“Poetry is what it is not”

Poetry is what it is not

            Billy Collins, in his poem “Introduction to Poetry”, presented the idea of enjoying a poem. By suggesting to “water ski across the surface of a poem”; or to “walk inside the poem’s room” he proposed to naturally enjoy a poem as it is.   That piece of poetry can be as simple as the surface. No complications, no frills.   However, instead of doing so, we ” tie the poem to a chair…beating it with a hose, to find out what it really means.  Somehow, in our quest to decipher a poem’s meaning we “unnaturally” confine it to our limited understanding, dissect it using our own perspectives and try to extract its meaning.  Does this mean that by trying to understand poetry with our devices that we somehow limit and misunderstand it? Then, in that case poetry is what it is not.

            To further explain, we can never confine poetry to a single definition. Since poetry comes from human emotions and the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” that is “squeezed like a lemon or a lime…into atomic words”, its forms come in many ways. And like the creativity that spurs it into creation, it is limitless. It flows like water; it takes many shapes and forms. It is interpreted by an individual into different meanings and emotions.  It rides the tide of time and changes as it wishes. It is black to you and blue to me. It is a child today and an elderly tomorrow.  Who am I to say this is poetry for you? And who are you to say the same to me?  Poetry is what it is not.

-Amy Wan