by Ayodele Abbis

Created on: September 24, 2009

Poetry is an art. It is the art of using words arranged together in a particular manner, with a precise tone, and in a structured approach, to participate, relate, and celebrate existence.. Now the term existence is here applied in a much broader sense than just living. I have used it here with effect to saying, it takes the living to write poetry! Therefore poetry, is in effect, a way for the living to communicate whatever relates to their existence either by participating in the subject being communicated, relating to it as a third person, or celebrating it as an object. Enough with the technical jargon, the fact is, there are a million and one ways to define what poetry is. It is one of those types of arts that everyone has a view to what it is. In general it should suffice to say that poetry is a form of communication, and that it is an art, and that it mostly involves the use of words, in a particular way, and with a particular message.

The origins of poetry is seated deeply in the evolution of human nature. It is believed by many scholars that the ancients often had their writings sung so as to aid memorization and remembrance. Homer Iliad for instance, even though an historical account, was written in such a way as to aid easy recital and remembrance, and it was often sung. This practice, it is believed, eventually led to the art of poetry. Another origin of poetry is known to be ancient summeria (modern day Iraq). This accreditation is based on the fact that the earliest and oldest surviving poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, written in the 4Th Millennium B.C. came from that region. Wherever poetry began, it is a common and agreed fact that it has its origins in human expression.

What better way to explore poetry than to see through the eyes of great poets. To Simonides, the ancient philosopher and poet, Poetry is silent painting and painting is silent poetry; To William Wordsworth, a great English poet, All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility; To the sage of Concord, Ralph Waldo Emerson,

Poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warbling, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem; To Maya Angelou, The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it

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