“Nuances of a well-written Poem”

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( By Dr Karanam R Rao )

A poem, if it should successfully communicate the nuances of felt

experiences, should be “felt in the blood’, and “felt along the heart”. It is wisdom
crystallized and synthesized, and shoved into a string of metaphors or images to
edify and instruct the common readers Any other arrangement of words into a syntactical
order without proper locutions of sensibility or structure sonic is going to fail to lift a
poem into an aesthetic artifact. A poem is, in essence, a rhythmic thought supercharged
with emotional overplus to fascinate its readers with its sheer exuberance. These are,
what Wallace Stevens calls , “ beauty of inflections ” and “ beauty of innuendos ” that
elevate the poem into an aesthetic experience. It should carve for itself a niche or create a
self-space, and translate a moment into the eternity of experience.
It is an accepted fact that a poem should have a formal structure that
defines and delimits the experience that is sought to be communicated. For instance, a
lyric poem operates within the confines of order set by the poet and carries the emotive
feeling through the conduits of images and metaphors with a rhythm that encapsulates
thought. As for instance:
“ We know the snow is cold,
the sky is blue and wet
but we don’t know who told
the man is to mend his net”
A brilliant articulation of thought through the choice of simple yet potential concatenation
of words that creates the needed effect.
Imagery is the summa of a poem , and it is imagery that carries the
poem to a definitive finality .It’s both a decorative frill and a necessary component
without which a poem stands to lose all the weight of perception and its actualization
.Imagery could be drawn from the external world of perception or the internal world
where the feelings are inchoate and unformulated This gives continuity to thought and
enhances the dramatic effect to the poem. The poet could exploit words and their
different etymological connections to create an aura of abstraction that lifts the poem into
a metaphysical level. For instance, William Carlos Williams uses imagery as the leit
motif of a poem while Seamus Heaney believes in the strong rhythms.
Effective use of punctuation and line breaks do contribute to the
embellishment of a poem .Some poets effectively the dignity of the thought process by
Making use of these elements A poem works with shorter lines and the line breaks
provide “stop” and “go” arrangement. The next step is to work on the sound pattern of the
poem. One must try to rearrange the lines and stanzas so that they stand out on their own
.In fact, words create their own resonances and a careful selection of words is necessary
to lift the poem into an aesthetic level. One has to exploit the etymology of words to
make the poem enjoyable .It should not be a drab affair where everything is
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is an abstraction. It should be an aesthetically satisfying artifact in which sense and sound
cohere to push the poem into a metaphysical whole. There is everything to be said about
the creation of mood which is most important if one wants to see that the poem moves
into an aesthetic level .It’s the mood that gives it a formal structure, and that it becomes
an axis for the creation of a poem.
The following are some of the cardinal principles that one has to follow to
orient the poem into setting a mood.
-It should have a well-chosen pattern of image and discourse.
-Must contain rhythm that gives it color and variation.
-there should be effective line-breaks that add up to the totality of effect .It adds beauty
and concinnity.
=word music is a sine qua non, for it’s the word that creates the sonic effect to the poem.
-and the formal structure is necessary for a poem without which it loses direction and
objectivity.
These are but a few of the relevant aspects of a poem that form it sinner dynamics.