April, the National Poetry Writing Month in the US, is almost over but we’re still in the mood to celebrate and #NaPoWriMo has been trending everywhere. While poetry has never won the award for the most popular form of literature, we, #Versophiles, are deeply dedicated to the poems and poets we love the most. We’ve written down our favourite lines in our journals, snuck them into secret notes to crushes, turned to them for comfort and inspiration in dark times and even tried to pen a word or two in their style. This National Poetry Writing Month, we’re taking a stroll down memory lane to celebrate our favourites.
THREE POEMS THAT WE GREW UP WITH
The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
The Highwayman is about a robber and his beloved, who are betrayed by the beloved’s jealous lover. The poem turns our idea of good and evil on its head and its eerie atmosphere is perfect for a late-night read, preferably with a kalbaisakhi playing out in the background.
Fave Lines: And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees, / When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, / When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, / A highwayman comes riding —/ Riding—riding— / A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
Geek Speak: The entire poem is written in a regular iambic and anapaestic hexameter and an AABCCB rhyme scheme.
Where the Mind is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore
Published as part of Tagore’s Nobel Prize-winning anthology, Gitanjali (in picture), the poem is a translation of the Bengali poem Chitto Jetha Bhayshunyo. It is a cry for resistance against narrow-mindedness and a vision of Tagore’s ideal India.
Fave Lines: Where the mind is led forward by thee / Into ever-widening thought and action / Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Geek Speak: The poem uses a device called anaphora, in which a particular phrase or word is repeatedly used for emphasis — in this case, the word “where”.
Daffodils by William Wordsworth
We all know this one — it’s a favourite of multiple Indian education boards! The poem is about the joy that a fleeting moment of beauty can bring. But it’s also about the power of imagination or “our mind’s eye”.
Fave Lines: Continuous as the stars that shine / And twinkle on the milky way, / They stretched in never-ending line / Along the margin of a bay:... / The waves beside them danced; but they / Out-did the sparkling waves in glee...
Geek Speak: The poem famously uses a lot of inversion — in which the construction of the sentence is turned on its head — which can be seen in the line: Ten thousand saw I at a glance!
THREE POETS WE DISCOVERED ONCE WE GREW UP
Sylvia Plath
She was an American poet, known for pioneering the “confessional” style of poetry. It breaks our heart that her struggles with depression led her to taking her own life at the very young age of 30 but she left behind an enormous body of work that has provided immense inspiration and comfort to generations of readers.
Fave Poem: Mirror
Favourite Lines: Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, / Searching my reaches for what she really is. / Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
Must-reads: Mad Girl’s Love Song, which was published in The Bell Jar (in picture), Daddy, Lady Lazarus, Lesbos and The Moon and the Yew Tree.
Maya Angelou
She was an American poet and civil rights activist. We adore her poems about subverting beauty standards, the strength of women, anti-war messages and social justice. She was also a cook, a nightclub performer, actor, opera singer and journalist!
Fave Poem: Phenomenal Woman
Favourite Lines: I say / It’s in the reach of my arms, / The span of my hips, / The stride of my step, / The curl of my lips. / I”m a woman / Phenomenally. / Phenomenal woman, / That’s me.
Must-reads: Her series of seven autobiographies (written in prose), including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (in picture).
Pablo Neruda
This Nobel-winning Chilean poet brought a whole new language of love with his sensitive, erotic and lyrical sonnets.
Fave Poem: Sonnet XXVII published in 100 Love Sonnets
Favourite Lines: Naked, you are blue as the night in Cuba; / You have vines and stars in your hair; / Naked, you are spacious and yellow / As summer in a golden church.
Must-reads: Every Day You Play that includes the famous line: I want to do with you what the spring does to the cherry trees.
OUR FAVE SLAM POETS
Their poems are not in school textbooks. They write about things with deeper meaning, issues which need to be talked about and subjects that evoke debates. Coupled with a soothing guitar and powerful delivery, performance poetry on YouTube is hitting all the right notes, especially over the last year, and has garnered massive following. While veteran global channels like Button Poetry have been around for some time, some new Indian channels like Spill Poetry (358K followers), Tape A Tale (451K followers), Your Quote (287K followers) and UnErase Poetry (365K followers) have exposed the nation to both English and Hindi poetry like never before. Here are some of our favourite YouTube slam poets:
Aranya Johar
She took the Internet by storm and won our hearts with her A Brown Girl’s Guide to Gender (2.1 million views), stating in a clear and unapologetic manner the ugly misogyny that even our sisters, mothers and friends are victims of. Telling it exactly how it is, from catcalls to leers to objectification, Aranya doesn’t leave out any detail while describing the shallow manner in which people still think. She followed it up with A Brown Girl’s Guide To Beauty (2.6 million views), which confronted society’s idea of beauty, which is still dependent on someone’s skin colour and body weight, describing how girls are brought up with these notions, which they internalise up to such a point that they resort to fairness creams because society doesn’t consider “brown” beautiful.
Simar Singh
His poems are often on topics that don’t receive adequate attention. The Legal Rapist (696K views) made us sit up and take notice, with its take on marital rape, which is often suppressed, simply because many still feel that a wife does not have the right to say no to her husband. How to Be A Man (465K views) talks about how society expects men to bottle up their emotions and sees them showing any emotion as a sign of weakness, causing mental disorders which slowly gnaw into many of our loved ones. In Super Woman (74K views), he ponders over how many women, including his mother, have had to give up their dreams, simply because they got married, as he says: We’ve arranged lesser education and more marriages.
Yahya Bootwala
His Shayad Wo Pyaar Nahi (7.8 million views) can be credited for bringing the Indian youth’s attention back to poetry made in India, back in August 2017. This beautiful piece made us melt, talking about how people often mistake basic things like being a part of each other’s social media stories and celebrating their #monthiversary for true love while not understanding that the latter is something much more intimate and innocent. His Shehar (936K views) draws a parallel between the close-knit towns of the past where people basked in the simpler pleasures of life and the present-day metropolitan cities, which are concrete jungles sans intimacy. Cycle (2.2 million views) is a take on how he overcame his fear of falling and learnt a life lesson from his father.
Which poet have you discovered recently? Tell t2@abp.in
