WORSSLINGER'S PRE-OCCUPATION WITH TIME IN HIS POETRY

Poetry is a special use of language. The creative artist, in my opinion , has three motives: firstly, to create and give expression or vent to his feelings about an object , event or situation: secondly, to perceive either in the external world of sense or the internal world of feeling to produce a work of art, and thirdly, to share his perceprions with the world in his time and thereafter. The perception the poet may want to share may be fanciful, may be graceful, may be a landscape, a kaleidoscopic or cinematographic representation in words.

Wordsworth claimed that the purpose of poetry was to teach the young and gracious of every age to see , to think and feel, and therefore, to become more actively and securely virtuous. He uses the word “virtuous” to mean possessing the power of knowledge. I prefer the word “conscious”. Poetry, in this sense of consciousness, intensifies and extends our faculties , and therefore, gives us more understanding and illumination of our own lives, as well as of others.

We read , we enjoy or contemplate poetry, because the poet like the reader is usually haunted and ruled by time and the inevitability of death, have enjoyed pleasure or suffered pain, loss , hate, frustration or disgust, or have had moods of tumult or peace. The poet is a human being alive in his time or age, and influenced by a particular social , intellectual and physical environment ,and endowed by nature with an individual temperament ,and creating his poetry within his own poetic domain, and from his own experience of time, place and event. On the other hand, the reader, conditioned by his own age and circum-stance , by his psychological make-up, his idiosyncrasies, even by his religious or moral attitude or beliefs.
What may be called the “tyranny of time” or consciousness of time is a prevailing element of poetry ,and we seem shackled and doomed to it, and cannot escape. Wordslinger is, by no means, ignorant of this , nor can he ignore it in many ,if not most , of his creations.

Wordslinger is not only captured by time, but he also captures and manipulates time in his poetry, Many of his poems reveal that he is pre-occupied, without becoming obsessed with it. I don’t think he is obsessed ,in the true sense of time becoming a mania with him. If time was an obsession with him, he would obviously come forth strongly to the forefront with it in his creations. It may be correct to say he uses hours, day, weeks, years, age as time-frames in which to set action , moods, scenes and scenery, emotions and insights. . Rarely does passing time points to death, but it sometimes does, in a few of his numerous creations.

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THIS COMING SUNDAY, we shall explore how Wordslinger interpolates and effectively manipulates the “tyranny of time” in some of his poetry. [/b]

Last edited by cousinsoren 04-15-2010 at 07:06:19 PM