I'm glad to share with you my paper published in the International Indian GLOBAL LITERATI INSIGHTS' Research Magazine last May and on OPA's Opainternational site for researches (
https://opainternational.wordpress.com)
Here's also its full text:
THE WORD VERSUS THE SWORD AMID OUR TODAY WORLD’S CHALLENGES
Can Creativity in Poetry/Writing Make the Word Mightier than the Sword?
By George Onsy - Egypt
Abstract
In a world shadowed by dominance and conflicts, I’d like to suggest a way out of that fatal battle between all that’s human and what’s against the very sense of humanity. It is about resurrecting the dormant power of the Word so it may stand high and invincible facing the Sword’s terror. Through this research I will talk first, in Part I, about the indispensable elements of Creative Poetry/Writing, starting from the VISION, moving to the literary work’s coherently expressive STRUCTURE that includes its Beginning, Idea Sequence and Conclusion that should leave the needed impact on the reader very conscience. In this part, I will also give more details about the Physical Aspect of the poetic work and how the Imagery takes flesh and blood through the word music enhancing the poetic translucent logic. However, as the structural analysis of the Word’s literary forms is not everything we need to empower the Word’s Message, I will later, in Part II, proceed to demonstrate and analyze more endeavors of poetic/literary works that can enable the Word to echo the human voice louder than the Sword’s menacing roar.
THE WORD VERSUS THE SWORD AMID OUR TODAY WORLD’S CHALLENGES
Can Creativity in Poetry/Writing Make the Word Mightier than the Sword?
We live in an era of fatal challenges that menace the very existence of the notion of HUMANITY as they are about to completely abolish what characterizes a human being to be really a “human”. So, if the Sword of Terrorism, Oppression, and Corruption, continues to wave from East to West trying to have the final say, hasn’t yet the time come to raise the silenced Humanity’s Voice through the still Hidden and Ineffective Power of its WORD?
To discuss this possibility, we need to study and apply two approaches that can open the way to: First, empowering the writer/poet’s Word by enhancing the main elements of the text’s structure – and this will be Part I of this research. Then we’ll proceed, later, to Part II where we will apply some Key Mechanisms to activate the Word’s Power in order to face human challenges, as our Today’s World does need a NEW WORLD ORDER that can never be built without an URGING MIND-CHANGE AWARENESS COMPAIGN, and in that second part we’ll focus on:
- Supporting Human Unity Against Discrimination; Racism and Fanaticism.
- How to Motivate the International Community to Help the Needy; the Refugees, Persecuted and Oppressed.
- How to Face Terrorism Questioning the very Fear of Death.
Part I: CREATIVITY IN POETRY – How to Empower the Word:
I would like to display here some ideas to help enhance and intensify the needed power of humanity’s word. I will first start with the analysis of powerful works of writing, focusing on poetry, suggesting some effective approaches to empower the Human Word through poetic VISION, IDEAS, and STRUCTURE.
Through the infinite space of awareness, meanings and ideas never cease to hover everywhere and your yet-to-be-born poem is still hanging there, entangled across that faint blue print of the universal enlightenment. It is still waiting for your own personal vision to trace its structure amid the silence and stillness of minds, expecting the birth of thought that’s unquestionably original.
VISION is the very starting point from which a creative poet’s pen set to navigate through the poetic hazardous journey. It is a vision woven out of the lights and shadows of the poetic soul’s own experience, situation, problem or issue to incorporate into the poem’s very body in order to be seen, felt and embraced by the reader’s eyes, heart and mind.
The poet’s vision about what he is going to handle through his write is his own specific angle of view; how he would view through his very personal perspective what he is to weave with his verses. So, his vision must be authentically transparent to his identity, beliefs, way of thinking, manner of responding to what he sees, feels, and conceives. Here, such a vision must be very individual, inimitable, matchless, and fairly distinguished from any others’, even if it still belongs to the global frame of human consciousness regarding what needs to write about.
In fact, a vision is the very natural and spontaneous approach to the topic treated, an approach the poet must start his creation with adding, through his own perception and conception new dimensions to what he would portrait in verses where shadowed sides of the subject are to be bathed in a new light, where unknown mysteries that have never been disclosed before are to be deciphered and heard through the ears of minds, hearts and souls.
A good example of starting with poet’s special vision is William Blake’s “THE LAND OF DREAMS” where he visualizes, through his own enlightened soul’s eyes, Eternity as a land of dreams then he molds it into a short simple dialogue smoothly flowing between a son and his father. See how his mystical vision of Eternity is implicitly being revealed through his verses:
- ‘ O, what land is the Land of Dreams?
‘ What are its mountains, and what are its streams?
‘ O father ! I saw my mother there,
‘ Among the lilies by waters fair.
…………………………………….
We can see how he tells about Eternal Life through a vision he creates out of his own profound spiritual experience that had characterized almost all his works. The father’s reply to his son’s words will come later as an excellent example of ending.
Likewise, William Shakespeare in his “FEAR NO MORE THE HEAT OF THE SUN” from his play, Cymbeline, incorporates his own vision about Death as his lines echo a voice saying to a parting soul:
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun;
Nor the furious winter’s rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages;
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney sweepers come to dust.
Fear no more the frown of the great,
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke:
Care no more to clothe and eat;
For thee the reed is as the oak:
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.
Another example of Blake’s work shows his vision and philosophy about true love when he displays in his “THE CLOD AND THE PEBBLE”two opposite views of love uttered by their opposite viewers; the Clod of clay trodden by cattle’s feet then the Pebble of the flowing brook:
Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself has any care;
……………………………………..
Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight:
But as this particular work is closely related to the structural feature of poetry, I’d rather talk about it later when we will come to analyze the physical aspect, particularly the poetic music that echoes each of these two contrasting views and its reversed one.
Then, the vision should take on a STRUCTURE, that’s, a sequence of ideas to give it bones and flesh, starting from the very beginning. The BEGINNING or the introductory verses should tell the reader about the topic, yet, not direct like news information, rather in a way that can be unexpectedly capturing the reader’s attention.
My mother cried my father wept
Into the dangerous world I leapt
Helpless, naked piping loud
Like a fiend hid in a cloud
Through these verses, Blake tells about those special moments of his birth. Here, the powerfully rhythmic meter proclaims loud the event his going to talk about.
When Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea, writes an open letter “TO DEATH”, she begins with verses presenting that unusual interviewee:
O King of terrors, whose unbounded sway
All that have life must certainly obey;
The King, the Priest, the Prophet, all are thine,
Nor would ev’n God (in flesh) thy stroke decline.
In some other cases, the introductory stanza or verses can effectively be used to set the scene for the coming events that will take place throughout the poem, as we read in Tennyson’s “THE LADY OF SHALOTT”:
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro’ the field the road runs by
To many-tower’d Camelott;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Then, a coherent chain of IDEAS should follow the introductory part. These ideas would better be built ascending a hierarchical progression to reach an intellectual and emotional climax preparing for an echoing ENDING or conclusion.
A good example of this is also Tennison’s “LADY OF SHALOTT” narrative lines which keeps the rhythm, ending each stanza with a rhymed phrase as if marking the consecutive episodes of an epic: The town of Camelot, The lady of Shalott, and at certain point; bold Sir Lancelolt.
In such cases, presenting the protagonists of the story or its main scenes is to be given a special care by the poet. So, the Lady of Shalott is presented through these soft dreaming verses:
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle embowers
The lady of Shalott.
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
…………………………..
…………………………….
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers, “ ‘Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott.”
And when the poem comes to Lancelott, we find Tennyson presenting him through these lines:
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel’d
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.
When we come to talk about the IMAGERY, we can say that those poem’s ideas should exhibit a wide variety of poetic images. If the poem’s ideas are not clothed into their beautifully woven imagery the poem may sound more like an article or a research paper set in verses, lacking the emotional whispering that can tap upon the reader’s consciousness.
However, wrapping ideas with images is not merely an external nor superficial adornment. We should bear in mind that each idea is impatiently tempted to melt into its own “coupling” image, so structurally and so intimately. The intermarriage between ideas and their images that they mysteriously, both consciously and unconsciously admire and woo, is a major key to this crucial stage of poetic creativity.
As we all know, imagery may take up different forms; simile, metaphors, … etc., but WORDS with their different levels of connotations, will still be the splendidly coloured threads that can beautifully and coherently interlace those forms, bringing forth their intended impact.
Words are the main element of both ideological/emotional and physical aspects of poetry as they convey a wide range of meanings while equally ring a broad range of sounds that enhance those meanings leaving lasting echoes within the reader’s space of awareness. Thus, intertwining both meanings and their related sounds, i.e., poetic logic and poetic music is indispensable for the poetic structure.
We have seen how Tennyson played with the rhymes, Camelottand Shalott, alternately at the end of each couple of stanzas. That wasn’t merely to maintain the poetic music, but also to give an identifiable sound color to the scene he wanted to set of that gloomy mysterious town, the very stage of his narrative, Camelott, focusing in the meantime on its main character, the Lady of Shalott. Hence, both elements of his built go perfectly parallel right from the poem start till its planned end.
………………………………….
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
For often through the silent nights,
A funeral, with plumes and lights
AND MUSIC, WENT TO CAMELOTT;
Or when the Moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
“I am half sick of shadows,” said
THE LADY OF SHALOTT.
In fact, poetic music can be widely misunderstood. For many, rhyming is essential to create it. Some go as far as trying to keep their poem rhymed sacrificing its logical coherence, and by so doing, they may allow themselves to twist the flow of ideas, or at least, make it superficial loosing their poem’s needed depth.
Here, Blake’s “THE CLOD AND THE PEBBLE” can give us an ideal example of the perfect symbiosis of both the logical-emotional and physical aspects of poetry. See how he amazingly tells about those two opposing views of love, mentioned above, through a highly inspired philosophy that his mastery over poetic meter is beautifully highlighting:
Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself has any care;
But for another gives its ease:
And builds a Heaven in Hells’ despair
So sang a little Clod of Clay
Trodden with the cattles’ feet:
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres’ meet,
Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight:
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heavens’ despite.
Another important element of the write or poem’s structure is the TURNING POINT. A turning point helps push forward both the logical and emotional flow of a poem, a literary work in general, or even any work of performing art or music, in order to reach a higher phase of its progression, steadily moving towards the work’s planned ending. See how Tennyson knits his turning point in his narrative of “THE LADY OF SHALOTT” in order to prepare for a more dramatic complication of his write which is here Lady of Shallot’s voluntary death, hence, leading the reader towards the ending part:
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look’d down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
“The curse is come upon me,” cried
The Lady of Shalott.
Then he dexterously paints the whole nature’s colossal revolution prophesying her tragic end:
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower’d Camelott.
Then come the verses that tell how she took the boat to end her life putting a sad end to her emotional conflict.
Finally, the ENDING or CLOSING stanzas or verses should stress the final conclusion or the lesson learned out of the entire poem’s message. In order to give this message a resounding logical and emotional effect, a special effort has to be done in order to elaborate those concluding verses, both rationally, emotionally and musically, as all these aspects should be harmoniously intertwined together throughout the entire poetic work.
Another look at Anne Finch’s piece, “TO DEATH”, will exemplify this:
…………………………………………………..
Spare these, and let thy time be when it will;
My bus’ness is to die, and thine to kill.
Gently thy fatal scepter on me lay,
And take to thy cold arms, insensibly, thy pray.
In spite of his strikingly different vision of death and afterlife, William Blake’s ending of his “THE LAND OF DREAM” was molded with a great care leaving a strong impact on the reader as the father answers his son’s question:
- ‘ O, what land is the Land of Dreams?
‘ What are its mountains, and what are its streams?
‘ O father ! I saw my mother there,
‘ Among the lilies by waters fair.
‘ Among the lambs, clothed in white,
‘ She walk’d with her Thomas in sweet delight,
‘ I wept for joy ; like a dove I mourn :-
‘ O when shall I again return !’
- ‘ Dear child ! I also by pleasant streams
‘ Have wander’d all night in the Land of Dreams :-
‘ But, though calm and warm the waters wide,
‘ I could not get to the other side.’
In fact, this particular stanza leading to the poem conclusion, like many others characterizing Blake’s works, is standing unique as it is mysteriously veiled with such an ambiguous meaning that the reader can hardly grasp. This can also be another important feature of a powerful ending of both literary and artistic works.
At the end of this part, I would like to say that what I have explained in this paper is neither an ultimate criterion nor a set of rules. It is just my own view on creative structured poetry writing, a view that I have shaped out of my experience with visions, ideas, imagery and words. So, I do appreciate if you would kindly enrich this write with your appreciated feedback and enlightening comments.
We’ll meet again, in Part II where we will apply, as mentioned above, some Key Mechanisms to activate the Word’s Power in order to face human challenges, as our Today’s World does need a NEW WORLD ORDER that can never be built without an URGING MIND-CHANGE AWARENESS COMPAIGN, and again, in that second part we’ll focus on:
- Supporting Human Unity Against Discrimination; Racism and Fanaticism.
- How to Motivate the International Community to Help the Needy; the Refugees, Persecuted and Oppressed.
- How to Face Terrorism Questioning the very Fear of Death.
Many thanks for reading and for your very appreciated feedback!
George Onsy@copyright2019
George Onsy – Egypt
Writer, Poet and Artist for Peacemaking & Human Solidarity
Researcher and designer Applying his Problem-Solving Visual Modeling Approach
Professor of English and History of Art & Architecture – Fac. of Engineering
International Director at The World Union of Poets (WUP)
Jury Member for several International Poetry/Literary Contests
Secretary General of the International Higher Academic Council of English Literature (IHACEL)
Advisor of 5 International Literary Organizations in India, Kazakhstan and Canada
Laureate of many International Awards, among them “The World Icon of Peace” 2017 and the “The Most Outstanding Peace Poet for 2017” 2018 from the World Institute for Peace-Nigeria (WIP).
