Introduction to Poetry

“Poetry, when either created or read, becomes a catalyst for expanding a person’s creative, immune, psychological, mental and spiritual, potential” – Marijke Alida

A love of language is a gift more precious than perhaps is generally thought. Language is inextricably bound up in the process of thought and it is postulated by many that the extent of its richness/complexity directly correlates to the extent of the richness/complexity of thinking potential. Language is not just a tool of thought but is a direct reflection of it.

Wittgenstein considered that all aspects of our minds are dependant on language – while Descartes’ view was “I think, therefore I am”. Wittgenstein’s view was perhaps, ‘I use language, therefore I think and that is why I know I am’ – he proposed that the world is made up of a series of objects, similarly to a language structure, in the same way as musical notes, which, although not a direct representation of music, nevertheless, represent it indirectly. Wittgenstein maintains that we cannot MEAN anything without language and as with growing older, one’s understanding of the world becomes more complex, the more complex one’s language becomes.

It is interesting but not necessary, to invoke academic, philosophical reasons for introducing at avery early age, the variety and beauty not just of language in general, but of Poetry, in particular.

Poetry is the expression indisciplined form, of what is remembered after flights of inspiration and the difficulty of its birthing process is partly due to the difficulty of remembering one’s experience during such ‘flights’. This difficulty is rather like that of writing down, upon waking, the exact content of a dream – even as one grabs pen and paper and writes the first lines, already one feels the memory become less and less distinct, till, only perhaps 5 minutes after waking, seemingly most of what one experienced during the dreaming, is completely eradicated by the reality of the waking state.