you can see, although these are sufficient points for us in a personal context, they are not even close to the master poets. Because, in fact, poets both handle and weigh each factor (by combining it with their personal desire) and make you feel as if they are not doing this at all. They make you feel that you can write like them. This is not true; the main thing is that they can communicate their feelings to you. That is why they are masters.
Photo by Juan Di Nella on Unsplash
As I mentioned a month or two ago, every time I read Poe's “The Raven” I get ecstatic. When you read the poem, you are actually reading a story. It's a narrative whose scenes you can see in your mind. First we try to solve the story with him. Throughout the work, he conveys his pessimistic feelings in such a way that we feel sorry for him. When we read aloud, we sometimes run out of breath and succumb to the rush of repetitive words. We get our share of his gloom. We are completely caught up in the rhythm of the words, the dance of the metres or the binding of the rhymes. Finally, with the repetitive word that follows the logic of fiction, we make the same touch, but we encounter the poet's changing emotions.
Poe (in his essay describing the creation of this poem) says that he thought a lot about it and wanted to bring an innovative perspective to the monopolised forms of poetry. Because he was bold and free in this regard, he was able to leave a work that has endured 200 years later. That is what artistic influence should be, it should be able to impress us from that time. It should still be able to make a name for itself today.
So how difficult is it to give birth to a new form? Can we do it? Do we have to?
If we leave the past and focus on the present, this time we encounter the individualised understanding of contemporary artworks. That's why we don't understand a lot of it and think a lot of it is nonsense. Maybe the time has not yet come for some of them and they are waiting to be discovered, I don't know. But with the individualised artistic approach, everyone is trying to show their unique side and stand out from society. It is natural that there are works that we consider meaningless and of poor quality, and those that are extraordinary and rational. When I say "meaningless", I mean that we are in a period where meaning is pluralised with different individual perceptions.
However, the works of the great poets mentioned above (in this context, they were also contemporary writers of their time) advise us to establish a strong balance between form and content. We cannot achieve the new if we do not incorporate the existing.
Let us return to poetry. I'm in favour of emphasising this literary form, which is influenced by so many factors, and I don't think it's right to cut it off. On the other hand, it is obvious that not everyone can write ambitiously. After all, we need a lot of practice to become proven veterans like the aforementioned masters. In the meantime, we can still write as we please. But if we are going to talk about radical change, it is important that we know what we are doing. Spending time on at least a certain form can make it easier for us to take side roads.
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